Causal Foundations of Evolutionary Genetics

Abstract

The causal nature of evolution is one of the central topics in the philosophy of biology. The issue concerns whether equations used in evolutionary genetics point to some causal processes or purely phenomenological patterns. To address this question the present article builds well-defined causal models that underlie standard equations in evolutionary genetics. These models are based on minimal and biologically plausible hypotheses about selection and reproduction, and generate statistics to predict evolutionary changes. The causal reconstruction of the evolutionary principles shows adaptive evolution as a genuine causal process, where fitness and selection are both causes of evolution. 1 Introduction 2 The Philosophical Puzzle 3 Causal Models 4 Causal Foundations of Evolutionary Genetics 4.1 Univariate quantitative genetics model 4.1.1 The causal graph 4.1.2 Structural equations 4.1.3 Deriving evolutionary transition functions 4.2 One-locus population genetics model 5 Evolution as a Causal Process 5.1 Selection as a causal process 5.2 Causes of evolutionary change 6 Conclusion