Evolution of morality
The concept of the evolution of morality refers to the emergence of human moral behavior over the course of
Animal sociality
Though other animals may not possess what humans may perceive as moral behavior, all social animals have had to modify or restrain their behaviors for group living to be worthwhile. Typical examples of behavioral modification can be found in the societies of
The basic reason that social animals live in groups is that opportunities for survival and reproduction are much better in groups than living alone. The social behaviors of mammals are more familiar to humans. Highly social mammals such as primates and elephants have been known to exhibit traits that were once thought to be uniquely human, like empathy and altruism.[3][4]
Primate sociality
Humanity's closest living relatives are
- attachment and bonding, cooperation and mutual aid, sympathy and empathy, direct and indirect reciprocity, altruism and reciprocal altruism, conflict resolution and peacemaking, deception and deception detection, community concern and caring about what others think about you, and awareness of and response to the social rules of the group.[7]
Shermer argues that these premoral sentiments evolved in primate societies as a method of restraining individual selfishness and building more cooperative groups. For any social species, the benefits of being part of an altruistic group should outweigh the benefits of individualism. For example, lack of
Period years ago | Society type | Number of individuals |
---|---|---|
6,000,000 | Bands | 10s |
100,000–10,000 | Bands | 10s–100s |
10,000–5,000 | Tribes | 100s–1,000s |
5,000–4,000 | Chiefdoms | 1,000s–10,000s |
4,000–3,000 | States | 10,000s–100,000s |
3,000–present | Empires | 100,000–1,000,000s |
All social animals have societies in which each member knows its own place.[
Animals such as Capuchin monkeys[11] and dogs[12] also display an understanding of fairness, refusing to co-operate when presented unequal rewards for the same behaviors.
Chimpanzees live in
Adaptive valley of disgust at cruel individual altruism
Some evolutionary biologists and
Punishment problems
While groups may benefit from avoiding certain behaviors, those harmful behaviors have the same effect regardless of whether the offending individuals are aware of them or not.[15] Since the individuals themselves can increase their reproductive success by doing many of them, any characteristics that entail impunity are positively selected by evolution.[16] Specifically punishing individuals aware of their breach of rules would select against the ability to be aware of it, precluding any coevolution of both conscious choice and a sense of it being the basis for moral and penal liability in the same species.[17]
Human social intelligence
The social brain hypothesis, detailed by R.I.M Dunbar in the article The Social Brain Hypothesis and Its Implications for Social Evolution, supports the fact that the brain originally evolved to process factual information. The brain allows an individual to recognize patterns, perceive speech, develop strategies to circumvent ecologically-based problems such as foraging for food, and also permits the phenomenon of color vision. Furthermore, having a large brain is a reflection of the large cognitive demands of complex social systems. It is said that in humans and primates the neocortex is responsible for reasoning and consciousness. Therefore, in social animals, the neocortex came under intense selection to increase in size to improve social cognitive abilities. Social animals, such as humans are capable of two important concepts, coalition formation, or group living, and tactical deception, which is a tactic of presenting false information to others. The fundamental importance of animal social skills lies within the ability to manage relationships and in turn, the ability to not just commit information to memory, but manipulate it as well.[18] An adaptive response to the challenges of social interaction and living is theory of mind. Theory of mind as defined by Martin Brüne, is the ability to infer another individual's mental states or emotions.[19] Having a strong theory of mind is tied closely with possessing advanced social intelligence. Collectively, group living requires cooperation and generates conflict. Social living puts strong evolutionary selection pressures on acquiring social intelligence due to the fact that living in groups has advantages. Advantages to group living include protection from predators and the fact that groups in general outperform the sum of an individual's performance. But, from an objective point of view, group living also has disadvantages, such as, competition from within the group for resources and mates. This sets the stage for something of an evolutionary arms race from within the species.
Within populations of social animals, altruism, or acts of behavior that are disadvantageous to one individual while benefiting other group members, has evolved. This notion seems to be contradictory to evolutionary thought, due to the fact that an organism's fitness and success is defined by its ability to pass genes on to the next generation. According to E. Fehr, in the article, The Nature of Human Altruism, the evolution of altruism can be accounted for when kin selection and inclusive fitness are taken into account; meaning reproductive success is not just dependent on the number of offspring an individual produces, but also the number of offspring that related individuals produce.[20] Outside of familial relationships altruism is also seen, but in a different manner typically defined by the prisoner's dilemma, theorized by John Nash. The prisoner's dilemma serves to define cooperation and defecting with and against individuals driven by incentive, or in Nash's proposed case, years in jail. In evolutionary terms, the best strategy to use for the prisoner's dilemma is tit-for-tat. In the tit-for-tat strategy, an individual should cooperate as long others are cooperating, and not defect until another individual defects against them. At their core, complex social interactions are driven by the need to distinguish sincere cooperation and defection.
