Morality through achieving goals jointly

Instrumental normativity becomes moral normativity when the goal is achieved jointly.  

Morality could be described as the intrapersonal, interpersonal, and collective normative structures that arise when people collaborate towards a joint goal, necessarily relying on one another, and taking the risk of placing their fates in each others' hands.  

In other words, morality is the normativity internal to the collaborative group, team, or partnership.  

Helping a stranger in the street

It can be argued that when we help a stranger in the street, for example, we are not collaborating towards a joint goal.  This is true in a way.  My (proximate) goal is one-way, and personal to me: it is to help this stranger.  However, ultimately, the instinct to help people in one's vicinity evolved, we believe, within the context of the personal interdependence of the need to thrive, survive, and reproduce jointly and collaboratively of people living in small groups in harsh or changeable conditions over most of the 2 million year-history of the human family tree.  In other words, the instinct to help my neighbour evolved at a time when my neighbour's existence is valuable to me: I need them to be in good shape for future collaborations.  This is known as the "Interdependence Hypothesis" of the evolution of human altruism (Tomasello, Melis, Tennie, Wyman, and Herrmann, 2012).

It may also be argued that when I experience a proximate motivation to help a suffering stranger, our joint proximate goal is win-win mutualism: to restore mutual fitness by helping them to achieve well-being again, at some tolerable cost to myself, so that the result is "win-win".  Win-win mutualism is consistent with interdependence.  

 

Types of morality

If morality is the normative structure that arises when we collaborate towards a joint goal, then we can define a morality with: 1) a goal; 2) a method of achieving that goal.  Each definition forms a moral domain and generates moral values.  

 

Evolved moral domains

 

Goal

Win-win mutualism

Reproduction / mate acquisition and retention

Reproduction / mate retention

Reproduction / raising children

Inclusive fitness

Method of achieving goal

 

Cooperation

Patriarchy

Pair-bonding

Parenting

Family values and duties

Moral principles are (MAC)1

Solutions to challenges to win-win mutualism

Solutions to challenges to mate acquisition and retention

Solutions to challenges to mate retention

Solutions to challenges to raising children

Solutions to challenges to inclusive fitness

Moral principles are (GM)2

Ideal ways to cooperate

Ideal ways to be patriarchal

Ideal ways to pair-bond

Ideal ways to parent

Ideal ways to carry out family duties and values

Virtues

Moral principles

Moral principles

Moral principles

 

Moral principles

 

Moral principles

 

Vices

Breaches of moral principles

Breaches of moral principles

Breaches of moral principles

 

Breaches of moral principles

 

Breaches of moral principles

 

1: MAC = Morality-as-Cooperation (Curry, Mullins, and Whitehouse, 2019)

2: GM = Goals / Methods model of morality (Perry, 2022)

 

So we have, for each moral domain:

moral principles = ideal ways to (method) = ideal ways to (achieve goal G)

= solutions to challenges to (achieving goal G)

 

 

Morality does not equal collaboration

Importantly, morality does not equal achieving a goal jointly.  Morality does not equal, for example, cooperation, since cooperation can be used to commit evil.  Morality is the internal normativity that arises within a group, team or partnership when it seeks to achieve a goal jointly.  So, Nazis could be moral towards each other (loyal, reciprocal, etc.) while being unethical towards everyone else.  

 

Internal features of morality (sources of normativity)

Interdependence shapes and directs moral normativity.  

All internal features of morality are sources of normativity because they are all in the service of achieving the joint goal; their purpose is to help to achieve the joint goal; normativity is the pressure to achieve goals; and so, all internal features of morality are sources of the pressure to achieve the joint goal.  

 

 

Value and moral values

A policy is a coordinated pattern of behaviour.  

A value is either: 1) a utilitarian good; 2) a policy for achieving a goal G.  

A moral value is a policy for achieving a moral goal: i.e., a joint goal G.  

A moral value is the same thing as a moral principle: valuable in itself because it is a policy for achieving a joint goal.  

