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David Sloan Wilson is SUNY Distinguished Professor of Biology and Anthropology at Binghamton University in the USA. He is widely known for his fundamental contributions to evolutionary science and for explaining evolution to the general public. His books include Evolution for Everyone: How Darwin's Theory Can Change the Way We Think About Our Lives, Darwin's Cathedral: Evolution, Religion, and the Nature of Society, and Unto Others: The Evolution and Psychology of Unselfish Behaviour (with Elliott Sober). One of his key ideas is that the evolutionary theory of group selection favours co-operation and altruism. Co-operative groups lasted more successfully.

Patricia Lockwood is currently a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, UK. She is investigating the mechanisms of social cognition in health and disease. Her research investigates the psychological and neural mechanisms that underpin how we interact with other people. As part of this aim, she examines how our ability to interact with others is affected by factors such as personality, ageing and disorders of social cognition, including psychopathy and autism. Among her interests are the neurocomputational mechanisms of prosocial learning and links to empathy and the anatomy of empathy: Vicarious experience and disorders of social cognition.

Judith Lichtenberg is Professor of Philosophy and Affiliate Professor of Government at Georgetown University in the USA. She has written about international and domestic justice, moral psychology, nationalism, war, and higher education. Currently she is thinking about crime, punishment, and mass incarceration, and is teaching an ethics course at Jessup Correctional Institution in Maryland. One of her key thoughts in this discussion is that biological altruism is very different from true altruism.