Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-cfpbc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-23T16:44:28.030Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Cross-Unit Causation and the Identity of Groups

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Bruce Glymour
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In this article I explore some statistical difficulties confronting going conceptions of ‘group’ as understood in accounts of group selection. Most such theories require real groups but define the reality of groups in ways that make it impossible to test for their reality. There are alternatives, but they either require or invite a nominalism about groups that many theorists abjure.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 84 , Issue 4 , October 2017 , pp. 717 - 736
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

†

My thanks to Wes Anderson, John Basl, Clark Glymour, and Brian McLoone, who read early drafts of this article; to M. Maria Glymour and Michael Higgins, with whom I discussed statistics; and to four anonymous referees. They have together much improved this article.

References

Aronow, Peter M., and Samii, Cyrus. 2013. “Estimating Average Causal Effects under Interference between Units.” arXiv preprint. https://arxiv.org/pdf/1305.6156.pdf.Google Scholar
Aspi, Jouni, Jäkäläniemi, Anne, Tuomi, Juha, and Siikamäki, Pirkko. 2003. “Multilevel Phenotypic Selection on Morphological Characters in a Metapopulation of Silene tatarica.” Evolution 57:509–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Basl, John. 2011. “The Levels of Selection and the Functional Organization of Biotic Communities.” PhD diss., University of Wisconsin.Google Scholar
Breden, Felix, and Wade, Michael J.. 1989. “Selection within and between Kin Groups of the Imported Willow Leaf Beetle.” American Naturalist 134:35–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clauset, Aaron, Newman, Mark E. J., and Moore, Christopher. 2004. “Finding Community Structure in Very Large Networks.” Physical Review E 70:066111.Google ScholarPubMed
Damuth, John, and Heisler, I. Lorraine. 1988. “Alternative Formulations of Multilevel Selection.” Biology and Philosophy 3:407–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Darwin, Charles Robert. 1871. The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex. London: Murray.Google Scholar
Ding, Chris H. Q., He, Xiaofeng, Zha, Hongyuan, Gu, Ming, and Simon, Horst D.. 2001. “A Min-Max Cut Algorithm for Graph Partitioning and Data Clustering.” In IEEE International Conference on Data Mining 2001: Proceedings, ed. Cercone, Nick, Lin, Tsau Y, and Wu, Xindong, 107–14. Los Alamitos, CA: IEEE Computer Society.Google Scholar
Eldakar, Omar Tonsi, Dlugos, Michael J., Holt, Galen P., Wilson, David Sloan, and Pepper, John W.. 2010. “Population Structure Influences Sexual Conflict in Wild Populations of Water Striders.” Behaviour 147:1615–31.Google ScholarPubMed
Gelman, Andrew, Carlin, John B., Stern, Hal S., and Rubin, Donald B.. 2004. Bayesian Data Analysis. 2nd ed. Boca Raton, FL: Chapman & Hall.Google Scholar
Glymour, Bruce, and French, Christopher. 2009. “Causation, Equivalence and Group Selection.” Unpublished manuscript, Kansas State University.Google Scholar
Godfrey-Smith, Peter. 2008. “Varieties of Population Structure and the Levels of Selection.” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 59:25–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goodnight, Charles J., Schwartz, James M., and Stevens, Lori. 1992. “Contextual Analysis of Models of Group Selection, Soft Selection, Hard Selection, and the Evolution of Altruism.” American Naturalist 140:743–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grinsted, Lena, Bilde, Trine, and Gilbert, James D. J.. 2015. “Questioning Evidence of Group Selection in Spiders.” Nature 524:E1–E3.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gui, Huan, Xu, Ya, Bhasin, Anmol, and Han, Jiawei. 2015. “Network a/b Testing: From Sampling to Estimation.” In Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on World Wide Web, ed. Gangemi, Aldo, 399–409. New York: ACM.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haldane, J. B. S. 1932. The Causes of Evolution. London: Longmans.Google Scholar
Hamilton, William D. 1975. “Innate Social Aptitudes of Man: An Approach from Evolutionary Genetics.” In Biosocial Anthropology, 133–55. London: Malaby.Google Scholar
Heisler, I. Lorraine, and Damuth, John. 1987. “A Method for Analyzing Selection in Hierarchically Structured Populations.” American Naturalist 130:582–602.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Herbers, Joan M., and Banschbach, Valerie S.. 1999. “Plasticity of Social Organization in a Forest Ant Species.” Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology 45:451–65.Google Scholar
Hudgens, Michael G., and Halloran, M. Elizabeth. 2012. “Toward Causal Inference with Interference.” Journal of the American Statistical Association 103:832–42.Google Scholar
