In the Light of Evolution Volume IV: The Human Condition (2010) / Chapter Skim
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16 The Difference of Being Human: Morality--Francisco J. Ayala
16 The Difference of Being Human: Morality--Francisco J. Ayala
Pages 319-340
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From page 319... ...
i propose that the capacity for ethics is a necessary attribute of human nature, whereas moral codes are products of cultural evolution. humans have a moral sense because their biological makeup determines the presence of three necessary conditions for ethical behavior: (i)
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From page 320... ...
erect posture and large brain are not the only anatomical features that distinguish us from nonhuman primates, even if they may be the most obvious. other notable anatomical differences include the reduction of the size of the jaws and teeth and the remodeling of the face; reduction of body hair and changes in the skin and skin glands; modification of the vocal tract and larynx, with important implications for spoken language; opposing thumbs that allow precise manipulation of objects; and cryptic ovula tion, which may have been associated with the evolution of the nuclear family, consisting of one mother and one father with their children.
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From page 321... ...
. The advent of culture has brought with it cultural evolution, a superorganic mode of evolution superimposed on the organic mode, which has, in the last few millennia, become the dominant mode of human evolution.
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From page 322... ...
, but value judgments concerning human behavior are passed in all cultures. This universality raises two related questions: whether the moral sense is part of human nature, one more dimension of our biological makeup; and whether ethical values may be products of biological evolution rather than being given by religious and other cultural traditions.
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From page 323... ...
in practice, humans justify the set of moral norms they follow on several, not only one, metaethical doctrines. Thomas Aquinas, the 13th century Christian theologian whose authority is highly respected up to the present, says that some moral laws come from divine authority (worship only one God)
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From page 324... ...
, which he had already encountered while a student at Cambridge University, and the multivolume Illustrations of Political Economy by harriet Martineau, published more recently, in 1832–1834. These two authors, like other philosophers of the time, maintained that morality was a conven tional attribute of humankind, rather than a naturally determined human attribute, on the grounds of an argument often advanced nowadays by philosophers and anthropologists: the diversity of moral codes.
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From page 325... ...
But Darwin would eventually develop a more complex and subtle theory of the moral sense than his contempora neous authors, a theory that, implicitly at least, recognized moral behavior as a biologically determined human universal but with culturally evolved differences. For Darwin, the ethnographic diversity of moral customs and rules came about as an adaptive response to the environmental and historical conditions, unique in every different place, without necessarily implying that morality was an acquired, rather than natural, human trait.
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From page 326... ...
A variable adaptive response could very well derive from some fun damental attribute, a common substrate, unique for the whole human race but capable of becoming expressed in diverse directions. Darwin did not attribute the universality of morality to supernatural origin but rather saw it as a product of evolution by natural selection.
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From page 327... ...
Therefore, if our intelligence is an outcome of natural selection, the moral sense would be as well an outcome of natural selection. Darwin's statement further implies that the moral sense is not by itself directly promoted by natural selection, but only indirectly as a necessary consequence of high intellectual powers, which are the attributes that natural selection is directly promoting.
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From page 328... ...
MORAL NORMS The question of whether ethical behavior is biologically determined may, indeed, refer to either one of the following two issues. First, is the capacity for ethics -- the proclivity to judge human actions as either right or wrong -- determined by the biological nature of human beings?
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From page 329... ...
According to this evolution ary scenario, natural selection promoted the intellectual capacity of our bipedal ancestors because increased intelligence facilitated the perception of tools as tools, and therefore their construction and use, with the ensuing improvement of biological survival and reproduction. The development of the intellectual abilities of our ancestors took place over several million years, gradually increasing the ability to connect means with their ends and, hence, the possibility of making ever-more complex tools serving more diverse and remote purposes.
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From page 330... ...
The moral sense, as i have proposed, emerges as a necessary implication of our high intellectual powers, which allow us to anticipate the consequences of our actions, to evaluate such consequences, and to choose accordingly how to act. But is it the case that the moral sense may have been promoted by natural selection in itself and not only indirectly as a necessary consequence of our exalted intelligence?
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From page 331... ...
The issue at hand is whether moral behavior was directly promoted by natural selection or rather it is simply a consequence of our exalted intelligence, which was the target of natural selection (because it made possible the construction of better tools)
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From page 332... ...
it seems unlikely that making moral judgments would promote the reproductive fitness of those judging an action as good or evil; acting in one way or another might be of consequence in promoting fitness, but passing judgment by itself would seem unlikely to increase or decrease adaptive fitness. nor does it seem likely that there might be some form of "incipient" ethical behavior that would then be further promoted by natural selection.
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From page 333... ...
natural selection will thus eliminate genetically determined altruistic behaviors. of course, it is admitted that it might be the case that populations with a preponderance of altruistic alleles would survive and spread better than populations consisting of selfish alleles.
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From page 334... ...
do not imply advanced intelligence as it is required for moral behavior. A different explanation of the evolution of the moral sense has been advanced by proponents of the theory of "gene–culture coevolution" (simon, 1990; richerson and Boyd, 2005; haidt, 2007; strimling et al., 2009; richerson et al., Chapter 12, this volume)
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From page 335... ...
The gene–culture coevolution account of the evolution of morality is, of course, radically different from the theory i am advancing here, in which moral behavior evolved not because it increased fitness but as a consequence of advanced intelligence, which allowed humans to see the benefits that adherence to moral norms bring to society and to its members. The extreme variation in moral codes among recent human populations and the rapid evolution of moral norms over short time spans would seem to favor the explanation i am proposing.
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From page 336... ...
how do moral codes come about? The short answer is, as already stated, that moral codes are products of cultural evolution, a distinctive human mode of evolution that has surpassed the biological mode, because it is a more effective form of adaptation: it is faster than biological evolution and it can be directed.
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From page 337... ...
MORAL NORMS AND NATURAL SELECTION Parental care is a behavior generally favored by natural selection that may be present in virtually all codes of morality, from primitive to more advanced societies. There are other human behaviors sanctioned by moral norms that have biological correlates favored by natural selection.
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From page 338... ...
. Moral codes arise in human societies by cultural evolution.
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From page 339... ...
. But it is worth noticing that the legal and political systems that govern human societies, as well as the belief systems held by religion, are themselves outcomes of cultural evolution, as it has eventuated over human history, particularly over the last few millennia (Ayala, 2010)
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