Group Selection or altruism ????

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tturchi51

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I know this may seem like a dumb question but just bare with me and read how I just spent the last hour on this.

Here is a question I got wrong on khan academy

Vervet monkeys make noise to warn others about the approach of a predator. Even though the individual may stand out and be preyed upon while warning the others, this trait persists in the population because of which evolutionary concept?

Natural selection
Differential reproduction
Coevolution
Group selection

Even before I looked at the answers "Altruism" was the first evo concept that came to mind. I ended up choosing natural selection because I have never heard of the term " group selection" in any bio things I've read.

I then decided to google "group selection or altruism" just to make sure they were correlated somehow. The first site that came up I saw encyclopedia for the name with a .edu address so I figured it would be the most reliable. Here are the first 2 paragraphs. I apologize for so much of the text being bold. (I wanted to put the main points in bold).
1. The Concept of Altruism
Selection among groups rather than individuals is not a straightforward idea, especially not ontologically. Nonetheless, the notion of group selection is often used in evolutionary discourse, especially for explaining the evolution of altruism or sociality (the tendency to form social groups). The meaning of "altruism" in ordinary language is quite different from its use among evolutionary biologists (Sober and Wilson, 1998, pp. 17-18). An ultimate motivation of assisting another regardless of one's direct or indirect self-benefit is necessary for it to be altruistic in the ordinary sense ─ for what we might call moral altruism (see psychological egoism).

I decided to see what they said about psyc egoism and...

Psychological egoism is the thesis that we are always deep down motivated by what we perceive to be in our own self-interest. Psychological altruism, on the other hand, is the view that sometimes we can have ultimately altruistic motives. Suppose, for example, that Pam saves Jim from a burning office building. What ultimately motivated her to do this? It would be odd to suggest that it’s ultimately her own benefit that Pam is seeking. After all, she’s risking her own life in the process. But the psychological egoist holds that Pam’s apparently altruistic act is ultimately motivated by the goal to benefit herself, whether she is aware of this or not. Pam might have wanted to gain a good feeling from being a hero, or to avoid social reprimand that would follow had she not helped Jim, or something along these lines.


After realizing that I was reading philosophical articles, I decided to try my luck on another article/site google gave me. Here is what Encyclopedia Britannica said about group selection.

Group selection, in biology, a type of natural selection that acts collectively on all members of a given group. Group selection may also be defined as selection in which traits evolve according to the fitness (survival and reproductive success) of groups or, mathematically, as selection in which overall group fitness is higher or lower than the mean of the individual members’ fitness values.Typically the group under selection is a small cohesive social unit, and members’ interactions are of an altruistic nature.

Several decades later, however, group selection found renewed interest in evolutionary thinking—namely, as a factor in multilevel selection, the idea that the most altruistic groups within a population enjoy the greatest reproductive success and thereby fuel the evolution of altruism within the population. In the early part of the 21st century, though still opposed by some, scientists examined group selection as a means to explain altruism among animals and the survival of genetic traits associated with selflessness. It was invoked primarily in the context of kin selection, which is concerned with the reproductive success of relatives, and inclusive fitness, which is concerned with the genetic success of individual organisms as derived from cooperation and altruistic behaviour.


Around this point I finally determined I was wasting time. I then decided to procrastinate some more and give my $0.02 and ask what yalls opinion/thoughts/funny comments about it are?

I think Khan should change the question to choose the best answer because apparently group selection is natural selection in a group.....

Also the group selection "concept" should be replaced with altruism or altruistic selection since apparently everything Darwin came up with has to have selection after it.

Btw, the philosophical egoism and other philosophy article are not that bad of a read (and I hate philosophy). Here are a couple other excerpts and the links.

http://www.iep.utm.edu/altr-grp/#H1

http://www.iep.utm.edu/psychego/#H4



However, motivations and intentions are not accessible to someone studying non-humans. Thus, they are not part of the meaning of "altruism" in the biological sense. Biological altruism is a course of action that enhances the expected fitness of another at the expense of one's own fitness. Whether altruism occurs depends on several things: on the population's initial conditions, on the definition of "altruism" as absolute or relative fitness reduction ─ that is, whether one suffers a net loss or not (Kerr et al. 2003) ─ and on the meaning of "fitness" as an actuality or propensity (Mills and Beatty, 1979). Unlike ordinary speech, in biological discourse a trait that carries a cost to the individual, even if relatively small and with no net reduction of fitness, is typically labeled "altruistic" or, equivalently, "cooperative."

These distinctions between ordinary and technical senses of "altruism" notwithstanding, many scientists often link them in the evolutionary debates over group selection. Connecting biological and moral altruism is typically done without conflating the two, that is, without committing the naturalistic fallacy of "is implies ought." An example of such a fallacy might be: since group selection is found everywhere in nature, we should act for the benefit of the group. Instead, some scientists argue that the abundance of group selection processes throughout human evolution can explain why humans sometimes hold genuinely altruistic motivations (for example, Darwin, 1871; Sober and Wilson, 1998, part II). Others argue that moral altruism should be praised with extra vigor, since the process of group selection hardly – if ever – occurs in nature, so human altruism is not "in harmony" with nature but rather a struggle against it (Dawkins, 1976; Williams, 1987). In short, linking "altruism" with "group selection" is historically very common although conceptually not necessary. As we shall see below, a process of group selection can act on non-altruistic traits and the evolution of a cooperative trait need not always require a group selection process. Karl Popper (1945) blamed Plato for the historical identification of the moral concept of altruism with collectivism and for contrasting altruism to individualism:

Now it is interesting that for Plato, and for most Platonists, altruistic individualisms cannot exist. According to Plato, the only alternative to collectivism is egoism; he simply identifies all altruism with collectivism; and all individualism with egoism. This is not a matter of terminology, of mere words, for instead of four possibilities, Plato recognized only two. This has created considerable confusion in speculation on ethical matters, even down to our own day (Popper, 1945, p. 101).

Whether due to Plato or local circumstances within the nineteen-century scientific community, "altruism" and "group selection" have been linked from the origin of evolutionary biology.

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I think you are reading way, way too much into this. It is implicit in every MCAT question that you're supposed to pick the best answer, as there is often more than one right answer.

Yes, the monkey is displaying altruistic behavior. But it is displaying altruism for the sake of the survival of its species, making group selection--a mechanism of evolution in which natural selection acts at the level of the group vs. level of the individual--the best answer. And because group selection is more specific than natural selection, the former is the better answer.
 
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I think you are reading way, way too much into this. It is implicit in every MCAT question that you're supposed to pick the best answer, as there is often more than one right answer.

Thanks! I realized this whenever I finally got some good sleep. I just wish I could delete this thread now.......
 
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