A couple of days ago, David Brooks wrote a column about the evolution of morality by group selection, an idea that is finally gaining broader acceptance. I’m glad to see that happening; the group-selection model provides such a solid foundation for an evolutionary account of the origins of religion and morality that I was persuaded of its validity some time ago, and have been banging the drum (here, for example) ever since. (Mind, it’s still seen as heresy by many in the field; I know Richard Dawkins, for one, is a staunch opponent. But science advances, as they say, funeral by funeral.)
Anyway, it’s understandable that secular types and metrocons like Mr. Brooks would happily embrace the emerging view that group selection is the explanatory basis of human morality; without it, altruism was a nagging loose end for the naturalistic worldview. Mr. Brooks writes:
The story of evolution, we have been told, is the story of the survival of the fittest. The strong eat the weak. The creatures that adapt to the environment pass on their selfish genes. Those that do not become extinct.
In this telling, we humans are like all other animals ”” deeply and thoroughly selfish. We spend our time trying to maximize our outcomes ”” competing for status, wealth and mating opportunities. Behavior that seems altruistic is really self-interest in disguise. Charity and fellowship are the cultural drapery atop the iron logic of nature.
All this is partially true, of course. Yet every day, it seems, a book crosses my desk, emphasizing a different side of the story. These are books about sympathy, empathy, cooperation and collaboration, written by scientists, evolutionary psychologists, neuroscientists and others. It seems there’s been a shift among those who study this ground, yielding a more nuanced, and often gentler picture of our nature.
Yes, very uplifting indeed. But before we all float away on a fragrant cloud of nuanced, cooperative gentleness, I’ll point out that the “iron logic” of Darwinism is still very much the same. The “story of natural selection” now includes the survival of the fittest group, that’s all. The strong still eat the weak, but now we must also keep in mind that the strong groups eat the weak groups, too. The groups that adapt to their environment pass on their genes. Those groups that do not, become extinct.
The same process that selects for “sympathy, empathy, cooperation and collaboration” within groups also selects for high cohesion (tribalism, religious zeal), hostility toward those outside the group (racism, xenophobia), and competing successfully as a group against other groups (war).
Furthermore, as I argued here, the new moral naturalists are trying to pull a bit of a fast one as far as “objective” morality is concerned; at the very least, what they are willing to settle for as an objective basis for defining good and evil will leave many unsatisfied.
But having said all that, I’ll stop carping. It’s gratifying to see the idea of group selection gaining traction.
Read Mr. Brooks’s column here.
19 Comments
The same process that selects for “sympathy, empathy, cooperation and collaboration” within groups also selects for high cohesion (tribalism, religious zeal), hostility toward those outside the group (racism, xenophobia), and competing successfully as a group against other groups (war).
Which is why an evolutionary account of the origins of our social sentiments is insufficient to account for the universalism (in the sense of ‘impersonalism’) of moral maxims.
Hi Bob,
Well, I’d question just how universal those social sentiments actually are when the “rubber meets the road”. (Or, conversely, I’d question just how adaptive they are for groups that extend them beyond their own community. It may be that real moral univeralism is something of a maladaptive mutation.)
But if you don’t favor an evolutionary account, then what model do you prefer?
Perhaps I’m not understanding what you mean by “impersonalism” with regard to group-level selection.
I’ll try to clarify.
It’s not that I don’t favor an evolutionary account of the origins of our social sentiments, just that I think that in order to get to an account of morality, you need to add reason, with it’s impersonalism, to turn social sentiments into moral sentiments. Impersonalism (or universalism) is a feature of moral maxims in virtue of which they apply to any moral agent in relevantly similar circumstances — and this marks a distinction between morality and tribalism in it’s various guises.
I even look favorably on evolutionary accounts of the capacity to reason — but I also think that the employment of reason to fashion abstract concepts like universalism is probably a spandrel, in the sense that this exercise of the capacity for reason probably was not a significant factor in the evolution of that capacity.
In other words, I think that an account of the origin of morality involves a mixture of evolutionary and non-evolutionary (in the sense of natural selective) factors.
Sure, I can agree with pretty much all of that (although we might quibble over the distinction you make regarding what can be called “morality”.)
Where there is room for trouble is where these universalist, philosophical extensions to morality come into conflict with the underlying group-selected substrate: they may turn out not to be the best move, group-survival-wise. (I’m picturing the missionary in the pot. Or 21st-century Europe.)
I don’t think a group with a universalist view of morality would necessarily be placed at a selective disadvantage relative to a group with a particularist view. In some circumstances, perhaps. But I certainly agree that a universalist view will give rise to conflicts with social sentiments that were shaped by group selection.
The reason I consider it likely is because the universalist’s altruistic behavior toward the particularist group will not be reciprocated.
I’m not sure how much a factor altruism would be. Suppose the universalist group played tit-for-tat? The particularist group might have an immediate advantage at their first resort to beligerence, but unless they also possessed superior skills and resources, that advantage could disappear very quickly. Particularists, of course, can also play tit-for-tat, but it would be within their group. It would most likely be universalists who played it in between group selection regimens.
Interesting point, Bob. A couple of thoughts:
First, Tit For Tat is a formal, one-on-one game-playing strategy: you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours; you screw me, I’ll screw you in return. It seems to me that a universalist moral system still faces a disadvantage here, precisely because of its universalism: any “cheating” or “defections” will be reciprocated on an individual basis, rather than as a systematic feature of a particular group.
