Jonathan Michael Kaplan

On the concept of biological race and its applicability to humans

Biological research on race has often been seen as motivated by or lending credence to underlying racist attitudes; in part for this reason, recently philosophers and biologists have gone through great pains to essentially deny the existence of biological human races. We argue that human races, in the biological sense of local populations adapted to particular environments, do in fact exist; such races are best understood through the common ecological concept of ecotypes. However, human ecotypic races do not in general correspond with ‘folk’ racial categories, largely because many similar ecotypes have multiple independent origins. Consequently, while human natural races exist, they have little or nothing in common with ‘folk’ races.

Genes `for’ Phenotypes: A Modern History View

We attempt to improve the understanding of the notion of agene being `for’ a phenotypic trait or traits. Considering theimplicit functional ascription of one thing being `for’ another,we submit a more restrictive version of `gene for’ talk.Accordingly, genes are only to be thought of as being forphenotypic traits when good evidence is available that thepresence or prevalence of the gene in a population is the resultof natural selection on that particular trait, and that theassociation between that trait and the gene in question isdemonstrably causal. It is therefore necessary to gatherstatistical, biochemical, historical, as well as ecologicalinformation before properly claiming that a gene is for aphenotypic trait. Instead of hampering practical use of the `genefor’ talk, our approach aims at stimulating much needed researchinto the functional ecology and comparative evolutionary biologyof gene action.

Historical Evidence and Human Adaptations

Phylogenetic information is often necessary to distinguish between evolutionary scenarios. Recently, some prominent proponents of evolutionary psychology have acknowledged this, and have claimed that such evidence has in fact been brought to bear on adaptive hypotheses involving complex human psychological traits. Were this possible, it would be a valuable source of evidence regarding hypothesized adaptive traits in humans. However, the structure of the Hominidae family makes this difficult or impossible. For many traits of interest, the closest extant relatives to the human species are too phenotypically different from humans for such methods to provide meaningful data. While phylogenetic information can be useful for testing adaptive hypotheses in humans, these generally involve traits that are (a) not widely shared in the species or (b) fairly widely shared in the Hominidae family, and hence likely of a lower order of complexity than the sorts of traits evolutionary psychology has so far been interested in.

Realism, Antirealism, and Conventionalism about Race

This paper distinguishes three concepts of “race”: bio-genomic cluster/race, biological race, and social race. We map out realism, antirealism, and conventionalism about each of these, in three important historical episodes: Frank Livingstone and Theodosius Dobzhansky in 1962, A. W. F. Edwards’s 2003 response to Lewontin’s 1972 paper, and contemporary discourse. Semantics is especially crucial to the first episode, while normativity is central to the second. Upon inspection, each episode also reveals a variety of commitments to the metaphysics of race. We conclude by interrogating the relevance of these scientific discussions for political positions and a post-racial future.

The Paradox of Stasis and the Nature of Explanations in Evolutionary Biology

Recently, Estes and Arnold claimed to have “solved” the paradox of evolutionary stasis; they claim that stabilizing selection, and only stabilizing selection, can explain the patterns of evolutionary divergence observed over “all timescales.” While Estes and Arnold clearly think that they have identified the processes that produce evolutionary stasis, they have not. Instead, Estes and Arnold identify a particular evolutionary pattern but not the processes that produce that pattern. This mistake is important; the slippage between pattern and process is common in population and quantitative genetics and contributes to a persistent misunderstanding of the nature of explanations in evolutionary biology.

Evolutionary Innovations and Developmental Resources: From Stability to Variation and Back Again

Will a synthesis of developmental and evolutionary biology require a focus on the role of nongenetic resources in evolution? Nongenetic variation may exist but be hidden because the phenotypes are stable (developmentally canalized) under certain background conditions. In this case, those differences may come to play important roles in evolution when background conditions change. If this is so, then a focus on the way that developmental resources are made reliable, and the ways in which reliability fails, may prove to be of crucial importance to linking developmental and evolutionary biology.