If a moral value is a policy for achieving G, jointly, then a moral principle is a method, within a moral domain defined by an overall method, of achieving some overall G jointly.  

So, if cooperation is an overall description of ways to achieve win-win mutualism (mutual fitness – thriving, surviving, and cooperative breeding), then specifically cooperative moral principles (e.g., altruism, fairness, reciprocity, the Golden Rule) are also methods or policies for achieving win-win mutualism in everyday situations.  

A trait can only evolve if it benefits the self.  

Tomasello et al. (2012) propose two stages of human evolution: living in small groups from around 2 million years ago, and larger tribal groups from around 150,000 years ago.  From around 10,000 years ago, we began living in large mixed city states.  

It may be that fairness (as distributive justice) and reciprocity evolved in stages from “looser” in small free-sharing networks to “stricter” in large anonymous groups.  Great apes such as chimpanzees have a form of “friendship” or “buddy” reciprocity where friends and allies will benefit each other reciprocally over long periods of time, without keeping strict account (de Waal, 2005).  But they do not share food willingly (Tomasello et al., 2012).  By contrast, humans will share willingly with each other, and go to great pains to enforce “other-directed fairness” – to be as fair to their partners as they are to themselves.  This may be because: 1) I need my partner(s) to be happy enough to want to collaborate again in the future; 2) I need my partner(s) to be physically well enough to want to collaborate again in the future.  

The Golden Rule may be defined as compassionate “imagine self in position of other” perspective-taking: i.e., putting oneself or a loved one in the position of another, and consequently feeling compassion and understanding for that person.  Chimpanzees, our closest relatives along with bonobos, will adopt the perspective of competitors, “seeing the world through their eyes” in order to find out what they are “up to” (Tomasello, 2019).  They can perceive what others perceive.  Chimpanzees are largely competitive with each other, compared with humans who are largely cooperative with each other.  Hence, we will adopt the perspective of another for prosocial reasons.  The reasons for this may be: 1) humans are cooperative breeders: human babies are typically cared for by many adults, and so they need to enter into the minds of others for prosocial reasons; 2) compared with chimpanzees, humans procure their necessaries cooperatively and interdependently, so humans feel empathic concern for their fellows, because they depend on them to survive.  

The goal of patriarchy is ultimately reproduction at men's convenience, and proximately, mate acquisition and retention by men using the control and suppression of women (see Perry, 2021:104).  (The alternative, egalitarian male reproductive strategy is to make themselves into as ideal mates as possible.)  Patriarchy is constructed collectively, on a society-wide scale, through social norms: ways to be cooperative (to achieve win-win mutualism) in otherwise competitive situations (e.g., competition between males to control and dominate females).  Patriarchal values or moral principles include acknowledgement of the "superiority" and dominance of men; obedience in women; sexual exclusivity in women but not necessarily in men; men providing resources for women; and men physically protecting women from other marauding men.  All of these are ways to achieve the goal of reproduction on men's terms.  

Feminism, the egalitarian assertion of rights for women as well as men, is a necessary female resistance of patriarchy, and would not need to exist without patriarchy.  Among the great apes, those species with the strongest “sisterhood” or most effective solidarity between females are the most free from patriarchy in males.  This is, bonobos (de Waal, 1998, Smuts, 1995; see Perry, 2021:106).    

 

Right and wrong

In what sense does evolutionary ethics say that things are right and wrong?  

Interpersonal behaviour can be right or wrong according to this or that moral principle – whether helping in response to need; the Golden Rule; obedience in women; faithfulness to a pair-bonded sexual partner; etc.  

Hence, behaviour can be right according to moral values A, B, and C; but wrong according to moral values D, E, and F.  Behaviour is rarely 100% one or the other: ethical or immoral.  

As a standard method for achieving a joint goal, the moral value thus forms an impartial external arbiter or standard by which to judge moral justice and ought-ness.  

 

Morals and ethics

We define morality as the normativity internal to the cooperative unit.  We define ethics as behaviour that conforms to the “best” of that normativity: that positively correlates with moral values; “the good”.  

