Darwinian Archaeology / Cultural Evolution

[UndercoverElephant]

I was really just looking for confirmation that you meant that the choice would be arbitrarily different rather than details of where this arbitrariness would come from.

That does not really seem to be free will though. An arbitrary portion to a choice would be beyond our control and therefore not part of the will.

No, it would mean that what looked random to us was in fact being determined by will.

Free will would necessarily be determined. Aprt from the many factors beyond our control like environment, heredity, possibility, randomness our choice would be determined by mental entities such as intelligence, reasoning, attitude, belief, emotions, skill, memory, likes, dislikes etc.

No, that is compatibilist "free will". And I agree, it's not really free. Kant called compatibilism a "wretched subterfuge", and I agree.

Once you remove all these determinants from the system what is left?

Will. What currently looks like determinants + randomness is actually empirical determinants + non-empirical determinants. If you allow true randomness in QM, then determinism is already false. At this point, free will theories can just walk through the open door and claim that the indeterminism leaves wiggle-room for free will (Scroedinger denied this, BTW, but plenty of others have argued it is at least concievable).

 

[Piggy]

I was never trying to topple Darwinism. I was trying to topple a specific application of Darwinism.

And you have failed utterly. Your arguments not only fall short of toppling this aspect of Darwinian theory, but do not even challenge it.

You seem to believe that if free will exists, then it follows that Darwinism and biology are falsified. I have no idea where you got that notion from. Not from me, anyway.

Neither do I, because it's not a notion I have, nor one I have suggested.

Free will obviously does exist. As usual, when your claims are shown to be utterly without merit, you now resort to nonsequiturs and claims that others are saying what they've never said.

Maybe what has actually happened is that I'm defending a position that you haven't debated against before....?

Considering it's a position that's been debunked for over a century, you're flattering yourself beyond belief here.

 

[Piggy]

The claim is not that all human altruistic behaviour is biological. The claim is that all human altruistic behaviour can be explained in terms of Darwinism - in this case Darwinism applied to cultural information which is inherited/learned i.e. non-biological darwinism.

Maybe this is the nub.

Again, we see a conflation of Darwinian explanations (origin of behavior) and psychological explanations (goals or immediate cause).

Darwinian theory -- even as applied to social behavior and to individual behavior such as altruistic decisions -- only applies to the question of how such behavior arises. In other words, why does it exist at all?

Darwinian theory is not applicable to questions such as "Why did Bob dive into the water to save those kids while Greg went and had a soda?" It can only answer questions such as "Why should it be that members of a social species should exibit both selfish and altruistic behavior?"

Darwinian theory does not apply to cultural or individual specifics such as why the Macarena became a fad, why hot dogs are served at baseball games, or why I hate watermelon.

This is all very mundane and trivial. It is not a challenge to any aspect of Darwinian theory, but only to the most blatant misuses of Darwinian language.

But the OP and its explication are more ambitious than that.

Name anything and i'll explain how our genetics are responsible for it.

I name : altruism.

Human altruism can indeed be explained in terms of Darwinian theory (or, more properly, the Modern Synthesis), as long as we're clear that by this we mean that we can explain why a species would develop this behavior.

Once you get down to the level of individual decisions, you're at a level of granularity where Darwinian theory does not apply, and does not claim to apply. If that's what's being challenged, it's a straw man, pure and simple.

However, if it is being claimed that "attempting to provide Darwinian explanations for things like altruistic behaviour or the development of religion" is inappropriate or impossible, then the claim fails.

It has already been demonstrated how the development of altruism (in the reciprocal sense as well as the "true", "real", "psychological", or "moral" sense) in an intelligent species can be accounted for by the pressures of natural selection.

The development of religion in the human species can also be accounted for in this way -- it is a natural consequence of our pattern-seeking, anthropomorphizing, meaning-generating brains. However, the Modern Synthesis does not account for, say, the details of religious iconography or the endurance of one version of scripture over another or even the rise and fall of great religions themselves. There are other factors at work here, from the weather to individual psychology to economics and pure happenstance.

This is the primary error of the OP:

It is this anomalous behaviour for which a purely Darwinian explanation is the most difficult and most controversial of all – like the willingness of humans to sacrifice their own lives in defence of a moral conviction or an ideology, or the power and persistence of religious belief. Transmitted cultural information is necessary for the existence of these things, but any Darwinian explanations demand the omnipresence of personal gain as the originating causal factor of all behaviour.

