The way I see it, altruism has been the big selling point for group selection. The only way altruism would have been able to evolve is through group selection, so the presence of altruism is strong evidence for the existence of group selection.

Group selectionists have been (rightly) criticized by pointing out that they were merely looking for an explanation that would fit the results they had already decided on and wrote the conclusion before looking for hypotheses. They wanted a nice, friendly, altruistic world and devised a theory of why this should be so.

 

Now, while I fully agree their methods were wrong, I want to take a closer look at the word “altruism” in this context.

 

  Is a cow a vegetarian?

Think about this question, if you will, before reading on.

 

I would say no, it’s not. True, a cow only eats plants but there is a crucial difference that separates it from a real vegetarian. When a cow is hungry its brain tells it to eat grass, it doesn’t give the option to choose meat. A cow’s digestive system is specialized in processing grass, eating meat would send it haywire. 

A vegetarian, on the other hand, is a human, an omnivore, he can just as easily process food from animal as plant sources. Not eating meat is a deliberate and conscious choice.

The point I’m getting at is that eating plants because that’s all you can do doesn’t make you a real vegetarian. Luckily we have a convenient term to make this distinction: herbivore.

 

Now lets go back to altruism.

Bees have been called altruistic; after all, what greater sacrifice can an organism bring then its ability to reproduce? What if we, to stop overpopulation, sterilize every newborn child for the next three years.

Every time we meet one of those children we would give them a pat on the back and congratulate them for the enormous amounts of altruism they have displayed. I doubt many of them would agree.

It’s not really altruism if you have no choice, is it? The difference between true altruism and cases like this is deliberate choice and doing more then “default helping”.

 

In short: whenever the group selectionists saw a herbivore, they called it a vegetarian. Just like we make a distinction between herbivores and vegetarians, I would like to see someone introducing a new term for that-thing-animals-do-that-looks-like-altruism.

 

p.s. This is my very first article on this site, any feedback and tips would be greatly appreciated.