Evolution and Ethics

Great Debates
21

A “social instinct”, in my opinion, must be considered separately from “ethics”. Instincts are behaviors which have been fine-tuned by natural selection. Ethics are subjective judgments applied to behaviors – judgments of what is “right” or “wrong”. There is no “rightness” to herding; it is simply viable as a survival strategy. There is no “rightness” to cooperation; again, it is simply a viable survival strategy. It is this judgment, as applied to specific behaviors, that does not have a biological, thus evolutionary, component.

As for the sacrifice bit, I’m not aware of any speicies (aside from humans) wherein an individual will willingly sacrifice its ability to reproduce (or live) for the benefit of any non-related individuals. Maternal care is an example of an instinct which allows a mother to sacrifice herself in an effort to protect her offspring; such might still allow the mother’s genes to perpetuate, thus representing a viable evolutionary strategy. Sacrificing oneself for another’s offspring tends not to have this benefit, unless a complex social structure is already in place with an assumed “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours” sort of thing going. Or, in this case, “I’ll sacrifice myself for your kids if you sacrifice yourself for mine.” This is about the only circumstance I can conceive (and I freely admit that this does not rule out other possibilities) which would yield an evolutionary benefit, which would therefore allow it to have arisen as a result of evolution. Such a relationship I doubt exists outside of humans.

22

What the hell are you people talking about?

23

This seems like a contradiction. How does society decide what is right and wrong, if not by consensus–i.e., majority?

24

This seems like a contradiction. How does society decide what is right and wrong, if not by consensus–i.e., majority?

25

(Sorry for the double post)
An awful lot has been said since I last got a chance to post. Obviously, some people understand and/or agree with some things, while others do not.

(That’s what makes it fun!)

Ben–

I think there is a difference, to some people, between counting and morality. For at least some among us, morality is something that transcends numbers. One could be numerically illeterate, but one would still be obligated to act morally.

I did read the FAQ, with my questions in mind. So I will get specific:
“As for morality, I once again must say that atheism and Christianity do not differ on this point. Whether or not God exists, everyone has the same ultimate fate”

This is utterly true–if one assumes that the Christian’s belief about the afterlife do not affect his behavior. If the Christian believes, deeply enough to impact his behaviour, that Christians go to Heaven and athiests go to Hell, that beleif is an extra motivator which athiests do not have. (BTW, not saying athiests are immoral, only that the argument is unsound.)

“Personally, I think that killing people is inherently wrong.” Great. But, if it really comes down to personally, there is nothing to condemn me if I kill people. I think I’m right, you think you’re right, we’re all even and there is, in the end, no difference. Niether of us is more wrong.

There can only be a difference between our two, self-justified, positions if there is a yardstick against we are measured. That is not personally, though.

26

Hamish–

Oops. You missed the idea.

I did not even mean the society had to be humans. You said, “Might this deal with overpopulation? Possibly, but it certainly isn’t ethical.” The idea being expressed was under the theory that ethics only reflect long-term survival strategies that we somehow learned. These aliens learned different survival strategies, i.e. ethics.

You make assertions about what is ethical and what is not. This indicates that you believe there is an absoloute standard of morality, meaning that “evolutionary ancestors” were either (A) immoral, or (B) held to your standard of morality. A third choice, © ‘while they were animals, they were exempt; then they became humans and had to behave right,’ is a very tricky position to hold. At least one person here seems to hold it, but I can’t start that argument now.

27

Do even humans qualify here? Or are the few behaviors that seem entirely noble with no personal gene benefit exceptions that proof the rule? Situations in which the behavior was selected because, on the whole, it confered a selective genetic advantage, even if in a particular contrived situation it does not?

BTW, the sociobiologists and evolutionary psychologists aproach altruism in two ways: kin selection - altruistic behaviors that advantage relatives and indirectly encourage the genes to survive to reproduce another day; and reciporcal altruism - your “I’ll scratch yours …” paradigm. And indeed it is noted that the latter mandates enough processing power to recognize individuals and detect (and punish) cheaters. Some posit that the game of attempting to cheat the system and of building better cheater detectors, is what was the prime driver of early humanoid brain growth.

