Morality is Hardwired by Evolution?

Great Debates
21

I found the New Scientist article I remembered:

Moral outrage

New Scientist vol 173 issue 2325 - 12 January 2002, page Page 11
And another article that is relevant,

Together we are stronger

New Scientist vol 177 issue 2386 - 15 March 2003

Both can be seen online in the archives at www.Newscientist.com, but you have to register. It’s free for seven days, or completely free if you subscribe to the paper magazine.

The experiment they discribe is more or less as I summarised. Players in the game were allowed to invest “monetary units” into an investment pool that always returned 1.6 times the investment, but the dividend was shared equally between the players regardless of who invested what.

Equal investments gave equitable returns, but to maximise your own return you could free-ride - invest little or nothing and take your share of the dividend anyway. Other investors would find their share to be below their investments in that case.

When played openly and face to face, people tended to play fair and everyone made moderate profits. But played anonymously, cooperation disappeared as people took the oportunity to free-ride.

When the option of punishing the anonymous free-riders was introduced, at a cost to the punisher, cooperation was re-established. Players finding their return smaller than their investment would altruistically punish free riders rather than relying upon other players to do it. Fear of punishment enforced cooperation.

The experimenters claimed that a sense of “moral outrage” was built into the players. Righteous anger drove players to punish cheats even though it was personally costly to do. Whether such moral outrage is biological or cultural is debatable. The same kind of game played with primates may yield some answers!

erislover said:

“The only way I can see that this is sound is if we define moral advantage as biological advantage–something that I have found to be a perilous proposition that, in fact, runs contrary to the very morals we hold (and hence would require inconsistency in the theory–not the hallmark of profundity), and in any case begs the question to be answered which is whether this is in fact the case.”

You’ve cut to the heart of the matter. In The Origins of Virtue, Ridley described variations on “Tit for Tat.” The strategy of tit-for-tat was to cooperate with others the first time around, and then do to them what they did to you forever after. In very simple games, it proved to be the optimal strategy.

A weakness in tit-for-tat arises when you allow weighted “misunderstandings” - say one in ten cooperations is mistaken for betrayal, but only one in twenty betrayals are mistaken for cooperations. Then, tit-for-tat players become locked into cycles of retaliations that are re-established more often than they are broken.

In that case,“tit for tat” then becomes less effective than “forgiving tit for tat”, which forgives a betrayal one time in three. This allows misunderstandings to be rapidly resolved, so a population of “forgiving tit-for-tat” will be more successful than one of simple “tit-for-tat” which is torn apart by vendetta.

What I find fascinating about this is that from very simple games, a basic tenet of our morality (forgiveness) can arise as an optimal strategy. It is far from a proof that moral advantage equates to biological advantage, but it is interesting nevertheless.

Debates like these make me wish TVAA hadn’t been banned. He would champion the ultra-materialist view, which kept things lively!

22

I don’t have anything more to add, but I wanted to acknowledge the points made. Matt, that bit on the utility of forgiveness to avoid the adverse outcome of Hatfield-McCoy spirals, and thus being a selected for virtue, is wonderful!

Eris, I apologize. I think I was a bit snarkey in my response to you (on reread).

To the partiular: Evolution works on populations by way of the expression of invidual phenotypes. Including the tendency to make individual choices of certain types.

My by way of aside constructive criticism: I hope that you by now recognize that I am not exactly a poorly read fellow. If you are writing in a such a way that I can’t follow then you may want to consider that you are using more philosophicalese than the average well-read intellectual has a good command of. In certain threads, where only philosophy wonks need apply, (you can spot those by their having “ontology” or “universals” in their titles!) such is an appropriate use of short hand. I venture in forwarned to be ready to translate into commonsense speech as I go, knowing that “realism” has a different meaning in this context than in many others. But other threads require that you use common sense speech and define as you go, (if you wish to do more than have others go “Wow. He must know something because I don’t understand a word of what he just said!” anyway.)

23

It is very interesting indeed. It does make us wonder. However, I find it important to note that when an optimal strategy is realized, it can be exploited. For example, given two parties who are to cooperate, if the strategy for one is the optimized forgiving tit-for-tat, then the strategy for the other can be said to maximize betrayal without affecting overall retaliation. This is not a result most would like to produce; that is, we do not often like to encourage betrayal at all. Betrayal per se is wrong.

