Fall 2003, Vol. 10, Issue 3
David Sloan Wilson describes the biological basis of morality ("The biological basis of morality," Lahey Clinic Medical Ethics , Spring 2003, www.lahey.org/ethics/) in lucid fashion and, although we might have minor disagreements on points of emphasis, I find myself in broad agreement with what he has to say. Natural selection is neither moral nor immoral, but amoral. Our capacity to see things in moral terms is a product of the evolutionary process, as is our capacity for treachery, selfishness and deceit. Both moral and immoral behaviors are subject to winnowing on the basis of their effects on the replication of the agent responsible for the behavior. "The ends justify the means" is almost a definition of natural selection, if "justify" is stripped of any connotations of moral approval. As it concerns morality, evolutionary biology is descriptive rather than prescriptive. It helps us to understand how morality evolved, what it is used for, and why it sometimes breaks down. It may even suggest more effective means to achieve desired ends, but it cannot suggest what these ends should be.
Wilson positions the evolution of morality in the context of multilevel selection theory. Immoral behaviors tend to be favored by within-group selection, with immoral individuals gaining a selfish advantage at the expense of other group members. Moral behaviors, on the other hand, tend to be favored by among-group selection, with groups of moral individuals outperforming groups of selfish individuals and thus conferring reproductive bene- fits on the members of the moral group.
There are two problems with the rosy view that natural selection among groups will favor ever-greater advances in moral behavior. The first is that moral groups may include, among their members, individuals who benefit from the group's moral behavior but obtain additional benefits from their own immoral behavior. Such individuals appear to have the best of both worlds. If they gain a reproductive advantage relative to their moral colleagues, moral behavior is in danger of unravelling as the proportion of immoral individuals increases, gradually converting a productive group of selfless individuals into a less productive group of selfish individuals. There are a number of theoretical routes out of this bind. For example, if groups split up sufficiently often, some of the descendant groups will by random sampling (or, better yet, by preferential association of moral individuals) receive fewer selfish individuals. Such processes, that increase the variation among groups, can sometimes keep ahead of the tendency for the proportion of selfish individuals to increase. Perhaps the most effective route, however, is to directly deny the benefits of moral behavior to the selfish members of a group, either by exclusion or by direct punishment of selfish acts. If the benefits of cooperation and the costs of being punished are large enough, selfishness no longer pays and all individuals should behave "morally," not out of conviction nor on principle, but out of pragmatic self-interest. Recent work in experimental economics (a cousin of evolutionary biology) has shown that many individuals are prepared to incur a personal cost to punish individuals who are perceived as behaving unfairly, and that such "strong reciprocity" is remarkably effective at enforcing norms of fair behavior.
Moral communities are at risk of being exploited from within. Therefore, it is no coincidence that our evolved moral sentiments include what one may call righteous anger. The individual who transgresses the moral code is its focus. He or she is cast out from the community and is no longer entitled to its bene- fits. Sometimes the transgressor becomes an object of moral aggression, with the aggressors no longer constrained by the dictates of morality that apply to members of the community. The evolutionary rationale of righteous anger is clear when it is directed against the selfish exploiter of others, but the emotion can also be directed against other non-conformists who abide by different moral rules. It can then be used to justify the mistreatment of the dissenter, the homosexual, the Jew, the infidel or the heretic. Osama bin Laden unleashing the World Trade Center atrocity and George W. Bush declaring preemptive war have at least this much in common: each believes his acts are justified by the immoral behavior of his adversary. Both invoke divine approval for their actions. Both are enemies of moral relativism.
Consideration of who falls inside and outside the pale of moral protection raises the second problem with the rosy view that selection among groups inexorably favors advances in morality. Withingroup cooperation evolves because it provides an advantage relative to other groups, but groupishness may be even less desirable than selfishness. The capacity for genocidal warfare is an obvious candidate for a component of the human behavioral repertoire that has evolved by group-level selection. The obligations of group loyalty - and the fear of being outcast - may cause a nation to acquiesce, and many to participate, in a holocaust.
