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    The persistence of biologists' debates over the relative ... — Carmelics
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    The persistence of biologists' debates over the relative importance of drift and selection is explicable without making those debates seem trivial

    SkepticismTruth & Knowledge
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    Reasons For

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    • 1.Drift and selection can produce the same outcomes even though they are distinct processes
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    • 2.If two distinct processes can produce identical outcomes, scientists can reasonably disagree about which process was responsible in a given case
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    Reasons Against

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    • 1.Elliot Sober argues that drift and selection are not causally distinct processes but differ only in whether population-level forces are systematically directional.
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    • 2.If drift is merely the absence of systematic selection pressure rather than a distinct causal process, debates about their 'relative importance' conflate a cause with its absence.
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    • 3.Persistent debate arising from a conceptual confusion about causal categories reflects theoretical disorder, not legitimate empirical underdetermination.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
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    • 1.Bas van Fraassen's constructive empiricism holds that unobservable theoretical posits gain warrant only through their empirical adequacy, not their explanatory coherence.
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    • 2.If drift and selection produce identical observable outcomes, any methodological persistence in debating their relative contributions cannot be grounded in empirical evidence and thus lacks epistemic justification.
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    • 3.A debate that is structurally insulated from empirical resolution is trivial in the epistemically relevant sense, regardless of its sociological persistence among practitioners.
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    Related

    A debate that is structurally insulated from empirical resolution is trivial in ...Bas van Fraassen's constructive empiricism holds that unobservable theoretical p...Drift and selection can produce the same outcomes even though they are distinct ...Elliot Sober argues that drift and selection are not causally distinct processes...
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    If drift and selection produce identical observable outcomes, any methodological...If drift is merely the absence of systematic selection pressure rather than a di...If two distinct processes can produce identical outcomes, scientists can reasona...Persistent debate arising from a conceptual confusion about causal categories re...

    Similar

    Disproving drift as the cause of gene frequency fluctuations does not ...79%Beatty's argument that drift and selection cannot be distinguished nee...79%Distinguishing process from outcome dissolves the apparent overlap bet...74%Distinguishing drift from selection on the basis of causation — rather...72%

    Source

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    SEP: genetic-drift
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    As will be discussed further below, much of the twentieth century was marked by debates among biologists about the relative importance of drift and selection in evolution. Were those debates at least in part the result of conceptual unclarity? Millstein (2002) argues that we need not accept this inadvertent consequence of Beatty’s argument, and that selection can, in fact, be distinguished from drift. In order to do this, three extensions should be made to Beatty’s account. First, similar to Hod
    Extraction notes

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

    Details

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