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Identifying the Explanatory Weakness of Strong Altruism: The Needle in the ‘Haystack Model’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Stephen G. Morris
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Abstract

Evolutionary theorists have encountered difficulty in explaining how altruistic behavior can evolve. I argue that these theorists have made this task more difficult than it needs to be by focusing their efforts on explaining how nature could select for a strong type of altruism that has powerful selection forces working against it. I argue that switching the focus to a weaker type of altruism renders the project of explaining how altruism can evolve significantly less difficult. I offer a model of weak altruism that can avoid many of the difficulties that evolutionary accounts of altruism have traditionally faced.

Type
Natural Selection and Evolution
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 72 , Issue 5: Proceedings of the 2004 Biennial Meeting of The Philosophy of Science Association. Part I: Contributed Papers , December 2005 , pp. 1124 - 1134
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

‡

I am thankful to Zachary Ernst and Michael Ruse for providing guidance and helpful commentary during the process of writing this paper.

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