Benjamin Cain
2 min readFeb 23, 2021

--

Thanks for that helpful clarification. I agree that the existence of morality can be partly explained as a social constraint that's subject to evolutionary factors. I doubt morality or altruism is a direct adaptation, though; like scientific objectivity, morality is more likely a biproduct or an exaptation.

One reason why that evolutionary explanation is bound to be incomplete is that the social coordinations can work even if they're immoral. Natural selection is, of course, amoral, so the strategies creatures evolve to thrive carry forward that amorality. Rape and murder are tried and true strategies that work in evolutionary terms.

When we turn to the strategies of big-brained creatures (including persons or creative/anti-natural agents rather than animals/slaves), we leave behind such straightforward appeals to evolution.

Why do civilizations shun murderers and rapists? You'd want to cast doubt on the substance of the cultural reasons we'd give, such as the religious or legal ones. The true reason for the repudiation is that we need to negotiate to optimize our time living together in large groups.

But that appeal to negotiation or to coordination is no longer an appeal to natural selection. Now we're talking about reasoning, which is of course what game theory is about. The question is how thick is the relevant sort of reasoning. Is amoral, instrumental reason or Machiavellian calculation sufficient? I doubt it, even though that's the kind of self-interested reasoning that follows most directly from evolutionary principles.

The thicker kind of reasoning is more laden with existential, religious, and otherwise cultural developments that make for a barrier between their products and the evolutionary underpinning. And that's where the reductionism becomes casuistic.

Again, then, why do we condemn murder and rape even though these strategies work in strictly evolutionary terms? The moral answer arose from behavioural modernity (from a relatively late achievement in our prehistory). We began to see our species as anomalous. We were people rather than animals, friends of the gods obliged to improve on the wilderness. We saw ourselves as having inherent rights in virtue of our strange skills (our reason, autonomy, imagination).

That discovery made for our existential predicament: How should alienated creatures choose to live in an absurd world populated mostly by unknowing animals? Morality follows more from that dawning of self-awareness than from some amoral calculation of utility.

To be sure, we cope with that existential realization by positing various fictions. But the "illusions" of self-awareness make for the emergence of personhood. Morality applies to people, not to animals, whereas natural selection explains animal behaviour.

--

--

Benjamin Cain
Benjamin Cain

Written by Benjamin Cain

Ph.D. in philosophy / Knowledge condemns. Art redeems. / https://benjamincain.substack.com / https://ko-fi.com/benjamincain / benjamincain8@gmailDOTcom

Responses (1)