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The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 2008 59(1):25-50; doi:10.1093/bjps/axm044
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© The Author (2007). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of British Society for the Philosophy of Science. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Varieties of Population Structure and the Levels of Selection

Peter Godfrey-Smith

Department of Philosophy, Emerson Hall, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138 USA

pgs{at}fas.harvard.edu


  Abstract

Group-structured populations, of the kind prominent in discussions of multilevel selection, are contrasted with ‘neighbor-structured’ populations. I argue that it is a necessary condition on multilevel description of a selection process that there should be a nonarbitrary division of the population into equivalence classes (or an approximation to this situation). The discussion is focused via comparisons between two famous problem cases involving group structure (altruism and heterozygote advantage) and two neighbor-structured cases that resemble them. Conclusions are also drawn about the role of correlated interaction in the evolution of altruism.

1 Introduction
2 Two Kinds of Population Structure
3 Objections and Replies
4 Particles on a Line
5 Conclusion
Appendix: Neighborhoods and Selection


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