Brune details that theory of mind has been traced back to primates, but it is not observed to the extent that it is in the modern human. The emergence of this unique trait is perhaps where the divergence of the modern human begins, along with our acquisition of language. Humans use metaphors and imply much of what we say. Phrases such as, "You know what I mean?" are not uncommon and are direct results of the sophistication of the human theory of mind. Failure to understand another's intentions and emotions can yield inappropriate social responses and are often associated with human mental conditions such as
Evolution of religion
Psychologist Matt J. Rossano muses that religion emerged after morality and built upon morality by expanding the social scrutiny of individual behavior to include supernatural third-party agents. By including ever watchful ancestors, spirits and gods in the social realm, humans discovered an effective strategy for restraining selfishness and building more cooperative groups.[21] The adaptive value of religion would have enhanced group survival.[22][23]
Wason selection task
In an experiment where subjects must demonstrate abstract, complex reasoning, researchers have found that humans (as has been seen in other animals) have a strong innate ability to reason about social exchanges. This ability is believed to be intuitive, since the logical rules do not seem to be accessible to the individuals for use in situations without moral overtones.[24]
Emotion
See also
- Animal faith
- Evolutionary ethics
- The Origins of Virtue
- Moral foundations theory
- Moral progress
- Moral realism
- Science of morality
- Triune ethics theory
- Veneer theory
References
- ISBN 978-0-674-48525-9.
- ^ Wade, Nicholas (July 15, 2008). "Taking a Cue From Ants on Evolution of Humans". The New York Times. Retrieved 2008-08-27.
- CiteSeerX 10.1.1.669.4360.
- ^ ISBN 1-475-91933-6.
- ^ King, Barbara J. (15 August 2008). "Barbara J. King - What Binti Jua Knew". The Washington Post.
- ISBN 0-385-52155-3.[page needed]
- ISBN 978-0-8050-7520-5.
- PMID 18376667.
- PMID 17849015.
- S2CID 4354558.
- ^ "Monkey research : monkeys show sense of justice". www.primates.com.
- PMID 19064923.
- ISBN 978-3-319-19670-1.
- S2CID 146760529.
- ^ Nietzsche, Friedrich (1886). Beyond Good and Evil.[page needed]
- ^ Dawkins, Richard (1979). Twelve misunderstandings of kin selection.[page needed]
- ^ Schreier, Herb; Rosenthal, Miriam; Pyeritz, Reed; Miller, Larry; Madansky, Chuck; Lewontin, Richard C.; Leeds, Anthony; Inouye, Hiroshi; Hubbard, Ruth; Gould, Steven; Duncan, Margaret; Culver, David; Chorover, Steven; Beckwith, Jon; Beckwith, Barbara; Allen, Elizabeth. "Against 'Sociobiology'".
- S2CID 21495059.
- ^ S2CID 14104858.
- S2CID 4305295.
- S2CID 1585551.
- ^ Wade, Nicholas (20 March 2007). "Scientist Finds the Beginnings of Morality in Primate Behavior". The New York Times.
- ^ Rutherford, M. (2007). "The evolution of morality". Groundings. 1.
- ^ Dean, Tim (October 2007). "The science of good and evil". Cosmos. No. 17. Archived from the original on 2012-05-06. Retrieved 2010-06-19.
- PMID 19586243.
Further reading
- Christopher Boehm (2012). Moral Origins: The Evolution of Virtue, Altruism, and Shame. Basic Books. ISBN 978-0465020485.
- Frans de Waal (2014). The Bonobo and the Atheist: In Search of Humanism Among the Primates. W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 978-0393347791.
- Virginia Morell (2013). Animal Wise: The Thoughts and Emotions of Our Fellow Creatures. Crown Publishers. ISBN 978-0307461445.
- Joyce, Richard (2007). The evolution of morality. MIT press. ISBN 978-0-262-10112-7.
External links
- Evolution of Morality on PhilPapers
- Richard Dawkins video clip on morality
- Marc Hauser, Evolution of a Universal Moral Grammar, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
- Is morality innate? Brief video clip that examines whether infants have a sense or morality. This video is no longer available because the YouTube account associated with this video has been terminated.
- Jonathan Haidt on the Five foundations of morality
- Peter Swirski. "You'll Never Make a Monkey Out of Me or Altruism, Proverbial Wisdom, and Bernard Malamud's God's Grace." American Utopia and Social Engineering in Literature, Social Thought, and Political History. New York, Routledge, 2011.