Evolution, Selfishness and Cooperation

It is argued that replicators evolving through natural selection on the basis of fitness are intrinsically selfish. Though the synergy resulting from cooperation is generally advantageous, selfish or subsystem optimization precludes the reaching of a globally optimal cooperative arrangement. This predicament is exemplified by the "Prisoner's dilemma". Different proposals to explain the evolution of cooperation are reviewed: kin selection, group selection, reciprocal altruism ("tit for tat"), and moralism. It is concluded that the proposed mechanisms are either too limited in scope, unstable, or insufficiently detailed, and that the analysis must therefore go beyond the level of purely genetic evolution if human "ultrasociality" is to be explained.