Hostname: page-component-7dd5485656-s6l46 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-10-27T16:25:04.463Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Debate over Inclusive Fitness as a Debate over Methodologies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Hannah Rubin
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article analyzes the recent debate surrounding inclusive fitness and argues that certain limitations ascribed to it by critics—such as requiring weak selection or providing dynamically insufficient models—are better thought of as limitations of the methodological framework most often used with inclusive fitness (quantitative genetics). In support of this, I show how inclusive fitness can be used with the replicator dynamics (of evolutionary game theory, a methodological framework preferred by inclusive fitness critics). I conclude that much of the debate is best understood as being about the orthogonal issue of using abstract versus idealized models.

Information

Type
Articles
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 85 , Issue 1 , January 2018 , pp. 1 - 30
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

Footnotes

†.

I would like to thank Simon Huttegger, Brian Skyrms, Jonathan Birch, Cailin O’Connor, Kyle Stanford, Justin Bruner, three anonymous referees, members of the Social Dynamics Seminar at University of California, Irvine, and audiences at the International Society for History, Philosophy, and Social Studies of Biology 2015 meeting for helpful comments.

References

Abbot, P., et al. 2011. “Inclusive Fitness Theory and Eusociality.” Nature 471:E1–E4.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Allen, B., and Nowak, M. A.. 2015. “Games among Relatives Revisited.” Journal of Theoretical Biology 378:103–16.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Allen, B., Nowak, M. A., and Wilson, E. O.. 2013. “Limitations of Inclusive Fitness.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 110:20135–39.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Birch, J. 2014a. “Gene Mobility and the Concept of Relatedness.” Biology and Philosophy 29 (4): 445–76..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Birch, J. 2014b. “Hamilton’s Rule and Its Discontents.” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 65 (2): 381–411..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Birch, J. 2016. “Hamilton’s Two Conceptions of Social Fitness.” Philosophy of Science 83 (5): 848–60..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Birch, J., and Okasha, S.. 2015. “Kin Selection and Its Critics.” BioScience 65 (6): 22–32..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chakraborty, A., and Harbaugh, R.. 2007. “Comparative Cheap Talk.” Journal of Economic Theory 132 (1): 70–94..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eliashberg, J., and Winkler, R. L.. 1981. “Risk Sharing and Group Decision Making.” Management Science 27 (11): 1221–35..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frank, S. A. 1998. Foundations of Social Evolution. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frank, S. A. 2013. “Natural Selection.” Pt. 7, “History and Interpretation of Kin Selection Theory.” Journal of Evolutionary Biology 26:1151–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gardner, A., West, S., and Wild, G.. 2011. “The Genetical Theory of Kin Selection.” Journal of Evolutionary Biology 24 (5): 1020–43..CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Godfrey-Smith, P. 2009. Abstractions, Idealizations, and Evolutionary Biology. Dordrecht: Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grafen, A. 1979. “The Hawk-Dove Game Played between Relatives.” Animal Behaviour 27:905–7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grafen, A. 1984. “Natural Selection, Kin Selection and Group Selection.” In Behavioural Ecology, 2nd ed., ed. J. Krebs and N. Davies. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Grafen, A. 1985. “A Geometric View of Relatedness.” Oxford Surveys in Evolutionary Biology 2 (2): 28–89..Google Scholar
Grafen, A. 2007a. “Detecting Kin Selection at Work Using Inclusive Fitness.” Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B 274 (1610): 713–19..Google Scholar
Grafen, A. 2007b. “The Formal Darwinism Project: A Mid-Term Report.” Journal of Evolutionary Biology 20:1243–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hamilton, W. D. 1963. “The Evolution of Altruistic Behavior.” American Naturalist 97 (896): 354–56..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hamilton, W. D. 1964. “The Genetical Evolution of Social Behavior.” Pts. 1 and 2. Journal of Theoretical Biology 7:1–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hamilton, W. D. 1975. “Innate Social Aptitudes of Man: An Approach from Evolutionary Genetics.” Biosocial Anthropology 1:133–53.Google Scholar
