[Previous] What is "genetic"? | Home | [Next] Experts

"Heritability" is misleading and correlations don't hint

Genetics and Reductionism by Sahotra Sarkar, pp 12-13:
high [narrow] heritability, which is routinely taken as indicative of the genetic origin of traits, can occur when genes alone do not provide an explanation of the genesis of that trait. To philosophers, at least, this should come as no paradox: good correlatoins need not even provide a hint of what is going on. They need not point to what is sometimes called a "common cause". They need not provide any guide to what should be regarded as the best explanation.
I already knew that. :-)

Elliot Temple on August 30, 2010

Messages

Want to discuss this? Join my forum.

(Due to multi-year, sustained harassment from David Deutsch and his fans, commenting here requires an account. Accounts are not publicly available. Discussion info.)