Ethics and morality can be well explained as having evolved according to “selfish gene” principles. But so what?

For all any of us know, God (or gods) used evolution as the means to imbue us with senses of morals and ethics. Such speculation is not a matter of science; it is a matter of religious faith. Is there Good and Evil (absolutes) or just good and evil (moral relativism)? There is no scientific approach to answer this question. I believe the former, that Hitler would still be evil even if he had won WW2 and all left alive agreed with him. And to me such a belief mandates theism (in a very abstract way). Or to put it another way: I fear that there is no absolute morality and I pray that there is. But such is matter independent of empiricism. I respect that others reach other conclusions.

kabloomie, you might enjoy reading some past threads that seem to be related to your main theme: What are “myths”? What is “insanity”? In both the bottom line is that it is relative to where you are standing. If you are within a society that shares your belief structure then it is no myth, it is your shared belief about how the world works. No matter how crazy the version of reality may seem to those outside the belief structure, those within it are not crazy within the structure’s confines. It is only insanity, only mythology, when viewed from without.

28

As Darwin’s Finch pointed out, a self-sacrifice trait is selected against unless it results in a higher overall fitness for the individual that was sacrificed (meaning more of that individual’s genes were spread because of the sacrifice than would have been if he/she had not made that sacrifice). Thus such a moral trait is not evolutionarily sound when it involves saving the lives of people that are not your relatives and do not help your relatives in turn.

As I pointed out in my last post, it appears to me that morality is actually a bad thing that will be selected against in the long run. It is my opinion that our superior intelligence as a species is such a spectacular trait that it is actually making up for the flaw of morality that we posses. Morality is probably a relatively new thing. How long have large human societies existed? Less than 10,000 years. That really is not enough time for evolution to work. If morality was a truly horrible trait it could cause extinction in 10,000 years, but it is not that severe a problem. It may help lead to our long-term demise, but we have been able to overcome it effects so far.

I see how certain moral traits benefit the species (such as not killing off every human you see), but there are others that seem to be in very poor taste from an evolutionary perspective. Can you tell me how exactly it is beneficial to grant medical care to people born with extremely debilitating genetic disorders so that they can live long enough to breed and pass the trait on to others? Letting these people die is considered amoral by many but is a much wiser choice if we have the good of the species at heart. This is true for a great number of genetic traits. Modern medicine has allowed large numbers of genetically weak individuals to survive to breeding age and pass their traits on to others. As long as we have the medicine it may not matter, but if a catastrophe occurs and our societies are greatly disrupted, our morality may have helped lead us to extinction. We are the only species on earth intelligent enough to know how evolution works and yet we actually commit large numbers of acts that serve to lower the quality of our species. Many of these acts are performed in the name of morality.

I should point out that I am not advocating change (i.e. I am not saying we should prevent genetically inferior specimens from breeding), but I am saying that the morality that you and I posses make us genetically weaker than a person that is unhindered by morality. A person that has no moral code whatsoever, yet has the intelligence and wisdom to know how to get along well in a society, is genetically superior to a moral individual and will win the evolutionary game in the long run.

29

This is actually the argument which I am taking a position against: morality is independent of evolution. Morality is a cultural or societal development which works, neither for the good of the species nor to its peril, but for the good of society. The point or morality is not to achieve genetic superiority, or the continuation of the species, but rather the continuation and advancement of society! Evolution, of course has no such (or, indeed, any) goal (thus my earlier remark about society being much more Lamarckian in nature than Darwinian).

My position is the allegedly rare #3 of the OP: ethics (or morality) did not evolve, nor are they invalid. They were a necessary development (or “invention”, if you will) in order to move beyond a primitive, “herd”-type society; that is, beyond the point where living in groups constitutes a mere survival advantage. And our evolved intelligence allowed us to conceptualize the need for this invention.

