ABSTRACT
The status of adaptation always belongs to traits: structures or behaviors, parts of a phenotype. Natural selection explains adaptations, in that natural selection brings adaptations into existence. Philosophical disputes about adaptation have tended to focus on just how important adaptation is. Adaptationism is accused of exaggerating the prevalence of adaptations amongst the traits of organisms, and thus of exaggerating the role of natural selection in explaining the appearance of the living world. The chapter looks at an orthogonal dimension of the problem of adaptation: whether adapted traits must be considered always as possessed by organisms. It focuses on two pairs of authors, both of whom have, in light of major transitions, reconfigured the traditional relationship between bearing adaptations, being an organism, and being acted on by natural selection. Gardner and Grafen, for their part, accuse Sober and Wilson's position of paradox, because they give a particular kind of mechanism the status of both cause and consequence of adaptation.
