Optimality Models and the Test of Adaptationism

Orzack, Steven Hecht; Sober, Elliott

doi:10.1086/285608

Cited by 258 publications

(128 citation statements)

References 34 publications

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“…Responding to the criticism, biologists and philosophers have discussed the causal power of nonselective factors, the significance of alternative explanations and requirements for testing evolutionary hypotheses (e.g. Brandon and Rauscher 1996;Felsenstein 1985;Forber 2009;Kimura 1983;Orzack and Sober 1994a;1994b;Sober 1996). The empirical basis for adaptive or non-adaptive claims is often taken to be the main point of Gould and Lewontin's paper.…”

Section: Debating Adaptationismmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The empirical basis for adaptive or non-adaptive claims is often taken to be the main point of Gould and Lewontin's paper. For instance, Orzack and Sober (1994b) argue that the validity of adaptationism is a matter of testing different welldefined hypotheses about the power of natural selection. In contrast, others have defended a definition of adaptationism as a heuristic (Resnik 1997).…”

Section: Debating Adaptationismmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A Philosophical Evaluation of Adaptationism as a Heuristic Strategy

Green

2014

Acta Biotheor

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Adaptationism has for decades been the topic of sophisticated debates in philosophy of biology but methodological adaptationism has not received as much attention as the empirical and explanatory issues. In addition, adaptationism has mainly been discussed in the context of evolutionary biology and not in fields such as zoophysiology and systems biology where this heuristic is also used in design analyses of physiological traits and molecular structures. This paper draws on case studies from these fields to discuss the productive and problematic aspects of this heuristic in different research practices, in functional as well as evolutionary studies on different levels of biological organization. Gould and Lewontin's Spandrels-paper famously criticized adaptationist methodology for implying the risk of generating 'blind spots' with respect to non-selective effects on evolution. Some have claimed that this bias can be accommodated through the testing of evolutionary hypotheses. Although this is an important aspect of overcoming naïve adaptationism, I argue that the issue of methodological biases is broader than the question of testability. I demonstrate the productivity of adaptationist heuristics but also discuss the deeper problematic aspects associated with the methodological imperialism that is part of the strong adaptationist position.

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Section: Debating Adaptationismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Debating Adaptationismmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Philosophical Evaluation of Adaptationism as a Heuristic Strategy

Green

2014

Acta Biotheor

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“…Instead of describing the way the world genuinely is, idealized models in science predict and explain phenomena by creating models of how the world ought to behave given various idealizations we build into our model, and then using this to draw inferences about the behaviour of real systems. Angela Consider, for instance, the role that optimality models play in evolutionary biology (Beatty [1980], [1981]; Orzack & Sober [1994], [1996]; Rice [2004]; Potochnik [2007], Woods & Rosales [2010]). Optimality models are commonly used to investigate and predict the evolution of phenotypic traits within a given population not by describing how the evolutionary process actually works (often ignoring known genetic and epigenetic factors in the evolutionary process), but instead only by characterizing what sorts of traits would be optimal for the creature to have given the constraints of natural selection.…”

Section: Sehon Describes the Problem As Followsmentioning

confidence: 99%

When does ‘Folk Psychology’ Count as Folk Psychological?

Hochstein

2017

The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science

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It has commonly been argued that certain types of mental descriptions, specifically those characterized in terms of propositional attitudes, are part of a folk psychological understanding of the mind. Recently, however, it has also been argued that this is the case even when such descriptions are employed as part of scientific theories in domains like social psychology and comparative psychology. In this paper, I argue that there is no plausible way to understand the distinction between folk and scientific psychology that can support such claims. Moreover, these sorts of claims can have adverse consequences for the neuroscientific study of the brain by downplaying the value of many psychological theories that provide information neuroscientists need in order to build and test neurological models.

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“…Coincidence between optimality predictions and nature that are due to chance or any other non-adaptive process is regarded as so unlikely that the trait must be due to selection (Orzack and Sober 1994). Based only on coincidence between nature and model, an adaptationist explanation takes the form that the there is coincidence between model and nature, implies selection; this unobserved selection in turn explains why there is coincidence between the model and nature.…”

Section: Optimality Modelingmentioning

confidence: 99%

How to Study Adaptation (and Why To Do It That Way)

Olson¹,

Arroyo-Santos²

2015

The Quarterly Review of Biology

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Some adaptationist explanations are regarded as maximally solid and others fanciful just-so stories. Just-so stories are explanations based on very little evidence. Lack of evidence leads to circular-sounding reasoning: "this trait was shaped by selection in unseen ancestral populations and this selection must have occurred because the trait is present." Well-supported adaptationist explanations include evidence that is not only abundant but selected from comparative, populational, and optimality perspectives, the three adaptationist subdisciplines. Each subdiscipline obtains its broad relevance in evolutionary biology via assumptions that can only be tested with the methods of the other subdisciplines. However, even in the best-supported explanations, assumptions regarding variation, heritability, and fitness in unseen ancestral populations are always present. These assumptions are accepted given how well they would explain the data if they were true. This means that some degree of "circularity" is present in all evolutionary explanations. Evolutionary explanation corresponds not to a deductive structure, as biologists usually assert, but instead to ones such as abduction or induction. With these structures in mind, we show the way to a healthier view of "circularity" in evolutionary biology, and why integration across the comparative, populational, and optimality approaches is necessary.

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Optimality Models and the Test of Adaptationism

Cited by 258 publications

References 34 publications

A Philosophical Evaluation of Adaptationism as a Heuristic Strategy

A Philosophical Evaluation of Adaptationism as a Heuristic Strategy

When does ‘Folk Psychology’ Count as Folk Psychological?

How to Study Adaptation (and Why To Do It That Way)

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