Re: Article: Group selection, a theory whose time has come...again

John Harshman <jharshman.diespamdie@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

John Wilkins wrote:

Mark Isaak <eciton@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


On Sat, 01 Dec 2007 17:10:24 +0000, John Harshman wrote:


dkomo wrote:


[I found this post by Robert Karl Stonjek over on sci.bio.evolution and
decided to repost it here because it should be of general interest.
Besides, I love to point out instances of the shortcomings of
over-reductionism in evolutionary biology. -- dkomo]


===

Group selection, a theory whose time has come...again

Sociobiology, the discipline founded on Darwin's theory of group
evolution, is in theoretical disarray. In a landmark article for the
December issue of the Quarterly Review of Biology, eminent evolutionary
scientists David Sloan Wilson and Edward O. Wilson usher in a new era
in evolutionary science.

"Although a high standard of morality gives but a slight or no
advantage to each individual man and his children over the other men of
the same tribe...an advancement in the standard of morality will
certainly give an immense advantage to one tribe over another."

With these words, Charles Darwin proposed an evolutionary explanation
for morality and pro-social behaviors- individuals behaving for the
good of their group, often at their own expense-that anticipated the
future discipline of Sociobiology. A century after this famous passage
was published in The Descent of Man (1871), however, Darwin's
explanation based on group selection had become taboo and has not
recovered since.

In a landmark article for The Quarterly Review of Biology, "Rethinking
the Theoretical Foundation of Sociobiology," eminent evolutionary
scientists David Sloan Wilson and Edward O. Wilson-whose book
Sociobiology:The New Synthesis brought widespread attention to the
field in 1975-call for an end to forty years of confusion and divergent
theories.

They propose a new consensus and theoretical foundation that affirms
Darwin's original conjecture and is supported by the latest biological
findings.

Wilson and Wilson trace much of the confusion in the field to the
1960's, when most evolutionists rejected "for the good of the group"
thinking and insisted that all adaptations must be explained in terms
of individual self-interest. In an even more reductionistic move, genes
were called "the fundamental unit of selection," as if this was an
argument against group selection. Scientific dogma became entrenched in
popular culture with the publication of Richard Dawkins' The Selfish
Gene (1976). Although evidence in favor of group selection began
accumulating almost immediately after its rejection, its taboo status
prevented a systematic re-evaluation of the field until now.

Based on current theory and evidence, Wilson and Wilson show that
natural selection is unequivocally a multilevel process, as Darwin
originally envisioned, and that adaptations can evolve at all levels of
the biological hierarchy, from genes to ecosystems. They conclude with
a rallying cry that paraphrases Rabbi Hillel: "Selfishness beats
altruism within groups. Altruistic groups beat selfish groups.
Everything else is commentary,"Wilson and Wilson free sociobiology to
once again pursue all lines of inquiry within its discipline.

Source: University of Chicago
http://www.physorg.com/news115476686.html

I'd have to read the article. But what group selection needs to explain
is how groups become altruistic in the face of an ingroup advantage to
selfishness, and how altruism can be maintained in groups that happen to
gain it in the face of that advantage. This has always been the central
problem of group selection, that it's necessarily a weaker force than
individual selection and that we thus have a problem explaining how it
could prosper in cases where there is conflict between levels.

There has been a great deal of research into just this problem, mostly
using game theory. I really haven't followed it enough to explain it,
so take what follows with a lick of salt. A critical piece is
"altruistic punishment," the willingness to punish someone else who steps
out of line from the group's norms, even at some personal expense. My
understanding is that once altruistic punishment arises, everything about
atruism (as we do it) is evolutionarily stable.

That maintains altruism from being subverted by cheaters. It doesn't
explain how it can arise in the first case. I think that group selection
is not always prohibited by individual selection. It's not always the
case that individual selection is stronger WRT some trait or behaviour
than group selection.

No? The explanation is generally that groups live much longer than
individuals and that individuals are much more numerous than groups,
both of which give individuals a much greater rate of innovation. So
cheaters will arise at a much greater rate than will altruistic groups,
for example, making it unlikely for any altruistic group to last long
enough to achieve "fixation". Now of course punishment of cheaters is a
potential way out of this dilemma. But I certainly don't see that as
being a mere detail. And it does at least partially reduce the selection
problem to one of individual selection.

I should have said "in the abstract" it looks like there's no
theoretical reason why individual selection must outweigh higher level
selection. I don't think that group selection sensu Wynne Edwards is a
real phenomenon, but kin selection and deme selection are, and the
strength of selection at these levels in an empirical, not a theoretical
issue.
--
John S. Wilkins, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Philosophy
University of Queensland - Blog: scienceblogs.com/evolvingthoughts
"He used... sarcasm. He knew all the tricks, dramatic irony, metaphor,
bathos, puns, parody, litotes and... satire. He was vicious."

.

Relevant Pages

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