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  1. Units of selection.Javier Suárez - 2023 - New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Edited by Elisabeth A. Lloyd.
    'Unit of selection' is a polysemic expression, meaning interactor, replicator/reproducer or manifestor of adaptation/type-1 agent in today's biological research. This Element presents each of these concepts and demonstrates the necessity of their isolation.
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  2. Individuality through ecology: Rethinking the evolution of complex life from an externalist perspective.Pierrick Bourrat, Peter Takacs, Guilhem Doulcier, Matthew Nitschke, Andrew Black, Katrin Hammerschmidt & Paul Rainey - manuscript
    The evolution of complex life forms, such as multicellular organisms, is the result of a number of evolutionary transitions in individuality (ETIs). Several attempts have been made to explain their origins, many of which have been internalist (i.e., based largely on internal properties of these life form's ancestors). Here, we show how an externalist perspective, via the ecological scaffolding model in which properties of complex life forms arise from an external scaffold, can shed new light on the question of ETIs. (...)
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  3. An argument for global realism about the units of selection.Sandy C. Boucher - 2023 - Biology and Philosophy 38 (5):1-22.
    This paper defends global realism about the units of selection, the view that there is always (or nearly always) an objective fact of the matter concerning the level at which natural selection acts. The argument proceeds in two stages. First, it is argued that global conventionalist-pluralism is false. This is established by identifying plausible sufficient conditions for irreducible selection at a particular level, and showing that these conditions are sometimes satisfied in nature. Second, it is argued that local pluralism – (...)
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  4. Processes and Patterns of Interaction as Units of Selection : An Introduction to ITSNTS Thinking.W. Ford Doolittle & S. Andrew Inkpen - 2018 - Pnas 115 (16):4006–4014.
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  5. The Phenotype as the Level of Selection: Cave Organisms as Model Systems.Thomas C. Kane, Robert C. Richardson & Daniel W. Fong - 1990 - PSA Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1990 (1):151-164.
    Selection operates at many levels. Some of the most obvious cases are organismic, such as changes in coloration under the influence of predation (cf. Kettlewell 1973; also Endler 1986). It also operates at other levels. Meiotic drive involves selection for a gene, independently of its effect on the organism. At a higher level, there may also be selection for patterns of colony growth in social insects, again under the influence of predation (cf. Wilson 1971). The appropriate level of selection is (...)
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  6. Sober’s Use of Unanimity in the Units of Selection Problem.Fred Gifford - 1986 - PSA Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1986 (1):473-482.
    The units of selection problem is an issue within evolutionary theory (or the philosophy thereof) and concerns the question of what units or objects are acted upon by natural selection -- for example, whether these are genes, organisms or groups of organisms. One of the central theses of Elliot Sober’s recent book, The Nature of Selection, is that the philosophical problem of what it means for something to be a unit of selection is to be understood by applying the correct (...)
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  7. Units and levels of selection.Elisabeth A. Lloyd - 2007 - In David L. Hull & Michael Ruse (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to the Philosophy of Biology. Cambridge University Press.
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  8. Selection does operate primarily on genes : in defense of the gene as the unit of selection.Carmen Sapienza - 2010 - In Francisco José Ayala & Robert Arp (eds.), Contemporary debates in philosophy of biology. Wiley-Blackwell.
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  9. Natural Selection of Independently Originated Life Clades.Margarida Hermida - 2022 - Philosophy of Science 89 (3):454-470.
    Life on Earth descends from a common ancestor. However, it is likely that there are other instances of life in the universe. If so, each abiogenesis event will have given rise to an independently originated life clade, of which Earth-life is an example. In this paper, I argue that the set of all IOLCs in the universe forms a Darwinian population subject to natural selection, with more widely dispersed IOLCs being less likely to face extinction. As a result, we should (...)
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  10. Philosophy in Science: Some Personal Reflections.Elliott Sober - 2022 - Philosophy of Science 89 (5):899-907.