There are several problems here.

First, there are perfectly coherent explanations of why natural selection should give rise to a species which breeds individuals who will "sacrifice their own lives in defence of a moral conviction or an ideology" and who will have brains that tend to believe in religion and social structures that tend to support it.

Second, the need for "transmitted cultural information" to perpetuate the relevant ideologies is not a challenge. Again, there are perfectly coherent explanations of why natural selection should give rise to species which transmit cultural information.

But we cannot expect the OP to be very familiar with these, as evidenced by the claim that "Darwinian explanations demand the omnipresence of personal gain as the originating causal factor of all behaviour" which is blatantly false and demonstrates an ignorance of the very foundations of Darwinian theory.

 

[Piggy]

I wish people wouldn't use the term "Darwinism."

Thanks for the reminder, supercorgi. Ordinarily, I agree. In this case, tho, the OP addressed Darwinian theory very specifically, and its application to characteristics of human behavior and culture (specifically altruism and religion) which the OP claims it cannot account for. Given the OP's obvious misunderstanding of the basics of evolutionary theory in general and Darwin's theories in particular, as well as his tendency to quibble, I thought that launching into discussions of the MS might be counterproductive. Even so, I should have stuck to terms like "Darwinian theory". Mea culpa.

 

[Robin]

No, it would mean that what looked random to us was in fact being determined by will

.
But my question was about this will. Is it determined, arbitrary or something else? If something else then what?

No, that is compatibilist "free will". And I agree, it's not really free. Kant called compatibilism a "wretched subterfuge", and I agree.

It depends what you mean free from.

If you mean free from external control, then yes, it really is free will since there is a component that is only determined by the processes of our mind. These are in turn subject to the laws of physics. But the laws of the universe are not external to us, they are integrally part of us.

If, on the other hand, you mean free even from the underlying order that made the acts of thinking and making choices possible in the first place then this is a nonsensical definition. Something cannot be free from the thing that makes it possible.

Will.

Then we have just come full circle. Free will is free will.

What currently looks like determinants + randomness is actually empirical determinants + non-empirical determinants.

Where does the non-determinist part come in? Are you suggesting that non-empirical is equivalent to non-determinist?

Is there is some component of a choice that is neither determined, nor arbitrary? What does it mean for an event to be neither determined nor arbitrary?

If you allow true randomness in QM, then determinism is already false.

I can't see how. Any component of a choice that was arbitrary would be neither free nor choice

In any case we get plenty of effective randomness through the complexity of the sense data we process. I can't see how the existence of real randomness would make a difference.

Put it this way. Suppose you were to generate a string of random numbers using some QM process that generated true randomness. Then you generate a string of effectively random numbers by tumbling a bunch of numbered balls in a barrel and picking them out one by one.

There would be no way to tell which string was generated by QM and which merely by tumbling numbered balls. Randomness is already in the mind equation without QM. QM is just a red herring in the free will debate.

At this point, free will theories can just walk through the open door and claim that the indeterminism leaves wiggle-room for free will (Scroedinger denied this, BTW, but plenty of others have argued it is at least concievable).

Those theories will have to walk through the door marked "deterministic" or the door marked "random". I can't see any other door QM has left open.

Randomness leaves room for neither freedom nor will.

The other problem is that, say a man rushes into a burning building and saves a number of children. Why did he do that? Most people will say because of his courage, his moral character, his compassion. I would agree and call these the determinants of the decision.

But if the decision was really caused by some mysterious event that would appear random to the man himself then his decision to save the children says nothing about him.

So compatibilist free will gels with our intuitive understanding of free will. Non-compatibilist free will ascribes our choices ultimately to some force that would seem alien to us.

 

[Piggy]

With regard to free will, again I think Wolfram is relevant.

If Wolfram is correct in his assertion that deterministic rules, when played out, can give rise to truly random behavior, then there is no conflict here.

In other words, if a universe whose parameters can be described by deterministic rules can contain true randomness in its elaboration, then there is no contradiction posed by the evolution of free will as these deterministic laws play out.

QM, btw, is irrelevant here b/c it exists at a level of granularity that does not apply to the level at which free will operates.

I mean that given a specific situation we could actually have taken a different decision to the one we did make. At some point in the process, mere determinism is being transcended.

I don't know that "transcended" has any specific meaning. But I'm certainly willing to accept that a free-will choice is something other than a deterministic reaction such as a chemical combination.

In that sense, free will is very real and is non-deterministic, even if it arose from evolutionary processes.

