Briefly Debunking The Selfish Gene
In this essay, I will briefly debunk the concept of the selfish gene. For a complete debunking of the concept, see the book Debunking the Selfish Gene. The book covers much more ground than I can cover in a single essay, including many apparent counter-examples and counter-arguments. The point of this essay is to convey the core error of the selfish gene concept.
Let’s begin with a quote from Chapter 1 of The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins:
This book will show how both individual selfishness and individual altruism are explained by the fundamental law that I am calling gene selfishness. But first I must deal with a particular erroneous explanation for altruism, because it is widely known, and even taught in schools.
This explanation is based on the misconception that I have already mentioned, that living creatures evolve to do things ‘for the good of the species’ or ‘for the good of the group’. It is easy to see how this idea got its start in biology. Much of an animal’s life is devoted to reproduction, and most of the acts of altruistic self-sacrifice that are observed in nature are performed by parents towards their young. ‘Perpetuation of the species’ is a common euphemism for reproduction, and it is undeniably a consequence of reproduction. It requires only a slight over-stretching of logic to deduce that the ‘function’ of reproduction is ‘to’ perpetuate the species. From this it is but a further short false step to conclude that animals will in general behave in such a way as to favour the perpetuation of the species. Altruism towards fellow members of the species seems to follow.
Dawkins is going to make the case against group-selection theory, which is the theory that individual organisms act for the good of the group/species, rather than for their own self-interest.
If we look at nature, we see that organisms act toward reproduction, not toward the perpetuation of the species or some other “group”. Most energetic altruism is from parents to offspring. Organisms are selfish reproducers. They act toward their reproductive self-interest.
See Altruism and Selfishness for an in-depth discussion of altruism and selfishness, including how they can be defined (energetic, reproductive, hedonic), and to what extent altruism can exist.
Continuing from the same place in The Selfish Gene:
This line of thought can be put into vaguely Darwinian terms. Evolution works by natural selection, and natural selection means the differential survival of the ‘fittest’.
“Survival of the fittest” is a very misleading phrase. Natural selection is not based on the survival of the fittest. It is based on the reproduction of the fittest. Thinking of evolution in terms of survival is a big mistake. But Dawkins does not see this as an error. Instead, he asks the question “Survival of what?”.
But are we talking about the fittest individuals, the fittest races, the fittest species, or what? For some purposes this does not greatly matter, but when we are talking about altruism it is obviously crucial. If it is species that are competing in what Darwin called the struggle for existence, the individual seems best regarded as a pawn in the game, to be sacrificed when the greater interest of the species as a whole requires it. To put it in a slightly more respectable way, a group, such as a species or a population within a species, whose individual members are prepared to sacrifice themselves for the welfare of the group, may be less likely to go extinct than a rival group whose individual members place their own selfish interests first. Therefore the world becomes populated mainly by groups consisting of self-sacrificing individuals. This is the theory of ‘group selection’, long assumed to be true by biologists not familiar with the details of evolutionary theory, brought out into the open in a famous book by V. C. Wynne-Edwards, and popularized by Robert Ardrey in The Social Contract.
Dawkins does a pretty good job of presenting group-selection theory. However, he misses one critical point: that it is based on a metaphor. Group-selection theory views a species or race as analogous to a human social unit.
The word “group” naturally makes you think of a social unit, such as a rock band, a football team or a country. A social unit is not just a category of individuals. It has an internal structure. In a rock band, the structure is informal, consisting of personal relationships. In a football team, it is more formal, with a captain, coach, etc. In a country, it is even more formal, with a government, laws, police force, etc. A social unit is an organized structure of individuals. The structure holds the social unit together (makes it coherent), and gives it group agency, which is the ability to make decisions and act as a unit. Because social units have those properties, they can act as units and compete with each other as units.
A species or race is not a group in that sense. It is nothing like a social unit. It has no internal structure that gives it coherence and agency. It is just a descriptive category of individuals. It is a type of individual, or all individuals of that type.
The vague term “group” conflates the two notions. Other terms, such as “competing” and “rival group”, reinforce the social metaphor. We might say (metaphorically) that species “compete”, but this competition is very different from the competition between social units.
The relationship between organism and species is instance-type. The relationship between individual and social unit is part-whole.
The group selectionist thinks of the species or race as a coherent entity, like a social unit, and the individual organism as part of that entity. This is a misconception. The species or race is a type, and the individual organism is an instance of that type.
