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The nature of developmental constraints and the difference-maker argument for externalism

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Abstract

One current version of the internalism/externalism debate in evolutionary theory focuses on the relative importance of developmental constraints in evolutionary explanation. The received view of developmental constraints sees them as an internalist concept that tend to be shared across related species as opposed to selective pressures that are not. Thus, to the extent that constraints can explain anything, they can better explain similarity across species, while natural selection is better able to explain their differences. I challenge both of these aspects of the received view and propose a hierarchical view of constraints.

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Notes

  1. While Maynard Smith et al. (1985) also discuss selective constraints, this paper will only deal in developmental constraints.

  2. The constraints that take into account a population’s position in morphospace discussed in the previous section of this paper are local, but not all local constraints take account of position in such a specific way.

  3. They also take universality to be a measure of the “bindingness” of a constraint. I shall ignore that issue for now and concentrate only on scope.

  4. Nijhout (2007) describes how n-dimensional genotypes between n quantitative phenotypic values can be described in an n-dimensional hyperspace. This is a representation of all of possible morphospace, which was assumed in Figs. 1 and 2. Although Nijhout had a different project to mine, his work inspired my view of higher order constraints described here.

  5. For example, the selection pressures faced by population A, with A’s constraints, would have had different effects on population B, with B’s constraints.

  6. Convergent evolution poses some threat to this, but it is relatively rare and selection regime detail might still differ.

  7. Speciation events probably involve the splitting of a population. Both subpopulations may have just the same constraints but might not. However, the fact that speciation happens is not the $64000 question. It is not the existence of variety, but the existence of adaptive variety that natural selection is supposed to explain in terms of difference according to the difference-maker argument.

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  1. Department of Philosophy, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA

    Roger Sansom

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Sansom, R. The nature of developmental constraints and the difference-maker argument for externalism. Biol Philos 24, 441–459 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-008-9121-2

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