Comparing and integrating biological and cultural moral progress. (original) (raw)
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Biological and cultural evolution of morality: the delusion of progress
Revista de Filosofía Fundamental, 2022
Life evolves; it does not progress. Morality is transformed; it does not progress. These sentences summarize two ideas we have been developing on biological evolution and its relationship with the origin and transformations of morality within cultural evolution. Our argument stands in contrast to assertions supporting the idea of moral progress. In general terms, the objective of this essay is to argue in favor of the idea that the human being’s moral sense is an accidental and historical characteristic, developed through processes of biological and cultural evolution, and subject to a continuous process of diversification. Resulting from biological diversification, the phenomenon of morality increases its diversification within the various cultural spaces where the history of all the different human groups has taken place. Neither the biological nor the cultural process is exempt from historicity, divergence or an accidental nature and therefore cannot be considered progressive.
The Evolution of Morality and its Rollback
According to most Evolutionary Psychologists, human moral attitudes are rooted in cognitive modules that evolved in the Stone Age to solve problems of social interaction. A crucial component of their view is that such cognitive modules remain unchanged since the Stone Age, and I question that here. I appeal to evolutionary rollback, the phenomenon where an organ becomes non-functional and eventually atrophies or disappears - e.g. cave-dwelling fish losing their eyes. I argue that even if cognitive modules evolved in the Stone Age to solve problems of social interaction, conditions since then have favoured rollback of those modules. This is because there are institutions that solve those problems - e.g. legal systems. Moreover, evidence suggests that where external resources are available to perform cognitive tasks, humans often use them instead of internal ones. In arguing that Stone Age cognitive modules are unchanged, Evolutionary Psychologists say that evolutionary change is necessarily slow, and that there is high genetic similarity between human populations worldwide. I counter-argue that what is necessarily slow is the building-up of complex mechanisms. Undoing this can be much quicker. Moreover, rollback of cognitive mechanisms need not require any genetic change. Finally, I argue that cross-cultural similarity in some trait need not be rooted in genetic similarity. This is not intended as decisive evidence that rollback has occurred. To finish, I suggest ways we might decide whether moral attitudes are likely to be rooted in unchanged Stone Age modules, given that I have argued that cross-cultural similarity is not enough.
The evolution of moral progress and biomedical moral enhancement
Bioethics, 2019
In The Evolution of Moral Progress Allen Buchanan and Russell Powell advance an evolutionary explanation of moral progress by morality becoming more ‘inclusivist’. We are prepared to accept this explanation as far as it goes, but argue that it fails to explain how morality can become inclusivist in the fuller sense they intend. In fact, it even rules out inclusivism in their intended sense of moral progress, since they believe that human altruism and prosocial attitudes are essentially parochial. We also respond to their charge that the possibility of moral enhancement by biomedical means that we have defended in numerous publications assumes that moral attitudes are biologically hard‐wired to an extent that implies that they are resilient to the influence of cognitive or cultural factors. Quite the contrary, we think they are more open to such influence than they seem to do.
Moral diversity is often dismissed as being something to explain away en route to discovering the correct answers to moral questions, particularly by those who adopt a realist metaethical perspective. In this thesis I argue that moral diversity is actually far more interesting than this perspective might suggest, and that understanding the causes and dynamics of moral diversity can tell us something about the nature of morality itself. I draw on the tools of evolutionary biology, game theory and moral psychology to give an account of the existence and variation of moral and norms, and how they change over time. I argue that morality can be seen as a kind of cultural technology, the function of which is to help solve the problems of social living in order to facilitate prosocial and cooperative behaviour. However, the optimal solutions to the problems of social living depend on the state of the physical and social environments in which those solutions operate. As such, few, if any, norms or attitudes optimally satisfy the function of morality in every environment. Furthermore, the existence of other norms or attitudes within an environment effectively alters that environment such as to impact the success of other norms and attitudes, introducing another element of dynamism to moral systems. I call this phenomenon “moral ecology.” I also argue that these dynamics have influenced the evolution of our moral psychology, introducing another source of diversity into moral attitudes. This picture of morality suggests that moral diversity is not just an artefact of ignorance, error or bias but is a by-product of the inherent complexity of social living in a wide range of physical and social environments.
Complex animal societies are most successful if members minimise harms caused to one another and if collaboration occurs. In order to promote this, a moral structure inevitably develops. Hence, morality has evolved in humans and in many other species. The attitudes which people have towards other humans and individuals of other species are greatly affected by this biologically based morality. The central characteristic of religions is a structure which supports a moral code, essentially the same one in all religions. A key obligation to others is to help to promote their good welfare and to avoid causing them to have poor welfare. Human views as to which individuals should be included in the category of those to whom there are moral obligations have broadened as communication and knowledge have progressed. Many people would now include, not only all humans but sentient animals, e.g. vertebrates and cephalopods, as well. Amongst sentient animals, coping with adversity may be more difficult in those with less sophisticated brain processing.
Introduction. The Evolutionary Approach to Ethics: From Animal Prosociality to Human Morality.
European Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 2020
Evolutionary research on the biological fitness of groups has recently given a prominent value to the role that prosocial behaviors play in favoring a successful adaptation to ecological niches. Such a focus marks a paradigm shift. Early views of evolution relied on the notion of natural selection as a largely competitive mechanism for the achievement of the highest amount of resources. Today, evolutionists from different schools think that collaborative attitudes are an irremovable ingredient of biological change over time. As a consequence, a number of researchers have been attracted by evolutionary studies of human behaviors. Some think that a continuity among prosocial attitudes of human beings and other social mammals (particularly primates) can be detected, and that this fact has relevance for accounting for human morality. Others deny one or the other of these claims, or both. The papers in the present special issue address how these topics impact ethics and religion.
International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences (2nd ed.)., 2015
Morality is a mess. This might seem like a strange place to begin a discussion of the origins of morality, but let me explain why I think it’s a useful starting point. Scientists strive for simple, parsimonious explanations for phenomena. Those that meet this standard are described approvingly as elegant explanations. It seems unlikely, however, that morality will ever have an elegant explanation, for the simple reason that morality is not an elegant phenomenon. Like many human institutions, it is a messy aggregation of a vast array of competing influences. These influences include inclinations rooted in the biology of human nature, such as a tendency to favour kin, a tendency to resent free loaders, and a capacity to empathize with the suffering of others. They also include influences that can be broadly classed as cultural. Among these are norms designed to rein in socially-disruptive aspects of human nature, norms aimed at furthering the interests of the individuals or groups promoting them, and also genuine efforts to work out the logical consequences of universal principles of justice and the common good. If we focus on any of these influences to the exclusion of the others, we will arrive at a lopsided view of the nature of morality - hence the importance of keeping in mind that morality is a mess. In this article, I consider both the biological and cultural evolution of our formal moral systems. I begin with the evolution of altruistic behaviour, which is the area of moral behaviour that evolutionary theory has shed the most light on. I then consider some of the putative evolved mechanisms underlying human morality, such as inhibitions against harming innocents, the capacity for empathy, and an aversion to incestuous mating. Finally, I consider the cultural evolution of morality and why some moral systems thrive and persist while others fade away.