Hierarchy maintenance, coalition formation, and the origins of altruistic punishment
Philosophy of Science 74 (5):802-812 (2007)
| Abstract | Game theory has played a critical role in elucidating the evolutionary origins of social behavior. Sober and Wilson (1999) model altruism as a prisoner's dilemma and claim that this model indicates that altruism arose from group selection pressures. Sober and Wilson also suggest that the prisoner's dilemma model can be used to characterize punishment; hence, punishment too originated from group selection pressures. However, empirical evidence suggests that a group selection model of the origins of altruistic punishment may be insufficient. I argue that examining dominance hierarchies and coalition formation in chimpanzee societies suggests that the origins of altruistic punishment may be best captured by individual selection models. I suggest that this shows the necessity of coupling of game-theoretic models with a conception of what our actual social structure may have been like to best model the origins of our own behavior. ‡I would like to thank Zachary Ernst and Emma Marris for their many helpful comments which greatly improved this paper. †To contact the author, please write to: Department of Philosophy, University of Maryland, Skinner Building, College Park, MD 20742; e-mail: yrohwer@umd.edu. | |||||||||
| Keywords | No keywords specified (fix it) | |||||||||
| Categories | ||||||||||
| Options |
|
|||||||||
Download options| PhilPapers Archive |
Upload a copy of this paper Check publisher's policy on self-archival Papers currently archived: 5,875 |
| External links |
 |
| Through your library | Configure |
Similar books and articlesElliott Sober & David Sloan Wilson (2000). Summary Of: ‘Unto Others. The Evolution and Psychology of Unselfish Behavior'. Journal of Consciousness Studies 7 (1-2):185-206.
Dale Jamieson (2002). Sober and Wilson on Psychological Altruism. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 65 (3):702–710.
Peter Gildenhuys (2003). The Evolution of Altruism: The Sober/Wilson Model. Philosophy of Science 70 (1):27-48.
Samir Okasha (2001). Why Won't the Group Selection Controversy Go Away? British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 52 (1):25-50.
Scott Woodcock & Joseph Heath (2002). The Robustness of Altruism as an Evolutionary Strategy. Biology and Philosophy 17 (4).
Klaus Jaffe (2004). Altruism, Altruistic Punishment and Social Investment. Acta Biotheoretica 52 (3).
Nicolas Baumard (2010). Has Punishment Played a Role in the Evolution of Cooperation? A Critical Review. Mind and Society 9 (2):171-192.
Analytics
Monthly downloads |
Added to index2009-01-28Total downloads14 ( #84,232 of 556,888 )Recent downloads (6 months)1 ( #64,931 of 556,888 )How can I increase my downloads? |
My notes
Discussion