When we discuss national conflicts, we have moved into a very different world from that in which our moral sentiments evolved. Moral evolution has not ceased, but it now proceeds largely in the cultural realm. Our conception of what is right and what is wrong may have changed under the influence of philosophers, religious and political reformers, novelists, and perhaps scientists, but we are stuck with the emotional toolkit supplied by our biological heritage. Natural selection has provided us with the capacity for charity, generosity, forgiveness, courage and honesty, as well as for greed, callousness, vindictiveness, cowardice and mendacity. It has given us the ability to see things in moral terms, to put ourselves in others' shoes, and to sacrifice ourselves for a principle. But it has also given us the ability to sidestep our conscience, to practice double standards, and to sacrifice others for the same moral principle.
Our moral sentiments are powerful tools to move us to action. Moral precepts are perceived as being universal, and thus binding on all members of a group. Moral obligations are seen as overriding personal preference. If some policy can be defined as the moral course, much energy can be mobilized to advance it. If it can be defined as immoral, the forces of moral outrage can be marshalled against it. For these reasons, much of political debate is framed in moral terms, as arguments about what is right. In this world of competing interests, moral clarity is all too often a combination of a certain degree of self-deception about one's own motives and blindness to alternative points of view.
Is moral evolution progressive? There is no external standard against which to measure moral progress, at least none that would receive universal consent. But there is change. As the result of cultural evolution, we now make sacrifices to defend groups that are larger and more diverse in their membership than the groups for which our moral sentiments evolved. Moreover, moral evolution now proceeds in a marketplace of ideas, in which different moral philosophies compete for adherents. It need no longer proceed by the differential reproduction of individuals and groups. Some might see the cultural selection of ideas as preferable to the natural selection of genes. But that, of course, is a moral judgment.
David Haig, PhD
Professor of Biology
Department of Organismic and
Evolutionary Biology
Harvard University, Cambridge, MA
Suggested reading
Fehr E, Gächter S. Altruistic punishment in humans. Nature 2002;415:137-40.
Paradis JG, Williams GC. Evolution and Ethics: T. H. Huxley's Evolution and Ethics with New Essays on its Victorian and Sociobiological Context. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989.
Reply
David Haig and I agree on most issues. This might seem boring to the idle reader looking forward to a fight, but in fact it is a very encouraging sign that a resolution is possible on such a complicated and sensitive subject as the biological nature of morality.
Haig is especially eager to counteract the "rosy view that selection among groups inexorably favors advances in morality." Here again I agree. Not only does group selection promote a kind of morality that is primarily confined to members of the same group, but even this morality includes elements of intolerance and punishment within the group in addition to nurturing altruism.
It is important to stress that a theory should be judged by two standards. First, how well does it explain the world as it exists now and in the past? Second, can it be used to improve the world in the future? With respect to the first standard, it is clear that the moral systems of the past and present experience all of the difficulties alluded to above. They are almost always confined to an in-group, however much we might yearn for universal morality in abstract terms, and they invariably include punitive, in addition to nurturing, elements. If these are empirical facts about moral systems of the past and present, it is a strength of multilevel selection theory to be able to account for them.
With respect to the second standard, can multilevel selection (or any other) theory be used to improve the world in the future? Haig is somewhat shy about this prospect, stating, "It helps us to understand how morality evolved, what it is used for, and why it sometimes breaks down. It may even suggest more effective means to achieve desired ends, but it cannot suggest what these ends should be." The last part of this statement invokes something called the naturalistic fallacy, which is often used to deny that ought can be derived from is . The naturalistic fallacy is not as decisive as it is often taken to be, as I and others have discussed elsewhere. 1 Moreover, there is plenty of elbowroom in the phrase "more effective means to achieve desired ends."
Science has been spectacularly successful at achieving desired ends in some domains, such as engineering, although the unforeseen consequences are often like the man who unfortunately gets his wish in so many genie-in-a-bottle stories. We need to be careful about what we ask for, but a genuine theory of moral systems might enable us to get our wishes in the social domain more in the future than in the past or present.
David Sloan Wilson, PhD
Professor, Departments of Biology and Anthropology Binghamton University, New York
Footnotes
1 Wilson DS, Dietrich E, Clark AB. On the inappropriate use of the naturalistic fallacy in evolutionary psychology. Biology and Philosophy In press.
in collaboration with
Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center
The opinions expressed in the journal, Lahey Clinic Medical Ethics,
belong to the individual contributors and do not represent the institutional position
of Lahey Clinic on any subject matters discussed.
