Born to Cooperate? Altruism as Exaptation and the Evolution of Human Sociality

Abstract

In recent papers (e.g. Wilson and Wilson, 2007), it has been confirmed that the two standard solutions for the apparent paradox of the evolution of altruism and pro-social behaviours – ‘kin selection’, which leaves unsolved the question of pop- ulation structure, and ‘group selection’ – can indeed be consistent with one other. The result is a possible explanation of the ambiguity between deeply entrenched attitudes to cooperation inside social groups and organized hostility among them (Bowles, 2008). Nevertheless, thesemodels seem to undervalue the potential effects of ‘multilevel’ evolution and both notions remain strongly engaged with gene- centred interpretations of evolutionary dynamics – which lose their explanatory power when applied to group-living species that show unconditioned forms of altru- ism and pro-social feeling, especially when cultural evolution enters the process. In order to avoid ‘cultural discontinuity’ hypotheses at the other extreme, I emphasize the importance of ‘functional cooptation’, or ‘exaptation’ (Gould and Vrba, 1982; Gould, 2002) in arriving at a more satisfying explanation of the origins of free or reciprocal unselfishness, in group-living animals and in culture-bearing species