    The task of Philosophy in Science (PinS) is to use philosophical tools to help solve scientific problems. This article describes how I stumbled into this line of work and then addressed several topics in philosophy of biology—units of selection, cladistic parsimony, robustness and trade-offs in model building, adaptationism, and evidence for common ancestry—often in collaboration with scientists. I conclude by offering advice for would-be PinS practitioners.
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  11. Pluralism, Realism and the Units of Selection.Sandy C. Boucher - 2020 - South African Journal of Philosophy 1 (39):47-62.
    I consider two attempts to combine realism with pluralism about the units of selection: Sober and Wilson’s combination of “model” and “unit” pluralism, and Sterelny and Griffiths’ “local pluralism”. I argue that both of these attempts fail to show that realism and pluralism are compatible. Sober and Wilson’s pluralism turns out, on closer inspection, to be a kind of monism in disguise, while Sterelny and Griffiths’ local pluralism involves a combination of realism and anti-realism about interactors, and the units of (...)
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  12. What are the ‘levels’ in levels of selection?Markus Ilkka Eronen & Grant Ramsey - forthcoming - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science.
    The levels of selection debate is generally taken to be a debate about how natural selection can occur at the various levels of biological organization. In this paper, we argue that questions about levels of selection should be analyzed separately from questions about levels of organization. In the deflationary proposal we defend, all that is necessary for multilevel selection is that there are cases in which particles are nested in collectives, and that both the collectives and the particles that compose (...)
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  13. Cancer and the Levels of Selection.Samir Okasha - forthcoming - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science.
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  14. Review of "Biological Individuality: Integrating Scientific, Philosophical, and Historical Perspectives", by S. Lidgard and L. K. Nyhart (eds.).Pierrick Bourrat - 2017 - Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews.
  15. Introduction to evolutionary epistemology, language and culture.Nathalie Gontier - 2006 - In Nathalie Gontier, Jean Paul Van Bendegem & Diederik Aerts (eds.), Evolutionary Epistemology, Language and Culture: A Non-Adaptationist Systems Theoretical Approach. pp. 1-29.
  16. On the Different Applications of Haeckel’s Biogenetic Law In Language Origin and Evolution Studies.Nathalie Gontier - 2008 - In S. Kern (ed.), Emergence of Language abilities. pp. 12-29.
  17. On constructing a research model for historical cognitive linguistics (HCL): Some theoretical considerations.Nathalie Gontier - 2010 - In M. E. Winters (ed.), Historical Cognitive Linguistics. pp. 31-69.
  18. Universal symbiogenesis: a genuine alternative to universal selectionist accounts.Nathalie Gontier - 2007 - Symbiosis 1 (44):167-181.
  19. Evolutionary epistemology as a scientific method: a new look upon the units and levels of evolution debate.Nathalie Gontier - 2010 - Theory in Biosciences 2 (129):167-182.
  20. Guest-Editorial Introduction: Converging Evolutionary Patterns in Life and Culture.Nathalie Gontier - 2016 - Evolutionary Biology 4 (43):427-445.
  21. El holobionte/hologenoma como nivel de seleccion.Javier Suárez - 2021 - Theoria: Revista de Teoría, Historia y Fundamentos de la Ciencia 36 (1):81-112.
    The units or levels of selection debate concerns the question of what kind of biological systems are stable enough that part of their evolution is a result of the process of natural selection acting at their level. Traditionally, the debate has concerned at least two different, though related, questions: the question of the level at which interaction with the environment occurs, and the question of the level at which reproduction occurs. In recent years, biologists and philosophers have discussed a new (...)
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  22. A part‐dependent account of biological individuality: why holobionts are individuals and ecosystems simultaneously.Javier Suárez & Adrian Stencel - 2020 - Biological Reviews.
    Given one conception of biological individuality (evolutionary, physiological, etc.), can a holobiont – that is the host + its symbiotic (mutualistic, commensalist and parasitic) microbiome – be simultaneously a biological individual and an ecological community? Herein, we support this possibility by arguing that the notion of biological individuality is part‐dependent. In our account, the individuality of a biological ensemble should not only be determined by the conception of biological individuality in use, but also by the biological characteristics of the part (...)
