While biologists may be suspicious of the notion of human nature, philosophers have no qualms about offering clear cut opinions. The seventeenth century english philosopher Thomas Hobbes, for instance, was convinced that people are fundamentally selfish and that true selflessness is absent in human behaviour. Anything resembling altruism is merely selfishness dressed up in fine feelings. Caught one day late in life offering charity to a beggar, he was asked whether he had not just performed a selfless act. He answered: " the man's distress distressed me and in easing him I eased myself." Certainly the concept of original sin, which is peculiar to christian civilisation, and its accompanying sense of guilt are well steeped in such thinking. It has intact had a considerable influence on western intellectual thought, and still plays an important role today even with those who do not speak from a religious perspective.
Many evolutionary theorists have long maintained that the genes which promotes selfish behaviour have a higher probability of being transmitted to coming generations. Since the carriers of such genes systematically promote their own interest over those of others, the argument goes they have a greater chance of surviving and reproducing then the altruists. Such stark claims have become more nuanced in recent years and it is now conceded that cooperative behaviour apparently altruistic, can be useful to the survival and proliferation of the species. For example, Elliott Sober a philosopher of science has shown through convincing models that isolated, selfless individuals who come into contact with only selfish and violent individuals will be taken advantage of and tend to disappear quickly. Conversely, when such altruistic group together and cooperate with one another, they have a definite evolutionary advantage over the selfish people, who also fight among themselves and therefore may slowly disappear from the population.
