Four principal papers and a total of 43 peer commentaries on the evolutionary origins of morality. To what extent is human morality the outcome of a continuous development from motives, emotions and social behaviour found in nonhuman animals? Jerome Kagan, Hans Kummer, Peter Railton and others discuss the first principal paper by primatologists Jessica Flack and Frans de Waal. The second paper, by cultural anthropologist Christopher Boehm, synthesizes social science and biological evidence to support his theory of how our hominid (...) ancestors became moral. In the third paper philosopher Elliott Sober and evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson argue that an evolutionary understanding of human nature allows sacrifice for others and ultimate desires for another's good. Finally Brian Skyrms argues that game theory based on adaptive dynamics must join the social scientist's use of rational choice and classical game theory to explain cooperation. (shrink)

The authors demonstrate that unselfish behavior is in fact an important feature of both biological and human nature. Their book provides a panoramic view of altruism throughout the animal kingdom--from self-sacrificing parasites to the human capacity for selflessness--even as it explains the evolutionary sense of such behavior.

Altruism has both an evolutionary and a psychological meaning. As the term is used in evolutionary theory, a trait is deemed altruistic if it reduces the fitness of the actor and enhances the fitness of someone else. In its psychological sense, the thesis that we have altruistic ultimate motives asserts that we care about the welfare of others, not just as a means of enhancing our own well-being, but as an end in itself. In Unto Others (hereafter UO), we consider (...) both evolutionary altruism (Part I) and psychological altruism (Part II) from an evolutionary perspective. We propose a multilevel selection theory to explain how altruism can evolve from group selection, based on Darwin’s solution to the problem. Our presentation of multilevel selection theory expands the range of topics beyond altruism in other respects as well. In Part I1 of UO, we evaluate the arguments, both conceptual and empirical, that philosophers and psychologists have advanced in an attempt to choose between psychological egoism and motivational pluralism. We conclude that these arguments are inconclusive. (shrink)

In both biology and the human sciences, social groups are sometimes treated as adaptive units whose organization cannot be reduced to individual interactions. This group-level view is opposed by a more individualistic one that treats social organization as a byproduct of self-interest. According to biologists, group-level adaptations can evolve only by a process of natural selection at the group level. Most biologists rejected group selection as an important evolutionary force during the 1960s and 1970s but a positive literature began to (...) grow during the 1970s and is rapidly expanding today. We review this recent literature and its implications for human evolutionary biology. We show that the rejection of group selection was based on a misplaced emphasis on genes as “replicators” which is in fact irrelevant to the question of whether groups can be like individuals in their functional organization. The fundamental question is whether social groups and other higher-level entities can be “vehicles” of selection. When this elementary fact is recognized, group selection emerges as an important force in nature and what seem to be competing theories, such as kin selection and reciprocity, reappear as special cases of group selection. The result is a unified theory of natural selection that operates on a nested hierarchy of units.The vehicle-based theory makes it clear that group selection is an important force to consider in human evolution. Humans can facultatively span the full range from self-interested individuals to “organs” of group-level “organisms.” Human behavior not only reflects the balance between levels of selection but it can also alter the balance through the construction of social structures that have the effect of reducing fitness differences within groups, concentrating natural selection (and functional organization) at the group level. These social structures and the cognitive abilities that produce them allow group selection to be important even among large groups of unrelated individuals. (shrink)

In Adaptation and Natural Selection, George C. Williams linked the distinction between group and individual adaptation with the distinction between group and individual selection. Williams' Principle, as we will call it, says that adaptation at a level requires selection at that level. This is a necessary but not a sufficient condition; for example, group adaptation requires group selection, but the fact that group selection influences a trait's evolution does not suffice for the resulting trait frequency to be a group adaptation. (...) What more is required? In this paper, we describe an answer to this question that has been developed in multilevel selection theory. We also discuss an alternative framework for defining units of adaptation that violates Williams' Principle. (shrink)

