Research On Sober's Thought For Philosophy Of Natural Selection

Philosophy of biology is a hot field of philosophy of science and thchnology. Elliott Sober is the most renowned scholar of University of Wisconsin. His thoughts of philosophy of biology are prominent in the field and have profound impacts on the academia. On the basis of learning from former researches, this essay would analyze and evaluate in detail the philosophical problems in Sober's natural selection theory, explore the deeper meaning of natural selection theory and the important methodology in a comprehensive way.The part of introduction includes the significance of the thesis, the research trends of the thesis and the research ideas of the thesis.The First Chapter discusses issues in Sober's research background and theory characteristics. Based on the above discussion, Sober's place in the field of philosophy of biology will be analyzed, and the special features and methodology of Sober's philosophy of evolutionary biology will be explored. Sober is fond of exploring specific issues on philosophy of biology and holds unique views on natural selection. He starts off from specific problems in the theory of natural selection, explores its philosophical thoughts, and separates philosophy of biology from the subject of biology.The Second Chapter, Sober's Criticism of Intelligent Design, is about Sober's explorations on external arguments of natural selection. It firstly describes the origin and development of Intelligent Design, exposes the essence and existing problems in Intelligent Design. The theory holds that some properties of the universe and creatures could be better explained by intellectual reasons, rather than natural selections. Based on this, analysis will be carried out on the hot debates between the design theory and evolution theory. Sober gives the equal footing of Intelligent Design and natural selection. He uses likelihood principle and justifies that natural selection has more likelihood. Sober justifies the limits of Popper's principle of falsifiability, and points out that the falsifiability standard fails to play important roles in deciding the unscientific feature of design theory. Design theory holders just take advantage of the incompleteness of science to justify their viewpoints. Intelligent Design is an issue of belief not belonging to the field of scientific study in essence.The Third Chapter, Sober's Models for Natural Selection is about Unit problem of nature selection. Starting with the epistemology dilemma of altruism, it explores the unit problem of natural selection. Ever since Darwin, the unit of natural selection has been a challenging issue to biologists. However, altruism is widespread in nature. The theory of group selection holds that altruistic group would gain evolution. After that, the theory of group selection is fiercely attacked by the theory of gene selection, and gene selection supporters hold that gene is the true selection unit. On the basis of the controversy between individual selection and group selection, Sober distinguishes between group-within selection and group selection, and raises multi-level selection theory, arguing that the selection force could impact on different levels, and that individual, group and gene could all be possible natural selection units.The Fourth Chapter, Sober's analysis of phylogenetic inference is about the course problem of natural selection. On how the ancestry system shown by life tree has come out, Sober explores three inference methods of system development, i.e. cladistic classification, phenotypic classification and evolutionary taxonomy, and carries out deep comparison and analysis on the three inference methods, addressing their respective advantages and disadvantages. Sober discovers that supporters of the three inference theories all hold that classification is hierarchical, but the philosophical grounds of their theories are different.The simplicity principle is improtment methodology instrument in branch classification. Sober dates back to the philosophical source of simplicity principle, and analyses it deeply. Based on this, Sober raises three problems of simplicity principle and concludes that simplicity does not have a universal justification on the whole. Sober further explores simplicity's important role in evaluation of scientific hypothesis and standards of model selection.The Fifth Chapter concerns Sober's psychological altruism hypothesis. Sober proves rationality of hypothesis of psychological altruism from the view of evolutionism and advocates motivational pluralism. On the basis of this, the paper further discusses that psychological altruistic motive is the product of evolution by the effect of internal and external causes.Sober's philosophical ideas of evolutionary biology are deep. Through reading of Sober's philosophical problems of natural selection, wider perspectives will be formed in addressing the solution on a series of major biological problems. Systematic discussions on Sober's unique ideas of the hot issues in the philosophical fields of contemporary evolutionary biology will help domestic scholars to grasp the essence of Sober's ideas, enhance home and abroad communications on the cutting-edge thoughts of philosophy of biology, and provide access for the advancement of social activities.