Evolutionary Ethics Research Articles

Collective intentionality: A basic and early component of moral evolution

ABSTRACTMichael Tomasello’s account of moral evolution includes both a synthesis of extensive experimental work done on humans and chimpanzees on their potential for perspective-taking and helpful, altruistic generosity and a major emphasis on “collective intentionality” as an important component of morality in humans. Both will be very useful to the evolutionary study of this subject. However, his disavowal of collective intentions on the parts of chimpanzees would appear to be empirically incorrect, owing to reliance on experimental captive research focused only on dyadic interactions. Here, evidence to the contrary is provided from studies of wild chimpanzees as they naturally cooperate in sizable groups. Collective intentions are inferable when they go on patrol, when they mob predators, when they go hunting, and when large coalitions gang-attack disliked members of the same community. This last behavior has particularly significant pre-adaptive implications for the evolution of moralistic social control, and it suggests that moral evolution has deep roots, going back to the Last Common Ancestor of humans, bonobos, and chimpanzees.

진화론적 세계 인식과 동정의 윤리 - 양건식의 근대문학을 중심으로 -

진화론적 세계 인식과 동정의 윤리 - 양건식의 근대문학을 중심으로 -

Recent trends in evolutionary ethics: greenbeards!

In recent years, there has been growing awareness among evolutionary ethicists that systems of cooperation based upon “weak” reciprocity mechanisms (such as tit-for-tat) lack scalability, and are therefore inadequate to explain human ultrasociality. This has produced a shift toward models that strengthen the cooperative mechanism, by adding various forms of commitment or punishment. Unfortunately, the most prominent versions of this hypothesis wind up positing a discredited mechanism as the basis of human ultrasociality, viz. a “greenbeard.” This paper begins by explaining what a greenbeard is, and why evolutionary theorists are doubtful that such a mechanism could play a significant role in explaining human prosociality. It goes on to analyze several recent philosophical works in evolutionary ethics, in order to show how the suggestion that morality acts as a commitment device tacitly relies upon a greenbeard mechanism to explain human cooperation. It concludes by showing how some early scientific models in the “evolution of cooperation” literature, which introduced punishment as a device to enhance cooperation, also tacitly relied upon a greenbeard mechanism.

The Needs of the Many Do Not Outweigh the Needs of the Few: The Limits of Individual Sacrifice across Diverse Cultures

Abstract A long tradition of research in WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic) countries has investigated how people weigh individual welfare versus group welfare in their moral judgments. Relatively less research has investigated the generalizability of results across non-WEIRD populations. In the current study, we ask participants across nine diverse cultures (Bali, Costa Rica, France, Guatemala, Japan, Madagascar, Mongolia, Serbia, and the USA) to make a series of moral judgments regarding both third-party sacrifice for group welfare and first-person sacrifice for group welfare. In addition to finding some amount of cross-cultural variation on most of our questions, we also find two cross-culturally consistent judgments: (1) when individuals are in equivalent situations, overall welfare should be maximized, and (2) harm to individuals should be taken into account, and some types of individual harm can trump overall group welfare. We end by discussing the specific pattern of variable and consistent features in the context of evolutionary theories of the evolution of morality.

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.

No Moral Progress without an Objective Moral Ontology

One of the definitions of philosophy is: the study of presuppositions. While many philosophers and scholars agree that human history exhibits moral progress, there seems to be confusion about the presupposed moral ontology that such a view entails. Moral ontology is the sub discipline of ethics which concerns questions such as whether moral facts exist objectively, where 'objective' means that such facts would exist independently from anyone's personal beliefs (mind-independent), or subjectively, where 'subjective' means that such facts depend on the beliefs and/or desires of persons (mind-dependent). This paper concludes that moral progress requires an objective moral ontology. Consecutively, this paper will raise considerable doubts concerning the idea that the objective ontological foundation of moral progress can be natural. On a natural ontological foundation (such as provided by evolutionary ethics) either moral progress appears to be non-objective or it seems to be altogether illusory.

