How does Darwin help us understand evolution and natural selection?

Required

• Darwin, Origin of Species, Ch. 3 Struggle for Existence; Ch. 4 Natural Selection; Ch. 14 Recapitulation and Conclusion
• Background Tutorial: Ridley, Natural selection and Variation
• Dennett, DDI, Ch. 2 An Idea is Born, 3 Universal Acid), 5 The Possible and the Actual, 6 Threads of Actuality in Design Space
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Natural Selection (Brandon)
• Background Tutorial: Ridley, The units of selection
• Dawkins, ”Replicators and Vehicles”. King's College Sociobiology Group, eds., Current Problems in Sociobiology, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, (1982), pp. 45-64; Reprinted here from Robert Brandon and Richard Burian, Genes, Organisms, Populations, Cambridge MA, The MIT Press, 161-180.
• Wilson, D. S., & Wilson, E. O. (2008). Evolution "for the Good of the Group." American Scientist, 96(5), 380-389. Also here.
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Units and Levels of Selection (Lloyd)

Recommended

• Dawkins, R. (1989). Chapter 2: The Replicators from The Selfish Gene. Oxford University Press.
• SEP articles: Evolution (Sloan); Fitness (Rosenberg, Bouchard)
• Wilson, D. S., & Wilson, E. O. (2007). Evolution: Survival of the selfless. The New Scientist, 196(2628), 42-46.
• Wilson, D. S. (1989). Levels of selection: An alternative to individualism in the human sciences. Social Networks, 11(3), 257-272.
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Biological Altruism (Okasha)
• Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Altruism and Group Selection (Shavit)
• Okasha, S. (2003). Recent Work on the Levels of Selection Problem. Human Nature Review, 3, 349-356.

• What is evolution?
• What is natural selection? Lewontin (1970) has argued that selection will operate on any entities that exhibit “heritable variation in fitness.”
• At what level of the biological hierarchy (genes, organisms, groups, species) does selection occur? Could selection occur at multiple levels? Simultaneously? Might the direction of selection be different at different levels? Why did lower-level selection not disrupt the formation of the higher-level entities?
• Some have argued that genes are the proper units of selection (gene-centrism, Dawkins).
• How are replicators distinguished from vehicles (Dawkins) or interactors (Hull)? Does this help us settle the question about different levels of selection?
• Should we be realists or pluralists (conventionalists) about these levels of selection?
• Is gene-centrism challenged by the possibility of group selection?
• What are the effects of selection? Is the role of adaptation overstated?