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  23. The stability of traits conception of the hologenome: An evolutionary account of holobiont individuality.Javier Suárez - 2020 - History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 42 (1):1-27.
    Bourrat and Griffiths :33, 2018) have recently argued that most of the evidence presented by holobiont defenders to support the thesis that holobionts are evolutionary individuals is not to the point and is not even adequate to discriminate multispecies evolutionary individuals from other multispecies assemblages that would not be considered evolutionary individuals by most holobiont defenders. They further argue that an adequate criterion to distinguish the two categories is fitness alignment, presenting the notion of fitness boundedness as a criterion that (...)
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  24. Introduction.Robert A. Wilson - 1999 - In Species: New Interdisciplinary Essays. Cambridge, MA, USA:
    This volume of twelve specially commissioned essays about species draws on the perspectives of prominent researchers from anthropology , botany, developmental psychology , the philosophy of biology and science, protozoology, and zoology . The concept of species has played a focal role in both evolutionary biology and the philosophy of biology , and the last decade has seen something of a publication boom on the topic (e.g., Otte and Endler 1989; Ereshefsky 1992b; Paterson 1994; lambert and Spence 1995; Claridge, Dawah, (...)
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  25. The hologenome concept of evolution: a philosophical and biological study.Javier Suárez - 2019 - Dissertation, University of Exeter
    The hologenome concept of evolution is a hypothesis about the evolution of animals and plants. It asserts that the evolution of animals and plants was partially triggered by their interactions with their symbiotic microbiomes. In that vein, the hologenome concept posits that the holobiont (animal host + symbionts of the microbiome) is a unit of selection. -/- The hologenome concept has been severely criticized on the basis that selection on holobionts would only be possible if there were a tight transgenerational (...)
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  26. Biological Individuals.Robert A. Wilson & Matthew J. Barker - 2024 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    The impressive variation amongst biological individuals generates many complexities in addressing the simple-sounding question what is a biological individual? A distinction between evolutionary and physiological individuals is useful in thinking about biological individuals, as is attention to the kinds of groups, such as superorganisms and species, that have sometimes been thought of as biological individuals. More fully understanding the conceptual space that biological individuals occupy also involves considering a range of other concepts, such as life, reproduction, and agency. There has (...)
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  27. The Social Evolution of Human Nature: From Biology to Language. [REVIEW]Ryan M. Nefdt - 2019 - Philosophical Quarterly 69 (277):874-877.
    The Social Evolution of Human Nature: From Biology to Language. By Smit Harry.
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  28. El mecanismo evolutivo de Margulis y los niveles de selección.Javier Suárez - 2015 - Contrastes: Revista Internacional de Filosofía 20 (1):7-26.
    Margulis’ evolutionary theory entails a revision of certain core concepts of traditional biology. One of these changes is related to the hot debate about units of selection. This paper considers Margulis’ proposal as a new research tradition (RT) and evaluates its consequences to the mentioned issue. Three ideas are suggested here: firstly, that her theory represents the revision of many classical biological concepts; secondly, that her position implies a reappraisal of many traditional issues in philosophy of biology; and thirdly, that (...)
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  29. A metaphysical approach to holobiont individuality: Holobionts as emergent individuals.Javier Suárez & Vanessa Triviño - 2019 - Quaderns de Filosofia 6 (1):59-76.
    Holobionts are symbiotic assemblages composed by a host plus its microbiome. The status of holobionts as individuals has recently been a subject of continuous controversy, which has given rise to two main positions: on the one hand, holobiont advocates argue that holobionts are biological individuals; on the other, holobiont detractors argue that they are just mere chimeras or ecological communities, but not individuals. Both parties in the dispute develop their arguments from the framework of the philosophy of biology, in terms (...)
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  30. Moving past the levels of selection debates: Samir Okasha, Evolution and the levels of selection, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2006.Stephen M. Downes - 2009 - Biology and Philosophy 24 (5):703-709.
  31. Cancer stem cells modulate patterns and processes of evolution in cancers.Lucie Laplane - 2018 - Biology and Philosophy 33 (3-4):18.
