Conceptualizing Social Behaviour

Hamilton classified social behaviours by the sign of their effects on the reproductive success of the actor and the recipient, leading to a four-part schema that categorizes behaviour as altruistic, selfish, mutually beneficial, or spiteful. While broadly endorsing Hamilton’s approach, this chapter argues that we should categorize social behaviour in terms of the selection processes that have maintained the behaviour in recent evolutionary history. Given its close affinity with a recent history theory of function, this approach faces objections that parallel the well-known objections to that theory, but parallel responses are also available. This chapter further argues that the classification of an action should be (i) strategy-relative and (ii) task-relative.