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What Selection Can and Cannot Explain: A Reply to Nanay’s Critique of Sober

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Casey Helgeson
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Abstract

In The Nature of Selection, Elliott Sober argued that natural selection is in principle powerless to explain why any individual organism has the traits it does rather than the very same individual having different traits. In this note, I argue that in a recent and prominent critique of Sober’s position, Bence Nanay talks past that position rather than addressing it.

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Discussions
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Philosophy of Science , Volume 80 , Issue 1 , January 2013 , pp. 155 - 159
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Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

†

For helpful comments on a draft of this note, I thank Hayley Clatterbuck, Brian McLoone, Elliott Sober, and two anonymous referees.

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