Birch, Jonathan (2013) Hamilton's rule and its discontents. [Preprint]

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Abstract

In an incendiary 2010 Nature article, M. A. Nowak, C. E. Tarnita and E. O. Wilson present a savage critique of the best known and most widely used framework for the study of social evolution, W. D. Hamilton’s theory of kin selection. Over a hundred biologists have since rallied to the theory’s defence, but Nowak et al. maintain that their arguments ‘stand unrefuted’. Here I consider the most contentious claim Nowak et al. defend: that Hamilton’s rule, the core explanatory principle of kin selection theory, ‘almost never holds’. I first distinguish two versions of Hamilton’s rule in contemporary theory: a special version (HRS) that requires restrictive assumptions, and a general version (HRG) that does not. I then show that Nowak et al. are most charitably construed as arguing that HRS almost never holds, while HRG buys its generality at the expense of explanatory power. While their arguments against HRS are fairly uncontroversial, their arguments against HRG are more contentious, yet these have been largely overlooked in the ensuing furore. I consider the arguments for and against the explanatory value of HRG, with a view to assessing what exactly is at stake in the debate. I suggest that the debate hinges on issues concerning the causal interpretability of regression coefficients, and concerning the explanatory function Hamilton’s rule is intended to serve.

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Item Type:	Preprint
Creators:	Creators Email ORCID Birch, Jonathan jgb37@cam.ac.uk
Keywords:	kin selection, inclusive fitness, Hamilton's rule, evolutionary game theory, Price equation, explanation, causation, unification
Subjects:	Specific Sciences > Biology > Evolutionary Theory General Issues > Causation General Issues > Models and Idealization
Depositing User:	Dr Jonathan Birch
Date Deposited:	15 Feb 2013 14:23
Last Modified:	15 Feb 2013 14:23
Item ID:	9567
Subjects:	Specific Sciences > Biology > Evolutionary Theory General Issues > Causation General Issues > Models and Idealization
Date:	15 February 2013
URI:	https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/9567

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