Why Won't the Group Selection Controversy Go Away?

• Published in: The British journal for the philosophy of science 2001-03, Vol.52 (1), p.25-50
• Main Author: Okasha, Samir
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Altruism; Analysis; Biological altruism; Biological evolution; Ecological competition; Evolution; Evolutionary theories; Game theory; Group selection; Heritability; Kin selection; Natural selection; Philosophy; Philosophy of history. Social and political philosophy. Philosophy of law; Selection; Smith, John Maynard; Sober, Elliot; Social and political philosophy; Theory; Wilson, David Sloan
• ISSN: 0007-0882; 1464-3537
• DOI: 10.1093/bjps/52.1.25

The group selection controversy is about whether natural selection ever operates at the level of groups, rather than at the level of individual organisms. Traditionally, group selection has been invoked to explain the existence of altruistic behaviour in nature. However, most contemporary evolutionary biologists are highly sceptical of the hypothesis of group selection, which they regard as biologically implausible and not needed to explain the evolution of altruism anyway. But in their recent book, Elliot Sober and David Sloan Wilson [1998] argue that the widespread opposition to group selection is founded on conceptual confusion. The theories that have been propounded as alternatives to group selection are actually group selection in disguise, they maintain. I examine their arguments for this claim, and John Maynard Smith's arguments against it. I argue that Sober and Wilson arrive at a correct position by faulty reasoning. In the final section, I examine the issue of how to apply the principle of natural selection at different levels of the biological hierarchy, which underlies the dispute between Sober and Wilson and Maynard Smith.