Optimality, Fitness and the Principle of Selection

ROFFÉ, ARIEL; GINNOBILI, SANTIAGO

Buenos Aires

Encuentro; Meeting on Alexander Rosenberg; 2015

In this presentation, we will defend that optimality models do not allow us to directly operationalize fitness values. That means that, if you take fitness to be a probabilistic term, interpreting it in terms of propensities adds nothing to interpreting it in frequentist terms. Nevertheless, they can and do play a role in evolutionary biology explanations (as explanations of observed fitness differences). In order to capture this fact, a reformulation of the Principle of Natural Selection as a 3 part law is necessary. Finally, since optimality models are part of functional biology, functional terms figure inside of natural selection theory?s explanans, which means that the etiological concept of function is not sustainable.