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Topic: Adaptationism

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	Adaptationism — How to Carry Out an Exaptationist Program
		Adaptationism is a research strategy that seeks to identify adaptations and the specific selective forces that drove their evolution in past environments.
		Adaptationism is built on a view of evolution that overemphasizes the power of selection and under-appreciates the constraints on selection and other evolutionary processes.
		Consequently, adaptationism is not an ontological commitment to the idea that traits or organisms are perfectly adapted to their environment (Sober and Wilson 1998).
	www.bbsonline.org /documents/a/00/00/22/43/bbs00002243-00/bbs.andrews.htm (15763 words)

	IF NOT NATURAL SELECTION
		Accordingly, they define adaptationism as the claim that "natural selection is the only important cause of the evolution of most nonmolecular traits and that these traits are locally optimal." This brings us to the second key term in their title: optimality.
		In their essay for this collection (Adaptationism and Optimality is an anthology with twelve essays), Orzack and Sober compare the respective contributions of natural selection and phylogenetic inertia in accounting for the stability of traits.
		Orzack and Sober's call for analytic precision to study adaptationism is much needed, but if the analytic methods described in their volume cannot be extended to large scale evolutionary changes, then their project will be of very limited interest.
	www.designinference.com /documents/05.02.Orzack-Sober_review.htm (1689 words)

	Evolutionary psychology: An emerging integrative perspective within the science and practice of psychology by Leif ... (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-12)
		So far, Adaptationism has been taken at face value, but as quite a few renowned theoreticians have claimed that this approach to the study of Human Nature is at fault, a discussion of the Adaptationist program is necessary.
		Rather, adaptationism holds that the predictions that follow from simple selectional models, in which the true selection coefficients are recorded, would not be much perturbed by taking other factors into account.
		Maybe this is due to adaptationism not being panselectionism, because the description of the panselectionist is a non-existent caricature.
	human-nature.com /nibbs/02/ep.html (17103 words)

	Welcome to Duke's Center for Philosophy of Biology
		Contrary to most current characterizations, adaptationism is not a thesis about the power of natural selection vis a vis other evolutionary forces, and the anti-adaptationism of "Spandrels" does not imply that organisms are imperfectly adapted.
		This contribution to the adaptationism debate elaborates the nature of constraints and their importance in evolutionary explanation and argues that the adaptationism debate should be limited to the issue of how to privilege causes in evolutionary explanation.
		The adaptationism issue that remains is a species of the general issue of how to privilege causes in explanation.
	www.duke.edu /philosophy/bio/conference2003.html (1931 words)

	The KLI Theory Lab - keywords - adaptationism
		Ahouse, J.C. The tragedy of a priori selectionism: Dennett and Gould on adaptationism.
		Chemero, A. Teleosemantics and the critique of adaptationism.
		Gould, S.J. Lewontin, R.C. The spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian paradigm: A critique of the adaptationist programme.
	www.kli.ac.at /theorylab/Keyword/A/adaptationism.html (315 words)

	Adaptationism and Optimality -- Steven Hecht Orzack Elliott Sober
		Adaptationism and Optimality -- Steven Hecht Orzack Elliott Sober
		Adaptationism and Optimality presents an up-to-date view of this controversy and reflects the dramatic changes in our understanding of evolution that have occurred in the past 20 years.
		These essays are intended to provide useful advice to "biologists in the trenches" but also to assess the larger theoretical and conceptual issues that form the basis of the current controversy.
	www.frontlist.com /detail/0521598362 (208 words)

	Intertextual Self-Fashioning: Gould and Lewontin's Representations of the Literature (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-12)
		The remainder of the abstract details their alternative, their specific criticisms of adaptationism, and the alignment of their project with the Ur-intent of the founding father: ÒWe support Darwin's own pluralistic approach to identifying the agents of evolutionary changeÓ (581).
		Rather the attack on adaptationism aims at the technical underpinnings, the explanatory mechanism by which sociobiological accounts gain the appearance of plausibility.
		In that struggle the control over representation of the intertext is a crucial strategic weapon, for whoever controls the intersubjective intertext (that is, the widely accepted representation of the intertext) controls the communal memory and thereby the framework of knowledge.
	www.education.ucsb.edu /~bazerman/65.intertextual (7468 words)

	Anti-Adaptationist Evolution
		Adaptationism is a theory of evolution that has been prevalent in evolutionary biology for many years.
		Anti-Adaptationism is not a refutation of the role of adaptation in evolution, rather it is a recognition that other forces which Adaptationism tends to ignore, play an important role in the evolutionary process.
		In particular, Anti-Adaptationism holds that some of an organism's most important features may not be the result of adaptation at all, but may be the result of a change in functionality of an existing feature, or the product of some other genetic or evolutionary operator.
	www.juric.org /projects/software/thesis/node11.html (740 words)