Символика православного календаря в творчестве А. Варламова

The article considers the specifics of the Orthodox worldview reflection in the contemporary art. Attention is paid to the analysis of the ideological principle of the work through the representation of Christian chronometry. The novelty of the work is seen in the understanding of the symbols of the Orthodox calendar on the material of modern Russian prose, as until today there is a tradition of analysis of this problem only on the example of writers of the 19 th -20 th centuries. The novelty of the work also lies in the consideration of A. Varlamov’s creativity not from the perspective of continuation of the traditions of realistic prose or postmodern understanding of reality, but from the point of realization of the author’s religious worldview and attempts to translate the Orthodox worldview in his work. Special attention is paid to the analysis of spiritual and moral evolution of A. Varlamov’s characters in the context of symbols of Easter and Christmas holidays. The relevance of the study is determined by the appeal to the problems of the moral principle in modern fiction and the possibility of reading it from the position of the spiritual potential typical to all Russian classics. The author comes to the conclusion that modern Russian literature cannot be considered as completely secularized, it reflects the traditions laid down by Russian classics (A. S. Pushkin, F. M. Dostoevsky), and traditions associated with the idea of spiritual salvation of man.

Moral progress or evolution? Lessons from narrative bioethics

Moral progress or evolution? Lessons from narrative bioethics

Revolution without evolution: The ‘Way’ of change in Ayi Kwei Armah's Two Thousand Seasons

ABSTRACTMuch has been written on Ayi Kwei Armah's disavowal of African revolution/independence and his radical imaginative recreation of African past in his early and middle fiction respectively. However, even when his radical, Afrocentric discourse is underscored and his mythical (re)construction of the black nation's past is unveiled, they are not linked to the Eurocentric philosophies against which they are deployed. This article, therefore, seeks to track the call for change in Armah's middle works, and to reread his narrative and discourse in Two Thousand Seasons in contradistinction to western progressive thought and evolutionary ethics, which spawned western historicism and legitimated imperialism in the 19th century. Approached from this perspective, Armah's ideological and ethical construct of ‘the Way’ acquires an additional meaning, and his yearning for a true revolutionary change achieves a wider and more concrete sense.

The evolving spirit: morals and mutualism in Arabella Buckley's evolutionary epic.

Contemporaries of Charles Darwin were divided on reconciling his theory of natural selection with religion and morality.Although Alfred Russel Wallace stands out as a spiritualist advocate of natural selection who rejected a natural origin of morality, the science popularizer and spiritualist Arabella Buckley (1840-1929) offers a more representative example of how theists, whether spiritualist or more orthodox in their religion, found reconciliation. Unlike Wallace, Buckley emphasized the lawful evolution of morality and of the soul, drawing from the theological tradition of traducianism. Significantly, Buckley argued for a mutualistic and deeply theistic interpretation of Darwinian evolution, particularly the evolution of morals, without sacrificing the uniformity of natural law.Though Buckley's understanding of the evolutionary epic has been represented as emphasizing mutualism (Gates 1998) and spiritualist theology (Lightman 2007), here I demonstrate that her distinctive addition to the debate lies in her unifying theory of traducianism.In contrast to other authors, I argue that through Buckley we better understand Victorian spiritualism as more of a religion than an occult science. However, it was a conception of religion that, through her evolutionary traducianism, bridged science and spiritualism. This offers historians a more complex but satisfying image of the Victorian worldview after Darwin.

Evolutionary Pragmatism and Ethics, written by Beth L. Eddy

Evolutionary Pragmatism and Ethics, written by Beth L. Eddy

Enhancing a Person, Enhancing a Civilization: A Research Program at the Intersection of Bioethics, Future Studies, and Astrobiology.

