Pierrick Bourrat: Dissolving the Fitness-Decoupling Paradox in Evolutionary Transitions in Individuality
- Date: May 11, 2018
- Time: 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM (Local Time Germany)
- Speaker: Pierrick Bourrat from Macquarie University, Sydney, Australien
- For further information on the speaker, please check here: https://mq.edu.au/about_us/faculties_and_departments/faculty_of_arts/department_of_philosophy/staff/pierrick_bourrat/
- Location: MPI Plön
- Room: Lecture hall
- Host: Paul Rainey
Abstract:
When an evolutionary transition in individuality occurs, the
fitnesses
of the lower-level individuals that compose a higher-level
individual seems to
progressively decouple from that of this higher-level
individual: At the end of
the transition, if the fitness of the higher-level level is
high, the fitnesses
of the lower-level entities that compose it are low, and vice
versa. On the face
of it, this is a paradoxical situation. In this talk, I show,
that once one
begins to think about fitness in ecological rather than in
purely statistical terms,
the paradox can readily be dissolved.