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Causally Modeling Adaptation to the Environment

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Abstract

Brandon claims that to explain adaptation one must specify fitnesses in each selective environment and specify the distribution of individuals across selective environments. Glymour claims, using an example of the adaptive evolution of costly plasticity in a symmetric environment, that there are some predictive or explanatory tasks for which Brandon’s claim is limited. In this paper, I provide necessary conditions for carrying out Brandon’s task, produce a new version of the argument for his claim, and show that Glymour’s reasons for making his claim are problematic. I provide a few interpretations of Glymour’s argument but ultimately raise worries for what I take to be the key premises.

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Bruce Glymour, Valerie Racine, and the anonymous reviewers. The paper is substantially better because of their comments and helpful suggestions.

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  1. Western New England University, Springfield, USA

    Wes Anderson

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  1. Wes Anderson
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Correspondence to Wes Anderson.

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Anderson, W. Causally Modeling Adaptation to the Environment. Acta Biotheor 67, 201–224 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10441-019-09345-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10441-019-09345-z

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