Group selection and individual selection are just two of the selection processes that have played important roles in evolution. There also is selection within individual organisms (intragenomic conflict), and selection among multi-species communities (an idea that now is getting attention in work on the human microbiome). All four of these levels of selection find a place in multi-level selection theory.

The rabid opposition to group selection has now considerably subsided. In the process, the conceptual structure of evolutionary theory has become clearer, as have the relationships that connect different theoretical approaches.

It can be a necessary conceptual truth that pains are painful without this ruling out the physicalist thesis that immaterial minds are impossible or the thesis that conscious states supervene on physical states. The necessity involved in these claims is nomological necessity, not metaphysical necessity (assuming that these are different).

When I was in high school I found literature and history interesting, but science not at all. Literature and history obviously involved thinking, but science seemed to be all about memorizing facts and doing mindless calculations.

I have spent a lot of time arguing that the theory of group selection is not the stupid, pernicious doctrine that many biologists once claimed it to be. The theory is not just conceptually coherent; there are adaptations out there in nature (like reduced virulence in some viruses) that evolved because there was group selection.

Just as thought experiments can't show that vitalism is true (or that it is false), they also can't show that dualism is true (or that it is false).

"Simpler is always better" is an overstatement.