Summary of: 'Unto others - The evolution and psychology of unselfish behavior'

The hypothesis of group selection fell victim to a seemingly devastating cr itique in 1960s evolutionary biology. In Unto Others (1998), we argue to th e contrary, that group selection is a conceptually coherent and empirically well documented cause of evolution. We suggest, in addition that it has be en especially important in human evolution. In the second part of Unto Othe rs, we consider the issue of psychological egoism and altruism - do human b eings have ultimate motives concerning the well-being of others ? We argue that previous psychological and philosophical work on this question has bee n inconclusive. We propose an evolutionary argument for the claim that huma n beings have altruistic ultimate motives.