This is not a quibble about terminology. Group-selection theory is based on a conceptual error: a false conception of what a race or species is. The false conception arises by a misleading metaphor. Most metaphors use something less abstract to represent something more abstract. This makes thought easier, but it can also cause errors.
In this case, the metaphor (species → society) causes the thinker to attribute properties of a society (coherence and agency) to a species. It also causes the thinker to view individual organisms as part of a coherent whole, rather than instances of a type.
Another metaphor is often involved in group-selection theory: (species → body), (organism → cell). Again, this uses something less abstract (a body) to represent something more abstract (a species). The species is viewed as a body composed of individual organisms. In other words, it is a “superorganism”. This metaphor is equally misleading. A body has coherence and agency. The individual cells of a body contribute to the purpose of the body. These properties do not apply to a species, which is a type.
It is worth briefly explaining why the cells of a multicellular organism work together “altruistically” for the good of the unit, the organism. Each cell of a body descends by cell division from one original cell, the zygote. It inherits the purpose of the zygote, which is to create more zygotes by somatic (usually sexual) reproduction. The bottleneck of somatic reproduction “forces” (metaphorically) the cells of the body to work together.
A body is not just a colony of cells. There can be colonies of bacteria, but they are not coherent, organized entities. A coherent, organized system of cells can only evolve if it reproduces as a unit. This is explained in more detail in Debunking the Selfish Gene.
A body composed of cells is one type of structure. A society composed of individuals is another type of structure. Those structures are organized in very different ways. A species or race is not a structure at all.
The orthodox alternative is normally called ‘individual selection’, although I personally prefer to speak of gene selection.
Dawkins says that he prefers to speak of “gene selection” instead of individual selection. But there are two different alternatives to consider: selection for reproduction, and selection for gene survival. Dawkins seems to have never considered the former, which is the actual basis of natural selection.
The quick answer of the ‘individual selectionist’ to the argument just put might go something like this. Even in the group of altruists, there will almost certainly be a dissenting minority who refuse to make any sacrifice. If there is just one selfish rebel, prepared to exploit the altruism of the rest, then he, by definition, is more likely than they are to survive and have children. Each of those children will tend to inherit his selfish traits. After several generations of this natural selection, the ‘altruistic group’ will be over-run by selfish individuals, and will be indistinguishable from the selfish group. Even if we grant the improbable chance existence initially of pure altruistic groups without any rebels, it is very difficult to see what will stop selfish individuals migrating in from neighboring selfish groups, and, by inter-marriage, contaminating the purity of the altruistic groups.
This is Dawkins’ attempt to explain the free-rider problem. It is essentially correct, but not very well explained. Dawkins uses human-centric and animal-centric terms, such as “dissenting”, “migrate”, “marriage”, etc. The argument can be made much more clearly.
Suppose that there are two genetic variants in a population, S and A. Individuals of type S are reproductively selfish: they simply try to reproduce. Individuals of type A are reproductively altruistic: they help other organisms to reproduce, to some extent. In aggregate, the S-type will receive a net reproductive benefit from the A-type, and the A-type will pay a net reproductive cost. Thus, the S-type will have a higher net reproductive rate than the A-type. Eventually, the S-type will completely replace the A-type.
Reproductive selfishness is more adaptive than reproductive altruism, by definition. Thus, reproductive altruism cannot evolve.
The free-rider problem applies to societies. Society is based on cooperation between selfish individuals, not altruism. There is the potential for individuals to take from society without contributing to it. Societies use incentives to solve the free-rider problem and other problems of cooperation.
A rock band can be held together by simple reciprocity: every member wants it to succeed, and if one member doesn’t pull his weight, he will be kicked out by the other members. Large societies require more complex forms of organization: the state and the market. The state imposes non-violence on members of society, and requires them to make some contribution to group efforts (taxation). The market enables individuals to cooperate economically for their mutual benefit.
See Game Theory and Cooperation and The Case Against Anarchism.
A modern society incentivizes most people to be productive, but it still has a free-rider problem. The welfare state subsidizes the survival and reproduction of many people at the expense of others. This free-rider problem will eventually destroy modern civilization if we do not solve it.
The free-rider problem also exists for multicellular organisms, in a way. The cells of the body must work together for the good of the body, not for their own individual reproduction. The bottleneck of somatic reproduction solves the free-rider problem. Each cell of a body inherits the same purpose — somatic reproduction — from the initial zygote. Each cell is genetically programmed to carry out some function within the body. Thus, the cells work together toward their common purpose.
