Social evolution as moral truth tracking in natural law

Morality can be adaptive or maladaptive. From this fact come polarizing disputes on the meta-ethical status of moral adaptation. The realist tracking account of morality claims that it is possible to track objective moral truths and that these truths correspond to moral rules that are adaptive. In contrast, evolutionary anti-realism rejects the existence of moral objectivity and thus asserts that adaptive moral rules cannot represent objective moral truths, since those truths do not exist. This article develops a novel evolutionary view of natural law to defend the realist tracking account. It argues that we can identify objective moral truths through cultural group selection and that adaptive moral rules are likely to reflect such truths.

Social Evolution as Moral Truth Tracking in Natural Law

Morality can be adaptive or maladaptive. From this fact come polarising disputes on the meta-ethical status of moral adaptation. The realist tracking account of morality claims that it is possible to track objective moral truths and that these truths correspond to moral rules that are adaptive. In contrast, evolutionary anti-realism rejects the existence of moral objectivity and thus asserts that adaptive moral rules cannot represent objective moral truths, since those truths do not exist. This article develops a novel evolutionary view of natural law to defend the realist tracking account. It argues that we can identify objective moral truths via cultural group selection and that adaptive moral rules are likely to reflect such truths.

Explaining human altruism

Humans often behave altruistically towards strangers with no chance of reciprocation. From an evolutionary perspective, this is puzzling. The evolution of altruistic cooperative behavior—in which an organism’s action reduces its fitness and increases the fitness of another organism (e.g. by sharing food)—only makes sense when it is directed at genetically related organisms (kin selection) or when one can expect the favor to be returned (reciprocal altruism). Therefore, evolutionary theorists such as Sober and Wilson have argued that we should revise Neo-Darwininian evolutionary theory. They argue that human altruism evolved through group selection in which groups of altruists were naturally selected because they had a comparative advantage over other groups. Wilson and Sober’s hypothesis attracted followers but is rejected by most of their peers. The heated debate between advocates and critics of group selection often suffers from a lack of conceptual clarity. In response, I set out to clearly distinguish ‘genetic’ from ‘cultural’ group selection (developed by Boyd, Richerson & Henrich) and argue that the latter does not face the potentially debilitating problems plaguing the former. I defend the claim that human altruistic dispositions evolved through cultural group selection and gene-culture coevolution and offer empirical evidence in support. I also argue that actual altruistic behavior often goes beyond the kind of behavior humans have evolved to display. Conscious and voluntary reasoning processes, I show, have an important role in altruistic behavior. This is often overlooked in the scientific literature on human altruism.

Cultural group selection and the evolution of reindeer herding in Norway

Herding can be characterized as a coordination game with two strategies for minimising risk: increase herd size (livestock quantity) or increase livestock body mass (livestock quality). In this paper I demonstrate that the selection of herd maximisation as a risk management strategy in the Northern parts of Norway has been influenced by a history of intra-group competition exacerbating between-herder conflict and lack of trust. In the South herder-farmer conflicts have increased between-herder coordination and trust; resulting in the adoption of increasing livestock quality as the dominant risk management strategy.

Foundations of Cooperation

This chapter reveals that there is strong evidence that the large-scale cooperation observed solely in human societies arises because of our uniquely potent capacities for social learning, imitation, and teaching, combined with the coevolutionary feedbacks that these capabilities have generated on the human mind. Culture took human populations down evolutionary pathways not available to noncultural species, either by creating conditions that promoted established cooperative mechanisms, such as indirect reciprocity and mutualism; or by generating novel cooperative mechanisms not seen in other taxa, such as cultural group selection. In the process, gene–culture coevolution seemingly generated an evolved psychology, comprising an enhanced ability and motivation to learn, teach, communicate through language, imitate, and emulate, as well as predispositions to docility, social tolerance, and the sharing of goals, intentions, and attention. The chapter concludes that this evolved psychology is entirely different from that observed in any other animal, or that could have evolved through genes alone.

The origins of human prosociality: Cultural group selection in the workplace and the laboratory

Human prosociality toward nonkin is ubiquitous and almost unique in the animal kingdom. It remains poorly understood, although a proliferation of theories has arisen to explain it. We present evidence from survey data and laboratory treatment of experimental subjects that is consistent with a set of theories based on group-level selection of cultural norms favoring prosociality. In particular, increases in competition increase trust levels of individuals who (i) work in firms facing more competition, (ii) live in states where competition increases, (iii) move to more competitive industries, and (iv) are placed into groups facing higher competition in a laboratory experiment. The findings provide support for cultural group selection as a contributor to human prosociality.