There are manifold intriguing issues located within largely unexplored borderlands of bioethics, future studies (including global risk analysis), and astrobiology. Human enhancement has for quite some time been among the foci of bioethical debates, but the same cannot be said about its global, transgenerational, and even cosmological consequences. In recent years, discussions of posthuman and, in general terms, postbiological civilization(s) have slowly gained a measure of academic respect, in parallel with the renewed interest in the entire field of future studies and the great strides made in understanding of the origin and evolution of life and intelligence in their widest, cosmic context. These developments promise much deeper synergic answers to questions regarding the long-term future of enhancement: how far can it go? Is human enhancement a further step toward building a true postbiological civilization? Should we actively participate and help shape this process? Is the future of humanity "typical" in the same Copernican sense as our location in space and time is typical in the galaxy, and if so, can we derive important insights about the evolutionary pathways of postbiological evolution from astrobiological and Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence (SETI) studies? These and similar questions could be understood as parts of a possible unifying research program attempting to connect cultural and moral evolution with what we know and understand about their cosmological and biological counterparts.

Is market liberalism adaptive? Rethinking F. A. Hayek on moral evolution

Hayek’s social theory of evolution suggests that market liberal morality is adaptive for social groups. He justified the evolutionary superiority of market liberalism by asserting that groups operating under a market liberal morality would have a higher capacity to expand and reproduce than groups with alternative tribal moralities. Thus, market liberal groups would be favoured through cultural and genetic group selection. But in fact, market liberal morality reveals maladaptive tendencies and remains insufficiently powerful to create adaptive social groups. Hayek’s dismissal of moral tribalism in favour of market liberal morality is found to underestimate the importance of tribal goals in the evolutionary system.

The evolution of religion and morality: a synthesis of ethnographic and experimental evidence from eight societies

ABSTRACTUnderstanding the expansion of human sociality and cooperation beyond kith and kin remains an important evolutionary puzzle. There is likely a complex web of processes including institutions, norms, and practices that contributes to this phenomenon. Considerable evidence suggests that one such process involves certain components of religious systems that may have fostered the expansion of human cooperation in a variety of ways, including both certain forms of rituals and commitment to particular types of gods. Using an experimental economic game, our team specifically tested whether or not individually held mental models of moralistic, punishing, and knowledgeable gods curb biases in favor of the self and the local community, and increase impartiality toward geographically distant anonymous co-religionists. Our sample includes 591 participants from eight diverse societies – iTaukei (indigenous) Fijians who practice both Christianity and ancestor worship, the animist Hadza of Tanzania, Hindu Indo-Fijians, Hindu Mauritians, shamanist-Buddhist Tyvans of southern Siberia, traditional Inland and Christian Coastal Vanuatuans from Tanna, and Christian Brazilians from Pesqueiro. In this article, we present cross-cultural evidence that addresses this question and discuss the implications and limitations of our project. This volume also offers detailed, site-specific reports to provide further contextualization at the local level.

Big Gods in small places: the Random Allocation Game in Mauritius

ABSTRACTThe relationship between religion and social behavior has been the subject of longstanding debates. Recent evolutionary models of religious morality propose that particular types of supernatural beliefs related to moralizing and punitive high gods will have observable effects on prosociality. We tested this hypothesis, comparing the effects of diverse religious beliefs, practices, and contexts among Hindus in Mauritius. We found that specific aspects of religious belief (related to moralizing gods) as well as religious practice (participation in high-intensity rituals) were significant predictors of prosocial behavior. These findings contribute to a more nuanced understanding of religious prosociality and have significant implications for the evolution of morality.

STORY OF CINDERELLA AND TAJIK-PERSIAN NARRATIVE OF YUSUF AND ZULAIKHA: RE-INTERPRETING THE “DEEP STRUCTURES” WITH REFERENCE TO CURRENT SOCIAL AND CULTURAL CONTEXT

