ABSTRACT
In their recent examination of the units of selection problem, Elliott Sober and David Sloan Wilson (1998) argue that the importance of group selection in evolution has been obscured because of what they call the "averaging fallacy". Those who commit the averaging fallacy are prone to claim that certain selection processes are driven by purely individual-level selection, when in fact they involve at least a component of group selection. Indeed, Sober and Wilson maintain that "the controversy over group selection and altruism in biology can be largely resolved simply by avoiding the averaging fallacy" (1998: 34).
