Group adaptation, formal darwinism and contextual analysis

Okasha, Samir; Paternotte, Cédric

doi:10.1111/j.1420-9101.2012.02501.x

Cited by 28 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…The requirements for group, as opposed to individual, adaptation are rather imposing: It is rare for individual human fates to be so intertwined with their group's fate that group success directly causes (rather than merely correlates with) individual success, such as all group members succeeding or failing together as a unit because of their group's composition. Generally, we can expect group traits to directly cause group adaptation only when partners are clonal or when there is extreme repression of competition (Gardner & Grafen 2009;Okasha & Paternotte 2012), neither of which describes the human condition well. The examples given by Richerson et al do not come close to meeting this criterion.…”

Section: The Burden Of Proof For a Cultural Group Selection Accountmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cultural group selection plays an essential role in explaining human cooperation: A sketch of the evidence

Richerson¹,

Baldini²,

Bell³

et al. 2014

Behav Brain Sci

517

499

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Human cooperation is highly unusual. We live in large groups composed mostly of non-relatives. Evolutionists have proposed a number of explanations for this pattern, including cultural group selection and extensions of more general processes such as reciprocity, kin selection, and multi-level selection acting on genes. Evolutionary processes are consilient; they affect several different empirical domains, such as patterns of behavior and the proximal drivers of that behavior. In this target article, we sketch the evidence from five domains that bear on the explanatory adequacy of cultural group selection and competing hypotheses to explain human cooperation. Does cultural transmission constitute an inheritance system that can evolve in a Darwinian fashion? Are the norms that underpin institutions among the cultural traits so transmitted? Do we observe sufficient variation at the level of groups of considerable size for group selection to be a plausible process? Do human groups compete, and do success and failure in competition depend upon cultural variation? Do we observe adaptations for cooperation in humans that most plausibly arose by cultural group selection? If the answer to one of these questions is "no," then we must look to other hypotheses. We present evidence, including quantitative evidence, that the answer to all of the questions is "yes" and argue that we must take the cultural group selection hypothesis seriously. If culturally transmitted systems of rules (institutions) that limit individual deviance organize cooperation in human societies, then it is not clear that any extant alternative to cultural group selection can be a complete explanation.Keywords: competition; culture; evolution; group selection; heritable variation; institutions; norms BEHAVIORAL AND BRAIN SCIENCES (2016) KARL FROST is a Ph.D. candidate in Ecology at the University of California, Davis. He researches the cultural evolution of prosociality via religion and ritual practices, using behavioral experiments, gene-culture coevolution models, and field research in Canada looking at environmental activism in the face of the tar sands oil industry and an antagonistic government. He also directs the Body Research Physical Theater and is interested in cross-cultural exchange of theater practice as theater anthropology and arts-science fusion.

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Section: The Burden Of Proof For a Cultural Group Selection Accountmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cultural group selection plays an essential role in explaining human cooperation: A sketch of the evidence

Richerson¹,

Baldini²,

Bell³

et al. 2014

Behav Brain Sci

517

499

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…In a kin selection framework, adaptations are regarded as occurring at the level of the individual organism and to maximize an individual’s inclusive fitness 19 , 135 , 136 . By analogy, group adaptation is thus understood as a process that is driven by between-group selection and optimizes phenotypes for the purpose of group fitness maximization 135 , 136 (see also 137 ). This optimization process, however, is typically compromised by within-group selection because of conflicts among group members and thus will be favored by natural selection only if these conflicts are either absent (as for instance in clonal groups) or completely suppressed 136 (but cf.…”

Section: The Controversymentioning

confidence: 99%

Kin and multilevel selection in social evolution: a never-ending controversy?

Kramer

Meunier

2016

F1000Res

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Kin selection and multilevel selection are two major frameworks in evolutionary biology that aim at explaining the evolution of social behaviors. However, the relationship between these two theories has been plagued by controversy for almost half a century and debates about their relevance and usefulness in explaining social evolution seem to rekindle at regular intervals. Here, we first provide a concise introduction into the kin selection and multilevel selection theories and shed light onto the roots of the controversy surrounding them. We then review two major aspects of the current debate: the presumed formal equivalency of the two theories and the question whether group selection can lead to group adaptation. We conclude by arguing that the two theories can offer complementary approaches to the study of social evolution: kin selection approaches usually focus on the identification of optimal phenotypes and thus on the endresult of a selection process, whereas multilevel selection approaches focus on the ongoing selection process itself. The two theories thus provide different perspectives that might be fruitfully combined to promote our understanding of the evolution in group-structured populations.

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“…The implication is that there can be scope for selection in a population even if no change in allele frequencies takes place. Indeed, if a population contains fitness differences then there is guaranteed to be some possible p ‐score that co‐varies with fitness, irrespective of whether or not fitness co‐varies with any actual alleles (Okasha & Paternotte, , ).…”

Section: Grafen's ‘Formal Darwinism’ Projectmentioning

confidence: 99%

Natural selection and the maximization of fitness

Birch

2015

Biological Reviews

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The notion that natural selection is a process of fitness maximization gets a bad press in population genetics, yet in other areas of biology the view that organisms behave as if attempting to maximize their fitness remains widespread. Here I critically appraise the prospects for reconciliation. I first distinguish four varieties of fitness maximization. I then examine two recent developments that may appear to vindicate at least one of these varieties.The first is the 'new' interpretation of Fisher's fundamental theorem of natural selection, on which the theorem is exactly true for any evolving population that satisfies some minimal assumptions. The second is the Formal Darwinism project, which forges links between gene frequency change and optimal strategy choice. In both cases, I argue that the results fail to establish a biologically significant maximization principle. I conclude that it may be a mistake to look for universal maximization principles justified by theory alone. A more promising approach may be to find maximization principles that apply conditionally and to show that the conditions were satisfied in the evolution of particular traits.2

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Group adaptation, formal darwinism and contextual analysis

Cited by 28 publications

References 18 publications

Cultural group selection plays an essential role in explaining human cooperation: A sketch of the evidence

Cultural group selection plays an essential role in explaining human cooperation: A sketch of the evidence

Kin and multilevel selection in social evolution: a never-ending controversy?

Natural selection and the maximization of fitness

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