Elmer writes:
The issue is the mechanism/engine that drives the origins of adaptive phenotypic traits that cause or contribute to increased productivity, including increased "differential reproduction".
Boy, do I agree with you, Elmer! And, yet, what an impossible question it is”this question of driving forces and mechanisms.
"Species survival" is not a matter of "personal reproductive cost", but of collective, i.e., species, "productivity", or lack of same. Just so long as the birth rate equals the death rate, it does not matter to 'species survival' just which individuals supply the requisite number of offspring, just as long as at least some do. Connecting his " differential survival of gene pools (species)" to his "would promote species survival' is simply uttering the inanity, 'differential survival of species would promote species survival'. This stuff is so stupid that it's giving me a headache!
Elmer, I think he's refuting species survivalism.
IAC, the nature of causation is an interesting and difficult question. I still prefer Aristotle's approach to it. But, thankfully, in this thread we only have to decide whether or not random, accidental, unintentional genetic mutations can and do deterministically and mechanically cause the origin of particular, novel, productive, and adaptive traits and functions.
In a biological world where cause and effect are organically blurred, digital genetic determinism is one of the precious few options we have to consider on a cause-and-effect basis. Otherwise it's either the woo-woos of trait "plasticity" or the raw gears of chemistry that randomly make humans out of apes and eukaryotes out of prokaryotes.
But I have to say that your kind of questioning is fairly agreeable to my own.
”HM