Morality Evolution, Its Explanations, and Definitions

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Evolutionary explanations for morality and altruism have been developed considerably during the last several centuries to comprehend its roots and urgency¹ and prove its appropriateness, correctness, and importance in comparison to other refined applications of the emotions.² Morality may be defined as a kind of social obligation to authority-independent norms and moral judgments that may be imposed by a number of legally approved sanctions,³ a byproduct of some accidental or invented faculties,⁴ or, in other words, everything that people can harbor in their heads and describe in the most adequate way for them.⁵ Krebs admits that all normal people may have a sense of morality that can be defined as what people may think it is.⁶ This means that any kind of interpretation of morality developed by people should be appropriate for them because all these interpretations and definitions are based on the experience and knowledge of these people.

Essence of Evolutionary Theory and Its Connection to Moral Behavior

The evolution of morality is closely connected to the issues of human evolution and human moral development⁷ that are discussed by Darwin and his followers. In fact, there are many types of writers and scholars that can use the evolutionary theory as the main explanation of morality. For example, Lawrence Kohlberg is the representative of moral psychologists who developed an idea that children should not be identified as passive receptacles of morality only because they are able to develop their own conceptions of morality and interpret the information they get from different sources regarding their knowledge of social words.⁸

There are also many modern moral philosophers, such as Richard Joyce, who tries to explain the development and evolvement of moral traits and human behavior. Boehm introduces Darwin as one of the brightest evolutionary pioneers in the discussions of moral aspects of human nature.⁹ Darwin did not offer the alternatives but defined human nature as something that could be blank from the beginning and could be relatively specific, with time being determined by the existing culture.¹⁰ Human morality is a product of human evolution. Evolution helps people find out moral truth and comprehend the conditions under which they have to live and to follow the norms identified during different epochs.¹¹ It also helps people to comprehend the essence and boundaries of moral progress they can achieve.

Social and Political Behavior in Terms of Morality

Many researchers and philosophers also admit that the evolution of morality has to be defined in certain political and social terms because the way people understand their moral issues may influence their political philosophies.¹² Psychologists and philosophers are ready to introduce different opinions and attitudes to moral ideals, human opportunities, and the outcomes to their social lives. On the one hand, there are moral psychologists, who believe that the boundaries of moral idealism have to be lower because of various human limitations and contradictions. On the other hand, there are the philosophers, who underline the power of philosophical idealism in terms of which all human actions and social organizations have ideal forms that may or may not be in balance with the current human needs and wants.¹³

The social and political behavior of one group of people may be misunderstood or judged by the representatives of other groups because nowadays people are eager to introduce their personal truths and ideals that they cannot demote or change. Every human has the ability to find out the reasons for actions taken and the decisions made, and the identification of personal values can be used to comprehend the essence of morality and identify the moral standards. Therefore, the rise of open-ended normativity may result in the diverse standards of ethics that people develop using their own ideas, promoting their ideals, and appreciating their experience.

Open-Ended Normativity and the Rise of Morality in a Constantly Developing Society

Many psychologists believe that human ethics is based on the instinct of survival and a moral instinct that helps to generate the rapid judgments and social expectations¹⁴ to avoid making wrong decisions while being aware of both aspects and their options in case some wrong decisions have already been made.¹⁵ Buchman and Powell,¹⁶ as well as Buchman¹⁷ independently, made an attempt to explain the importance of open-ended normativity as one of the main capacities to change human behavior by means of the reflections and modifications of the moral norms. Still, in both projects, the authors did not identify the conditions under which open-ended normativity can be explained or even improved. They also did not explain the peculiar features of the capacity but focused on the explanation of moral norms and moral evolution that could underline the importance of open-ended normativity.

Ideas of Reciprocal Altruism and Altruistic Punishment

Morality is necessary for people to cooperate, and their cooperation should be based on the ideas of altruistic punishment.¹⁸ In fact, altruism has posed a specific puzzle for many philosophers due to the power of selfishness inherent to people.¹⁹ Different groups demonstrate different attitudes to the ideas of altruism and altruistic punishment as the crucial aspects of evolutionary morality.²⁰ Boehm offers to contrast the peculiarities of altruism to the peculiarities of behavioral nepotism.²¹ There is also an idea to avoid or be very careful with the idea of punishment because it may destroy ethical and moral forms. There are three main types of altruism—biological, behavioral, and psychological—and each of them influences how people understand the essence of ethics and people’s intentions to interpret their decisions.²² The evolution of altruism may be observed in small groups where migration is a frequent notion, and altruistic punishment can help to avoid the complications based on the moral ideals developed by people.²³

Moral Obligations of People

The evaluation of morality and human evolution proves the fact that people try to act morally correct and use their experience and personal judgments to identify the positive and negative outcomes of their behavior. People try to consider open-ended normativity as a chance to explain the rise of morality,²⁴ to underline the worth of altruism and self-sacrificial behavior,²⁵ and to realize that altruistic tendencies make sense and guide people on how to create morally stable communities regarding their current needs and expectations as well as acquiring their reputation. There are many types of obligations that help people take care of their children, such as the provision for their children of appropriate education or the idea to share their knowledge and experience to introduce the norms that should be followed. All these moral obligations and behaviors prove that evolutionary theory and morality are closely connected, and this connection should be investigated in terms of philosophers’ and psychologists’ points of view.

