Origins Are Not Essences in Evolutionary Systematics

Abstract

Natural selection explains why humans have eyes: eyes are useful for getting around in an illuminated world; without them we would get around a lot less effectively, at much greater risk, and with a great deal less appreciation of potential mates. One might think, therefore, that natural selection explains why you or I—humans as we are—have eyes. But the inference has been contested by a number of able philosophers, starting with Elliott Sober and going to Joel Pust. The disputants divide as follows. Sober, Denis Walsh, and Pust hold that though natural selection explains why humans as a species have eyes, it doesn't explain why particular humans have them.

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