So if we start to equate moral advantage with biological advantage, which of the two teams is acting morally? No answer.

Well, that’s one way of putting it! Though I do miss him, I agree.

24

Ah, I didn’t read it that way. You’ve never given me any reason to think of you as snarky. I hope I have returned that kindness. :slight_smile:

Errr… yeahhh. But I think that is stretching it a bit thin. Even if one member of a population has expressed a “better” (more conducive to survival) phenotype, this is not to suggest that it will in fact cause this individual to survive better, and certainly not the group as a whole or a subset of the group to which this individual belongs. Morality does not operate analogously. For example, at any time I have a plethora of moral codes available to me from which I must select by various conscious and unconscious means. For a cultural relativist, the analogy becomes stronger–except for the little flaw that cultural relativism doesn’t hold, because within any culture there are significant dissidents. (Any history book should demonstrate this beyond a reasonable doubt ;)). We don’t get to have it both ways in the sense of culture selecting morals, but also not selecting morals because cultural mores change due to those dissidents.

To see the difference more clearly: at any time, I have a set of moral codes that I may select from (or synthesize myself), yet the same is not true for biological matters. I only have, biologically, what I was given. Now, in some unspecified future where I can alter my own genetics, this conversation will definitely become more interesting.

Never thought otherwise. :slight_smile:

It is my failing. I sacrifice legibility for conciseness because I am so very tired of nitpickers. However, as a context from which to view my previous post, it is simply that I am comparing two possible entailments that would express the idea that there is a relationship between morality and biology. First, I consider that morality entails survival; that is, the notion that if we are acting morally we will survive, thus putting a link in that direction. The last paragraph then considers the other notion, that survival entails morality; that is, the notion that if we are surviving then we are acting morally. My post was meant to demonstrate that neither of these are true, and that even if they were, an evolutionary perspective on morality would not be able to account for the facts of the matter.

I never wish to come off that way, believe me. I have been wrong enough times privately and publically and on this board certainly that it is never my aim to make my points by hiding behind obscurity. When I see I am wrong I admit it right away. But the less I complicate things, the more I sacrifice accuracy and open myself up to nitpicking–it can’t be both ways. Either someone talks technically in an attempt to provide as much conciseness as is possible on a message board, or a point is made more easy to digest while suggesting things that are open to extreme criticism. I will back off the technical matters of morality some to clear up my previous post, but please keep that in mind before you jump on an incorrectly stated proposition. :slight_smile:

25

I haven’t time to read the thread right now but let me also suggest The Moral Animal by Robert Wright. It deals with many of these things; the parts that I found most interesting was where he attempts to discover a “base” human condition by comparisons of thousands of different human cultures and dozens of primate cultures. He comes up with some very general rules (like tit-for-tat, power seeking, polygyny, and a few others) and comes up with how they are behind very specific characteristics of both individual psychology and modern cultural practices.

26

Eris,

I know that your intent is not to dazzle em with BS. The fact that I’ve so often taken the time to reread until I comprehend your points is the best evidence I can offer that I think the ideas in there are worthwhile … even if I often disagree! Heck, before geting into some of your threads, I thought epistemology was a bad pronounciation of what Public Health is all about.

I think that we are not too far off from agreement in this case. Morality (that which we consider right and wrong, which may or may not have a 100% correlation with some independent objective universal standard of the same) is a product of both biological selection and cultural evolution of societal organisms that takes advantage of those biologic tendencies. And of course the slower genetic response to the new environment created by the cultural changes. Within the societal organism individuals respond according to that which they have been endowed with, their own experiences, and their own synthesis of those factors. They may come on a new strategy or a modification of current strategies, that can propagate throught the society. Or be sent off to a labor camp.

Morality is in this “particular” sense is merely that standard for determining right and wrong that a particular individual or group of individuals (society) consistently utilize and believe represent some more universal value. Within a society someone who utilizes a standard significantly different from the majority of others risks the cost of being punished, being considered insane, or becoming a prophet and having their views become a new standard in the future. The strategies created may themselves not be “moral” according to of the standards themselves. And we only hope that there is a universal of morality that we have well approximated by this process.