We hypothesise that overall, the most important ethical value, in the minds of typical human beings, is compassion, in the form of the bodily well-being of the self and others.  After all, without the survival of an organism, nothing else is biologically possible for it.  

The morality between groups is another matter: how groups interact morally with each other.  We may observe that they have higher tendency towards competition than in the interpersonal relations of individuals.  Human groups living and interacting together as whole entities may thus be more like chimpanzees: social but not very cooperative; competitive, strategic, and Machiavellian (Tomasello, 2016).  

 

Evolved moral domains and moral values

1.  Cooperation for win-win mutualism

Interpersonal / small groups

Collective / large groups

 

2.  Patriarchy for reproduction, at males’ convenience, through mate acquisition and retention (cooperativised as social norms)

 

3.  Pair-bonding for reproduction through mate retention

 

4.  Parenting for reproduction through raising children successfully

 

5.  Family morality for inclusive fitness of individuals

 

Loyalty

Loyalty is a result of the giving of compassion – altruism – helping in response to need – on at least one occasion, when it really mattered.  Loyalty can be to a person, people, one’s group or coalition, one’s family, one’s pair-bond, etc.  The higher the level of risk and of the corresponding helping behaviour, the higher the resulting loyalty.  Mutual helping results in mutual loyalty.  

Loyalty could be described as a genuine and sincere commitment to help.  As a gift or exchange of compassion, we would expect to see it within the moral domains of cooperation for win-win mutualism; pair-bonding; and parents and children.  It is unclear what kind, if any, loyalty a patriarchal male has towards “his” subordinate female(s).  

Family, compassion, and two kinds of fitness benefit

Because we need them to be alive and well, we wish to help those who represent fitness value for us: whether utilitarian or genetic.  

Family loyalty is a result of bestowing a different kind of fitness than that given in compassion.  I am loyal to family members because they are helping to ensure the survival and potential reproduction of some of my genes.  This is described in Hamilton’s Rule:

 

“I will help you when” r × B > C

“I will help you when the amount by which it benefits the genes we share is greater than the cost I incur in helping you”.

 

B = your benefit

r = coefficient of relatedness

> is greater than

C = my cost

 

The kind of fitness benefit bestowed in compassion is to put the right conditions in place in the other person for the pressure to thrive to do its work in them: as a flower that we look after in the garden grows strong and healthy because we give it the right conditions it needs.  We feel a desire to help those whose value benefits us.  We may call it a form of reciprocity: “long-term” or “buddy” reciprocity.  This is described by the Stakeholder inequality (Tomasello, 2016):  

 

altruists pay a cost c which benefits a recipient by b. Then, unlike in reciprocal altruism where the recipient actively benefits the original altruist, the altruist gains secondarily as a function of the beneficiary's gain. Denoting as s the altruist’s stake in the recipient’s benefit, we obtain the expression:

Roberts, 2005

 

“I will help you when” s × B > C

 

B = your (increased) well being

s = my stake in your (overall) well being

> is greater than

C = my cost in helping you

 

Moral purity

Moral purity is treated as a separate moral “foundation” by Jonathan Haidt (2013) and others.  However, we propose that purity is “about” the other evolved moral foundations: it is a quality that may apply to any of them.

Purity is a property of sacred values – things that are treated as having infinite value (see Perry, 2021:225).  Now, all of the evolved moral foundations have either reproduction or mutual fitness as their goals.  Reproduction and fitness are of infinite value, because the DNA molecule reproduces.  Hence, any of the evolved moral domains and their values can be, and is, regarded as sacred.  

Sacred principles can be “polluted” by their antitheses: selfishness, and “dark” behaviour.  “Dark” behaviour means to thrive at the expense of others, whether negligently or deliberately (see Perry, 2021:182).  

 

Other forms of morality (goals/methods)

There are other forms of morality than the evolved ones: for example, religion, and medical ethics.  In religion, the goal is “serving God”, and the method of achieving it is “religious practice”.  This involves all the standard features of morality/sources of normativity that we see in evolved morality.  Since it constitutes a complete system for living, it incorporates the morality of the day (or that from historical times).  Medical ethics has “patient welfare” as its goal, and “ethical medical practice” as the method of achieving it.  

