Evolutionary Ethics

Evolutionary intuitive ethics has the potential to explain a lot of perplexing phenomena and clarify many of the debates that have perpetuated in moral philosophy for over two and a half thousand years.

Here we present another guest article from Tim Dean, author of the Ockham’s Beard blog.

Tim is a philosophy PhD candidate at the University of New South Wales, researching the implications of evolution on moral philosophy and exploring the insights that evolution can yield on this strangest of human capacities. He is also an award-winning science and technology journalist, former editor of Cosmos and PC Authority magazines. Tim’s writing has appeared in New Scientist, Popular Science, Cosmos, G Magazine, PC Authority, The Sydney Morning Herald, on ABC Radio National and numerous other outlets. - M.T.

Evolutionary Ethics

Evolutionary intuitive ethics is a new approach to understanding our moral capacity, drawing upon evolutionary theory, cognitive psychology and economic game theory. It suggests that morality springs from a bunch of evolved intuitions that promote pro-social and cooperative behaviour, and that these intuitions lent our ancestors an adaptive advantage in our evolutionary past.

An adjunct thesis, called moral diversity, also suggests there are two broad streams of pro-social intuitions—egalitarian and authoritarian—both of which provide an adaptive advantage in different situations. These two streams of intuitions work in tension to provide a diverse range of possible responses to a wide range of situations. This last thesis I think is largely overlooked in the current literature.

The following is a brief overview of evolutionary intuitive ethics and moral diversity.

Cognitive Shortcuts

Traditionally, much moral philosophy and psychology has focused on the role of reason in moral judgement. The paragon of this approach is Immanuel Kant, but more recent examples from the sciences are Jean Piaget and Lawrence Kohlberg. For the latter, the highest level of moral development was universal ethical principles, which individuals would consult prior to forming a moral judgement.

However, recent research in psychology paints a very different picture of the mind to what we held even a decade ago. The role of reason and conscious deliberation appears to take a back seat to a slew of heuristics—i.e. quick and dirty shortcuts—that enable us to make very rapid decisions in a wide range of circumstances. These heuristics enable everything from facial recognition to perception of converging lines indicating perspective to fear responses to snakes and spiders.

Many emotions also fall into the category of heuristics to motivate behaviour without a lot of conscious deliberation. For example, outrage may motivate retribution for an injustice, and all without lengthy reflection on the nature or extent of the outrage—by which point the antagonist might have made a hasty getaway. Pleasure and pain also serve to encourage or discourage certain behaviours etc.

These heuristics are the product of evolution, and served to lend our ancestors an adaptive advantage in our evolutionary past by enabling them to make quick and (mostly) accurate decisions involving navigating the world, securing food and shelter, finding a mate, raising young and defending themselves from threats etc.

Yet, as useful as these heuristics are, they are far from foolproof. The thousands of optical illusions that abound are ample evidence for how easily our visual heuristics can be tricked. And our other heuristics can be likewise tricked or co-opted into triggering in circumstances other than those for which they were ‘designed’ (and I use that term in the teleonomical sense, by no means implying that evolution is teleological).

We have also evolved a capacity for abstract reasoning, but contrary to popular belief, it plays little role in the direct formation of moral judgements. Instead, it allows reflection, and abstraction from our intuitions into general principles as well as imagination of possible future outcomes and scenarios. After an intuitive moral judgement has been triggered by some stimulus, reason can interject to steer behaviour in various directions rather than just following the initial impulsive urge. Reason can inhibit impulsive behaviour, or redirect it to another outlet etc, but it doesn’t contribute to the initial moral judgement. See the Moral Black Box page for more specifics on the operation of our moral faculty.

Caveats

At this point it’s worth stressing that this view doesn’t say there is any such thing as an evolved behaviour, just evolved intuitions. These intuitions do lead to behaviour, but it’d be wrong to say, for example, that ‘men have evolved to read maps better than women’ or ‘women have evolved to gossip about relationships’. There may certainly be sex differences in the intuitions that motivate these various behaviours, but the behaviours are not themselves evolved, and the evolved intuitions go through many twists and turns before they result in a behaviour.

Another point worth making is that these intuitions aren’t always in accord with each other. It is not uncommon at all to have two or more intuitions competing to steer a particular behaviour—and they could be moral intuitions or self-interested intuitions. Should I lie and tell my friend their haircut is fantastic, even though I feel uncomfortable about being dishonest?

