A group comprising many individual agents working together can be viewed as a problem-solving system. Each agent may have some degree of autonomy, but may not be aware of the entire picture. This sort of teamwork is seen in many situations; e.g. in human sports and at the workplace, as also in social-insect colonies.
One of the
great minds to have studied insect behaviour is E. O. Wilson, the Harvard
naturalist. Wilson spent many decades decoding the biochemical communication
mechanisms that ants use in order to function as a well-synched group. His
discoveries led him to explore behaviour in all social organisms. He coined the
word 'sociobiology', which is
the study of the evolutionary basis for the behaviour of organisms. Wilson, in
his 1975 book Sociobiology: The New Synthesis, took the
scientific community by surprise with his assertion that biology also played a
key role in human behaviour. At that time it was widely believed that human
behaviour was purely culturally determined.
The triumph of
Wilson's ideas was in presenting the self-organization view of group behaviour
as a common aspect of both bee swarms and humans groups. The concept of the
'superorganism' was
developed to express how a large group of non-intelligent agents can function
as one highly intelligent entity. These entities can handle and synthesize
large quantities of sensory data, and use the data to perform complex
computations that are commonly associated with intelligence
Altruism and
Natural Selection
Altruism can
emerge in a species in spite of the fact that each individual is hard-wired to
be selfish. It may appear at first sight that selfish individuals are more
likely to survive and propagate their selfish-tendency genes. But if a group or
a population as a whole has better survival chances if altruism prevails, than
if rank selfishness prevails, altruism can emerge: Even though an altruist
individual may not survive because it chooses to make sacrifices for the group,
its altruistic genes will still survive in the population because the latter
comprises of its brothers and sisters and other relatives. In such a situation,
natural selection works in favour of promoting altruism in the gene pool.
In the human
context, it should be clear to us that only a kind of collective altruism can
ensure our survival as a species.
At what level
does natural selection drive biological evolution? Is it all about selfish
genes and fertile individuals, or can ‘group selection’ also occur?
The group-selection idea involves altruistic behaviour conducive to the
survival and propagation of a group as a whole, even at the cost of elimination
of some individuals making the sacrifice for the sake of the group. Group
selection is still a matter of debate, although it has been debunked by many
experts.
Historically
speaking, Darwin supported the idea of group selection (Mirsky 2009). He argued
that, although moral men may not do better than immoral men at the level of the
individual, tribes of moral men would ‘have an immense advantage’ compared to
the survival and propagation rate of tribes with no moral scruples. But later
opinion in the evolution community did not favour this postulate. The argument
advanced was that at the genetic level it has to be ‘every man for himself’. I
quote Steven Pinker: 'I am often asked whether I agree with the new
group selectionists, and the questioners are always surprised when I say I do
not. After all, group selection sounds like a reasonable extension of
evolutionary theory and a plausible explanation of the social nature of humans.
Also, the group selectionists tend to declare victory, and write as if their
theory has already superseded a narrow, reductionist dogma that selection acts
only at the level of genes. . . . The more carefully you think about group
selection, the less sense it makes, and the more poorly it fits the facts of
human psychology and history. . . . . Group selection has become a scientific dust bunny, a hairy blob in
which anything having to do with "groups" clings to anything having
to do with "selection." The problem with scientific dust bunnies is
not just that they sow confusion; … the apparent plausibility of one restricted
version of "group selection" often bleeds outwards to a motley
collection of other, long-discredited versions. The problem is that it also
obfuscates evolutionary theory by blurring genes, individuals, and groups as
equivalent levels in a hierarchy of selectional units; ... this is not how
natural selection, analyzed as a mechanistic process, really works. Most
importantly, it has placed blinkers on psychological understanding by seducing
many people into simply equating morality and culture with group selection,
oblivious to alternatives that are theoretically deeper and empirically more
realistic'.
Pinker summarizes his essay as
follows: 'The idea of Group Selection has a superficial appeal because
humans are indisputably adapted to group living and because some groups are
indisputably larger, longer-lived, and more influential than others. This makes
it easy to conclude that properties of human groups, or properties of the human
mind, have been shaped by a process that is akin to natural selection acting on
genes. Despite this allure, I have argued that the concept of Group Selection
has no useful role to play in psychology or social science. It refers to too
many things, most of which are not alternatives to the theory of gene-level
selection but loose allusions to the importance of groups in human evolution.
And when the concept is made more precise, it is torn by a dilemma. If it is
meant to explain the cultural traits of successful groups, it adds nothing to
conventional history and makes no precise use of the actual mechanism of natural
selection. But if it is meant to explain the psychology of individuals,
particularly an inclination for unconditional self-sacrifice to benefit a group
of nonrelatives, it is dubious both in theory (since it is hard to see how it
could evolve given the built-in advantage of protecting the self and one's kin)
and in practice (since there is no evidence that humans have such a trait).
None of this prevents us from seeking
to understand the evolution of social and moral intuitions, nor the dynamics of
populations and networks which turn individual psychology into large-scale
societal and historical phenomena. It's just that the notion of "group
selection" is far more likely to confuse than to enlighten—especially as
we try to understand the ideas and institutions that human cognition has
devised to make up for the shortcomings of our evolved adaptations to group
living'.
Kerry Koyen (2012) has also argued strongly against group
selection.
And here is more from Pinker on
morality: 'Nor
is morality any mystery. Abstract, universal morality
(e.g., a Kantian categorical imperative) never evolved in the first place, but
took millennia of debate and cultural experience, and doesn’t characterize the
vast majority of humanity. More rudimentary moral sentiments that may have
evolved – sympathy, trust, retribution, gratitude, guilt – are stable strategies in cooperation games, and emerge in computer simulations'.
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