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Hamilton’s Two Conceptions of Social Fitness

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Jonathan Birch
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Abstract

Hamilton introduced two conceptions of social fitness, which he called neighbor-modulated fitness and inclusive fitness. Although he regarded them as formally equivalent, a reanalysis of his own argument for their equivalence brings out two important assumptions on which it rests: weak additivity and actor’s control. When weak additivity breaks down, neither fitness concept is appropriate in its original form. When actor’s control breaks down, neighbor-modulated fitness may be appropriate, but inclusive fitness is not. Yet I argue that, despite its more limited domain of application, inclusive fitness provides a distinctively valuable perspective on social evolution.

Type
50 Years of Inclusive Fitness
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 83 , Issue 5 , December 2016 , pp. 848 - 860
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

†

This article is based on my contribution to the symposium “50 Years of Inclusive Fitness” held at the 2014 PSA meeting in Chicago, IL, November 6–9. I am very grateful to my fellow contributors (Ullica Segerstrale, Patrick Forber, Rory Smead, Dave Queller, and Samir Okasha) and also to Andrew Buskell, Ellen Clarke, James Marshall, and a reading group at Australian National University. This work was supported by a Philip Leverhulme Prize from the Leverhulme Trust.

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