Ethical Guidelines for Genetic Research on Alcohol Addiction and Its Applications

ABSTRACT:Research on the genomic correlates to addiction raises ethical issues in a number of different domains. In this paper, we evaluate the status of genetic research on alcohol dependence as background to addressing the ethical issues raised in conducting research on addiction and the application of that research to the formulation of public policies. We conclude that genetic testing is not yet ready for use in the prediction of alcohol dependence liability. Pharmacogenetic testing for responses to treatments may have more clinical utility, although additional research is required to demonstrate utility and cost-effectiveness. Genetic research on addiction raises potential risks for participants that must be clearly communicated to participants, including limitations on the ability of researchers to protect their privacy. Responsible communication of research findings is essential to prevent common misunderstandings about the role of genetics in addiction liability, to prevent its premature or inappropriate use, and to reduce discrimination and stigmatization experienced by addicted individuals. More research is needed to determine the impact of genetic explanations on addicted individuals, treatment-seeking behavior, and on public attitudes towards addicted persons. Importantly, genetic research on addiction must not be at the expense of investments in social, behavioral, and psychological research on addiction.

Children of One’s Own

Technologies for assisted reproduction often aim explicitly at giving hitherto infertile couples a ‘child of their own’ – that is, a child that is genetically related to them. And many couples find themselves spending enormous amounts of money, time, and energy attempting to have a child via these techniques. But why should a genetic relationship make a child any more ‘one’s own’ than other kinds of relationships – for example, those parent-child relationships forged through adoptions? There is a wide-spread assumption in much of contemporary society that genetic parenthood is important because of what it implies about the relationship between the (physical and behavioral) traits of the parents and those traits of the child; arguments relying on these assumptions have even been accepted in some legal cases. I argue here that this state of affairs is particularly unfortunate, and that the over-blown rhetoric of the Human Genome Project and related research programs is at least partially to blame. This rhetoric includes the metaphorical language of genes as ‘master controllers’, ‘blue-prints’, ‘recipes’, and as ‘carrying information’. But as none of these metaphors is well-justified by contemporary understandings of the roles played by genes in the organismal development, the metaphors ought to be rejected, and with them, the social emphasis on a genetic relationship as the most important aspect of parenthood

Reply from M. Pigliucci and J. Kaplan.

The goal of our article was precisely the one stated by Getty, to show that constraints and selection are not a dichotomy. However, Getty wants to subsume everything under the heading of selection, even talking about selective constraints (an oxymoron). We would rather think of selection and constraints (both coming in a variety of flavors) as continuously interacting agents of evolutionary change. Therefore, we do not see selection as unconstrained – on the contrary. From this point of view, of course we agree with Getty that ‘one person’s constraints may be another’s design problem’ and that selection ‘is a consequence of constraints’. What else could it be?We find his criticisms of our idea of natural selection as favoring the ‘barely tolerable’ quite surprising, and exactly along the lines of that neo-Panglossianism that we would like people to stay clear of. First, satisficing1xThe role of satisficing in foraging theory. Ward, D. Oikos. 1992; 63: 312–317CrossrefSee all References1 is an ecological concept under active discussion, not a strange idea as maintained by Getty. Second, the idea that selection is not an optimizing machine (and cannot be, because of constraints) is actually gaining momentum in the recent literature2xNatural selection, or the non-survival of the non-fit. den Boer, P.J. Acta Biotheoretica. 1999; 47: 83–97Crossref | Scopus (8)See all References2.We agree that constraints shape fitness surfaces, but our exact goal was to arrive at a better understanding of how this happens, what constraints are and how they yield evolutionary trajectories by interacting with selection (and with stochastic forces, the third player in the evolutionary game). In that sense, how could we ‘only recognize explicit constraints, external to the fitness surface’? If they are external to the fitness surface they do not exist as constraints and therefore they (whatever they are) are not of interest to evolutionary biologists.Getty says that ‘the challenge is not to bridge a vast chasm between constraints and selection, but rather to understand the constraints that create and shape selection’. Our point exactly. Historically, the chasm has been between different views of evolutionary forces endorsed and promulgated by different groups of researchers. Once we realize that we are all talking about the many sides of the same multidimensional polyhedron we will be able to move away from semantics and into conceptually more fertile areas of discussion.