And certainly the OP is correct in asserting that free-will choices cannot individually be accounted for in their totality by citing evolutionary causes.

The OP is also certainly correct in asserting that natural selection does not account for all the details of culture.

Yet it seems that the salient examples cited in the OP -- the existence of religion and altruism as universals of human culture and behavior -- have been ill-chosen.

 

[Robin]

If Wolfram is correct in his assertion that deterministic rules, when played out, can give rise to truly random behavior, then there is no conflict here.

I would point out here that Wolfram's RNG rule has to be seeded like any other pseudo random number generator. If you start it at the same point it gives all the same numbers.

So it is still merely a conjecture on Wolfram's part.

On the other hand why does it make a difference whether or not there are truly random events just so long as there is effective randomness from complexity. As I pointed out earlier you couldn't tell the difference between tombola randomness and QM randomness.

 

[Piggy]

So it is still merely a conjecture on Wolfram's part.

Granted.

On the other hand why does it make a difference whether or not there are truly random events just so long as there is effective randomness from complexity. As I pointed out earlier you couldn't tell the difference between tombola randomness and QM randomness.

One reason for bringing up the possibility of true randomness from deterministic rules is to (possibly) object to the assertion that "if you allow true randomness in QM, then determinism is already false" as has been claimed above.

I say "possibly" because if "determinism" means the clockwork universe, then I do believe that's false. If "determinism" means that everything arises from fundamental processes that can be described by deterministic rules, then I have no reason to believe that's false.

I do think it makes a difference whether we're talking about true randomness or seeming randomness (if we define randomness as deviation from deterministic reaction, simply b/c if only the latter exists then free will becomes impossible, even if the illusion of free will remains possible).

In other words, for our purposes here, it doesn't seem that human inability to discern determinism is an adequate test. So if tombola randomness is actually just determinism that's so complex we can't tease it out, that's significant relative to this discussion. But perhaps that's not what you meant -- correct me, please, if I'm misinterpreting.

Back to your equation, I see a potential problem with the condition "Let's call the precise state of a human's mind at the point of the decision X". If "at the point of the decison" is defined as the point at which the decision is made (in itself a possibly impossible "point" to define, but let's ignore that for now) then there is only one resulting value.

So how about this.... let's call the precise state of a human's mind at the point when s/he begins to consider the decision X. Then we have some room for the path from f(X) to a or to b, which I think more accurately describes the situation.

You ask, "Would there be anything at all that accounted for the difference between decision outcomes a and b or would this difference be purely arbitrary?"

I'd be a liar if I said I knew for certain.

My brother calls to say that my estranged father is dying. It's a medical certainty that he will die within 2 days, although he will likely live at least another 12 hours. He's conscious and will probably remain so for a day. It takes 4 hours for me get to the hospital.

Do I try to see him before he dies? Simple a/b choice. I leave or I don't.

Is my ultimate decision determined by random firings in my brain, even if I can't perceive them? Is it determined by non-random firings in my brain mapped out by the rigid laws of physics, even if I can't perceive that either? Is it determined by an act of will? Is there an interplay of these?

No matter which decision I reach, it certainly will seem, in hindsight, as though I could have chosen the other. It will seem that the other was not impossible.

And because I have no basis for declaring that either choice is, in fact, impossible, I therefore concede free will. Perhaps I'm wrong, but until a mechanism is shown, I side with free will (somewhere Neil Peart is smiling).

Is it arbitrary, purely random? I don't think so. Then what accounts for it? I believe that the emergent phenomenon of individual conscious processing accounts for it. I believe that this "weighing of things" that we do, this process of decision-making, is very real, and in cases when we're not simply reacting, when we don't feel overwhelmingly compelled, it could go either way.

Of course, I could be wrong.

But either way, it's very clear that the Modern Synthesis accounts very well for how beings with such capacity of choice could arise. And more than that, it accounts very well for why we should feel the need to choose in situations such as this... why this situation should cause me more distress than, say, a choice between the piece of pie closest to me, and an identical one farther away on the cafeteria shelf.

 

[Roboramma]

Geoff, I'm sorry I haven't read the whole thread, though I did read the OP, so I apologize if I'm repeating points already made.

It seems to me that you are conflating ultimate and proximate causes. The ultimate cause of apparently altruistic behavior may be natural selection for genes that lead to that altruistic behavior, but that doesn't mean that the individual exhibiting that behavior will look at it like that.

