10 found
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  1. Individualist and multi-level perspectives on selection in structured populations.Benjamin Kerr & Peter Godfrey-Smith - 2002 - Biology and Philosophy 17 (4):477-517.
    Recent years have seen a renewed debate over the importance of groupselection, especially as it relates to the evolution of altruism. Onefeature of this debate has been disagreement over which kinds ofprocesses should be described in terms of selection at multiple levels,within and between groups. Adapting some earlier discussions, we presenta mathematical framework that can be used to explore the exactrelationships between evolutionary models that do, and those that donot, explicitly recognize biological groups as fitness-bearing entities.We show a fundamental set (...)
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  2. Gestalt-Switching and the Evolutionary Transitions.Peter Godfrey-Smith & Benjamin Kerr - 2013 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 64 (1):205-222.
    Formal methods developed for modeling levels of selection problems have recently been applied to the investigation of major evolutionary transitions. We discuss two new tools of this kind. First, the ‘near-variant test’ can be used to compare the causal adequacy of predictively equivalent representations. Second, ‘state-variable gestalt-switching’ can be used to gain a useful dual perspective on evolutionary processes that involve both higher and lower level populations.
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  3. What is altruism?Benjamin Kerr, Peter Godfrey-Smith & Marcus W. Feldman - unknown
    Altruism is generally understood to be behavior that benefits others at a personal cost to the behaving individual. However, within evolutionary biology, different authors have interpreted the concept of altruism differently, leading to dissimilar predictions about the evolution of altruistic behavior. Generally, different interpretations diverge on which party receives the benefit from altruism and on how the cost of altruism is assessed. Using a simple trait-group framework, we delineate the assumptions underlying different interpretations and show how they relate to one (...)
     
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  4.  29
    The Dual Landscape Model of Adaptation and Niche Construction.Mark M. Tanaka, Peter Godfrey-Smith & Benjamin Kerr - 2020 - Philosophy of Science 87 (3):478-498.
    Wright’s “adaptive landscape” has been influential in evolutionary thinking but controversial, especially because the landscape that organisms encounter is altered by the evolutionary process itsel...
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  5. Cheats as first propagules: A new hypothesis for the evolution of individuality during the transition from single cells to multicellularity.Paul B. Rainey & Benjamin Kerr - 2010 - Bioessays 32 (10):872-880.
    The emergence of individuality during the evolutionary transition from single cells to multicellularity poses a range of problems. A key issue is how variation in lower‐level individuals generates a corporate (collective) entity with Darwinian characteristics. Of central importance to this process is the evolution of a means of collective reproduction, however, the evolution of a means of collective reproduction is not a trivial issue, requiring careful consideration of mechanistic details. Calling upon observations from experiments, we draw attention to proto‐life cycles (...)
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  6.  38
    Tolerance: A Hierarchical Analysis.Peter Godfrey-Smith & Benjamin Kerr - 2019 - Journal of Political Philosophy 27 (4):403-421.
    Journal of Political Philosophy, EarlyView.
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  7.  50
    Niche Construction and Cognitive Evolution.Benjamin Kerr - 2007 - Biological Theory 2 (3):250-262.
    Despite the fact that animal behavior involves a particularly powerful form of niche construction, few researchers have considered how the environmental impact of behavior may feed back to influence the evolution of the cognitive underpinnings of behavior. I explore a model that explicitly incorporates niche construction while tracking cognitive evolution. Agents and their stimuli are modeled as coevolving populations. The agents are born with “weights” attached to behaviors in a repertoire. Further, these agents are able to change these weights based (...)
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  8. The caucus-race of the dodo.Benjamin Kerr - 2004 - Biology and Philosophy 19 (5):781-799.
  9. Selection in ephemeral networks.Peter Godfrey-Smith & Benjamin Kerr - unknown
    A model of “ephemeral” population structure is presented that applies not only to biological systems in which discrete groups form but also to networks without group boundaries. The evolution of altruistic behaviors is discussed. Nonrandom interaction and nonlinear fitness structures are modeled; together, these factors can produce stable polymorphisms of altruistic and selfish types, as well as bistability. Empirical applications of the model may be found in microbes, marine invertebrates, annual plants, and other organisms.
     
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  10. Group fitness and multi-level selection: Replies to commentaries. [REVIEW]Peter Godfrey-Smith & Benjamin Kerr - 2002 - Biology and Philosophy 17 (4):539-549.