    The clonal evolution model and the cancer stem cell model are two independent models of cancers, yet recent data shows intersections between the two models. This article explores the impacts of the CSC model on the CE model. I show that CSC restriction, which depends on CSC frequency in cancer cell populations and on the probability of dedifferentiation of cancer non-stem cells into CSCs, can favor or impede some patterns of evolution and some processes of evolution. Taking CSC restriction into (...)
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  32. Selection at Multiple Levels. [REVIEW]Simon M. Huttegger - 2007 - Biological Theory 2 (4):429-431.
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  33. Samir Okasha, Evolution and the Levels of Selection. Oxford: Oxford University Press , 263 pp., $55.00. [REVIEW]Alirio Rosales - 2008 - Philosophy of Science 75 (2):254-256.
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  34. In defence of generalized Darwinism.Howard E. Aldrich, Geoffrey M. Hodgson, David L. Hull, Thorbjørn Knudsen, Joel Mokyr & Viktor J. Vanberg - 2008 - Journal of Evolutionary Economics 18:577-596.
    Darwin himself suggested the idea of generalizing the core Darwinian principles to cover the evolution of social entities. Also in the nineteenth century, influential social scientists proposed their extension to political society and economic institutions. Nevertheless, misunderstanding and misrepresentation have hindered the realization of the powerful potential in this longstanding idea. Some critics confuse generalization with analogy. Others mistakenly presume that generalizing Darwinism necessarily involves biological reductionism. This essay outlines the types of phenomena to which a generalized Darwinism applies, and (...)
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  35. Levels of selection in Darwin’s Origin of Species.Gordon Chancellor - 2015 - History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 37 (2):131-157.
    References in Darwin’s Origin of Species to competition between units of selection at and above the level of individual organisms are enumerated. In many cases these references clearly speak of natural selection and do not support the view that Darwin thought selection only occurred at the level of the individual organism. Darwin did see organismal selection as the main process by which varieties were created but he also espoused what is here termed community and varietal selection. He saw no essential (...)
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  36. Multi-level selection and the issue of environmental homogeneity.Ciprian Jeler - 2017 - Biology and Philosophy 32 (5):651-681.
    In this paper, I identify two general positions with respect to the relationship between environment and natural selection. These positions consist in claiming that selective claims need and, respectively, need not be relativized to homogenous environments. I then show that adopting one or the other position makes a difference with respect to the way in which the effects of selection are to be measured in certain cases in which the focal population is distributed over heterogeneous environments. Moreover, I show that (...)
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  37. Is evolution fundamental when it comes to defining biological ontology? Yes.Ellen Clarke - 2020 - In Shamik Dasgupta, Brad Weslake & Ravit Dotan (eds.), Current Controversies in Philosophy of Science. Routledge.
    I argue for the usefulness of the evolutionary kind of biological individual.
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  38. It’s the song, not the singer: an exploration of holobiosis and evolutionary theory.W. Ford Doolittle & Austin Booth - 2017 - Biology and Philosophy 32 (1):5-24.
    That holobionts are units of selection squares poorly with the observation that microbes are often recruited from the environment, not passed down vertically from parent to offspring, as required for collective reproduction. The taxonomic makeup of a holobiont’s microbial community may vary over its lifetime and differ from that of conspecifics. In contrast, biochemical functions of the microbiota and contributions to host biology are more conserved, with taxonomically variable but functionally similar microbes recurring across generations and hosts. To save what (...)
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  39. Précis of Unto Others.David Sloan Wilson & Elliott Sober - 2002 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 65 (3):681-684.
    It is a challenge to explain how evolutionary altruism can evolve by the process of natural selection, since altruists in a group will be less fit than the selfish individuals in the same group who receive benefits but do not make donations of their own. Darwin proposed a theory of group selection to solve this puzzle. Very simply, even though altruists are less fit than selfish individuals within any single group, groups of altruists are more fit than groups of selfish (...)
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  40. The Extended Phenotype: The Gene as the Unit of Selection. Richard Dawkins.Robert C. Richardson - 1984 - Philosophy of Science 51 (2):357-359.
