Article ID: CBB308076732

Mayr and Tinbergen: disentangling and integrating (2019)

unapi

Research on animal behavior is typically organized according to a combination of two influential frameworks: Ernst Mayr’s distinction between proximate and ultimate causes, and Niko Tinbergen’s “four questions” (mechanisms, development, survival value, and evolution). My aim is to debunk two common interpretive misconceptions about Mayr’s proximate–ultimate distinction and its relationship to Tinbergen’s four questions, and to offer a new interpretation that avoids both. The first misconception is that the proximate–ultimate distinction maps cleanly onto Tinbergen’s four questions, marking a boundary between Tinbergen’s evolutionary and survival value questions (ultimate) versus developmental and mechanistic questions (proximate). The second is that Mayr’s proximate–ultimate distinction is meant to rule out the relevance of proximate causes to evolutionary explanations. I argue that neither is plausible given the text and Mayr’s philosophical aims, namely, to argue that evolutionary biology cannot be reduced to either the physical sciences or to other areas of biology. Through a reconstruction of Mayr’s anti-reductionist argument, I develop an interpretation according to which the proximate–ultimate distinction marks two ways that teleological reasoning can be naturalistically grounded in biology, corresponding to Mayr’s distinction between teleonomic and adapted systems. Mayr distinguishes reduction, which the proximate–ultimate distinction is meant to block, from analysis, through which he allows that proximate causes, causes that are neither proximate nor ultimate, and chance can all contribute to evolutionary explanations. I conclude by suggesting some ways in which the interpretation defended here reframes our understanding of Mayr’s disagreements with some evolutionary-developmental biologists.

...More
Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB308076732/

Similar Citations

Article Takacs, Peter; Ruse, Michael; (2013)
The Current Status of the Philosophy of Biology (/isis/citation/CBB001252311/)

Article Ariew, André; (2003)
Ernst Mayr's “Ultimate/Proximate” Distinction Reconsidered and Reconstructed (/isis/citation/CBB000340589/)

Article Sandy C. Boucher; (2021)
Biological Teleology, Reductionism, and Verbal Disputes (/isis/citation/CBB536738665/)

Book Riccardo Mona; (2023)
Oltre il meccanicismo. La causalità della teoria dell'evoluzione (/isis/citation/CBB780306593/)

Article Hull, David L.; (2011)
Defining Darwinism (/isis/citation/CBB001023980/)

Article José Luis González Recio; (2005)
Ernst Mayr (1904-2005): de la teoría sintética de la evolución a la filosofía de la Biología (/isis/citation/CBB035558864/)

Article Ben Bradley; (2022)
Natural selection according to Darwin: Cause or effect? (/isis/citation/CBB830954057/)

Book Dowe, Phil; Noordhof, Paul; (2004)
Cause and Chance: Causation in an Indeterministic World (/isis/citation/CBB000410585/)

Book Koons, Robert C.; (2000)
Realism Regained: An Exact Theory of Causation, Teleology, and the Mind (/isis/citation/CBB000410586/)

Article Short, T. L.; (2002)
Darwin's Concept of Final Cause: Neither New nor Trivial (/isis/citation/CBB000202574/)

Article Aaron Wells; (2020)
Kant, Linnaeus, and the economy of nature (/isis/citation/CBB872058525/)

Article Alejandro Fábregas-Tejeda; Abigail Nieves Delgado; Jan Baedke; (2021)
Revisiting Hans Böker’s "Species Transformation Through Reconstruction: Reconstruction Through Active Reaction of Organisms" (1935) (/isis/citation/CBB806685409/)

Article Moss, Lenny; Nicholson, Daniel J.; (2012)
On Nature and Normativity: Normativity, Teleology, and Mechanism in Biological Explanation (/isis/citation/CBB001221591/)

Article Glymour, Bruce; (1999)
Population Level Causation and a Unified Theory of Natural Selection (/isis/citation/CBB000111011/)

Article Jessica Riskin; (2020)
Biology’s mistress, a brief history (/isis/citation/CBB880456753/)

Article Matthen, Mohan; (2000)
Intentionality and the Linguistic Analogy (/isis/citation/CBB000770646/)

Book Godfrey-Smith, Peter; (2014)
Philosophy of Biology (/isis/citation/CBB001510277/)

Article Michael Ruse; (2016)
Evolutionary biology and the question of teleology (/isis/citation/CBB878894989/)

Authors & Contributors
Ruse, Michael
Riccardo Mona
Fábregas-Tejeda, Alejandro
Delgado, Abigail Nieves
William J. Talbott
Boucher, Sandy C.
Concepts
Philosophy of biology
Biology
Teleology
Evolution
Causality
Evolutionary developmental biology
Time Periods
20th century
21st century
20th century, late
20th century, early
19th century
18th century
Places
Germany
United States
Comments

Be the first to comment!

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}

Log in or register to comment