Why Multilevel Selection Matters

In spite of its checkered intellectual history, and in spite of the myriad proposals ofalternative models that claim to account for the broad range of human behavior and todispense with the need for selection above the organism level, a multilevel selectionframework remains the only coherent means of accounting for the persistence andspread of behavioral inclinations which, at least upon first appearance at low frequency,would have been biologically altruistic. This argument is advanced on three tracks:through a review of experimental and observational evidence inconsistent with a narrowversion of rational choice theory, through a critique of models or explanationspurporting to account for prosocial behavior through other means, and via elaboration ofthe mechanisms, plausibility, and intellectual history of group selection...