27

Now, what I agree here is that this is an account of what happened. It might even serve as an explanation of the development of morality. But what good does it do me, a moral agent, in deciding what to do? Is there an analogous atavism available to morality? For example, could choices that once served to promote the species (and were, by hypothesis, more moral) no longer be applicable? Or could choices that are now not helping anything worth removing? As a moral agent, how I am to use this evolutionary perspective to make a moral choice? This was one of my criticisms to the previously mentioned TVAA who often promoted this view. Yet I have never found an answer as to why the question is improper; or, if it is proper, how we are to use this perspective to answer it.

Yet it is precisely these dissidents that shape the ever-changing cultures! Without them culture stagnates. And we do not see much historical evidence of stagnation over time. So how do we explain this anomoly?

So what of atavism? How have we ruled it out? This evolutionary perspective seems to strongly support various moral relativisms, not anything like a universal perspective, any more than biological evolution creates the best being (i.e.-biological complexity is not a measure of value per se). Now, I am fond of moral relativisms myself, but that is neither here nor there.

28

None. But still an interesting question. Like universals, eh?

It doesn’t preclude an extant objective morality (on the other side of the screen); it is the mechanics of how this current one that we percieve came into existence. Certainly it dovetails with philosphies of moral relativism but it is not proof of such. God could have used this as the means to create these morals within us. Not being a fan of moral relativism, I choose to believe that there is an absolute morality even while being a fan of evolutionary psychology as the means of moral ontogeny, and thus logically am I a soft theist.

As to the role of dissidents to alter societal norms: I did include the possibilty of being a prophet. Like other concepts, our concept of what is moral evolves with time. Others take the ideas and translate them into new domains, rotate them, transform them. And society changes as a result. And judges past societal norms as immoral.

I am not quite sure what atavism has to do with it though.

29

Touche! :smiley:

Is it, though? Because morality does deal with individual choices. How do they make these choices? How do we account for dissidents if society is the selective agent? Biologically speaking, different genes may be expressed without undermining the species, and thus there would be competition among them internally on, one presumes, biological matters. But this is not the same for society as a selective agent which is not encumbered by such niceties. It can go out of its way to find difference–including biological difference. (Here we see how the two may interact, and how we might be begging the question. Might be.)

Absolutely. But the comparison is interesting.

Right, clearly this is so. Yet this means society isn’t strictly the selective agent, because it does show a preference in these matters, yet they persist. A deeper analysis is necessary, and I think this deeper analysis will have to let go of the evolutionary perspective to retain consistency and be constructive.

Well, I’m going to assume we’ve got the biological form of atavism down and proceed with atavism in an evolutional morality perspective. My point is that since society is changing, we can’t (as far as I can tell) suggest that what was once morally proper, but no longer is, won’t occur again. This goes to work against universal morality (a sort of teleology when we’re under evolutionary analogies) and also works against any particular thing being moral–for how are we to know this isn’t the time to bring back slavery (for example)? As an individual and as a society it leaves us no way to properly select morals because anything we currently hold might be atavistically invalid–and how will we know until we try?

30

If morality is hardwired then all would be moral. The premise is faulty.
Tit for tat produces constant war and turmoil.
Morality comes from the spiritual presence within each being.

Nothing in the way of behaviour is hardwired. I know some scientists have tried to promote this idea by brain mapping. If fact this spoof is wide spread, but false.

http://ndeweb.com/info02.htm

Love

31

It may be a generalization,but only a false generalization when there are cases of it being untrue. I am unaware of any.

I agree, but at some point the point would be reached at which it would be more cost effective to spend the money on law enforcement, aid to people here at home, and we can’t be spending no money on roads, and space exploration for when the earth becomes uninhabitable.

Which I focused on. There are certainly plenty of underfed people, but they are not in danger of dying. Unless you can point me to a country where people are currently dying of hunger, and they would be free to receive food, but no one is offering them food.

Now, if the people are underfed rather than starving, it then becomes a question of whether to spend the extra money to send extra food for them, which will help their health marginally (if not overdone, of course, too much can be as bad or worse than too little), but also possibly help to support an unfree nation by subsidizing their budget.