Robustness in evolutionary explanations: a positive account

详细信息    查看全文

• 作者：Cédric Paternotte ; Jonathan Grose
• 关键词：Robustness analysis ; Evolutionary game theory ; Basins of attraction ; Stability ; Explanation ; Models
• 刊名：Biology & Philosophy
• 出版年：2017
• 出版时间：January 2017
• 年：2017
• 卷：32
• 期：1
• 页码：73-96
• 全文大小：
• 刊物类别：Humanities, Social Sciences and Law
• 刊物主题：Philosophy of Biology; Evolutionary Biology;
• 出版者：Springer Netherlands
• ISSN：1572-8404
• 卷排序：32

文摘

Robustness analysis is widespread in science, but philosophers have struggled to justify its confirmatory power. We provide a positive account of robustness by analysing some explicit and implicit uses of within and across-model robustness in evolutionary theory. We argue that appeals to robustness are usually difficult to justify because they aim to increase the likeliness that a phenomenon obtains. However, we show that robust results are necessary (under certain conditions) for explanations of phenomena with specific properties. Across-model robustness is necessary for how-possibly explanations of multiply instantiated phenomena, while within-model robustness is necessary for explanations of phenomena with multiple evolutionary starting points. In such cases, the appeal of robustness is explanatory rather than confirmatory.