Abstract

Gene centrism is the idea that genes have a privileged causal role in the ontogeny of phenotypes. It has traditionally been defended on the grounds that genetic causation is a special kind of causation. According to this viewpoint, genes are special causal agents because they carry the information to build the organism. The recent trend in the philosophy of biology is to replace informational concepts with causal ones. Specific influence of genes in the production of RNA and proteins has received much attention. However, the history of genetics shows that gene centrism concerns not only the most proximate effects of genes, but also higher level phenotypes and the kind of specificity required to justify gene centrism must extend beyond proteins and RNAs. The missing heritability problem implies that it is no easy task to find specific causal relations between genomes and phenotypes. It seems to be the case that thousands of genes somehow influence variation in any complex trait and genomic findings offer no clear-cut mechanistic explanation. Thus, causal specificity concepts currently employed in philosophy are inadequate for answering the substantive problem of genotype-phenotype relations.