Propensity Interpretation Research Articles

Evolvability: filling the explanatory gap between adaptedness and the long-term mathematical conception of fitness

The new foundation for the propensity interpretation of fitness (PIF), developed by Pence and Ramsey (Br J Philos Sci 64:851–881, 2013), describes fitness as a probability distribution that encompasses all possible daughter populations to which the organism may give rise, including daughter populations in which traits might change and the possible environments that members of the daughter populations might encounter. This long-term definition of fitness is general enough to avoid counterexamples faced by previous mathematical conceptions of PIF. However, there seem to be downsides to its generality: the ecological role of fitness involves describing the degree of adaptedness between an organism and the specific environment it inhabits. When all possible changes in traits and all possible environments that a daughter population may encounter are included in the concept, it becomes difficult to see how fitness can fulfill this role. In this paper, we argue that this is a feature of Pence and Ramsey’s view rather than a bug: long-term fitness accommodates evolvability considerations, which concern the role that variation plays in evolutionary processes. Building on the foundations, we show that Pence and Ramsey’s fitness—F—can be partitioned into fourths: adaptedness, robustness of adaptedness, and two facets of evolvability. Conceptualizing these last three components forces us to consider the role played by grains of description of both organisms and the environment when thinking about long-term fitness. They track the possibility that there could be a change in type in a daughter population as a way of responding to environmental challenges, or that the type persists in the face of novel environments. We argue that these components are just as salient as adaptedness for long-term fitness. Together, this decomposition of F provides a more accurate picture of the factors involved in long-term evolutionary success.

The conceptual foundation of the propensity interpretation of fitness

The conceptual foundation of the propensity interpretation of fitness

Biological functions are causes, not effects: A critique of selected effects theories

The theory of Selected Effects (SE) is currently the most widely accepted etiological account of function in biology. It argues that the function of any trait is the effect that past traits of that type produced that contributed to its current existence. Its proper or etiological function is whatever effect was favoured by natural selection irrespective of the trait's current effects. By defining function with respect to the effects of natural selection, the theory claims to eschew the problem of backwards causality and to ground functional normativity on differential reproduction or differential persistence. Traditionally, many have criticised the theory for its inability to envisage any function talk outside selective reproduction, for failing to account for the introduction of new functions, and for treating function as epiphenomenal. This article unveils four additional critiques of the SE theory that highlight the source of its critical problems. These critiques follow from the fact that natural selection is not a form of work, but a passive filter that merely blocks or permits prior functioning traits to be reproduced. Natural selection necessarily assumes the causal efficacy of prior organism work to produce the excess functional traits and offspring from which only the best fitted will be preserved. This leads to four new incapacities of the SE theory, which will be here analysed: (i) it provides no criterion for determining what distinguishes a proper from an incidental function; (ii) it cannot distinguish between neutral, incidental, and malfunctioning traits, thus treating organism benefit as irrelevant; (iii) it fails to account for the physical work that makes persistence and reproduction possible, and (iv) in so doing, it falls into a vicious regress. We conclude by suggesting that, inspired by Mills and Beatty's propensity interpretation, the aporia of backward causation implicit in anticipatory accounts of function can also be avoided by a dispositional approach that defines function in terms of work that synchronously counters the ubiquitous tendency for organism entropy to increase in the context of far-from-equilibrium thermodynamics.

Popper’s Propensity Interpretation of Quantum Physics as a form of Modal Metaphysics

With the emergence of quantum physics in the 1920s, the major philosophical question was, do the unobservables in quantum system have ontological status or are mere instruments for scientific prediction? The Copenhagen interpretation developed an instrumentalist thesis, contending that the unobservables are tools for making predictions concerning the observables. Thus, we cannot have knowledge of the quantum particles. However, Popper attempts a realist and an objective interpretation. As such, he criticizes the Copenhagen interpretation, developing the propensity view, which accords ontological status to subatomic particles. The main thrust of our argument in this paper is that by replacing probability possibilities with propensities, Popper positions himself as a proponent of the metaphysics of modality. It is then our objective to establish the parallelism between Popper’s Propensity Interpretation and Modal Metaphysics. To establish this contention we proceeded analytically: firstly by situating the seismic shift from macro to quantum physics, secondly by examining Popper’s critique of the Copenhagen Interpretation and thirdly by attempting a demonstration of the correlation between Popper’s propensity interpretation and modal metaphysics. The merit of this paper resides in its elucidation of the importance of metaphysics in science. It is a double challenge at the same time for antimetaphysical philosophy of science and for antiscientific metaphysics, to rethink the relationship between Metaphysics and science and invest in finding how both disciplines nurture each other. Finally, it is hoped that policy makers in Philosphy and science uses our findings to revamp the conceptualisation and practice of interdisciplinarity.

Chances and Propensities in Evo-Devo

While the notion of chance has been central in discussions over the probabilistic nature of natural selection and genetic drift, its role in the production of variants on which populational sampling takes place has received much less philosophical attention. This article discusses the concept of chance in evolution in the light of contemporary work in evo-devo. We distinguish different levels at which randomness and chance can be defined in this context, and argue that recent research on variability and evolvability demands a causal understanding of variational probabilities under which development acquires a creative, rather than a constraining role in evolution. We then provide a propensity interpretation of variational probabilities that solves a conceptual confusion between causal properties, variational probabilities and extant variation present in the literature, and explore some metaphysical consequences that follow from our interpretation, specifically with regards to the nature of developmental types.

Taming fitness: Organism‐environment interdependencies preclude long‐term fitness forecasting

Fitness is a central but notoriously vexing concept in evolutionary biology. The propensity interpretation of fitness is often regarded as the least problematic account for fitness. It ties an individual's fitness to a probabilistic capacity to produce offspring. Fitness has a clear causal role in evolutionary dynamics under this account. Nevertheless, the propensity interpretation faces its share of problems. We discuss three of these. We first show that a single scalar value is an incomplete summary of a propensity. Second, we argue that the widespread method of "abstracting away" environmental idiosyncrasies by averaging over reproductive output in different environments is not a valid approach when environmental changes are irreversible. Third, we point out that expanding the range of applicability for fitness measures by averaging over more environments or longer time scales (so as to ensure environmental reversibility) reduces one's ability to distinguish selectively relevant differences among individuals because of mutation and eco-evolutionary feedbacks. This series of problems leads us to conclude that a general value of fitness that is both explanatory and predictive cannot be attained. We advocate for the use of propensity-compatible methods, such as adaptive dynamics, which can accommodate these difficulties.

The propensity interpretation of probability and diagnostic split in explaining away

Causal judgements in explaining-away situations, where multiple independent causes compete to account for a common effect, are ubiquitous in both everyday and specialised contexts. Despite their ubiquity, cognitive psychologists still struggle to understand how people reason in these contexts. Empirical studies have repeatedly found that people tend to ‘insufficiently’ explain away: that is, when one cause explains the presence of an effect, people do not sufficiently reduce the probability of other competing causes. However, the diverse accounts that researchers have proposed to explain this insufficiency suggest we are yet to find a compelling account of these results. In the current research we explored the novel possibility that insufficiency in explaining away is driven by: (i) some people interpreting probabilities as propensities, i.e. as tendencies of a physical system to produce an outcome and (ii) some people splitting the probability space among the causes in diagnostic reasoning, i.e. by following a strategy we call ‘the diagnostic split’. We tested these two hypotheses by manipulating (a) the characteristics of cover stories to reflect different degrees to which the propensity interpretation of probability was pronounced, and (b) the prior probabilities of the causes which entailed different normative amounts of explaining away. Our results were in line with the extant literature as we found insufficient explaining away. However, we also found empirical support for our two hypotheses, suggesting that they are a driving force behind the reported insufficiency.

Optimality Models and the Propensity Interpretation of Fitness.

The propensity account of fitness intends to solve the classical tautologicity issue by identifying fitness with a disposition, the ability to survive and reproduce. As proponents recognized early on, this account requires operational independence from actual reproductive success to avoid circularity and vacuousness charges. They suggested that operational independence is achieved by measuring fitness values through optimality models. Our goal in this article is to develop this suggestion. We show that one plausible procedure by which these independent operationalizations could be thought to take place, and which is in accordance with what is said in the optimality literature, is unsound. We provide two independent lines of reasoning to show this. We then provide a sketch of a more adequate account of the role of optimality models in evolutionary contexts and draw some consequences.

The Magic Potion Paradox

This paper introduces a new infinite paradox. The main novelty is that it poses problems of causality in a very different form from to the one in use until now. By means of a probabilistic generalization, the paradox shows that the disposition to act according to a specific plan is not always necessary to derive causal effects in Benardete-type contexts involving infinity. It also suggests that, in such cases, the explanation for those causal effects requires a propensity interpretation of probability.

How J M Keynes's Logical Theory of Probability Totally Refutes All Attacks on the Concept of Probability

J Derbyshire has recently repeated G L S Shackle’s original attack on the concept of probability in a number of recent articles. He adds nothing new to Shackle’s arguments of forty to eighty years ago that were completely refuted in 1959 by R. Weckstein, who based his refutation of Shackle on a relatively limited understanding of chapters 1-3 and 6 of Keynes’s A Treatise on Probability (1921). Shackle never replied to Weckstein’s repeated demonstrations in 1959 that Keynes’s approach refuted his arguments, which held only against the limiting frequency, relative frequency, propensity and subjective interpretations of probability. Shackle’s arguments failed completely when confronted with Keynes’s theory of logical probability. J M Keynes’s theory of probability is a logical, objective, epistemological approach that is based on partial ordering and not complete orderings. This results in non additive, non linear interval valued probabilities, specified and operationalized in terms of logical propositions about any kind of event. It can easily deal with unique events, single events, crucial events, infrequent events, frequent events, non repeatable events, irreversible events, path dependence, sensitivity to initial conditions, emergence, complex causation, attractor states, partial uncertainty, complete and total uncertainty, fundamental uncertainty, irreducible uncertainty, by means of Keynes’s weight of the evidence analysis, which, when combined with his interval valued probability, can demonstrate that Shackle’s theory is a very special theory that applies only to situations of complete and total uncertainty, which Keynes categorized as ignorance. There is not a single one of Derbyshire’s objections to the concept of probability left standing if Keynes’s logical approach to probability is used.

Explaining Drift from a Deterministic Setting

Drift is often characterized in statistical terms. Yet such a purely statistical characterization is ambiguous for it can accept multiple physical interpretations. Because of this ambiguity it is important to distinguish what sorts of processes can lead to this statistical phenomenon. After presenting a physical interpretation of drift originating from the most popular interpretation of fitness, namely the propensity interpretation, I propose a different one starting from an analysis of the concept of drift made by Godfrey-Smith. Further on, I show how my interpretation relates to previous attempts to make sense of the notion of expected value in deterministic setups. The upshot of my analysis is a physical conception of drift that is compatible with both a deterministic and indeterministic world.

Metode Penafsiran Ibn Qayyim dalam Tafsîr al-Qur’ân al-Hakîm

<p>This article is intended as an introduction to the work of heritage interpretation Ibn Qayyim al-Jawzîyah. As an introduction course cannot be expected to complete an exposure. But from the lilte bit of description above, at least we getting conclusion that general methods are applied in interpreting. The Koran is a <em>tah</em><em>lîlî</em> method or <em>tajzi’</em>. However, if viewed from term of the propensity interpretation it’s can be categorized as a <em>al-ma’thûr</em> interpretation despite as well as the interpretation of <em>bi al-ra’y</em>. As a work of interpretation, al-Qayyim interpretation may be not as famous as the work of other commentators, such as the interpretation of <em>al-Jâmi‘ al-Bayân</em>, <em>Tafsîr Ibn Kathîr</em>, <em>Tafsîr Jalâlayn</em> an so on. But as a work of Muslim intellectuals seem this book need to be reviewed more thoroughly.</p>

The Propensity Interpretation of Probability: A Re-evaluation

Single-case and long-run propensity theories are among the main objective interpretations of probability. There have been various objections to these theories, e.g. that it is difficult to explain why propensities should satisfy the probability axioms and, worse, that propensities are at odds with these axioms, that the explication of propensities is circular and accordingly not informative, and that single-case propensities are metaphysical and accordingly non-scientific. We consider various propensity theories of probability and their prospects in light of these objections. We argue that while propensity theories face challenges, these challenges do not undermine their validity as prospective interpretations of probability in science.

Toward a propensity interpretation of stochastic mechanism for the life sciences

In what follows, I suggest that it makes good sense to think of the truth of (at least some of) the probabilistic generalizations made in the life sciences as metaphysically grounded in stochastic mechanisms in the world. To further understand these stochastic mechanisms, I take the general characterization of mechanism offered by MDC (Philos Sci 76(1):1–25, 2000) and explore how it fits with several of the going philosophical accounts of chance: subjectivism, frequentism, Lewisian best-systems, and propensity. I argue that neither subjectivism, frequentism, nor a best-system-style interpretation of chance will give us what we need from an account of stochastic mechanism, but some version of propensity theory can. I then draw a few important lessons from recent propensity interpretations of fitness in order to present a novel propensity interpretation of stochastic mechanism according to which stochastic mechanisms are thought to have probabilistic propensities to produce certain outcomes over others. This understanding of stochastic mechanism, once fully fleshed-out, provides the benefits of (1) allowing the stochasticity of a particular mechanism to be an objective property in the world, a property investigable by science, (2) a way of quantifying the stochasticity of a particular mechanism, and (3) a way to avoid a problematic commitment to the causal efficacy of propensities (and dispositional properties in general).

The Propensity Interpretation of Fitness and the Propensity Interpretation of Probability

The paper provides a new critical perspective on the propensity interpretation of fitness (PIF), by investigating its relationship to the propensity interpretation of probability. Two main conclusions are drawn. First, the claim that fitness is a propensity cannot be understood properly: fitness is not a propensity in the sense prescribed by the propensity interpretation of probability. Second, this interpretation of probability is inessential for explanations proposed by the PIF in evolutionary biology. Consequently, interpreting the probabilistic dimension of fitness in terms of propensities is neither a strong motivation in favor of this interpretation, nor a possible target for substantial criticism.

On the concept of probability

In this paper, we discuss the crucial but little-known fact that, as Kolmogorov himself claimed, the mathematical theory of probabilities cannot be applied to factual probabilistic situations. This is because it is nowhere specified how, for any given particular random phenomenon, we should construct, effectively and without circularity, the specific and stable distribution law that gives the individual numerical probabilities for the set of possible outcomes. Furthermore, we do not even know what significance we should attach to the simple assertion that such a distribution law “exists”. We call this problem Kolmogorov's aporia†.We provide a solution to this aporia in this paper. To do this, we first propose a general interpretation of the concept of probability on the basis of an example, and then develop it into a non-circular and effective general algorithm of semantic integration for the factual probability law involved in a specific factual probabilistic situation. The development of the algorithm starts from the fact that the concept of probability, unlike a statistic, does not apply to naturally pre-existing situations but is a conceptual artefact that ensures, locally in space and time, a predictability that is more stable and definite than that permitted by primary statistical data.The algorithm, which is constructed within a method of relativised conceptualisation, leads to a probability distribution expressed in rational numbers and involving a sort of quantification of the factual concept of probability. Furthermore, it also provides a definite meaning to the simple assertion that a factual probability law exists. We also show that the semantic integration algorithm is compatible with the weak law of large numbers.The results we give provide a complete solution to Kolmogorov's aporia. They also define a concept of probability that is explicitly organised into a semantic, epistemological and syntactic whole. In a broader context, our results can be regarded as a strong, pragmatic and operational specification of Karl Popper's propensity interpretation of probabilities.