“Rags to riches” as an invariant “deep” structure of many stories about restored dignity and status has been in universal literary use since the eminent version of “Cinderella” in the Grimm brothers’ collection of fairy-tales. So has the “deep” structure of an individual’s moral evolution towards god, as made explicit by many narratives taking after the Quran story of Yusuf. After morphological dissection of Cinderella and Jami’s Yusuf and Zulaikha stories (performed with V. Propp’s original scheme in view) we discovered certain similarities between the respective underlying structures despite the stories’ apparent difference. Taking into consideration a number of later adoptions of Cinderella and Yusuf / Zulaikha plots, the authors put forward a hypothesis about culture-and-society determined reciprocal rapprochement and transformation of interpretation dominants in more recent narratives of the respective traditions. At that, “spiritual growth towards god” stories acquire certain features of the society-bound “rag to riches” progression and, vice versa, “rags to riches” narratives become increasingly suggestive of god’s favour as the highest value. If duly supported by scientific evidence, the hypothesis could assist in further study of causes and outcomes of an on-going “orientalization” of western culture and westernization of that of the Orient.

Lecture two: The evolution of morality: The emergence of personhood

In a series of three articles, presented at the Goshen Annual Conference on Science and Religion in 2015, with the theme ‘Interdisciplinary Theology and the Archeology of Personhood’, J. Wentzel van Huyssteen considers the problem of human evolution – also referred to as ‘the archaeology of personhood’ – and its broader impact on theological anthropology. This trajectory of lectures tracks a select number of challenging contemporary proposals for the evolution of crucially important aspects of human personhood. Lecture Two argues that, on a postfoundationalist view, some of our religious beliefs are indeed more plausible and credible than others. This also goes for our tendency to moralise and for the strong moral convictions, we often hold. It demonstrates that, in spite of a powerful focus on the evolutionary origins of moral awareness, ethics emerge on a culturally autonomous level, which means that the epistemic standing of the particular moral judgements human beings make is independent of whatever the natural sciences can says about their genesis.

Lecture three: From empathy to embodied faith: Interdisciplinary perspectives on the evolution of religion

In a series of three articles, presented at the Goshen Annual Conference on Science and Religion in 2015, with the theme ‘Interdisciplinary Theology and the Archeology of Personhood’, J. Wentzel van Huyssteen considers the problem of human evolution – also referred to as ‘the archaeology of personhood’ – and its broader impact on theological anthropology. This trajectory of lectures tracks a select number of challenging contemporary proposals for the evolution of crucially important aspects of human personhood. These are aspects that were all of great significance for Darwin: the evolution of cognition, the evolution of imagination, music and language, the evolution of morality, and the evolution of the religious disposition.

But could they tell right from wrong? Evolution, moral responsibility and human distinctiveness

This article takes as its point of departure the public interest aroused by the discovery of Homo naledi and the debate about the possibility that H. naledi buried their dead. If they buried their dead, did H. naledi have an awareness of moral responsibility? We have no basis in the fossil remains of H. naledi or other hominids for determining when and how the awareness of moral responsibility evolved. The article provides a brief summary of the evidence for the evolution of morality based on research into the behaviour of other primates and then argues that human moral consciousness is qualitatively distinct from this but can still be understood to be the product of evolution. In the final section the article draws on ideas from the theologies of John Wesley and Dietrich Bonhoeffer to provide a theological interpretation of this evolution of moral consciousness.

Lecture One: Rediscovering Darwin for theology – Rethinking human personhood

In a series of three articles, presented at the Goshen Annual Conference on Science and Religion in 2015, with the theme ‘Interdisciplinary Theology and the Archeology of Personhood’, J. Wentzel van Huyssteen considers the problem of human evolution – also referred to as ‘the archaeology of personhood’ – and its broader impact on theological anthropology. These Goshen Lectures explore the potentiality that the history of human evolution provides bridge theories to theological anthropology and thus to a positive and constructive way of appropriating Darwinian thought for a public, interdisciplinary Christian theology. Lecture One tracks a select number of contemporary proposals for the evolution of aspects of human personhood. These aspects were of significance for Darwin: the evolution of cognition; the evolution of imagination, music and language; the evolution of morality; and the evolution of the religious disposition. The article acknowledges the close ties to hominid ancestors and focuses on the emergence of human distinctiveness, consciousness and personhood, and the propensity for religious awareness and experience.