Laiolo, Paola, and Obeso, José Ramón. 2012. “Multilevel Selection and Neighbourhood Effects from Individual to Metapopulation in a Wild Passerine.” PloS One 7: e38526.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mason, William M., Wong, George Y., and Entwisle, Barbara. 1983. “Contextual Analysis through the Multilevel Linear Model.” Sociological Methodology 14:72–103.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maynard Smith, John. 1998. “The Origin of Altruism.” Review of Unto Others, by Elliott Sober and David S. Wilson. Nature 393:639–40.Google Scholar
McLoone, Brian. 2015. “Some Criticism of the Contextual Approach, and a Few Proposals.” Biological Theory 10:116–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Michod, Richard E. 1982. “The Theory of Kin Selection.” Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 13:23–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moorad, Jacob A. 2013. “Multi-Level Sexual Selection: Individual and Family-Level Selection for Mating Success in a Historical Human Population.” Evolution 67:1635–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Newman, Mark, and Girvan, Michelle. 2004. “Finding and Evaluating Community Structure in Networks.” Physical Review E 69:026113.Google ScholarPubMed
Nunney, Leonard. 1998. “Are We Selfish, Are We Nice, or Are We Nice because We Are Selfish?” Review of Unto Others, by Elliott Sober and David S. Wilson. Science 281:1619–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Okasha, Samir. 2004. “Multi-Level Selection, Covariance and Contextual Analysis.” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 55:481–504.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Okasha, Samir 2006. Evolution and the Levels of Selection. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pearl, Judea. 2000. Causality: Models, Reasoning, and Inference. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Pruitt, Jonathan N., and Goodnight, Charles J.. 2014. “Site-Specific Group Selection Drives Locally Adapted Group Compositions.” Nature 514:359–62.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pruitt, Jonathan N., and Goodnight, Charles J. 2015. “Pruitt and Goodnight Reply.” Nature 524:E4–E5.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Raudenbush, Stephen W., and Bryk, Anthony S.. 2002. Hierarchical Linear Models: Applications and Data Analysis Methods. Vol. 1. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.Google Scholar
Rubin, Donald B. 2005. “Causal Inference Using Potential Outcomes.” Journal of the American Statistical Association 100:322–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sober, Elliott, and Wilson, David S.. 1999. Unto Others: The Evolution and Psychology of Unselfish Behavior. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Spirtes, Peter, Glymour, Clark, and Scheines, Richard. 2000. Causation, Prediction and Search. 2nd ed. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Sterelny, Kim. 1996. “The Return of the Group.” Philosophy of Science 63:562–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stevens, Lori, Goodnight, Charles J., and Kalisz, Susan. 1995. “Multilevel Selection in Natural Populations of Impatiens capensis.” American Naturalist 145:513–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tsuji, Kazuki. 1995. “Reproductive Conflicts and Levels of Selection in the Ant Pristomyrmex pungens: Contextual Analysis and Partitioning of Covariance.” American Naturalist 146:586–607.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ugander, Johan, Karrer, Brian, Backstrom, Lars, and Kleinberg, Jon. 2013. “Graph Cluster Randomization: Network Exposure to Multiple Universes.” In Proceedings of the 19th ACM SIGKDD International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining, 329–37. New York: ACM.Google Scholar
Uyenoyama, Marcy, and Feldman, Marcus W.. 1980. “Theories of Kin and Group Selection: A Population Genetics Perspective.” Theoretical Population Biology 17:380–414.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Vögeli, Matthias, Serrano, David, Pacios, Fernando, and Tella, José L.. 2010. “The Relative Importance of Patch Habitat Quality and Landscape Attributes on a Declining Steppe-Bird Metapopulation.” Biological Conservation 143:1057–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wade, Michael. 1985. “Soft Selection, Hard Selection, Kin Selection and Group Selection.” American Naturalist 125:61–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weinig, Cynthia, Johnston, Jill, Willis, Charles, and Maloof, Julin. 2007. “Antagonistic Multilevel Selection on Size and Architecture in Variable Density Settings.” Evolution 61:58–67.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
White, Douglas R., and Reitz, Karl P.. 1983. “Graph and Semigroup Homomorphisms on Networks of Relations.” Social Networks 5:193–234.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Williams, George C., and Williams, Doris C.. 1957. “Natural Selection of Individually Harmful Social Adaptations among Sibs with Special Reference to Social Insects.” Evolution 11:32–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wilson, David Sloan. 1980. The Natural Selection of Populations and Communities. Menlo Park, CA: Benjamin/Cummins.Google Scholar
Woodward, James. 2003. Making Things Happen. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Wright, Sewall. 1945. “Tempo and Mode in Evolution: A Critical Review.” Ecology 26:415–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar