Jeremy, I will try to answer. From: Jeremy Evans [mailto:jeremy.ev...@me.com] Sent: May 30, 2015 12:30 AM To: John Collier; peirce-l@list.iupui.edu Cc: Jeremy Evans Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] [biosemiotics:8690] Re: self-R
John, [Peirce-L] List I found your post below fascinating and informative. May I nit-pick a few points with the aim of seeking to comprehend what exactly you were seeking to convey? I apologise for nit-picking, but the post is so pregnant with meaning that I am keen to reach full understanding of it. Line 2: 'That view ...'. Do you mean by this the former or latter view or, in other words, the genic- or species-selectionist view? [John Collier] I meant species selection. That may be due to individual organism selection, but not genic selection generally (there are genuine cases), since the cause acts at the individual organism level or above. As individuals, species can be in competition with each other through species strategies, but typically it usually isn't right to talk of selection for the good of the species, though there are cases of this (processes that enhance gene distribution within a species, for example). Line 3: Are the 'holdouts' the species and/or group selectionists? [John Collier] The holdouts are the genic selectionists. If E.O. Wilson ever was one, he isn't now, or at least I think that is the most charitable reading of his recent work. Who was GCW's father, and and what was the 'paradigmatic case of group selection' which these two 'showed', by which I take it you mean 'made a case for'? Simple ignorance here [John Collier] No, they showed it to hold. There isn't any doubt. "Making a case for" would be far too weak. It was his wife, Doris, who was D.C. Williams. I don't have a reference to the article here - I am travelling. Interestingly, Wikipedia says: In later books, including Natural Selection: Domains, Levels and Challenges, Williams softened his views on group selection, recognizing that clade<https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Clade> selection,trait group selection<https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Group_selection#The_haystack_model_and_trait_groups> and multilevel selection<https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Group_selection#Multilevel_selection_theory> did sometimes occur in nature, something he had earlier thought to be so unlikely it could be safely ignored Clade selection includes species selection. Searching further, I see the paper was "Natural Selection of Individually Harmful Social Adaptations among Sibs with Special Reference to Social Insects," was coauthored with Doris, and published in Evolution. That was his first paper in that prestigious journal, and it could be read as presaging Hamilton's work on kin selection, so it isn't clear that it is a group selection paper. But it is also not clear that it was not. Para 1 further on: 'You end up having to invoke groups as filtering units for gene selection in any case'. Should this sentence not read at the very least '...invoke species and groups...' No, I would stop at groups. Species are groups as well as individuals. Para 2, line 1: 'Wilson's way ...'. Are you referring here to EOW or to DSW? E.O. Wilson, if it was indeed his way. I am impressed by the case that S J Gould makes - if I understand him well - in 'The Structure of Evolutionary Theory' for multilevel selection - of genes, groups of genes no doubt, species, groups, clades. Yeh, but he was not the first by any means. It is an old debate, and more complicated than I thought. John Jeremy On 30 May 2015, at 8:54 am, John Collier <colli...@ukzn.ac.za<mailto:colli...@ukzn.ac.za>> wrote: Jeff, Lists, I haven't read this book. Wilson is widely regarded as a genic selectionist (genes are the units of selection). This doesn't fit the species as individuals view very well, but it can be made to. That view is held by almost all systematists now, but there are still some evolutionary theorists who are holdouts to the classification methodology and data. Others, Like Richard Dawkins take this view. And others, like David Sloan Wilson, disagree. The history is a bit complex, with some bizarre generalizations and misinterpretations of both evolutionary processes. It is supposed that group selection, for example, was disproved by George C. Williams on theoretical grounds, but interestingly Williams and his father had earlier shown one of the paradigmatic cases of group selection. You can make the process of evolution fit the gene selection account -- there is no logical failing, but it focuses attention on the wrong causal processes to explain evolution. You end up having to invoke groups as filtering units for gene selection in any case. Joel Cracraft was asking at one point "do species do anything?", the idea being that if they did not, then they were not causal units. They do indeed do something by constraining evolutionary possibilities through the constraints they put on what gene combination can be presented for selection. This is equally, if not more important, than the selection process itself. (Darwin had a passage to this effect in the 5th edition of The Origin of Species.) So the evidence allows going in a number of directions about the units of selection, but Wilson's way (if it is indeed his) is a bit more strained than others, and is not the way that species individuation experts, systematists, have gone. I should say that there are some holdout systematists, but there aren't very many. They take a cluster view of species rather than a constraint view, which would allow species to be epiphenomenal, but would not imply it. Wilson's view makes them epiphenomenal, if his view is like Dawkins' view, as I have been assuming here, but not from systematists. I would say that E.O. Wilson, all evidence I have considered, has always accepted multilevel selection, and his views have been misrepresented by himself or others. He is not always that careful about consistency, in my opinion. In any case, I would throw my lot in with the systematists, who are the experts on identifying species, rather than evolutionary theorists, who have an annoying habit of giving post facto explanations (abductions without the follow-up testing). Lewontin and Gould have complained that this methodological error is rank in the field. I once had an optimality theorist go in a two sentence circle without even recognizing it, which indicates how deep seated the idea is that if you can give an account that fits the genic selection view and optimizes some property you have attributed, then it is a good explanation; no further testing required. This was a major objection to Wilson's sociobiology (sometimes justified) and that may be where the idea he was a genic selectionist came from. John -----Original Message----- From: Jeffrey Brian Downard [mailto:jeffrey.down...@nau.edu] Sent: May 29, 2015 2:51 PM To: biosemiot...@lists.ut.ee<mailto:biosemiot...@lists.ut.ee>; peirce-l@list.iupui.edu<mailto:peirce-l@list.iupui.edu> Subject: RE: [PEIRCE-L] RE: [biosemiotics:8690] Re: self-R Hi John, Lists, In the The Diversity of Life, E.O. Wilson devotes of few chapters to the conception of a species. As far as I can tell, he takes the account he is arguing for to be a mainstream position amongst evolutionary theorists and ecologists. Is your account consistent the position he articulates, or are the positions at odds with one another? --Jeff Jeff Downard Associate Professor Department of Philosophy NAU (o) 523-8354 ________________________________________ From: John Collier [colli...@ukzn.ac.za<mailto:colli...@ukzn.ac.za>] Sent: Wednesday, May 27, 2015 9:04 AM To: Benjamin Udell; biosemiot...@lists.ut.ee<mailto:biosemiot...@lists.ut.ee>; peirce-l@list.iupui.edu<mailto:peirce-l@list.iupui.edu> Subject: RE: [PEIRCE-L] RE: [biosemiotics:8690] Re: self-R Ben, Lists, I mean a historical individual with an origin and probably an end, localized in space. A concrete individual. This is the Hull-Ghiselen view that Is almost universally accepted by systematists and evolutionary biologists these days. It follows from the phylogenetic view of species, developed by Cladists and for which the standard text for a long time was Phylogenetic Systematics by my friend Ed Wiley. John From: Benjamin Udell [mailto:bud...@nyc.rr.com] Sent: May 27, 2015 2:43 PM To: biosemiot...@lists.ut.ee<mailto:biosemiot...@lists.ut.ee>; peirce-l@list.iupui.edu<mailto:peirce-l@list.iupui.edu> Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] RE: [biosemiotics:8690] Re: self-R John C., Just curious, by an _individual species_ do you mean something like an individual kind or do you mean (and I suspect that you don't) the species population as a large, somewhat scattered, collective concrete individual? Best, Ben On 5/26/2015 2:27 PM, John Collier wrote: We mean something different by "individual", Edwina. I am using it in the sense that species are individuals. It was David HulI who put the ecologists onto me because of my work on individuality. I don't think that further discussion with you on this topic is likely to be fruitful for either of us. John From: Edwina Taborsky Sent: May 26, 2015 8:23 PM To: John Collier; biosemiot...@lists.ut.ee<mailto:biosemiot...@lists.ut.ee><mailto:biosemiot...@lists.ut.ee> Cc: peirce-l@list.iupui.edu<mailto:peirce-l@list.iupui.edu><mailto:peirce-l@list.iupui.edu> Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] RE: [biosemiotics:8690] Re: self-R I don't see an ecosystem as an individual but as a system, in its case, a CAS. It doesn't have the distinctive boundaries of an individual - either temporally or spatially. I see a human being as a system, in that its parts co-operate in a systemic manner; and it is also an individual - with distinctive temporal and spatial boundaries. But a human being is not a CAS, for it lacks the wide range of adaptive flexibility and even transformative capacities of a CAS. I have long argued that societies are a CAS; they are socioeconomic ecological systems, operating as logical adaptations to environmental realities - which include soil, climate, water, plant and animal typologies etc. All of these enable a particular size of population to live in the area and this in turn, leads to a particular method of both economic and political organization. Unfortunately, the major trends in the social sciences have been to almost completely ignore this area - except within the alienated emotionalism of AGW or Climate Change...Instead, the social sciences tend to view 'culture' or 'ideology' as the prime causal factors in societal development and organization. Whereas I view these areas as emotionalist psychological explanations, as verbal narratives for the deeper causal factors of ecology, demographics, economic modes. Edwina ----- Original Message ----- From: John Collier To: John Collier ; biosemiot...@lists.ut.ee<mailto:biosemiot...@lists.ut.ee><mailto:biosemiot...@lists.ut.ee> Cc: peirce-l@list.iupui.edu<mailto:peirce-l@list.iupui.edu><mailto:peirce-l@list.iupui.edu> Sent: Tuesday, May 26, 2015 1:59 PM Subject: [PEIRCE-L] RE: [biosemiotics:8690] Re: self-R ----------------------------- PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to peirce-L@list.iupui.edu<mailto:peirce-L@list.iupui.edu> . To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to PEIRCE-L but to l...@list.iupui.edu<mailto:l...@list.iupui.edu> with the line "UNSubscribe PEIRCE-L" in the BODY of the message. More at http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm . Jeremy Evans 3 Rucker St, Northcote Melbourne VIC 3070 Australia
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