Skip to main content
Log in

Sober & Wilson’s evolutionary arguments for psychological altruism: a reassessment

  • Published:
Biology & Philosophy Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

In their book Unto Others, Sober and Wilson argue that various evolutionary considerations (based on the logic of natural selection) lend support to the truth of psychological altruism. However, recently, Stephen Stich has raised a number of challenges to their reasoning: in particular, he claims that three out of the four evolutionary arguments they give are internally unconvincing, and that the one that is initially plausible fails to take into account recent findings from cognitive science and thus leaves open a number of egoistic responses. These challenges make it necessary to reassess the plausibility of Sober & Wilson’s evolutionary account—which is what I aim to do in this paper. In particular, I try to show that, as a matter of fact, Sober & Wilson’s case remains compelling, as some of Stich’s concerns rest on a confusion, and those that do not are not sufficiently strong to establish all the conclusions he is after. The upshot is that no reason has been given to abandon the view that evolutionary theory has advanced the debate surrounding psychological altruism.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. It is important not to confuse psychological altruism with the very different notion of evolutionary altruism (the existence of phenotypes that reduce the fitness of an organism, relative to that of the other members of its group). For more on the latter, see the first five chapters of Sober and Wilson (1998).

  2. Note that Sober & Wilson claim that FPH can be ruled out for philosophical reasons alone (Sober and Wilson 1998, pp. 281–287). For present purposes, though, it is better not to follow them in this, and to assume that FPH is still a live option—this is more in line with Stich (2007), and makes the exposition of the arguments below easier.

  3. A brief remark about why Sober & Wilson focus on reliability and parental care. They focus on reliability, as they think that considerations of availability and energetic efficiency do not distinguish between the two motivational architectures (Sober and Wilson 1998, pp. 221–223). While Lemos (2004) calls this into question, it is best to grant this assumption here. They focus on parental care, as they (reasonably) think that the latter is likely to be adaptively important to the parent: helping one’s children, by and large, will increase one’s own fitness as well as that of one’s children (see also Stich 2007, p. 270).

  4. I follow Stich (2007) in the way the arguments are presented, ordered and numbered (which differs slightly from how they are laid out in Sober and Wilson 1998). Doing this should not introduce any infelicities—in particular, there is no reason to think that Stich (2007) has misread Sober and Wilson (1998) in any way.

  5. In fact, this counter-reply was offered to me by Stephen Stich (in personal communication).

References

  • Batson CD (1991) The altruism question: towards a social-psychological answer. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Hillsdale

    Google Scholar 

  • Carey S (1998) Knowledge of number: its evolution and ontogenesis. Science 242:641–642

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Goldman A (1970) A theory of human action. Prentice-Hall, Princeton

    Google Scholar 

  • Lemos J (2004) Psychological hedonism, evolutionary biology, and the experience machine. Philos Soc Sci 34:506–526

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Orzack S, Sober E (1994) Optimality models and the test of adaptationism. Am Nat 143:361–380

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pylyshyn Z (1999) Is vision continuous with cognition? Behav Brain Sci 22:341–423

    Google Scholar 

  • Sober E, Wilson DS (1998) Unto others: the evolution and psychology of unselfish behavior. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA

    Google Scholar 

  • Stich S (1978) Beliefs and sub-doxastic states. Philos Sci 45:499–518

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Stich S (2007) Evolution, altruism and cognitive architecture: a critique of Sober and Wilson’s Argument for psychological altruism. Biol Philos 22:267–281

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Stich S, Doris J, Roedder E (forthcoming) The science of altruism. In: Doris JM, Harman G, Nichols S, Prinz J, Sinnott-Armstrong W, Stich S (eds) The Oxford handbook of moral psychology. Oxford University Press, Oxford

Download references

Acknowledgments

I thank Elliott Sober, Stephen Stich, Kim Sterelny, and an anonymous referee of this journal for useful comments on earlier drafts of this paper.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Armin W. Schulz.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Schulz, A.W. Sober & Wilson’s evolutionary arguments for psychological altruism: a reassessment. Biol Philos 26, 251–260 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-009-9179-5

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-009-9179-5

Keywords

Navigation