Environmental Homogeneity, Selective Paths, and the Individuation of Selection Processes

Abstract In his influential book Adaptation and Environment, Robert Brandon defended a fitness-centered definition of natural selection according to which selection requires differences in fitness (i.e. differences in the ability to survive and reproduce of the biological entities of a population) and argued that natural selection requires homogeneous selective environments. This paper shows that, when taken in conjunction with his fitness-centered definition of selection, Brandon’s idea that selection requires homogeneous selective environments entails a stronger thesis according to which selection processes are individuated by homogeneous selective environments. I then show that the latter idea is problematic and that the reasons for rejecting it are provided by the main argument against fitness-centered definitions of selection. More specifically, the way evolutionary biologists handle cases of antagonistic selection encourages us not only to embrace an alternative, trait-centered definition of selection—according to which natural selection is the contributing causing of differences in actual reproductive success by differences in a trait—, but to also embrace the idea that selection processes are not individuated by homogeneous selective environments, but by “selective paths,” i.e. by the causal paths between differences in a trait and differences in reproductive success. I finally argue that natural-selectionist explanations need not appeal to selection processes that are fully individuated, i.e. the full individuation of selection processes is not a requirement for the explanations of evolutionary outcomes put forth by biologists.