  41. Coherence, Consistency, and Cohesion: Clade Selection in Okasha and Beyond.Matthew H. Haber & Andrew Hamilton - 2005 - Philosophy of Science 72 (5):1026-1040.
    Samir Okasha argues that clade selection is an incoherent concept, because the relation that constitutes clades is such that it renders parent-offspring (reproduction) relations between clades impossible. He reasons that since clades cannot reproduce, it is not coherent to speak of natural selection operating at the clade level. We argue, however, that when species-level lineages and clade-level lineages are treated consistently according to standard cladist commitments, clade reproduction is indeed possible and clade selection is coherent if certain conditions obtain. Despite (...)
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  42. The Poverty of Pluralism: A Reply to Sterelny and Kitcher.Philip Kitcher, Kim Sterelny & C. Kenneth Waters - 1990 - Journal of Philosophy 87 (3):151-158.
  43. A levels-of-selection approach to evolutionary individuality.Ellen Clarke - 2016 - Biology and Philosophy 31 (6):893-911.
    What changes when an evolutionary transition in individuality takes place? Many different answers have been given, in respect of different cases of actual transition, but some have suggested a general answer: that a major transition is a change in the extent to which selection acts at one hierarchical level rather than another. The current paper evaluates some different ways to develop this general answer as a way to characterise the property ‘evolutionary individuality’; and offers a justification of the option taken (...)
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  44. Principles of selection in animal learning.Harvey Carr - 1914 - Psychological Review 21 (3):157-165.
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  45. A persistence enhancing propensity account of ecological function to explain ecosystem evolution.Antoine C. Dussault & Frédéric Bouchard - 2017 - Synthese 194 (4).
    We argue that ecology in general and biodiversity and ecosystem function research in particular need an understanding of functions which is both ahistorical and evolutionarily grounded. A natural candidate in this context is Bigelow and Pargetter’s evolutionary forward-looking account which, like the causal role account, assigns functions to parts of integrated systems regardless of their past history, but supplements this with an evolutionary dimension that relates functions to their bearers’ ability to thrive and perpetuate themselves. While Bigelow and Pargetter’s account (...)
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  46. Philosophical Dimensions of Individuality.Alan C. Love & Ingo Brigandt - 2017 - In Scott Lidgard & Lynn K. Nyhart (eds.), Biological Individuality: Integrating Scientific, Philosophical, and Historical Perspectives. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. pp. 318-348.
    Although natural philosophers have long been interested in individuality, it has been of interest to contemporary philosophers of biology because of its role in different aspects of evolutionary biology. These debates include whether species are individuals or classes, what counts as a unit of selection, and how transitions in individuality occur evolutionarily. Philosophical analyses are often conducted in terms of metaphysics (“what is an individual?”), rather than epistemology (“how can and do researchers conceptualize individuals so as to address some of (...)
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  47. Do We Need a New Account of Group Selection? A Reply to McLoone.Ciprian Jeler - 2016 - Biological Theory 11 (2):57-68.
    In "Some Criticism of the Contextual Approach, and a Few Proposals" in Biological Theory, Brian McLoone discusses some of the points about the contextual approach that I made in a recent paper. Besides offering a reply to McLoone’s comments on my paper, in this article I show why McLoone’s discussion of the two main frameworks for thinking about group selection—the contextual and the Price approach—is partly misguided. In particular, I show that one of McLoone’s main arguments against the contextual approach (...)
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  48. In defence of classification.John Dupré - 2001 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 32 (2):203-219.
    It has increasingly been recognised that units of biological classification cannot be identified with the units of evolution. After briefly defending the necessity of this distinction I argue, contrary to the prevailing orthodoxy, that species should be treated as the fundamental units of classification and not, therefore, as units of evolution. This perspective fits well with the increasing tendency to reject the search for a monistic basis of classification and embrace a pluralistic and pragmatic account of the species category. It (...)
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  49. The emergence of selection rules and their encounter with group theory, 1913–1927.Arianna Borrelli - 2009 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 40 (4):327-337.
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  50. Organizational levels and explanation.Clifford Grobstein - 1969 - Journal of the History of Biology 2 (1):199-206.
1 — 50 / 497