Abstract
In ‘The Levels of Selection’ (Brandon, 1984), Robert Brandon provides a suggestive but ultimately unsuccessful attempt to use the probabilistic notion ofscreening off in providing a schema for dealing with an aspect of the “units of selection” question in the philosophy of biology. I characterize that failure, and suggest a revision and expansion of Brandon's account which addresses its key shortcoming.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Brandon, R.: 1984, ‘The Levels of Selection’, in Robert Brandon and Robert Burian (eds.),Genes, Organisms, Populations: Controversies Over the Units of Selection, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., pp. 133–141.
Clark, A.: 1991,Microcognition, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.
McClamrock, R.: 1991, ‘Methodological Individualism Considered as a Constitutive Principle of Scientific Inquiry’,Philosophical Psychology 3, 343–354.
McClamrock, R.: 1994,Existential Cognition: Computational Minds in the World, University of Chicago Press, Chicago. In press.
Salmon, W.: 1984,Scientific Explanation and the Causal Structure of the World, Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.J.
Sober, E.: 1984, ‘Holism, Individualism, and the Units of Selection’, in E. Sober (ed.),Conceptual Issues in Evolutionary Biology, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., pp. 184–209.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
McClamrock, R. Screening-off and The Levels of Selection. Erkenntnis 42, 107–112 (1995). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01666814
Received:
Revised:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01666814