Also, the universalist group will have lower cohesion, I think, because by definition it will have fewer shared traits around which its common identity can coalesce, and far more areas of internal dissonance.
I’d also think that many of the ways in which the asymmetry between the groups will manifest itself won’t be of the one-on-one kind that a Tit For Tat strategy can react to; rather it will be that the universalist group will systematically extend higher levels of tolerance, trust, and altruistic behavior than the particularist group, which is only looking out for itself, will offer in return. Even a slight, systematic imbalance, small enough not to trigger a major defensive reaction, would accrue advantages over time — particularly if, as noted above, universalism itself hinders perception of groups as agents by regarding everyone as being members of the one universal group.
Malcolm –
Just two quick observations.
First, there’s no reason that tit-for-tat can’t be played on the group level — in group selection scenarios, groups function as the relevant individuals being subjected to selective forces.
Second, there’s no obvious connection between universalism and higher levels of tolerance, trust and altruism. “Distrust others until and unless they demonstrate good will toward you” could be a universalist maxim. Remember that ‘universalism’ here simply means that the maxim would be interpreted to apply to all rational agents, not just within one’s group.
Two more quick observations.
First, I think I misspoke concerning the likelihood that it would be universalists who played tit-for-tat in between group selection regimens. Paricularists could just as well adopt a tit-for-tat strategy in these encounters, and might even view its adoption as a moral choice.
Second, when considering the contrast between universalist and particularist understandings of morality, it’s difficult but necessary to be careful to respect the distinction between the object language and the meta-language. The distinction between universalist and particularist views of morality is important mainly for meta-level discussions. It’s true, though, that meta-level considerations can affect things at the object level. For example, assuming the universal character of moral maxims, Kant was able to argue for constraints on what is morally permissible; namely, maxims that cannot be consistently universalized are morally impermissible.
I think you must have misunderstood me, Bob — I wasn’t saying that there was any reason that universalists would show higher levels of tolerance, etc., in general. Rather, I was pointing out that a particularist group would be inclined to see maximum moral consideration applying only to its own members (indeed, that’s how it’s usually worked, Kantian/Rawlsian ideas of morality being a fairly recent innovation), while the universalist would by definition extend it to everyone, including the members of the particularist group. So there’d be an asymmetry there.
I do agree that two particularist groups could play Tit For Tat at the group level; indeed we’ve seen that play out, more or less, throughout history.
In other words, for universalist moral systems to work effectively and symmetrically at any level, everyone has to buy in. A particularist sub-group entering a moral relationship with a universalist society creates a mixing of levels that works, I think, to the particularist group’s selective advantage.
Malcolm – OK, we are on the same page. But I wonder, would cheaters (in the technical sense) who cheat the system because they are particularists be at any greater advantage than those who cheat for any other sort of reason (perhaps they’re simply ammoral, or having a bad day … who knows?)? If the universalist society has decent cheater detectors, and cheaters are made to pay for thier cheating, I don’t see that particularism confers any sort of advantage.
The advantage would come from the success of the group itself relative to the universalist group; non-affiliated individuals, by contrast, are just on their own.
I don’t see the advantage as being about “cheating” in the technical sense, but rather just in the asymmetry created by the within-group cohesion of the particularists. I think a sub-group that plays as a team within a more loosely cohesive ambient society has an edge, as long as they don’t overdo it to the point of the team itself being identified as cheaters — a state of affairs that will cause an anti-universalist reaction in the society in which they are embedded. (For example: the rising tide of nationalist sentiment in Europe, in defiance of their universalist elites.)
By ‘cheating’ I simply meant not abiding by the universalist standard espoused by the society into which the particularists have immigrated. My sense is that so long as cheaters are identified by universalist standards, and particularist claims to exemption are treated as illicit special pleading, particularists won’t have any special advantage. If the pattern of immigration is reversed, though, with universalists moving into particularist societies, the universalists can expect to be the victims of systematic discrimination.
As an aside, I think there aren’t very many particularists in this world. Even those who think they are morally deserving of special privileges, like a great many muslims, typically will have a universalist veiw of morality — they will agree that moral maxims apply to all rational agents. The practical problem isn’t that we’re threatened by particularists, but that some universalists don’t believe in freedom of conscience and freedom of expression or equality befor the law.
Bob? Malcolm?
I’m worried. The last comment posted at 5:20 pm. Ya’ll still here?
I’d say that a hallmark of modern Western-style liberal universalism is a deep-seated resistance to identifying “cheaters” as a group (victims, yes indeed, but not offenders — with the singular exception of white Europeans themselves).
There’s plenty of particularism on offer all over the world, I think, if by that we mean a belief that those outside the group are not entitled to the same moral consideration as those within. One certainly doesn’t have to look too far, or too far back: The Nazis. The Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda. Pol Pot. al-Qaeda. On and on and on. This sort of particularism has been at the root of every violent ethnic or religious conflict throughout history, and shows no particular sign of abating; indeed it’s hard even to see how war itself is possible without it.
Well, yes. We tend to ignore morality when it suits us; when it’s to our own or our group’s advantage to do so. But our failure to be consistent universalists shouldn’t be confused with a failure of universalism as an account of the scope of morality.