In fact, it is the tension between various intuitions that yields such a diverse range of possible behaviours given any particular circumstance. This is because different strategies can lend a greater or lesser selective advantage in different circumstances. So instead of us being wiring with a limited number of intuitions that might function exceptionally well in limited range of circumstances, we are wired with a large number of more fallible intuitions that can combine to deliver a vastly greater range of behaviours.

This is similar to the contemporary view of personality theory—that we have evolved a range of possible personalities that gives us a wide range of approaches to dealing with the world. Some may not be ideally suited for some environments, but they might excel in others. And by having such diversity lends a measure of insurance against settling on a narrow range of strategies that might result in extinction should the environment shift.

Moral Intuitions

So our intuitions are shortcuts that have evolved to enable us to make quick and dirty decisions that will ultimately improve our fitness. Some of these intuitions promote self-interest, such as greed, hunger, fear, competitiveness, jealousy etc. Arguably, these are the more ‘primitive’ intuitions—the self preservation and survival instincts that all animals have developed to enable them to survive particularly when in competition with other individuals from their own or other species.

But we have also evolved ‘pro-social’ intuitions, such as empathy, guilt and outrage. These serve to encourage cooperation which can benefit all individuals and improve fitness more than if they were self-sufficient. However, with cooperation comes risk of free riders. As such, we have also evolved a range of intuitions to not only promote pro-social behaviour, but punish those who exploit cooperation.

Now, one crucial point that differentiates evolutionary intuitive ethics from other forms of evolutionary ethics—not all intuitions are moral intuitions!

One mistake made by many previous thinkers was to assume that if evolution has endowed us with morality, and morality serves fitness, then all intuitions that serve fitness must be moral. That’s wrong. In fact, Thomas Huxley noted as much in 1893:

As the immoral sentiments have no less been evolved, there is so far as much natural sanction for the one as the other. The thief and the murderer follow nature just as much as the philanthropist.

Core to evolutionary intuitive ethics is that only the pro-social intuitions are the ones we have come to call ‘moral’.

So all those fitness enhancing intuitions that promote violence, competition, cheating etc are not moral intuitions. This point requires a lot more elaboration for me to make it convincing, but it requires us to remember that for over two millennia we’ve been terribly confused about what is moral and what is not. As such, various thinkers have mistakenly taken the self-interested intuitions as being moral intuitions.

There are also other characteristics of moral intuitions that distinguish them from other intuitions—such as feelings of universalisability, impartiality, non-negotiability etc. In fact, psychologically, I think the distinction between moral judgement and non-moral judgement has been overstated. The two processes might be very similar, except that moral judgements have the added quality of feeling universal. Doesn’t mean they necessarily are universal, just that they feel that way. From an evolutionary perspective, this makes some sense: if we’re to be encouraged to behave pro-socially, it would be useful for pro-social moral intuitions to feel like they’re not up for negotiation, unlike customs or individual preferences. I think this is a notion that deserves more attention and research.

Finally, the distinction between ultimate and proximate causes is crucial to understanding any brand of evolutionary ethics. Some argue that there can be no such thing as altruism if even pro-social behaviour is working to pass an individual’s selfish genes to the next generation. However, this is confounding the ultimate and proximate levels of explanation. Altruistic intuitions do exist, but at the proximate level. An individual who helps someone else at a cost to themselves might be motivated by empathy or concern; they won’t be contemplating the ultimate benefit of spreading cooperative genes amongst the population in the hope that future reciprocation might benefit their descendants. So while the ultimate cause of pro-social behaviour might be selfish, the proximate cause can quite plausibly be altruistic.

Moral Diversity

Another crucial distinction to make is between the two broad streams of moral intuitions: egalitarian and authoritarian. (Note: they could go by many other names, such as communitarian and hierarchical, or even liberal and conservative, but I’ll use egalitarian and authoritarian as they are clear enough for use here).

While we have evolved pro-social intuitions, there are two broad strategies for going about getting people to cooperate. One is the ‘egalitarian’ route, which promotes equality, fairness, reciprocity and encourages cooperation through empathy, trust, tolerance etc. It’s the classic dove strategy from game theory. The benefit of the egalitarian approach is if a majority of individuals also apply the same strategy, they can all benefit for a low cost. However, the weakness of the strategy—as it is a weakness to doves in the iterated prisoner’s dilemma—is free-riders/defectors. As such, egalitarians have a strong emphasis on justice and cheater detection, but tend to be more trusting until betrayed rather than guarded from the start.