	Ian Ravenscroft (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-12)
		Adaptationism entails what we might call psychological adaptationism: most important psychological features of organisms are adaptations.
		However, it should be clear that adaptationism is sufficiently controversial to render psychological adaptationism controversial.
		Evolutionary biologists sometimes argue that a trait is an adaptation because of its distribution on the phylogenetic tree.
	www.kcl.ac.uk /ip/nevensesardic/Ravenscroft.html (585 words)

	VisionTalksSep141998(Bravo).html (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-12)
		In the 1970's, adaptationism was ridiculed by two evolutionists, S. Gould and R. Lewontin.
		Adaptationism does, however, suffer from several other- and less well known- problems.
		Indeed I will conclude that adaptationism is at best intellectually suspect and at worst formally unsound.
	ruccs.rutgers.edu /talks/ColloqTalkMar91999Orr.html (92 words)

	ADAPTATIONISM AND OPTIMALITY by Sober, Elliott, Williams, Brian, McCombie, Karen, Orzack, Steven, SOBER, ELLIOTT ... (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-12)
		The theory of adaptationism argues that natural selection contains sufficient explanatory power in itself to account for all evolution.
		If the adaptationism theory is applied, are energy and resources being used to their optimum?
		This book presents an up-to-date view of this controversy and reflects the dramatic changes in our understanding of evolution that have occurred in the last twenty years.
	www.studentbookworld.com /BookDetail/0521598362.html (207 words)

	Why should adaptationism be testable? (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-12)
		If that adaptationism is an existential claim, then it is irrefutable.
		If it specifies a minimum ratio(or an interval of ratio), let’s say p, of traits which are results of natural selection to all traits, then, in the long run, we can test it.
		I can’t understand how adaptationism can be tested as a research program(POB, 130-131), because the point of the research program may not be that it could be refuted.
	philosophy.wisc.edu /sober920/_disc2/0000013b.htm (235 words)

	Strong adaptationists try to explain distinctively complex organic design as task-specific adaptations to particular ... (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-12)
		For some domain-specific competencies (folkbiology) strong adaptationism is useful, not necessary.
		Recent cognitive experiments indicate that humans have specialized core mental faculties with privileged access to distinct but overlapping domains of nature, including: folkmechanics (object boundaries and movements), folkbiology (biological species configurations and relationships), and folkpsychology (interactive agents and goal-directed behavior).
		Evidence against exaptation in all populations stems from developmental and cross-cultural research; this may be compatible with strong prior or post hoc adaptationism but doesn’t require it.
	www.bbsonline.org /Preprints/Andrews/Commentators/.Atran.html (1962 words)

	Response to Fodor on DDI
		He has doubts about all three steps, but is willing to suspend judgment on the first two and dig in his heels on the third.
		Fodor still has his doubts about adaptationism, and about its underwriting of a notion of biological function, but he thinks that even if he's wrong on those two scores, he has a knock-down argument against my evolutionary theory of intentionality.
		There is as much reason to suppose that the behavior-controlling capacities of the human brain evolved as there is to suppose that the blood-flow-controlling capacities of the human circulatory system evolved.
	ase.tufts.edu /cogstud/papers/fodor2.htm (2471 words)

	Gould on Adaptationism
		It is hard to construe this as an argument against adaptationism, though I think Gould is correct in saying it is an argument against single-minded gene-level adaptationism.
		That contingency and chance play a vital role in the evolution of life (¶8) is not controversial; it is a cornerstone of Darwinian evolutionary theory.
		His beefs are appear minor: the methodology should not be sloppy, the results should be more sensitive to his values, and the importance of chance should be acknowledged.
	cogweb.ucla.edu /Debate/On_Gould.html (2771 words)

	NetForum - Messages In Topic: Adaptationism (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-12)
		That is, we all know adaptationism is false, but can we really do the science required without pretending it is true?
		The amount we can deploy adaptationism depends on the degree we can determine the order of the traits.
		And to be blindy and naively optmistic, Panglossian paradigan then 'each trait plays its part and must be as it is.' As Sober stated, "Adaptationist tend to expect nature to confrom to the predictions of well motivated models...." and "Adaptationism is a 'tendency' of thought.
	athena.english.vt.edu /cgi-bin/netforum/philbio/a/15--6.1 (738 words)

	Stephen Jay Gould - EvoWiki (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-12)
		Gould wrote many books popularising evolution and paleontology, and fought against pseudoscience and creationism.
		Gould and Dawkins were the major players in the "Darwin wars", a long-running disagreement about the details of sociobiology, adaptationism and whether evolution took place more on the level of genes or organisms.
		This page was last modified 23:21, 6 Nov 2005.
	www.evowiki.org /index.php/Stephen_Jay_Gould (141 words)

