Abstract

Biological market theory has in recent years become an important part of the social evolutionist’s toolkit. This article discusses the explanatory potential and pitfalls of biological market theory in the context of big picture accounts of the evolution of human cooperation and morality. I begin by assessing an influential account that presents biological market dynamics as a key driver of the evolution of fairness norms in humans. I argue that this account is problematic for theoretical, empirical, and conceptual reasons. After mapping the evidential and explanatory limits of biological market theory, I suggest that it can nevertheless fill a lacuna in an alternative account of hominin evolution. Trade on a biological marketplace can help explain why norm-based cooperation did not break down when our Late Pleistocene ancestors entered new, challenging social and economic environments.

Highlights

  • Biological market theory (BMT) aims to explain the evolution and stability of cooperation by reference to ecological equivalents of economic market effects

  • After a slow start in the 1990s, BMT has in recent years become an influential framework for the study of social evolution, having drawn support from further theoretical and empirical studies

  • This paper aims to show that BMT merits close philosophical scrutiny, in relation to ‘big picture’ accounts of the evolution of hominin cooperation and morality

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Summary

Introduction

Biological market theory (BMT) aims to explain the evolution and stability of cooperation by reference to ecological equivalents of economic market effects. Their account is complex and multifaceted: it draws on insights from mathematical modelling, anthropology, behavioural ecology, economics, and cognitive science From this combination of inputs, Baumard et al construct a scenario of the evolution a shared, intuitive sense of fairness under selective pressures for participating in cooperative endeavours with mutual fitness benefits.. From this combination of inputs, Baumard et al construct a scenario of the evolution a shared, intuitive sense of fairness under selective pressures for participating in cooperative endeavours with mutual fitness benefits.2 These interactions, they argue, were market-based: supply-and-demand effects determined how the spoils from cooperation were divided. When market-based trade began to expand in size, scope, and diversity in the course of hominin evolution, this put an increasing strain on a purely strategic, reputation-based management of cooperation At this point biological markets began to select for a genuine sense of fairness about dividing the spoils from cooperation. Let us first consider the basic conditions for biological markets

Conditions for biological markets
Markets without market dynamics?
Markets and Evolutionary Continuity
The target of reputational concern
An Alternative Scenario
Fairness before markets
Markets and the reciprocation crisis
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