It is possible for an individually selfish cell to arise by mutation, multiply, and eventually destroy the body. That is cancer. Essentially, cancer is caused by the free-rider problem. But when cancer kills the body, the cancer dies too. The mutation will not be inherited by new bodies. It will not pass on through a zygote.
See Sex, Death and Complexity.
A species or race has no internal structure, and thus it has no solution to the free-rider problem. There is no equivalent to the state and the market for a species or race. There is no equivalent to somatic reproduction; a species or race does not reproduce as a unit. Again, a species or race is just a descriptive category.
Dawkins goes on to say that group-selection theory has been discredited in evolutionary theory, but it has a strong intuitive appeal. Skipping ahead a bit:
Perhaps one reason for the great appeal of the group-selection theory is that it is thoroughly in tune with the moral and political ideals that most of us share.
Dawkins correctly points out that group-selection theory gains a lot of support from the moralistic fallacy, by which people expect nature to conform to our moral values (even if, somewhat ironically, we don’t really conform to them). Also, people have been conditioned by morality and religion to believe that our actions serve a higher purpose. Most people would find it hard to accept that the purpose of life is simply to reproduce, and that reproduction has no higher purpose. But reproduction is the basis of natural selection, and thus the (biological) purpose of life.
Now, let’s look at how Dawkins explains the concept of the selfish gene. I will leap ahead to chapter 6, because it takes him a while to develop the concept.
What is the selfish gene? It is not just one single physical bit of DNA. Just as in the primeval soup, it is all replicas of a particular bit of DNA, distributed throughout the world. If we allow ourselves the licence of talking about genes as if they had conscious aims, always reassuring ourselves that we could translate our sloppy language back into respectable terms if we wanted to, we can ask the question, what is a single selfish gene trying to do? It is trying to get more numerous in the gene pool. Basically it does this by helping to program the bodies in which it finds itself to survive and to reproduce. But now we are emphasizing that ‘it’ is a distributed agency, existing in many different individuals at once. The key point of this chapter is that a gene might be able to assist replicas of itself that are sitting in other bodies. If so, this would appear as individual altruism but it would be brought about by gene selfishness.
Dawkins believes that the abstract gene (the sequence of nucleotides) is a selfish entity that tries to perpetuate itself. Individual copies of the abstract gene are not individually selfish, however. They act toward a common purpose: the perpetuation of the abstract gene. Biological purpose ultimately resides in the abstract gene, not the organism or the species.
The abstract gene is just information: a nucleotide sequence. It is a type, a descriptive category. The description is the nucleotide sequence. If a strand of DNA contains that sequence, we say that it has a copy of the gene.
Dawkins’ theory of the selfish gene is structurally identical to group-selection theory. The individuals are gene copies, and the “group” (type) is the abstract gene. Dawkins believes that the individual gene copies act for the good of their group, the abstract gene. He calls the abstract gene “a distributed agency, existing in many individuals at once”. This is like viewing a species as a distributed agency that consists of many individual organisms.
The selfish-gene theory is based on the same kind of conceptual error as group-selection theory. Through a metaphor, Dawkins views the abstract gene as a coherent entity with purpose and agency. This is entirely false.
The abstract gene is a type, not an entity. The individual gene copy is an instance of the abstract gene, not part of it. Dawkins is confusing an instance-type relationship with a part-whole relationship — the same error that is involved in group-selection theory.
Dawkins could have titled his book “The Altruistic Gene”. In his view, the abstract gene is selfish, but the gene copy is altruistic toward its “group”. According to Dawkins, the abstract gene is “trying to get more numerous”. It is selfishly pursuing its own purpose of self-perpetuation and/or self-expansion. The gene copy, however, is altruistic toward its fellows, and toward the abstract gene as a whole. Dawkins says that a gene copy might assist other copies in other organisms. In doing so, the individual gene copy would be altruistic. It would be acting toward the “good of the group”.
The free-rider argument cannot be applied directly to the selfish gene concept, because there cannot be altruistic and selfish versions of the same gene — at least, not if “gene” means a precise sequence of nucleotides. There are variants of the same gene, called “alleles”. Dawkins doesn’t make a clear distinction between “gene” and “allele”. There is an in-depth discussion of genes and alleles in Debunking the Selfish Gene.
