Natural Selection Is Not Responsible for Increasing the Frequency of Fitter Traits: A Reply to Pérez-González and Luque
Chuanke Wei · International Studies in the Philosophy of Science · 2025
There is an ongoing debate about how to understand the nature of natural selection, and one view holds that it can be characterised as a mechanism. Wei (Citation2024) argues that this characterization is problematic, since it is difficult to attribute an appropriate phenomenon to natural selection. Pérez-González and Luque object to Wei’s arguments and contend that they fail to challenge their proposal that natural selection is responsible for increasing reproductive success. In this paper, I reply to their critique and show that many of their objections rest on misinterpretations of Wei’s original paper and are ultimately unconvincing.