The terms complexity, complex adaptive systems, and sciences of complexity are found often in recent scientific literature, reflecting the remarkable growth in collaborative academic research focused on complexity from the origin and dynamics of organisms to the largest social and political organizations. One of the great challenges in this field of research is to discover which features are essential and shared by all of the seemingly disparate systems that are described as complex. Is there sufficient synthesis to suggest the possibility (...) of an overarching science of complexity? This report describes current views on this subject held by various eminent scholars associated with the Santa Fe Institute.The physical sciences have traditionally been concerned with “simple” systems whose dynamics can be described in mathematical terms with precision and certainty. In contrast, the biological and social sciences are inevitably concerned with self-organized or social “complex” systems whose detailed behaviors appear to be unpredictable. The two categories differ greatly in size and diversity, prompting the late mathematician Stanislaus Ulam to remark that research on complex systems might be compared to the study of non-elephants. Nevertheless, certain integrative themes have begun to emerge.Rising activity in this field of research runs completely counter to the trend toward increasing fragmentation and specialization in the sciences. It has stimulated a resurgence of interest in a broad synthesis involving mathematics, computational science, physics, chemistry, biology, neuroscience, and the social sciences. The growth of effort in this very extended field has been greatly stimulated by the development of new computational tools that are capable of dealing with vast, interrelated databases. Many of the participants in complexity research feel that it is now time to reintegrate the fragmented interests of much of the academic community. The reader is encouraged to consider whether such views are sparking a historic renaissance of scholarship or represent a passing scientific diversion. (shrink)

The hypothesis of group selection fell victim to a seemingly devastating critique in 1960s evolutionary biology. In Unto Others (1998), we argue to the contrary, that group selection is a conceptually coherent and empirically well documented cause of evolution. We suggest, in addition, that it has been especially important in human evolution. In the second part of Unto Others, we consider the issue of psychological egoism and altruism -- do human beings have ultimate motives concerning the well-being of others? We (...) argue that previous psychological and philosophical work on this question has been inconclusive. We propose an evolutionary argument for the claim that human beings have altruistic ultimate motives. (shrink)

The evolutionary problem of the units of selection has elicited a good deal of conceptual work from philosophers. We review this work to determine where the issues now stand.

It is a challenge to explain how evolutionary altruism can evolve by the process of natural selection, since altruists in a group will be less fit than the selfish individuals in the same group who receive benefits but do not make donations of their own. Darwin proposed a theory of group selection to solve this puzzle. Very simply, even though altruists are less fit than selfish individuals within any single group, groups of altruists are more fit than groups of selfish (...) individuals. If a population is subdivided into many groups that vary in their altruistic tendencies, altruism will be favored at the level of selection among groups even as it is being disfavored at the level of selection among individuals within groups. Darwin’s scenario became the basis for a theoretical framework called multilevel selection theory. (shrink)

We address the following issues raised by the commentators of our target article and book: (1) the problem of multiple perspectives; (2) how to define group selection; (3) distinguishing between the concepts of altruism and organism; (4) genetic versus cultural group selection; (5) the dark side of group selection; (6) the relationship between psychological and evolutionary altruism; (7) the question of whether the psychological questions can be answered; (8) psychological experiments. We thank the contributors for their commentaries, which provide a (...) diverse agenda for future study of evolution and morality. Our response will follow the organization of our book, distinguishing between evolutionary issues that concern fitness effects and psychological issues that concern motives. (shrink)

We thank Karen Canfell, Hamish Spencer and Ben Oldroyd for their commentaries. Below are some comments on the points they raise: 1. Is the Group Selection Debate Merely a Matter of Semantics? 2. Multi-Level Selection Theory versus Genic Selectionism 3. Heritability and Group Selection in Human Beings 4. Adaptationism.

The substance of the commentaries, however, reveals considerable disagreement about how UO conceptualizes the idea of group selection. Dennett describes the issues as “mind-twistingly elusive and slippery” and hints that it is mere hype to say that group selection has been revived. Barrett and Godfrey-Smith discuss the problem of multiple perspectives at length and claim that we are too liberal in our definition of groups. We believe that these criticisms obscure the simplicity of the basic question that group selection theory (...) is designed to answer and the historical continuity of that theory, from Darwin to the present. (shrink)

In both biology and the human sciences, social groups are sometimes treated as adaptive units whose organization cannot be reduced to individual interactions. This group-level view is opposed by a more individualistic one that treats social organization as a byproduct of self-interest. According to biologists, group-level adaptations can evolve only by a process of natural selection at the group level. Most biologists rejected group selection as an important evolutionary force during the 1960s and 1970s but a positive literature began to (...) grow during the 1970s and is rapidly expanding today. We review this recent literature and its implications for human evolutionary biology. We show that the rejection of group selection was based on a misplaced emphasis on genes as "replicators" which is in fact irrelevant to the question of whether groups can be like individuals in their functional organization. The fundamental question is whether social groups and other higher-level entities can be "vehicles" of selection. When this elementary fact is recognized, group selection emerges as an important force in nature and what seem to be competing theories, such as kin selection and reciprocity, reappear as special cases of group selection. The result is a unified theory of natural selection that operates on a nested hierarchy of units. The vehicle-based theory makes it clear that group selection is an important force to consider in human evolution. Humans can facultatively span the full range from self-interested individuals to "organs" of group-level "organisms." Human behavior not only reflects the balance between levels of selection but it can also alter the balance through the construction of social structures that have the effect of reducing fitness differences within groups, concentrating natural selection (and functional organization) at the group level. These social structures and the cognitive abilities that produce them allow group selection to be important even among large groups of unrelated individuals. (shrink)

The six commentaries raise five issues about multi-level selection theory that we attempt to address: (1) replicators without vehicles, (2) group selection and movement between groups, (3) absolute versus relative fitness, (4) group-level psychological adaptions, and (5) multi-level selection as a predictive theory.

Essays devoted to the work of the late Neil Wilson, Canadian philosopher and contributor to the field of semantic analysis that emerged from the fusion of logic, pragmatism, and ontology. Many of the essays in this volume take their initial inspiration from Wilson's seminal work Substances Without Substrata.

We have two main objections to Kerr and Godfrey-Smith's (2002) meticulous analysis. First, they misunderstand the position we took in Unto Others – we do not claim that individual-level statements about the evolution of altruism are always unexplanatory and always fail to capture causal relationships. Second, Kerr and Godfrey-Smith characterize the individual and the multi-level perspectives in terms of different sets of parameters. In particular, they do not allow the multi-level perspective to use the individual fitness parameters i and i. (...) We don't see why the multi-level perspective prevents one from thinking in these terms. Kerr and Godfrey-Smith's argument that Uyenoyama and Feldman's (1980, 1992) definition of altruism belongs more to the individualist perspective than it does to the multi-level perspective is an artifact of their choice of parameters; the same point applies to their argument about the individualism inherent in the idea of Class I and Class II fitness structures. (shrink)

The introspective method has come under attack throughout the history of psychology, yet it is widely used today in virtually all areas of the field, often to good effect. At the same time indirect methods that do not rely on introspection are widely used, also to good effect. This conundrum is best understood in terms of models of nonconscious processing and the role of consciousness. People have access to many of their feelings and emotions, and develop rich narratives about themselves (...) and their social worlds. These conscious states, accessible to introspective reports, are often good predictors of people’s behaviour. There is also a pervasive adaptive unconscious that is inaccessible via introspection. When using introspective reports researchers should be clear about which kinds of mental states they are trying to measure. (shrink)

Seventeenth century discussions of materialism, whether favorable or hostile towards the position, are generally conducted on a level of much less precision and sophistication than recent work on the problem of the mind-body relation. Nevertheless, the earlier discussions can still be interesting to philosophers, as the plethora of references to Cartesian arguments in the recent literature makes clear. Certainly the early development of materialist patterns of thought, and efforts on both the materialist and immaterialist side to establish fundamental points in (...) the philosophical analysis of mind, have considerable historical interest at the present time. This paper attempts to clarify the significance of some of leibniz's views in connection with the materialist thesis. I do not have in mind his rather notorious parallelism, though some of the points made below bear indirectly on the character of this position. Instead, I will examine his approach to arguments against materialism. (shrink)

We reinforce Thompson's points by providing a second example of the paradox that makes group selection appear counterintuitive and by discussing the wider implications of multilevel selection theory.

Reviews evidence which suggests that there may be little or no direct introspective access to higher order cognitive processes. Ss are sometimes unaware of the existence of a stimulus that importantly influenced a response, unaware of the existence of the response, and unaware that the stimulus has affected the response. It is proposed that when people attempt to report on their cognitive processes, that is, on the processes mediating the effects of a stimulus on a response, they do not do (...) so on the basis of any true introspection. Instead, their reports are based on a priori, implicit causal theories, or judgments about the extent to which a particular stimulus is a plausible cause of a given response. This suggests that though people may not be able to observe directly their cognitive processes, they will sometimes be able to report accurately about them. Accurate reports will occur when influential stimuli are salient and are plausible causes of the responses they produce, and will not occur when stimuli are not salient or are not plausible causes. (shrink)

Humans possess great capacity for behavioral and cultural change, but our ability to manage change is still limited. This article has two major objectives: first, to sketch a basic science of intentional change centered on evolution; second, to provide examples of intentional behavioral and cultural change from the applied behavioral sciences, which are largely unknown to the basic sciences community.All species have evolved mechanisms of phenotypic plasticity that enable them to respond adaptively to their environments. Some mechanisms of phenotypic plasticity (...) count as evolutionary processes in their own right. The human capacity for symbolic thought provides an inheritance system having the same kind of combinatorial diversity as does genetic recombination and antibody formation. Taking these propositions seriously allows an integration of major traditions within the basic behavioral sciences, such as behaviorism, social constructivism, social psychology, cognitive psychology, and evolutionary psychology, which are often isolated and even conceptualized as opposed to one another.The applied behavioral sciences include well-validated examples of successfully managing behavioral and cultural change at scales ranging from individuals to small groups to large populations. However, these examples are largely unknown beyond their disciplinary boundaries, for lack of a unifying theoretical framework. Viewed from an evolutionary perspective, they are examples of managing evolved mechanisms of phenotypic plasticity, including open-ended processes of variation and selection.Once the many branches of the basic and applied behavioral sciences become conceptually unified, we are closer to a science of intentional change than one might think. (shrink)

The current system of ethical review for medical research in the United Kingdom is changing from the current system involving large committees of 7–18 members reviewing every individual application to a system involving pre-review by small sub-committees of National Research Ethics Officers , who have a remit to approve studies if they believe there are no material ethical issues imposed by the research. The reliability of this new system depends on the reliability of the NREAs and in particular the ability (...) of small groups to effectively identify and appropriately assess the seriousness of all the material ethical issues that may be posed by an application. There is anecdotal evidence to suggest that many individual research ethics committee members have had experience of believing that a study presents no material ethical concerns, then on reaching the committee and discussing the application they realise that the committee feels it does present significant ethical concerns. If this is the case then this casts doubt on the reliability of NREAs or small groups to effectively identify ethically problematic research and appropriately respond to this to protect research participants. In this paper we describe a small questionnaire based piece of research carried out to assess how common this and other relevant experiences are. (shrink)

Interface theory is the hypothesis that inferential, representational theories of perception entail that fitness, not truth, dictates the evolution of perceptual systems. They show, with simulations, that “veridical” perceptual mappings (ones that preserve at least some of the structure of the world) are routinely out-competed by “non-veridical” interfaces (ones that make no attempt to preserve that structure). They therefore take particular aim at the direct perception, ecological approach to perception and work to show that such a system, even if technically (...) an option, would never be selected for by evolution. This paper defends the ecological approach from this novel, existential attack by showing that the ecological hypothesis is so different in kind to the inferential, representational view of perception that it simply falls outside the scope of interface theory’s critiques; ecological psychology remains a viable scientific endeavor. This analysis will show that, far from being a radical new approach to perception, interface theory is simply a clear and elegant formalization of mainstream representational psychology, and any implications interface theory may have belong solely to that branch of science. (shrink)