A set of constraints forces trade-offs which prevent us from achieving the best possible definitions of the ‘level’ and ‘unit’ of natural selection. This set consists in decisions concerning conflicting pre-analytic intuitions in problematic cases, the relative roles of various conceptual resources in the definitions, which facts need to be accounted for using the definitions, how the relation between selection and evolution orients the definitions, and the relation between the level and unit concepts. Systematic reconstruction and evaluation of leading analyses (...) along these dimensions favors a new functional analysis over Williams’ consequentialist analysis, Sober’s causal analysis, and Dawkins’ teleological analysis. (shrink)

Ernst Mayr (1980) provided an influential picture of the nature of the Modern Evolutionary Synthesis and of the debate and changes occurring prior to its completion. Mayr intended his account to be applicable to comparable cases. Sociobiology should be evaluated both as a comparable case, an attempt to produce a synthesis which undergoes development of the sort Mayr described, and as an extension of the Modern Synthesis itself. Examination of what the explanatory goals and development of the New Sociobiological Synthesis (...) would be, if it is to achieve a fruitful synthesis which fits Mayr's account, undermines Richard Lewontin's critique of sociobiology. Although Lewontin speaks for many in viewing sociobiology as the latest historical manifestation of social Darwinism, genetic determinism, biological reductionism, and vulgar adaptationism, sociobiology's effort to produce a synthesis does not entail commitment to those positions. (shrink)