Pence, Charles H. (2011) The Conflation of "Chance" in Evolution. [Preprint]
|
PDF
pence-conflation-preprint-1.pdf - Draft Version Download (124kB) |
Abstract
Discussions of “chance” and related concepts (such as “stochasticity,” “randomness,” “indeterminism,” etc.) are found throughout philosophical work on evolutionary theory. By drawing attention to three very commonly-recognized distinctions, I separate four independent concepts falling under the broad heading of “chance”: randomness (as a property of sequences), epistemic unpredictability, causal indeterminism, and probabilistic causal processes. Far from a merely semantic distinction, however, it is demonstrated that conflation of these obviously distinct notions has an important bearing on debates at the core of evolutionary theory, particularly the debate over the interpretation of fitness, natural selection, and genetic drift.
Export/Citation: | EndNote | BibTeX | Dublin Core | ASCII/Text Citation (Chicago) | HTML Citation | OpenURL |
Social Networking: |
Item Type: | Preprint | ||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Creators: |
|
||||||
Keywords: | chance, fitness, genetic drift, natural selection, propensity, randomness | ||||||
Subjects: | Specific Sciences > Biology > Evolutionary Theory General Issues > Causation General Issues > Determinism/Indeterminism |
||||||
Depositing User: | Charles H. Pence | ||||||
Date Deposited: | 10 Jul 2011 13:32 | ||||||
Last Modified: | 10 Jul 2011 13:32 | ||||||
Item ID: | 8711 | ||||||
Subjects: | Specific Sciences > Biology > Evolutionary Theory General Issues > Causation General Issues > Determinism/Indeterminism |
||||||
Date: | 8 July 2011 | ||||||
URI: | https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/8711 |
Monthly Views for the past 3 years
Monthly Downloads for the past 3 years
Plum Analytics
Actions (login required)
View Item |