Hammerstein, P., and Selten, R.. 1994. “Game Theory and Evolutionary Biology.” In Handbook of Game Theory with Economic Applications, Vol. 2, ed. S. Hart. Amsterdam: Elsevier.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lehmann, L., and Rousset, F.. 2014. “The Genetical Theory of Social Behaviour.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 369 (1642). doi:10.1098/rstb.2013.0357.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maciejewski, W., Fu, F., and Hauert, C.. 2014. “Evolutionary Game Dynamics in Populations with Heterogenous Structures.” PLoS Computational Biology 10 (4): e1003567.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Marshall, J. A. 2011. “Queller’s Rule OK: Comment on Van Veelen ‘When Inclusive Fitness Is Right and When It Can Be Wrong.’” Journal of Theoretical Biology 270:185–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marshall, J. A. 2015. Social Evolution and Inclusive Fitness Theory. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Nowak, M. A., Tarnita, C. E., and Wilson, E. O.. 2010. “The Evolution of Eusociality.” Nature 466 (26): 1057–62..CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tarnita, C. E., and Wilson, E. O. 2011. “Nowak et al. Reply.” Nature 471:E9–E10.Google Scholar
Okasha, S., and Martens, J.. 2016. “Hamilton’s Rule, Inclusive Fitness Maximization, and the Goal of Individual Behaviour in Symmetric Two-Player Games.” Journal of Evolutionary Biology 29 (3): 473–82..CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Okasha, S., Weymark, J. A., and Bossert, W.. 2014. “Inclusive Fitness Maximization: An Axiomatic Approach.” Journal of Theoretical Biology 350:24–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Orlove, M., and Wood, C. L.. 1978. “Coefficients of Relationship and Coefficients of Relatedness in Kin Selection: A Covariance Form for the RHO Formula.” Journal of Theoretical Biology 73 (4): 679–86..CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Page, K. M., and Nowak, M. A.. 2002. “Unifying Evolutionary Dynamics.” Journal of Theoretical Biology 270:93–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Queller, D. C. 1992. “Quantitative Genetics, Inclusive Fitness, and Group Selection.” American Naturalist 139 (3): 540–58..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rousset, F. 2002. “Inbreeding and Relatedness Coefficients: What Do They Measure?” Heredity 88:371–80.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Skyrms, B. 1996. Evolution of the Social Contract. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Skyrms, B. 2002. “Altruism, Inclusive Fitness, and the Logic of Decision.” Philosophy of Science 69 (Proceedings): S104–S111.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taylor, P. D., and Frank, S. A.. 1996. “How to Make a Kin Selection Model.” Journal of Theoretical Biology 180:26–37.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Taylor, P. D., and Maciejewski, W.. 2012. “An Inclusive Fitness Analysis of Synergistic Interactions in Structured Populations.” Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B 279 (1747): 4596–4603..Google ScholarPubMed
Taylor, P. D., Wild, G., and Gardner, A.. 2007. “Direct Fitness or Inclusive Fitness: How Shall We Model Kin Selection?” Journal of Evolutionary Biology 20:301–9.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Traulsen, A. 2010. “Mathematics of Kin- and Group-Selection: Formally Equivalent?” Evolution 64 (2): 316–23..CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
van Veelen, M. 2005. “On the Use of the Price Equation.” Journal of Theoretical Biology 237:412–26.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
van Veelen, M. 2009. “Group Selection, Kin Selection, Altruism and Cooperation: When Inclusive Fitness Is Right and When It Can Be Wrong.” Journal of Theoretical Biology 259:589–600.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
van Veelen, M. 2011. “The Replicator Dynamics with N Players and Population Structure.” Journal of Theoretical Biology 276 (1): 78–85..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
van Veelen, M., García, J., Sabelis, M. W., and Egas, M.. 2012. “Group Selection and Inclusive Fitness Are Not Equivalent: The Price Equation vs. Models and Statistics.” Journal of Theoretical Biology 299:64–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
West, S. A., and Gardner, A.. 2013. “Adaptation and Inclusive Fitness.” Current Biology 23 (13): R577–R584..CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wild, G., and Traulsen, A.. 2007. “The Different Limits of Weak Selection and the Evolutionary Dynamics of Finite Populations.” Journal of Theoretical Biology 247 (2): 382–90..CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wilson, E. O. 2012. The Social Conquest of Earth. New York: Norton.Google Scholar