Trait fitness is not a propensity, but fitness variation is

The propensity interpretation of fitness draws on the propensity interpretation of probability, but advocates of the former have not attended sufficiently to problems with the latter. The causal power of C to bring about E is not well-represented by the conditional probability Pr(E|C). Since the viability fitness of trait T is the conditional probability Pr(organism O survives to adulthood|O has T), the viability fitness of the trait does not represent the degree to which having the trait causally promotes surviving. The same point holds for fertility fitness. This failure of trait fitness to capture causal role can also be seen in the fact that coextensive traits must have the same fitness values even if one of them promotes survival and the other is neutral or deleterious. Although the fitness of a trait does not represent the trait’s causal power to promote survival and reproduction, variation in fitness in a population causally promotes change in trait frequencies; in this sense, fitness variation is a population-level propensity.

A New Foundation for the Propensity Interpretation of Fitness

The propensity interpretation of fitness (PIF) is commonly taken to be subject to a set of simple counterexamples. We argue that three of the most important of these are not counterexamples to the PIF itself, but only to the traditional mathematical model of this propensity: fitness as expected number of offspring. They fail to demonstrate that a new mathematical model of the PIF could not succeed where this older model fails. We then propose a new formalization of the PIF that avoids these (and other) counterexamples. By producing a counterexample-free model of the PIF, we call into question one of the primary motivations for adopting the statisticalist interpretation of fitness. In addition, this new model has the benefit of being more closely allied with contemporary mathematical biology than the traditional model of the PIF. 1 Introduction 1.1 The ‘Generality Problem’ 1.2 Counterexamples to the PIF 1.2.1 The moments problem 1.2.2 The delayed selection problem 1.2.3 Timing of reproduction 1.3 The need for a new model2 A New Formalization 2.1 The new model and biological theory3 Possible Objections to 3.1 Objection 1: Natural selection is short term 3.2 Objection 2: Descendants are only minimally related to ancestors 3.3 Objection 3: Evolutionary time scale is pragmatically determined 3.4 Objection 4: Long-term fitness is lineage fitness 3.5 Objection 5: The theory of evolution by natural selection fundamentally concerns trait fitness, not individual fitness4 Response to Counterexamples 4.1 Timing of reproduction 4.2 Delayed selection 4.3 The moments problem5 Conclusion

Propensities and Pragmatism

Abstract (for The Review of Metaphysics): This paper outlines a genuinely pragmatist conception of propensity, and defends it against common objections to the propensity interpretation of probability, prominently Humphreys’ paradox. The paper reviews the paradox and identifies one of its key assumptions, the identity thesis, according to which propensities are probabilities (under a suitable interpretation of Kolmogorov’s axioms). The identity thesis is also involved in empiricist propensity interpretations deriving from Popper’s influential original proposal, and makes such interpretations untenable. As an alternative, I urge a return to Charles Peirce’s original insights on probabilistic dispositions, and offer a reconstructed version of his pragmatist conception, which rejects the identity thesis. – Correspondence to: msuarez@filos.ucm.es

Popper and Bohr on Realism in Quantum Mechanics

Popper's program in the foundations of quantum mechanics defending objectivity and realism developed out of a profound dissatisfaction with the point of view associated with Bohr, which is usually designated the Copenhagen interpretation. Here I will argue that while Popper's aim is a noble one, his program does not succeed on two counts: he does not succeed in showing that Bohr's philosophy must be rejected as a variety of subjectivism, and his alternative interpretation of indeterminacy rests on a highly questionable assumption according to which simultaneously precise conjugate parameters are possible. Nevertheless I like Popper's propensity interpretation of probability and think that the propensity idea deserves further research. Quanta 2012; 1: 33–57.