NDLI: Generalizing Contextual Analysis

Content Provider	Springer Nature Link
Author	Bourrat, Pierrick
Copyright Year	2016
Abstract	Okasha, in Evolution and the Levels of Selection, convincingly argues that two rival statistical decompositions of covariance, namely contextual analysis and the neighbour approach, are better causal decompositions than the hierarchical Price approach. However, he claims that this result cannot be generalized in the special case of soft selection and argues that the Price approach represents in this case a better option. He provides several arguments to substantiate this claim. In this paper, I demonstrate that these arguments are flawed and argue that neither the Price equation nor the contextual and neighbour partitionings sensu Okasha are adequate causal decompositions in cases of soft selection. The Price partitioning is generally unable to detect cross-level by-products and this naturally also applies to soft selection. Both contextual and neighbour partitionings violate the fundamental principle of determinism that the same cause always produces the same effect. I argue that a fourth partitioning widely used in the contemporary social sciences, under the generic term of ‘hierarchical linear model’ and related to contextual analysis understood broadly, addresses the shortcomings of the three other partitionings and thus represents a better causal decomposition. I then defend this model against the argument that because it predicts that there is some organismal selection in some specific cases of segregation distortion then it should be rejected. I show that cases of segregation distortion that intuitively seem to contradict the conclusion drawn from the hierarchical linear model are in fact cases of multilevel selection 2 while the assessment of the different partitionings are restricted to multilevel selection 1.
Starting Page	197
Ending Page	217
Page Count	21
File Format	PDF
ISSN	00015342
Journal	Acta Biotheoretica
Volume Number	64
Issue Number	2
e-ISSN	15728358
Language	English
Publisher	Springer Netherlands
Publisher Date	2016-05-26
Publisher Place	Dordrecht
Access Restriction	One Nation One Subscription (ONOS)
Subject Keyword	Soft selection Price equation Multilevel analysis MLS1 MLS2 Philosophy of Biology Evolutionary Biology
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Philosophy Applied Mathematics Medicine Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology Environmental Science Agricultural and Biological Sciences

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