	Essay on Sociobiology and the Meaning of Life
		Adaptationism is, of course, also limited by biological constraints (due to physical laws); or to limitations imposed by past biological "baggage".
		The danger of adaptationism, though, is that all too often an adaptationist explanation is taken to mean the way "it was meant to be".
		If it sometimes seems that adaptationism explains a bit too much; then maybe that's because some adaptationists are overreaching...
	www.geocities.com /evo_psych (21327 words)

	Amazon.com: Adaptationism and Optimality (Cambridge Studies in Philosophy and Biology): Books (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-12)
		However, there are differing views about the efficiency, or optimality, of the adaptation model of explanation.
		If the adaptationism theory is applied, are energy and resources being used as optimally as possible?
		Adaptationism and Optimality combines contributions from biologists and philosophers, and offers a systematic treatment of foundational, conceptual, and methodological issues surrounding the theory of adaptationism.
	www.amazon.com /exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/052159166X?v=glance (697 words)

	Boston Review:Orr Reviews "Darwin's Dangerous Idea" by Daniel Dennett (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-12)
		According to adaptationism, then, evolutionary biologists are in the business of constructing adaptive stories about why organisms are the way they are.
		In 1979, they published an influential (and still-controversial) paper in which they argued that adaptationism is flawed.
		In the end, though, this gnashing of teeth over adaptationism is not supremely important to Dennett.
	www.bostonreview.net /br21.3/Orr.html (5612 words)

	Adaptationist Stories - Overview
		These and myriad other mysteries can be explained by using the magic of adaptationism.
		Adaptationism, with the powerful ingredient: Ultra-Darwinian selection, will end your ceaseless wondering about biological mysteries in the world around us, and will save thousands of hours of grueling and tedious laboratory and field work.
		This site began when one of us was involved in writing reviews (Ahouse, 1998; Ahouse and Berwick, 1998) of the recent wave of pop hyperadaptationism.
	home.comcast.net /~jeremy.ahouse/archives/adaptationism (366 words)

	Fresh Pond Research Institute
		We believe that developments over the last fifteen years or so in phylogenetic analysis, in our theoretical understanding of optimality and ESS models, in methods of testing models, as well as the dramatic increases in numbers of models and in tests of models, all have significantly increased our understanding of adaptationism and optimality.
		For these reasons, we have produced this integrated collection of the variety of views about these central issues in evolutionary biology.
		This book will be of interest to biologists "in the trenches" and to philosophers of biology who confront issues about adaptationism and optimality in their work.
	www.freshpond.org /adapt.html (371 words)

	Reading List: The MIT Encyclopedia of the Cognitive Sciences (MITECS)
		The MIT Encyclopedia of the Cognitive Sciences (MITECS) is a landmark, comprehensive reference work that represents the methodological and theoretical diversity of this changing field.
		At the core of the encyclopedia are 471 concise entries, from Acquisition and Adaptationism to Wundt and X-bar Theory.
		Each article, written by a leading researcher in the field, provides an accessible introduction to an important concept in the cognitive sciences, as well as references or further readings.
	www.asimovlaws.com /reading/2004/07/the_mit_encyclo.html (221 words)

	Adaptationism and Modularity
		One need not be a priori committed to a panhuman neurological implementation of such functional specializations, though within certain limits this is likely to be the case.
		As for the differences between the cognitive constructivist and the adaptationist approach, it is hard to see a fundamental conflict of interest; adaptationism is itself computational, and even the most ardent cognitive constructivist admits evolution has played a role in developing the human cognitive system.
		Finally, since human beings exist and emerge from a complex web of physical and representational relations, our own descriptions of ourselves should not aim only for Platonic abstractions, but also explicitly discuss what kind of understanding would actually be beneficial.
	cogweb.ucla.edu /CogSci/Modularity.html (871 words)

	IngentaConnect Adaptationism for Human Cognition: Strong, Spurious or Weak? (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-12)
		For certain domain-specific competencies (folkbiology) strong adaptationism is useful but not necessary to research.
		With group-level belief systems (religion) strong adaptationism degenerates into spurious notions of social function and cultural selection.
		You will be able to remove this item from your shopping cart at any time before you have completed check-out.
	www.ingentaconnect.com /content/bpl/mila/2005/00000020/00000001/art00004;jsessionid=46e6mqrp4bifg.henrietta (172 words)

	NetForum - Adaptationism (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-12)
		This almost necessarily implicates some sort of bias; human beings simply cannot touch any concept, idea, or rationale without placing some intent on it.
		I believe that neutrality is therefore the ideal vantage for evolutionary theory, because adaptationism just seems to "phenomenolize" everything.
		As Sober notes, it seems as if people feel that there has to be some sort of known deep-seeded explanation.
	athena.english.vt.edu /cgi-bin/netforum/philbio/a/14--6.1.1 (402 words)

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