For instance, I don't eat because I know it'll help me to reproduce - I eat because I'm hungry and it feels good.
I don't treat other people well because it will lead to greater reproductive success either - I do so because it feels good.
But why does it feel good? That's the question that evolutionary explanations attempt to explain.

Also, you talk of group selection frequently, but there's no need to appeal to group selection to explain altruistic behavior, even toward non-relatives.
Reciprocal altruism, for instance - the type exhibited by vampire bats - does not require group selection.
It isn't that the group as a whole has a better rate of survival, but that the individual does. Vampire bats reciprocate - that is, if bat A gives some blood to bat B when bat B is hungry one night, bat B will be more likely to give bat A blood if bat A is hungry. And because it costs little to give some blood when you've got plenty, but any vampire bat that doesn't eat for a night or two is at risk of starving to death, its in it's interests to share in order to make sure that the other bats that in it's colony will be willing to do the same for it in it's time of need.
But there's no reason to believe that the bat thinks about it like that. All that's required is that it wants to share blood with other bats that are in need - maybe it feels good when it does so. It doesn't have to know anything about the evolutionary reasons for this behavior.

Similarly, with humans, we evolved living in relatively small groups. Most of the people that our ancestors came into contact with were people that would have a chance to reciprocate favours. We also happen to be very good at remembering the favours we've given others and have been given by others. And even remember relatively well the relationships of others in our group.
So you see someone drowning. You try to save that person. Perhaps you know you're a good swimmer, or whatever. There are a number of reasons that this is reproductively a good move.
One is that you're putting yourself at less risk than the person you're trying to save. By saving that person's life, you incur their gratitude (we can talk about why gratitude would have evolved if you like). Most people would feel a huge debt in such a case, and try to reciprocate.
Another benefit is that such a feat demonstrates his fitness to others. This can be in the form of witnesses, or in the form of stories told by those he saved. Such a demonstration will likely help this individual to find more or higher quality (from an evolutionary perspective) mates. It might also give higher standing in the tribe, which can have other benefits - like maybe being more easily trusted, making it easier to make friends with which to form reciprocal relationships.

All of these are things that will tend to increase the reproductive success of the genes that are responsible for those traits, without need to appeal to group selection. But none of this requires the individual to think about those ultimate causes. Rather, it just requires that the gene cause an increased likelihood of the person who has it wanting to help others. From the individual's point of view he or she just wants to help others, or is willing (in some situations) to put him/herself at risk to help others.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

With regard to free will, again I think Wolfram is relevant.

Wolfram is highly relevant. I thought I was the only person here who believed this. I bought "A New Kind of Science" on the first day it was published. However, his kind of determinism also does not rule out some type of free will, via "hidden variable" versions of QM.

I don't know that "transcended" has any specific meaning. But I'm certainly willing to accept that a free-will choice is something other than a deterministic reaction such as a chemical combination.

What is it then?

I'm not sure how much we are really disagreeing here.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

But why does it feel good? That's the question that evolutionary explanations attempt to explain.

Maybe so, but I do not agree that all human feelings have evolutionary explanations either. Some of them do.

Also, you talk of group selection frequently, but there's no need to appeal to group selection to explain altruistic behavior, even toward non-relatives.
Reciprocal altruism, for instance - the type exhibited by vampire bats - does not require group selection.

That contradicts what I have been taught this term.

It isn't that the group as a whole has a better rate of survival, but that the individual does. Vampire bats reciprocate - that is, if bat A gives some blood to bat B when bat B is hungry one night, bat B will be more likely to give bat A blood if bat A is hungry.

That is cultural group selection acting on behaviour.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

I have to prepare for a three-hour exam on the philosophical foundations of cognitive science which is tomorrow at 9.30 am.

I'll be back on Sunday.

 

[Robin]

One reason for bringing up the possibility of true randomness from deterministic rules is to (possibly) object to the assertion that "if you allow true randomness in QM, then determinism is already false" as has been claimed above.

I say "possibly" because if "determinism" means the clockwork universe, then I do believe that's false. If "determinism" means that everything arises from fundamental processes that can be described by deterministic rules, then I have no reason to believe that's false.

I would agree with this. Also if determinism means "everything including mental events is subject to the laws of physics" I would have no reason to believe this has been falsified by QM.

My personal position is "everything is subject to some underlying order or is arbitrary". This says the same as the previous definition but covers the possibility of non-physical modes of existence.

