NDLI: Niche construction, adaptive preferences, and the differences between fitness and utility

Content Provider	Springer Nature Link
Author	Schulz, Armin
Copyright Year	2014
Abstract	A number of scholars have recently defended the claim that there is a close connection between the evolutionary biological notion of fitness and the economic notion of utility: both are said to refer to an organism’s success in dealing with its environment, and both are said to play the same theoretical roles in their respective sciences. However, an analysis of two seemingly disparate but in fact structurally related phenomena—‘niche construction’ (the case where organisms change their environment to make it fit to their needs) and ‘adaptive preferences’ (the case where agents change their wants to make them fit to what the world has given them)—shows that one needs to be very careful about the postulation of this sort of fitness–utility connection. Specifically, I here use the analysis of these two phenomena to establish when connecting fitness and utility is and is not possible.
Starting Page	315
Ending Page	335
Page Count	21
File Format	PDF
ISSN	01693867
Journal	Biology & Philosophy
Volume Number	29
Issue Number	3
e-ISSN	15728404
Language	English
Publisher	Springer Netherlands
Publisher Date	2014-03-06
Publisher Place	Dordrecht
Access Restriction	One Nation One Subscription (ONOS)
Subject Keyword	Evolutionary theory Evolutionary economics Natural selection Rational choice Philosophy of Biology Evolutionary Biology
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Philosophy Agricultural and Biological Sciences History and Philosophy of Science

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1	Ministry of Education (GoI), Department of Higher Education	Sanctioning Authority	https://www.education.gov.in/ict-initiatives
2	Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur	Host Institute of the Project: The host institute of the project is responsible for providing infrastructure support and hosting the project	https://www.iitkgp.ac.in
3	National Digital Library of India Office, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur	The administrative and infrastructural headquarters of the project	Dr. B. Sutradhar bsutra@ndl.gov.in
4	Project PI / Joint PI	Principal Investigator and Joint Principal Investigators of the project	Dr. B. Sutradhar bsutra@ndl.gov.in Prof. Saswat Chakrabarti will be added soon
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