The contrasting approach is ‘authoritarian’, which promotes tight group cohesion, strong leadership, powerful emotional bonds based on group identity, a cautious—or even downright mistrusting—attitude towards outsiders and strangers, promotion of family ties (and nepotism) and is less likely to encourage challenges to authority or breaking from ranks. It also encourages fairness, but sees it in a different light to that of egalitarians. To authoritarians fairness relates more to an individual getting the rewards of their toil, and not having others—who may or may not be trustworthy—take that away.

It’s important to note that while the egalitarian approach might be the dove in game theory, the authoritarian approach isn’t its antithesis, the hawk. The hawk represents more of a self-interested doctrine than a pro-social doctrine. The authoritarian approach is more a suspicious tit-for-tat, since it still encourages cooperation, but doesn’t trust outsiders to play fair. It’s also worth noting that authoritarians would employ different strategies when interacting with those within their in-group than those outside it. It all comes down to trust.

The strength of the authoritarian approach is that it’s resilient, particularly in the face of a hostile environment and many outsiders who would hope to exploit cooperation. It’s also close knit and resistant to change over time, at least more so than egalitarians. However, in an environment of doves, it doesn’t fare as well as it’s less likely to cooperate with strangers.

One final note: I’m not suggesting that there are two and only two moral perspectives. I’m suggesting there is a broad spectrum to our moral intuitions, with egalitarianism on one side and authoritarianism on the other. Each individual will have dozens of moral intuitions that will fall somewhere on this spectrum, and most will balance each other out. However, there appears to be a percentage of people who do consistently tilt one way or the other, but the majority would be somewhere in the centre. It will be a great empirical project to explore this spectrum and where people fall on various issues.

I’d also like to stress that these intuitions aren’t purely instinctive. They are informed by experience and environment. So while emotions like embarrassment, disgust or righteous anger might be very similar for everyone, the triggers for them will vary depending on experience. This is one of the areas where reason does play a role: reason and reflection shape the lens through which we see the world. See the Moral Black Box page for more information on the notion of the Lens.

New Ethics

So that’s the crux of evolutionary intuitive ethics. In general I think the implications on politics are particularly interesting. This thesis suggests that any one political theory informed by only one side (and most political philosophers have egalitarian intuitions themselves) will be doomed to be rejected by a significant percentage of the population. There may be no ultimate reconciliation—certainly not through reason alone—of the moral perspectives. But this could be why liberal democracy is so robust; it gives voice to both sides of the moral spectrum and allows them to keep each other in check.

I also think the implications on moral philosophy could be significant. There are a lot of metaethical concerns about morality, such as the ontological status of moral statements. If evolutionary intuitive ethics is correct, then we might be forced to concede that, while moral intuitions feel categorical—they feel like they’re somehow expressing moral facts—in fact they’re just pumped up preferences. This might lead us into some kind of error theory, because moral statements are ultimately based on intuitions to promote fitness—but not all fitness-promoting intuitions.

On the prescriptive level, there’s also the question: what are our cardinal values? According to evolutionary intuitive ethics, they appear to be closely linked to the evolutionary notion of fitness. But if we ally them too closely then we fall into the obsolete notion of social darwinism where fitness itself becomes a good, thus bundling the self-interested intuitions in with the pro-social intuitions and calling the lot moral. I don’t think that works. So where, then, do we find our cardinal values? This is a problem I’m still working on.

Another crucial implication of an evolutionary approach to morality is that any successful moral system needs to be one that lends a selective advantage to those who follow it. Moral systems compete, and are thus shaped by natural selection themselves. If a certain moral system lends a selective disadvantage—no matter how desirable it might be to its proponents—it is doomed. An example is the idea that gets expressed all too often: if everyone was just nice to each other, we wouldn’t need laws. This I call the Utopian Fallacy. While it’s true that if everyone was nice to each other, and no-one cheated, then we’d all be better off. But this population of super-doves would easily be invaded by hawks who would take advantage of the doves’ niceness for their own advantage. Such a system—a utopian system—is doomed to failure in the real world.

Then there’s the naturalistic fallacy… I happen to feel the naturalistic fallacy is itself a fallacy—mainly because if it’s not, then we spiral into a hard problem of ethics: what makes moral facts moral if not natural facts? Non-natural facts? Not according to evolutionary intuitive ethics, where there are no moral facts per se.

There’s plenty more to explore in the evolution of morality, but I think an approach like evolutionary intuitive ethics has the potential to explain a lot of perplexing phenomena and clarify many of the debates that have perpetuated in moral philosophy for over two and a half thousand years. It’s early days, but I think this is an exciting programme, and I look forward to exploring it, and debating it, in the years ahead.

Thanks, Tim, for another excellent contribution!