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    Drift is an evolutionary force, but a force of a differen... — Carmelics
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    Home/Skepticism
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    Drift is an evolutionary force, but a force of a different color from selection, mutation, and migration.

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    2 reasons against

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    Reasons For

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    Reason for
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    • 1.Selection, mutation, migration, and drift all play causal roles in evolutionary change.
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    • 2.Selection is deterministic in the sense that given trait frequencies and fitness values, it predicts a specific directional outcome for the next generation.
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    • 3.Drift does not have a definite direction — it could yield an increase in any of the types present in the population.
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    Reasons Against

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    • 1.Drift is not a cause but an absence of cause — it is what remains when selection, mutation, and migration are subtracted from total change.
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    • 2.Matthen and Ariew (2002) argue that drift names a statistical residual, not a force, making the 'different color' framing a category error.
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    • 3.Forces must be individuable and capable of vector addition; a residual variance term cannot coherently occupy the same ontological category as directional causes.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
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    • 1.Selection is no more deterministic than drift at the level of individual organisms — both are probabilistic processes described by expected value distributions.
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    • 2.If drift and selection are distinguished only by whether expected change is zero, this is a difference of degree in directional bias, not a difference in causal kind.
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    • 3.Brandon and Carson's own Newtonian analogy commits a level-of-analysis fallacy by treating population-level statistics as if they were individual-level physical forces.
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    Topics

    SkepticismCausation

    Related

    Brandon and Carson's own Newtonian analogy commits a level-of-analysis fallacy b...Drift does not allow one to quantify how much it contributed to a change relativ...Drift does not have a definite direction — it could yield an increase in any of ...Drift is not a cause but an absence of cause — it is what remains when selection...
    +6 moreShow less
    Forces must be individuable and capable of vector addition; a residual variance ...If drift and selection are distinguished only by whether expected change is zero...Matthen and Ariew (2002) argue that drift names a statistical residual, not a fo...Selection is deterministic in the sense that given trait frequencies and fitness...Selection is no more deterministic than drift at the level of individual organis...Selection, mutation, migration, and drift all play causal roles in evolutionary ...

    Similar

    Drift is a force, though less force-like than selection, mutation, and...90%Drift is not a distinct kind of force separate from selection79%Drift is a force78%The debate has yet to address what exactly the use of 'forces' is supp...77%

    Source

    AI-extracted1/3 agreementValid
    SEP: genetic-drift
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    What, then, are the statisticalist issues that random drift is entangled with? The concerns raised by Walsh, Lewens, and Ariew (2002) and Matthen and Ariew (2002) have their origins in claims made by Sober (1984) in his classic The Nature of Selection. Sober characterizes evolutionary theory as a theory of forces, with its zero-force state described by the Hardy-Weinberg equation of population genetics (see the population genetics entry for an explanation of the equation); in such a state, the
    Extraction notes

    Validity: Extracted via Max plan + API grounding/validity checks

    Details

    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (1 for, 2 against)
    Edits
    1 edit