Bibliography

Boehm, Christopher. Hierarchy in the Forest: The Evolution of Egalitarian Behavior. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999.

Boyd, Robert, Herbert Gintis, Samuel Bowles, and Peter Richerson. “The Evolution of Altruistic Punishment.”Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 100, no. 6 (2003): 3531-3535. Web.

Buchanan, Allen, and Russell Powell. “The Limits of Evolutionary Explanations of Morality and Their Implications for Moral Progress.” Ethics 126, no. 1 (2015): 37-67. Web.

Buchanan, Allen. “The Open-ended Normativity of the Ethical.” Analyse & Kritik 34, no. 1 (2012): 81-94. Web.

Dawkins, Richard. The Selfish Gene. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1989.

Eccleston, Charles, H., and Frederic March. Global Environmental Policy: Concepts, Principles, and Practice. New York, NY: CRC Press, 2011.

Fiske, Susan T., Gilbert, Daniel T., and Gardner Lindzey. Handbook of Social Psychology. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2010.

“Human Evolution: Moral Thinking.” The Economist (2008). Web.

Katz, Leonard D. “Toward Good and Evil: Evolutionary Approaches to Aspects of Human Morality.” Evolutionary Origins of Morality: Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives. Thorverton: Imprint Academic, 2000: ix-xvi.

Kitcher, Philip. The Ethical Project. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011.

Krebs, Dennis. The Origins of Morality: An Evolutionary Account. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.

MacDonald, Kevin B. “Evolution and a Dual Processing Theory of Culture: Applications to Moral Idealism and Political Philosophy.” Politics and Culture 1 (2010). Web.

Mathew, S., and R. Boyd. “Punishment Sustains Large-scale Cooperation in Prestate Warfare.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 108, no. 28 (2011): 11375-1380. Web.

Petrinovich, Lewis. Human Evolution, Reproduction, and Morality. New York, NY: Springer, 2013.

Prinz, Jesse. “Is Morality Innate?” In Moral Psychology, edited by W. Sinnott-Armstrong, 367-406. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008.

Footnotes

Leonard D. Katz, “Toward Good and Evil: Evolutionary Approaches to Aspects of Human Morality,” Evolutionary Origins of Morality: Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives (Thorverton: Imprint Academic, 2000): ix.
“Human Evolution: Moral Thinking,” The Economist (2008), Web.
Allen Buchanan and Russell Powell, “The Limits of Evolutionary Explanations of Morality and Their Implications for Moral Progress,” Ethics 126, no. 1 (2015): 38, Web.
Jesse Prinz, “Is Morality Innate?” in Moral Psychology, ed. W. Sinnott-Armstrong (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2008), 367.
Dennis Krebs, The Origins of Morality: An Evolutionary Account (New York: Oxford University Press, 201), 15.
Ibid.
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1989): 15.
Krebs, The Origins of Morality, 5.
Christopher Boehm, Hierarchy in the Forest: The Evolution of Egalitarian Behavior (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 229.
Ibid.
Susan T. Fiske, Daniel T. Gilbert, and Gardner Lindzey, Handbook of Social Psychology (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2010), 808.
Buchanan and Powell, “The Limits of Evolutionary Explanations of Morality”, 45.
Kevin B. MacDonald. “Evolution and a Dual Processing Theory of Culture: Applications to Moral Idealism and Political Philosophy,” Politics and Culture 1 (2010), Web.
Charles H. Eccleston, and Frederic March, Global Environmental Policy: Concepts, Principles, and Practice (New York, NY: CRC Press, 2011): 213.
Lewis Petrinovich, Human Evolution, Reproduction, and Morality (New York, NY: Springer, 2013), 130.
Buchanan and Powell, “The Limits of Evolutionary Explanations of Morality”,38.
Allen Buchanan, “The Open-ended Normativity of the Ethical,” Analyse & Kritik 34, no. 1 (2012): 81, Web.
Robert Boyd, Herbert Gintis, Samuel Bowles, and Peter Richerson, “The Evolution of Altruistic Punishment,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 100, no. 6 (2003): 3531, Web.
Boehm, Hierarchy in the Forest, 200.
S. Mathew and R. Boyd, “Punishment Sustains Large-scale Cooperation in Prestate Warfare,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 108, no. 28 (2011): 11375, Web.
Boehm, Hierarchy in the Forest, 200.
Philip Kitcher, The Ethical Project (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011): 19.
Boyd, Gintis, Bowles, and Richerson, “The Evolution of Altruistic Punishment,” 3532.
Buchanan, “The Open-ended Normativity of the Ethical,” 81.
Boehm, Hierarchy in the Forest, 200.

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