 

References

Curry, Oliver Scott; Daniel Austin Mullins; and Harvey Whitehouse – “Is It Good to Cooperate? Testing the Theory of Morality-as-Cooperation in 60 Societies”; Current Anthropology Volume 60, Number 1, February 2019; https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/701478

Haidt, Jonathan – “The Righteous Mind – why good people are divided by politics and religion”; Penguin Books, London 2013

Perry, Simon – “Understanding morality and ethics” (2021); https://orangebud.co.uk/Understanding%20morality%20and%20ethics.pdf

Perry, Simon – “Types and features of morality” (2022); https://orangebud.co.uk/types.html

Pick, Cari M – “Fundamental social motives measured across forty-two cultures in two waves”, 16 August 2022, nature.com, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-022-01579-w

Roberts, Gilbert – “Cooperation through interdependence”: Animal Behaviour, 2005, 70, 901–908 https://www.academia.edu/28485879/Cooperation_through_interdependence

Smuts, Barbara – “The Evolutionary Origins of Patriarchy": Human Nature, Vol. 6, No. 1, pp. 1-32, 1995

Tomasello, Michael; Alicia P Melis; Claudio Tennie; Emily Wyman; Esther Herrmann – “Two Key Steps in the Evolution of Human Cooperation – The Interdependence Hypothesis” – Current Anthropology, vol. 53, no. 6, Dec 2012

Tomasello, Michael – “A Natural History of Human Morality”; Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA 2016

Tomasello, Michael – “Becoming Human – a theory of ontogeny”; Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA 2019

de Waal, Frans B M and Frans Lanting – “Bonobo – the forgotten ape”; University of California Press, Berkeley CA 1998

de Waal, Frans B M – “How Animals Do Business” – Scientific American, April 2005

Foundations of evolutionary ethics

 

Evolutionary origin of normativity

The explanatory stopping-point or axiom for evolutionary ethics is the fact that reproduction is a fundamental property of the DNA molecule.  Even though we could ask the question, "why does DNA reproduce?", the answer is not necessary for evolutionary ethics to function as an explanatory model of morality.  

We hypothesise that the ancient first-life environment was one of finite resources, and that if a particular allele (version) of a gene was to survive long enough to reproduce, it had to effectively out-reproduce others.  Note that individual molecules could die, as long as the overall version survived and reproduced.  

Hence, those alleles that competed to reproduce could survive in the population long enough to reproduce the next generation.  The finiteness of the resources in the environment, sets up a competitive evolutionary pressure to reproduce, and thereafter, all organisms experience an internal pressure to reproduce (or at least, according to Freud’s Eros theory, to go in that direction (see Perry, 2021:16-17)).  In order to reproduce they have to survive, and in order to survive they need to thrive, do well, and achieve goals.  This is how normativity, should-ness, evolved.  

 

Normativity

Key to diagram

The pressure to thrive depends on the pressure to survive, which depends on the pressure to reproduce.

Cooperation and competition are two alternative ways to thrive, survive and reproduce: to achieve fitness.  Cooperation results in win-win mutualism; competition is a zero-sum game where if I win, you lose, and if you win, I lose.  

Pick et al. (2022) identify a number of universal human motivations, that are “high in fitness relevance and everyday salience”: self-protection, disease avoidance, affiliation, status, mate acquisition, mate retention, and kin care.  We may slot these into the overall picture of normativity at appropriate locations.  For example, status is a competitive motive, while affiliation is a cooperative one.  

When a fitness goal is approached or achieved, pleasure is the result.  When a fitness goal is hindered or fails to be achieved, the result is pain.  Accordingly, Freud’s Pleasure Principle states that there is a pressure to seek pleasure.

“Inclusive fitness” refers to the fitness of: 1) myself and my genetic relatives; 2) myself and the people who help me (to maintain my fitness).