ABSTRACT
Every mismatch between the actual world-body pair the people are observing and the notional pair used as the basis for the candidate goal function can be allocated to insufficient plasticity/sensitivity in the 'actual' goal function or treated as evidence that the people have posited the 'wrong' goal function. The same relativity to interpretation haunts McFarland's attempt to show that plasticity of behavior is not in itself a conclusive sign of goal-representation, as some have argued. Wilkes contrasts the biologist's interest in the concept of fitness with the layman's interest in idiosyncratic, ungeneralisable particularities, such as 'what George will do when he discovers that his youngest son has become a skinhead'. Indeed, the biologist Michael Ghiselin and several philosophers of biology have recently argued that species are not best considered to be natural kinds, but individuals — just like George.
