Evolution, altruism and cognitive architecture: a critique of Sober and Wilson’s argument for psychological altruism

Sober and Wilson have propose a cluster of arguments for the conclusion that ‘‘natural selection is unlikely to have given us purely egoistic motives’’ and thus that psychological altruism is true. I maintain that none of these arguments is convincing. However, the most powerful of their arguments raises deep issues about what egoists and altruists are claiming and about the assumptions they make concerning the cognitive architecture underlying human