Triviño Vanessa, Nuño de la Rosa Laura
Faculty of Philosophy, University of Murcia, Murcia, Spain.
IAS-Research Group, University of the Basque Country, San Sebastian, Spain.
Hist Philos Life Sci. 2016 Sep;38(3):6. doi: 10.1007/s40656-016-0102-5. Epub 2016 Jun 23.
The notion of fitness is usually equated to reproductive success. However, this actualist approach presents some difficulties, mainly the explanatory circularity problem, which have lead philosophers of biology to offer alternative definitions in which fitness and reproductive success are distinguished. In this paper, we argue that none of these alternatives is satisfactory and, inspired by Mumford and Anjum's dispositional theory of causation, we offer a definition of fitness as a causal dispositional property. We argue that, under this framework, the distinctiveness that biologists usually attribute to fitness-namely, the fact that fitness is something different from both the physical traits of an organism and the number of offspring it leaves-can be explained, and the main problems associated with the concept of fitness can be solved. Firstly, we introduce Mumford and Anjum's dispositional theory of causation and present our definition of fitness as a causal disposition. We explain in detail each of the elements involved in our definition, namely: the relationship between fitness and the functional dispositions that compose it, the emergent character of fitness, and the context-sensitivity of fitness. Finally, we explain how fitness and realized fitness, as well as expected and realized fitness are distinguished in our approach to fitness as a causal disposition.
适合度的概念通常等同于繁殖成功率。然而，这种实际主义的方法存在一些困难，主要是解释循环问题，这使得生物学哲学家们提出了一些替代定义，在这些定义中，适合度和繁殖成功率是有区别的。在本文中，我们认为这些替代方案都不尽如人意，并且受芒福德和安朱姆的因果倾向理论的启发，我们提出了一个将适合度定义为因果倾向属性的定义。我们认为，在这个框架下，生物学家通常赋予适合度的独特性——即适合度不同于生物体的物理特征及其留下的后代数量这一事实——可以得到解释，并且与适合度概念相关的主要问题也可以得到解决。首先，我们介绍芒福德和安朱姆的因果倾向理论，并提出我们将适合度定义为因果倾向的定义。我们详细解释了我们定义中涉及的每个要素：适合度与构成它的功能倾向之间的关系、适合度的突现特征以及适合度的情境敏感性。最后，我们解释了在我们将适合度视为因果倾向的方法中，适合度与实现的适合度，以及预期适合度与实现适合度是如何区分的。
