Editing The Selfish Gene (section)

====Altruism====
Dawkins says that his "purpose" in writing ''The Selfish Gene'' is "to examine the biology of selfishness and altruism." He does this by supporting the claim that "gene selfishness will usually give rise to selfishness in individual behaviour. However, as we shall see, there are special circumstances in which a gene can achieve its own selfish goals best by fostering a limited form of [[altruism]] at the level of individual animals." Gene selection provides one explanation for [[kin selection]] and [[eusociality]], where organisms act altruistically, against their individual interests (in the sense of health, safety or personal reproduction), namely the argument that by helping related organisms reproduce, a gene succeeds in "helping" copies of themselves (or sequences with the same [[phenotype|phenotypic effect]]) in other bodies to replicate. The claim is made that these "selfish" actions of genes lead to unselfish actions by organisms. A requirement upon this claim, supported by Dawkins in Chapter 10: "You scratch my back, I'll ride on yours" by examples from nature, is the need to explain how genes achieve [[kin recognition]], or manage to orchestrate [[Mutualism (biology)|mutualism]] and [[coevolution]]. Although Dawkins (and biologists in general) recognize these phenomena result in more copies of a gene, evidence is inconclusive whether this success is selected for at a group or individual level. In fact, Dawkins has proposed that it is at the level of the [[The Extended Phenotype|''extended phenotype'']]:<ref name=ExPh/><ref name=Bury>
{{cite journal |author=Dawkins, Richard |title=Burying the Vehicle: Commentary |journal=Behavioral and Brain Sciences |volume=17 |number=4 |pages=616–617 |year=1994 |url=https://www.scribd.com/doc/248092678/Burying-the-Vehicle#scribd |doi=10.1017/s0140525x00036207|s2cid=143378724 }}</ref> 
:"We agree [referring to Wilson and Sober's book ''Unto others: The evolution and psychology of unselfish behavior''] that genes are replicators, organisms and groups are not. We agree that the group selection controversy ought to be a controversy about groups as vehicles, and we could easily agree to differ on the answer...I coined the [term] vehicle not to praise it but to bury it...Darwinism can work on replicators whose phenotypic effects (interactors) are too diffuse, too multi-levelled, too incoherent to deserve the accolade of vehicle...Extended phenotypes can include inanimate artifacts like beaver dams...But the vehicle is not something fundamental...Ask rather 'Is there a vehicle in this situation and, if so, why?'"
::—Richard Dawkins, ''Burying the Vehicle''

Although Dawkins agrees that groups can assist survival, they rank as a "vehicle" for survival only if the group activity is replicated in descendants, recorded in the gene, the gene being the only true replicator. An improvement in the survival lottery for the group must improve that for the gene for sufficient replication to occur. Dawkins argues qualitatively that the lottery for the gene is based upon a very long and broad record of events, and group advantages are usually too specific, too brief, and too fortuitous to change the gene lottery:
::"We can now see that the organism and the group of organisms are true rivals for the vehicle role in the story, but neither of them is even a ''candidate'' for the replicator role.  The controversy between 'individual selection' and 'group selection' is a real controversy between alternative vehicles...As it happens the outcome, in my view, is a decisive victory for the individual organism. The group is too wishy-washy an entity." 
::—Richard Dawkins, ''The Selfish Gene'', [https://books.google.com/books?id=WkHO9HI7koEC&pg=PA254 pp. 254–255]

Prior to the 1960s, it was common for altruism to be explained in terms of [[group selection]], where the benefits to the organism or even population were supposed to account for the popularity of the genes responsible for the tendency towards that behaviour. Modern versions of [[Multilevel selection theory|"multilevel selection"]] claim to have overcome the original objections,<ref name=Korb>{{cite book |title=Animal Behaviour: Evolution and Mechanisms |author=Judith Korb |chapter=§7.4—The level of selection debate: multilevel selection |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Ej953ZCO_Q8C&pg=PA195 |pages =195 ''ff'' |publisher=Springer |isbn=978-3642026232  |year=2010 |editor=Peter Kappeler}}</ref> namely, that at that time no known form of group selection led to an evolutionarily stable strategy. The claim still is made by some that it would take only a single individual with a tendency towards more selfish behaviour to undermine a population otherwise filled only with the gene for altruism towards non-kin.<ref name=PinkerS>Pinker describes the futility of the "Public Good Game" where individuals elect not to aid the group: {{cite book |title=The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature |author-link=Steven Pinker|author=Pinker, Steven |page=257 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ePNi4ZqYdVQC&pg=PA257 |isbn=9781101200322 |year=2003 |publisher=Penguin}}</ref>