[SydPhil] Invitation: USyd Postgrad Work in Progress Talk: Pierrick Bourrat @ Tue 30 Apr 2013 15:00 - 16:30 (sydphil at arts.usyd.edu.au)

[Simon Varey]

You have been invited to the following event.

Title: USyd Postgrad Work in Progress Talk: Pierrick Bourrat
USyd Postgrad Work in Progress Talk: Pierrick Bourrat

What is natural selection?

Selection processes happen everywhere around us and more distinguishably in  
populations of organisms. Many scholars use the term “natural selection”  
but only a few of them define it clearly. Natural selection, like the word  
gene, has become a sort of free floating label. In this paper, I ask what  
is so distinctive about natural selection when compared to other forms of  
selection. I start by defining natural selection as a phenomenon occurring  
when a population of entities of different types have different fitness.  
This definition naturally calls for a definition of fitness. Yet, fitness  
is notoriously hard to pin down and relate to natural selection. I provide  
an analysis, which I claim succeeds, in pinning down the right concept of  
fitness to be associated with natural selection. Although this concept  
works perfectly well at the theoretical level it involves idealized  
assumptions that are never realized in real populations (e.g. unlimited  
population size). This leads me to conclude that natural selection is not a  
process but an idealized model: a description of what would happen ideally.  
I conclude that our claims about natural selection occurring in such or  
such population are merely claims about degrees of resemblance with this  
model.
When: Tue 30 Apr 2013 15:00 – 16:30 Eastern Time - Melbourne, Sydney
Where: Philosophy Common Room, Main Quad, University of Sydney
Calendar: sydphil at arts.usyd.edu.au
Who:
     * simonvarey at gmail.com- creator
     * Sydphil List

Event details:  
https://www.google.com/calendar/event?action=VIEW&eid=NnNib3Z2dThqaGFwcDQ0bTNxY3JxNG4xZXMgc3lkcGhpbEBhcnRzLnVzeWQuZWR1LmF1&tok=NTIjMmJlcm9za3ZqcjJnMjRyam50cWxxZWdzNm9AZ3JvdXAuY2FsZW5kYXIuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbTc3N2Y5Yzc5NDMwM2IzYTMwZDc0NGMwMTdmNDE4MTRkZDhkY2M4NTQ&ctz=Australia/Sydney&hl=en_GB

Invitation from Google Calendar: https://www.google.com/calendar/

You are receiving this email at the account sydphil at arts.usyd.edu.au  
because you are subscribed for invitations on calendar  
sydphil at arts.usyd.edu.au.

To stop receiving these notifications, please log in to  
https://www.google.com/calendar/ and change your notification settings for  
this calendar.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.sydney.edu.au/pipermail/sydphil/attachments/20130427/1975a567/attachment-0002.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: text/calendar
Size: 2630 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://mailman.sydney.edu.au/pipermail/sydphil/attachments/20130427/1975a567/attachment.ics>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: invite.ics
Type: application/ics
Size: 2678 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://mailman.sydney.edu.au/pipermail/sydphil/attachments/20130427/1975a567/attachment-0004.bin>