As morals change, societies change. But our evolution remains independent from whether, for example, we view killing another of our kind as “wrong”, or in what situations we may accept it as “right”. The realization and conceptualization of our own mortality, I believe, has more to do with the development of morality than anything else.

30

Hmmm…I think I need to clarify that first sentence:

The quoted part is the sort of argument I am against (that of morality having evolutionary implications, or there being any cause-effect relationship between the two). My position is that morality is independent of evolution. Maybe I should have used a semi-colon instead of a colon up there.

Sorry for any confusion.

31

I am not sure how confusing my post was so I will clarify as well. I do not believe that morality evolved, but that it is a new thing that arose in recent history (i.e. 10,000 years ago or less) and has not yet had a chance to be effected by evolution. I believe many of our current moral actions lower fitness, though I also believe that morality is a learned behavior, not a genetic one. So no person, no matter how moral their parents were, is more likely to be moral because of genetic reasons. However, moral parents are more likely to teach their children to be moral and therefore it spreads in a similar fashion. Though I do not believe morality is genetic, I do believe that some of our moral choices have caused us to lower the quality of the human gene pool and that may indeed have evolutionary effects.

I agree with you that morality exists for social reasons and not for evolutionary reasons, but I see morality as having a negative effect on the gene pool by allowing weaker specimens to survive and breed.

32

Under the evolutionar model, every species trait will be “punished” or “rewarded” by the behaviour of the species. I can’t recall that anyone ever said we couldn’t have evolved a group survival instinct. I don’t know the arguments on this topic, but it seems that trying to keep your race alive is no more abstract than trying to keep your offspring alive. If some mutation enabled the mokeys to start trying for group survival rather than individual survival, wouldn’t that constitute morality?

(Note: by “group survival” I mean the self-sacrificing or at lest self-repressing traits that are associated with morality, not the ability to find greater self-preservation in a herd setting.)

33

The main argument against group selection is that selfish individuals will have higher overall fitness than altruistic individuals. The selfish individuals get the same benefits as all other individuals yet do not commit altruistic behavior (e.g. self-sacrifice) and therefore bypass the fitness penalty that altruistic individuals experience due to their actions. Over time, selfish individuals will out-perform altruistic individuals and so altruistic individuals are eventually weeded out.

There are two main ways altruistic genes can survive. One way is for selfish individuals to experience a fitness penalty that is caused by the other individuals of its species. For example, if selfish individuals are ostracized from the group and therefore are unable to find partners to breed with, their selfish genes may not survive. An example of this is the way that rapists are treated in our society. Rape is a very beneficial act for males to commit, but due to the fact that we tend to abort fetuses caused by rape and then jail or execute the rapists, rape carries an unnatural fitness penalty that makes it a poor trait.

The other main way for altruistic genes to survive is unique to humans. Due to the fact that we understand how evolution works and yet we still do not care, anyone can have high fitness in our species. For example, people rarely have anywhere near the maximum number of children they could possibly have in their lifetime. If a human wanted to “win” at evolution and lived in America he/she could simply produce as many children as he/she was able and then let child protective services or adoption agencies take care of them. Since we have a very high survival rate in America and since our society is willing to take care of anyone that needs help, it is not actually necessary to take care of your own children the way that most species have to. If a person with an altruistic trait decided that they would attempt to “win” at evolution, they could breed like crazy. The altruistic trait is still a flaw, but the decision to breed more than anyone else overcame that flaw.

All that having been said, it could be said that group survival genes constitute morality, but since group survival genes tend to lose out in the long run, it is more likely that morality is a new thing that will be weeded out by evolution over time than that morality is something we have evolved into and will continue to experience for the rest of our species’ time.

34

“Altruistic genes” are simply those which increase the fitness of another at the expense of one’s own. They are not genes which dictate morality (indeed, biological altruism is itself independent of morality, as I have been arguing all along). A beneficial survival strategy has no inherent “goodness” attached to it.

