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Natural selection requires no teleology in addition to heritable variation in fitness

Published version
Peer-reviewed

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Abstract

jats:titleAbstract</jats:title>jats:pAccording to the standard formulation, natural selection requires variation, differential fitness, and heritability. I argue that this formulation is inadequate because it fails to distinguish natural selection from artificial selection, intelligent design, forward-looking orthogenetic selection, and adaptation via the selection of nonrandom variation. I suggest adding a jats:italicno teleology</jats:italic> condition. The no teleology condition says that the evolutionary process is not guided toward an endpoint represented in the mind of an agent, variation is produced randomly with respect to adaptation, and selection pressures are not forward looking.</jats:p>

Description

Acknowledgements: I am grateful to Alexander Bird, Richard Robb, Elliott Sober, Kim Sterelny, and two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments and discussion.

Keywords

31 Biological Sciences, 3104 Evolutionary Biology, 50 Philosophy and Religious Studies, Generic health relevance

Journal Title

Biology and Philosophy

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

0169-3867
1572-8404

Volume Title

39

Publisher

Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Sponsorship
Leverhulme Trust (ECF-2022-440)