[lit-ideas] Biological Altruism: A Griceian Perspective
- From: "" <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> (Redacted sender "Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx" for DMARC)
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 25 May 2014 21:04:09 -0400 (EDT)
In a message dated 5/25/2014 6:03:12 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx writes in "The Descent of Man and self-sacrifice":
mere
"group selection", where a group does not presupposes genetic kinship, is not
allowed.
For the record, biological altruism is examined philosophically in:
Okasha, Samir, "Biological Altruism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy (Fall 2013 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL =
<http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2013/entries/altruism-biological/>.
with interesting biographical references -- a few selected below.
Since Grice created the Cooperative Principle, I guess the evolution of
cooperation is relevant (to Griceians) -- as per title of essay cited belw.
Another essay, 'altruism: one word, multiple meanings' seems anti-Griceian
(Do not multiply senses beyond necessity).
One of Grice's unpublications read, "read Dawinks". It's not clear he did.
(He wrote that on an airplane bag).
Grice was obsessed (in a good way) by Aristotle on 'the soul'. Aristotle
remarked that the idea of 'number' has to be understood 'serially': so,
Aristotle adds, 'soul'. This gives Grice the idea that evolutionary theory may
provide some background to the idea that the Aristotelian 'progress' makes
sense. Making fun of Carnap's "Pirots karulise elatically", Grice calls
these creatures, 'pirots', as they evolve from plants to humans. Talking
pirots
are at the apex, where the Cooperative Principle operates. The Cooperative
Principle was Grice's second shot at virtues of efficient communication
and only mentioned in the 1967 William James lectures. At Oxford, two years
earlier he had referred merely to the less systematic virtues of candour,
clarity, brevity, and such -- all analysed ONLY in connection with their
ability to 'generate' implicatures (which is what he was interested in -- as a
philosopher, not a linguist or a sociobiologist!).
Cheers,
Speranza
Abbot, P. et. al., 2011, ‘Inclusive Fitness Theory and Eusociality’,
Nature, 471: E1–E4.
Axelrod, R. and Hamilton, W. D., 1981, ‘The Evolution of Cooperation’,
Science, 211: 1390–96.
Axelrod. R., 1984, The Evolution of Cooperation, New York: Basic Books.
Bowles, S. and Gintis, H., 2011, A Cooperative Species: Human Reciprocity
and its Evolution, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Carter, G. G. and Wilkinson, G. S., 2013, ‘Food Sharing in Vampire Bats:
reciprocal help predicts donations more than relatedness or harassment’,
Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 280: 20122573, doi 10.1098/rspb.2012.2573.
Clavien, C. and Chapuisat, M., 2013, ‘Altruism across disciplines: one
word, multiple meanings ’, Biology and Philosophy, 28(1): 125–140.
Darwin, C., 1859, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection,
London: John Murray.
–––, 1871, The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, New York:
Appleton.
Dawkins, R., 1976, The Selfish Gene, Oxford: Oxford University Press..
Dugatkin, L. A., 1997, Cooperation among Animals: an Evolutionary
Perspective, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Gardner, A., Alpedrinha J. and West S. A., 2012, ‘Haplodiploidy and the
evolution of eusociality: split sex ratios’, American Naturalist, 179: 240–
56.
Hamilton, W. D., –––, 1970, ‘Selfish and Spiteful Behaviour in an
Evolutionary Model’, Nature, 228: 1218–1220.
Hammerstein, P., 2003, ‘Why is Reciprocity so Rare in Social Animals? A
Protestant Appeal’, in P. Lehmann, L. and Keller, L., 2006 ‘The Evolution of
Cooperation and Altruism. A General Framework and Classification of Models’
, Journal of Evolutionary Biology, 19: 1365–1725.
Maynard Smith, J., –––, 1998, ‘The Origin of Altruism’, Nature, 393: 639–
640.
Okasha, S., 2005, ‘Altruism, Group Selection and Correlated Interaction’
, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 56: 703–24.
Sachs, J. L., 2004, ‘The Evolution of Cooperation’, The Quarterly Review
of Biology, 79: 135–160.
Sober, E., 1994, ‘Did Evolution Make us Psychological Egoists?’, in his
From A Biological Point of View, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Taborsky, M. 2013, ‘Social Evolution: Reciprocity There Is’, Current
Biology, 23(11): R486–88.
Trivers, R. L., 1971, ‘The Evolution of Reciprocal Altruism’, Quarterly
Review of Biology, 46: 35–57.
Vromen, J., 2012, ‘Human Cooperation and Reciprocity’, in Evolution and
Rationality, S. Okasha and K. Binmore (eds.), Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Wilkinson, G. S., 1984, ‘Reciprocal Food Sharing in the Vampire Bat’,
Nature, 308: 181–184.
–––, 1990, ‘Food Sharing in Vampire Bats’, Scientific American, 262, 2:
64–70.
Wilson E. O., 1975, Sociobiology: the New Synthesis, Cambridge MA: Harvard
University Press.
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