We, as humans, may have decided that such behaviors as increase the fitness of others (regardless of effect towards our own fitness) are to be admired and propagated, but that decision was not the result of evolution any more than is my decision to write this post. Human compassion is more complicated than “mere” altruism.

35

Darwin’s Finch:

I can easily see where altruistic genes are more than morality, but I can’t yet see your justification for saying that morality isn’t an altruistic genetic trait.

And, to me, it seems that if you say morality was an invention we begot when we became smart enough (which was a function of evolution), how is morality not a function of evolution? Or will this set of a big free-will debate?

36

It is as I said before: some form of morality is undoubtedly necessary for the advancement of a society or a culture, not a species. Our moral fiber, such as it may exist, has no bearing on how we evolve, or have evolved.

Altruistic genes represent a strategy for survival. That, in and of itself, does not constitute a system of morality. There is no judgment of "good’ or “evil” in the desire to survive. It is when we wish to move beyond mere survival that we have to start establishing which behaviors are “acceptable” and which ones are not. And, it should be obvious that what is acceptable is often determined by time and place, as well as who is doing the determining. Morals are, consequently, rather subjective in nature.

And being a product of our intelligence does not make morality a function of evolution, any more than our ability to build skyscrapers (also a product of our intelligence) is a product of evolution.

37

Darwin, I can see your point, but still disagree some.

Biologic selection operates on a fairly slow scale. It selected for traits such as guilt, the desire for approval, the desire for retribution, compassion, altruism, and a variety of other drives. Many of these traits coevolved with social structures, in response to them, and allowing for them.

Once coherent social structures developed then selection could work on that organismal level. Those societies which developed belief systems that exploited those individual traits such that the fitness of the society was increased, prospered. As you have pointed out, cultural evolution is often Lamarckian and also is much quicker to result in wholesale changes than is genetic selection. Societies which were more fit grew. That is the defintion of fitness at this level, growth. And the currency of cultural evolution is not genes, but ideas. Ideas which are translated and rotated across domains, twisted into new shapes for new purposes. A society can grow by keeping its members alive and birthing more of them (the tribal model). Or by recruiting new members (by conversion or take-over model). It doesn’t need to do both to be fit. Ethics, morality, and religion as a whole, clearly increased the fitness of societies. (That doesn’t mean that each society’s ethics and moralities were the same.) But some attempts were more fit than others.

Let’s illustrate:

The Essenes were a Jewish cult extant around the time of Christ. Strict celibacy and living according to strict laws. They produced no new members and converted too few to survive. They fade away sometime after the destruction of the second temple. Their ideas of ethics, of right and wrong, do not form the basis of what followed. Not a very fit group.

Chistianity came along and also promoted celibacy for at least one segment of its membership … some of its best and brightest. Yet because it came with a package that resulted in converts (adoption by the Roman empire helped!) it grew. The values base of Christianity influenced the morals of the rest of the world to follow. From the perspective of the societal organism, it was very fit. That idea of Christianity, including the conversion of whole societies, was hybridized across the world. It was morphed some with time and individual varieties have exploited particular niches.

This cultural evolution can run contrary to genetic selection because of it relatively rapid timescale.

So, in the one sense, I’d agree that morality is not entirely directly a result of gentic selection on individuals, but it is a result of it nevertheless, just with the selection occurring in a self-similar manner at a different level of competition, at the level of the societal organism.

BTW, I haven’t used the word memes, mainly because I think that the idea is a bit rigid in its gene metaphor. It is important to appreciate how the ideas change as they go through the geometric transformations in time and across domains. I don’t think memes acknowledges that.

38

If Evolution > Intelligence > Skyscrapers, then skyscrapers are a second-degree product of Evolution. If Evolution > Intelligence > Morality, than morality is a second-degree product of Evolution. However, if morality is an ever-existant, never changing Principle (as some believe), then morality has no relation to evolution.

If a strong society increases evolutionary fitness, and a strong society requires morality, morality beomes an evolutionary commodity.