Everybody assumes that non-physical realms would be non-deterministic but logic suggests that they would be as deterministic as physical existence.

I do think it makes a difference whether we're talking about true randomness or seeming randomness (if we define randomness as deviation from deterministic reaction, simply b/c if only the latter exists then free will becomes impossible, even if the illusion of free will remains possible).

In other words, for our purposes here, it doesn't seem that human inability to discern determinism is an adequate test. So if tombola randomness is actually just determinism that's so complex we can't tease it out, that's significant relative to this discussion. But perhaps that's not what you meant -- correct me, please, if I'm misinterpreting.

I don't think you are misinterpreting. But suppose we had some tiny component in our brains that was supplying randomness. Now it seems to me that it would not matter if this was working by some QM process or whether it was just a tiny tombola. Since it is a black box the signal it sends to the rest of the brain would be identical.

Now I think that it is highly possible that our brains are deterministic systems but are driven by continuous inputs of complex sense data. The outside world is, as far as our minds are concerned, a black box.

So we don't even have to identify any randomness producing component of our mind - we already have it - the outside world.

Back to your equation, I see a potential problem with the condition "Let's call the precise state of a human's mind at the point of the decision X". If "at the point of the decison" is defined as the point at which the decision is made (in itself a possibly impossible "point" to define, but let's ignore that for now) then there is only one resulting value.

So how about this.... let's call the precise state of a human's mind at the point when s/he begins to consider the decision X. Then we have some room for the path from f(X) to a or to b, which I think more accurately describes the situation.

I am OK with that.

You ask, "Would there be anything at all that accounted for the difference between decision outcomes a and b or would this difference be purely arbitrary?"

I'd be a liar if I said I knew for certain.

And neither do I. But say we call the factor that accounts for the difference w. w may be arbitrary or it may be determined. It may be a combination of the two. But what else could it be? What is it that is neither determined nor arbitrary?

If we hypothesise that w is actually a non-empirical factor we have not improved the situation since we would have to ask the same questions about the non-empirical w.

Is my ultimate decision determined by random firings in my brain, even if I can't perceive them? Is it determined by non-random firings in my brain mapped out by the rigid laws of physics, even if I can't perceive that either? Is it determined by an act of will? Is there an interplay of these?

There is a tendency to see the underlying order of our universe as some sort of an onerous burden - a prison. It seems to me that this attitude drives the free will debate. What if instead we see the underlying order as the very thing that enables us to think and make choices - the very thing that makes us free?

Another tendency is to see this order as something external to ourselves. Centuries of dualism have fed this tendency. But surely this order is integrally part of our minds.

We are not controlled by the laws of physics, we are made of the laws of physics.

My guess, by the way, is that the answer would be that a decision is a synergistic interplay between random and determined elements - in other words an emergent process.

No matter which decision I reach, it certainly will seem, in hindsight, as though I could have chosen the other. It will seem that the other was not impossible.

And this would be true of compatibilist free will. Suppose for example you had made up your mind not to go and someone nearby switches on a radio and you hear a song that was popular in your youth. This triggers memories of younger happier times and you decide to go. You might not even have been conscious of hearing the song. It might have been smell. Or perhaps some completely unrelated piece of sense data like an itch sets up a pattern in your brain that alters your decision.

There is not even a fixed time at which you can say that the decision was definitely made. Suppose you just don't make up your mind and the deadline elapses - have you made a choice?

Or suppose you journey to the hospital and see him. You could not say that the decision had definitely been made until you actually made eye contact with him, since at any time before that you could have changed your mind. Yet all the physical actions associated with the choice have already been completed, as though the choice had been made.

So if this is an act of will, it is an act of will that lasted several hours, or was perhaps a series of acts of will within that time.

And because I have no basis for declaring that either choice is, in fact, impossible, I therefore concede free will. Perhaps I'm wrong, but until a mechanism is shown, I side with free will (somewhere Neil Peart is smiling).

Or as Ed Lorenz says, if you choose to believe in free will you have not chosen wrongly.

Is it arbitrary, purely random? I don't think so. Then what accounts for it? I believe that the emergent phenomenon of individual conscious processing accounts for it. I believe that this "weighing of things" that we do, this process of decision-making, is very real, and in cases when we're not simply reacting, when we don't feel overwhelmingly compelled, it could go either way.

Of course, I could be wrong.

What is clear is that there are many things we do not yet understand about the physical world and it's laws. It seems premature, then, to start positing non-empirical realms. Especially as the same problems would necessarily exist in those realms.