Regardless, there is no way that a single gene could be “altruistic” or “selfish”. Genes don’t actually do anything. A gene is inert information that (in most cases) codes for a protein. A gene has effects when it is expressed in a cell. Genes expressed in cells can have organism-level effects, such as height, eye color or resistance to a disease. A single gene can’t have a complex effect such as recognizing other organisms with the same gene, and then acting differently toward them. A complex behavior, such as altruism, would depend on many genes. There is also a problem with recognizing one’s “group”. Any mechanism for recognizing other organisms with the same gene or genes would be heuristic and based on traits other than precise nucleotide sequences.
Given those realities, the free-rider argument applies. For a gene copy to act toward the greater good of the abstract gene, it would have to contribute to something like altruism toward similar or related organisms. Such a mechanism has the free-rider problem. A genetic variant that causes free-riding would be positively selected.
Of course, there are many other problems with Dawkins’ notion. The biggest is that genes are not independent replicators. A bacterium is an independent replicator. A sexually-reproducing organism, such as a human being, needs another member of its species to reproduce, but a couple can reproduce independently of others. They are not part of some larger reproducing unit. That is not true for genes. Genes are reproduced as part of a package: the individual organism. Natural selection applies to genes, but they are not selected to replicate independently. They are selected to contribute to the reproduction of the organism.
Genes are not independent entities. They have functions within an organism. They are like cogs in a complex machine.
For example, the β-globin gene codes for a protein that is part of hemoglobin. It doesn’t make sense to think of the β-globin gene as “selfish” relative to other genes in the same organism, or relative to the organism as a whole. A β-globin gene does not try to replicate itself, or assist other replicas of itself. It just codes for a protein that is essential to the functioning of the organism. This effect contributes to reproductive fitness. Without hemoglobin, the organism would simply die; it could not reproduce. The β-globin gene is one of many genes that are necessary for the organism to reproduce. It was not selected to replicate itself independently. It was selected to contribute in a specific way to the reproduction of the organism as a whole.
If the selfish-gene theory is true, every gene in an organism has its own purpose, which conflicts with the purposes of other genes in the same organism. We would expect the organism to be a battleground of competing interests. But we don’t see that. (There are a few rare exceptions, which are discussed in the book.)
As with group-selection theory, Dawkins seems to be viewing the abstract gene not only as a social unit, but also as an organism: something that can survive or die. Again, this metaphor is misleading.
We could say that a gene is “surviving” if it has at least one existing copy in some organism, and “dead” when no copies exist. But what if a gene gives rise to a new gene that replaces it? This is analogous to a species replacing an ancestor species, such as Homo sapiens replacing Homo erectus. Suppose that the new gene only differs by one base pair out of 10,000. Do we consider the old gene to have gone extinct, even though it has many descendant copies, which differ by only one base pair?
The notion of survival is not very meaningful when applied to a gene or a species. It is meaningful for an organism, because an organism is a coherent entity, which eventually loses its coherence (dies). For organisms, there is a crisp distinction between alive and dead. There is no such distinction for species or genes.
The abstract gene is not a coherent entity, like a society or a body. It is just information that can exist in different copies. It is just a descriptive category, a type.
The selfish gene concept is simply wrong. It is based on a conceptual error. It does not explain anything. There is very little non-parental altruism in nature, and what appears to be altruism can be explained without invoking either the selfish gene concept or group-selection theory.
Group-selection theory is an intellectual trap, which many people have fallen into. Dawkins took some time to discuss this trap, and then fell into an almost identical trap, dragging his readers and an entire generation of biologists along with him.
The individual organism is a selfish reproducing machine. The gene is not a reproducing machine. It is neither selfish nor altruistic.
There are a few cases in which the reproducing unit is not what we view as the organism. There is also a lot of complexity in nature. Maybe you are thinking about bees, or sibling tolerance, or pronking, or segregation distorters. Those are all covered in the book. I don’t have room to cover them here. Likewise for all the fallacious attempts to get around the free-rider problem, such as the “green beard” mechanism. Again, all of that and more is covered in the book.
This has been a very brief debunking of the selfish gene concept. The book, Debunking the Selfish Gene, is much broader and deeper in scope. It not only debunks the selfish gene concept in more detail; it also explains the alternative to both group-selection theory and the selfish gene theory: the phenocentric theory of biological purpose. If you found this interesting, you should read the book.