How should we distinguish between selectable and circumstantial traits?

Abstract

There is surprisingly little philosophical work on conceptually spelling out the difference between the traits on which natural selection may be said to act (e.g. "having a high running speed") and mere circumstantial traits (e.g. "happening to be in the path of a forest fire"). I label this issue the "selectable traits problem" and, in this paper, I propose a solution for it. I first show that, contrary to our first intuition, simply equating selectable traits with heritable ones is not an adequate solution. I then go on to argue that two recent philosophical solutions to this problem-due to Peter Godfrey-Smith and Pierrick Bourrat-are unconvincing because they cannot accommodate frequency-dependent selection. The way out of this difficulty is, I argue, to accept that extrinsic properties dependent on relations between intrinsic properties of the population members should also count as selectable traits. I then show that my proposal is legitimized by more than the simple accommodation of frequency-dependent selection.