 

[Piggy]

I'm not sure how much we are really disagreeing here.

With regard to the existence and operation of free will, it's likely that we agree on many fundamental points.

 

[Piggy]

Both Geoff and Ian (in another thread) have mentioned taking university courses in the philosophical foundations of science. I don't recall running across these in the US.

Are these common in the UK? Are students allowed/encouraged to take them without taking science courses as well? Are they offered in the US?

Just curious.

 

[Piggy]

Thanks for the considered reply, Robin. I think you and I are very much on the same wavelength.

In fact, I think the question of w would make a fascinating study/thread in its own right.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Both Geoff and Ian (in another thread) have mentioned taking university courses in the philosophical foundations of science. I don't recall running across these in the US.

Are these common in the UK? Are students allowed/encouraged to take them without taking science courses as well? Are they offered in the US?

Just curious.

Since I can answer this one quickly.....

The university I go to is well-known for its computing and cognitive science department, and for running inter-discplinary courses. I am an a joint philosophy and COGS degree, but the exam I am taking tomorrow is run by the COGS department rather than the philosophy department. The other people taking it are all science majors of one sort (mainly AI) or another, I am the only philosophy major taking it.

Philosophy of science is slightly different and is offered as an option to all science students and all philosophy students. I took in the first year as a COGS student and I will take it again in my third year as a philosophy student. The degree course I have taken has been tailored (by me) to centre around the questions on the border between philosophy and science, so I've avoided things like ethics and aesthetics, but taken philosophy modules like metaphysics, phenomenology and philosophy of science. Within the COGS stuff I took all the philosophically-biased options (which is philosphy of cognitive science and philosophy of mind) plus various scientific topics that were most useful such as evolution, human/cultural evolution, origins of language, some neuroscience, etc....

Cognitive Science as a subject only exists in a handful of Universities. In the UK the two big ones are Edinburgh and Sussex. There are a couple of well-known US universities that run COGS courses, but I can't remember which they are. Almost nowhere else offers the degree course I have ended up taking. I couldn't be at a better University to study this particular combination of subjects. The only downpoint is that the current governers don't actually know how to run a University and are currently in severe financial problems.

 

[Roboramma]

Maybe so, but I do not agree that all human feelings have evolutionary explanations either. Some of them do.

Well, I won't go so far as to say that I know that there are evolutionary explanations for all human feelings. On the other hand, I think most of the basic ones probably do have evolutionary origins, even if we don't have well supported explanations for them all yet. At this stage, it would be very surprising if we did. Humans are pretty complex, and we haven't been studying this long, after all.
But I don't think that there are any basic human feelings that can be shown to be impossible to evolve.

That contradicts what I have been taught this term.

That's interesting. But doesn't the modern synthesis tend to downplay the importance of group selection?
Specifically concerning altruism, if a trait negatively affected an individual's reproductive success, but increased the success of his group as a whole, it would still tend to be selected against, and couldn't gain a foothold long enough for group selection to function. The reason is that those within his population who didn't have that trait would have, on average, more offspring, and so the genes for their trait would proliferate.

That is cultural group selection acting on behaviour.

How?

The bat has a trait (to want to share with other bats who are going hungry) that is genetically determined.
Because of this trait, he has a higher probability of survival, and thus of having more offspring than those who don't have that trait.
Thus, the trait is selected for.
How is that group selection? I'm under the impression that group selection is a whole group or population of individuals tends to outcompete other groups or population of individuals belonging to the same species because of a trait that is overrepresented in that group in comparison to the other one. But the selection for reciprocal altruism doesn't require that such competion between groups even exists.
I don't even see how it's "cultural".

Maybe I'm missing something (note - not being sarcastic).

 

[Piggy]

Just a note, Robo, I don't think Geoff would consider reciprocal altruism to fall under the category of altruism he's discussing in this thread. Ditto for kin-specific altruism.

 

[Roboramma]

Just a note, Robo, I don't think Geoff would consider reciprocal altruism to fall under the category of altruism he's discussing in this thread. Ditto for kin-specific altruism.

I think you're right. The point I tried to make (badly) in my first post is that much of human altruism is reciprocal altruism, we just don't think of it that way.

The other point was that there can be other reproductive gains from apparently altruistic actions.

But I don't think it's necessary to say that all altrusitic acts that are common have evolutionary explanations. And if that's what Geoff is saying, then I don't disagree.