Dear all, This week at Serious Metaphysics will see Jonathan Birch presenting "Kin Selection and its Critics" (abstract below). As usual, it will be held at 5:30pm in the Philosophy Faculty Board Room.
Hope to see lots of you there. Best, Emily T ______________________________________________________ ABSTRACT: Kin selection and its critics In an incendiary 2010 Nature article, Martin A. Nowak, Corina Tarnita and E.O. Wilson present a savage critique of the best known and most widely used framework for the study of social evolution, W.D. Hamilton's kin selection theory. Over a hundred biologists have since rallied to the theory's defence, but Nowak et al. maintain that their arguments "stand unrefuted". I show that Nowak and colleagues' criticisms are, at heart, philosophical in character, and I consider how the kin selection theorist can respond to them. The debate hinges on the explanatory value of the Price equation, and on the extent to which we are prepared to sacrifice ecological intuitiveness for predictive generality in formulating Hamilton's Rule. _____________________________________________________ Sent by the CamPhilEvents mailing list. To unsubscribe or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents Posts are now archived here: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive
