| Abstract: |
In spite of its checkered intellectual history, and in spite of the myriad
proposals of alternative models that claim to account for the broad range of
human behavior and to dispense with the need for selection above the organism
level, a multilevel selection framework remains the only coherent means of
accounting for the persistence and spread of behavioral inclinations which, at
least upon first appearance at low frequency, would have been biologically
altruistic. This argument is advanced on three tracks: through a review of
experimental and observational evidence inconsistent with a narrow version of
rational choice theory, through a critique of models or explanations
purporting to account for prosocial behavior through other means, and via
elaboration of the mechanisms, plausibility, and intellectual history of group
selection. |