What's moral about evolution?

All morals stem from the fact that a species tries to survive, even if it involves wanting others of the same species to survive. Therefore acts of violence that hinders this survival are seem as immoral.

Because our thoughts are complex, we have much more complex morals that stem to sexuality. Ie homosexuality is seen as wrong to some people because it cannot create a child in a same-sex relationship.

Most people see morality as “what is natural”. In this case it is natural for a man to be with a woman and not with another man. However things get complex again when looking at issues such as money. Evolution suggests that we compete for resources, and even animals do this through fighting. However loads of people would see mugging as an immoral act. I guess this human’s theory of mind and empathy need to also be factored – we would hate to be in the position of being mugged. And possibly from the knowledge that the mugger could get the same rewards through friendlier means.

I….uh. It’s not a question of morality. It’s an issue of science and evidence. It’s kind of like saying, “What’s moral about gravity,” IMO…..

And sexual morality is a total human construct that varies from culture to culture.

Morality is nothing more then empathy.

There is nothing empathic about evolution.

Do you mean, why was it adaptive for human beings or their infra-human ancestors to make altruistic gestures? That is still hotly debated, but some evolutionary psychologists find reason to believe that efforts on behalf of the community that were honestly reciprocated were, in fact, adaptive.

Sexual morality is just sexual strategy. Females needed provisioning during pregancy, lactation, and altricial childcare, so they tended to be discriminant maters. Males were opportunistic maters and had some other mating strategies, but the most adaptive one turned out to be long-term monogamy with a certain amount of extra-pair copulation, which is what we still pretty much have.

Oh, I should say that EPC was also adaptive for females, so they indulged in it also.

@Val123: it doesn’t completely. I don’t know of any culture where you can marry your own parent and the institution of marriage itself happens in a lot of cultures.

@ChazMaz Knowing what other people (animals) are feeling would be highly beneficial in evolutionary terms. Example: Machiavellian intelligence.

Knowing has nothing to do with evolution of a species.

Only to its destruction.

therefore, the primary motive of any individual in a species is to reproduce

you have simplified or misunderstood evolutionary theory.

@pdworkin Good answer! I think you understood better than I what he was trying to ask….

@Ria777 Dunno. However, animals interbreed with their parents and offspring, all the time. No reason for humans not to, except that it’s repugnant, to us, anyway. Anyway, it might take some searching, but there might be some cultures out there where it IS ok….

@ChazMaz It is an adaptive trait which provides advantages to those that have it (increased resources and copulation). Therefore it has lots to do with evolution of a species.

Evolution is a process of trial and error.

How does knowledge inject into evolutionary adaptation through natural selection?

@ChazMaz Empathy isn’t a knowledge, it is just a skill hardly any different to learning a language. I hope you agree that language is an evolutionary inherited ability and if you don’t evidence comes from the fact that most animals show signs of communication, and ours just seems to be highly more advanced (grammar etc). No human starts with a ‘database’ of all emotions and behaviour – they learn these through development through their life. It is just the starting block that is inherited through genes.

And this starting block is a kin to all learning behaviour – which when reduced to its simplest form is just a long list of stimulus and responses.

(Note: I dislike reductionalist explanations as they often miss a few steps so I am most likely forgetting to mention a point that I understand but have forgotten to include).

I pretty much agree with what Ame Evil said about morality being what is natural. That happens in most cases.

Most actions that societies deem wrong come from their tendency to harm other people. In other words, it’s a sort of application of the Golden Rule. You don’t want to be killed, you don’t want your loved ones to be killed, so it makes sense that you don’t want anyone killing anyone and you want to establish killing as “wrong” to avoid it in the first place. (Of course, as most societies show, there are numerous exceptions to these rules). The same thing follows for stealing, cheating, lying, fighting, rape, etc. These things harm other people (causing emotional and physical pain and distress) and you wouldn’t want them to happen to you, so it makes sense that societies established them as “wrong”.

Sexual morality is a bit different because a lot of it has nothing to do with harming someone. Some of it does, not but all of it. The example of homosexuality is a main one. It’s my theory that societies first began to say homosexuality was wrong because it was so different and it went against the natural purpose of intercourse, so people wanted nothing to do with something that was different. Fear/hatred/avoidance of the different is common among all things, not just sexual acts. It’s my belief that it’s simply human nature. From then on, it became established as being wrong in religious doctrines and of course people are going to follow those if they are devoted and guided by their religion and its doctrines.

I remember I put forth the example of what if a new planet were created and humans were put on it (but had nothing to do with Earth and its societies), what kinds of things would they have come up with to be wrong? I figured that they would determine things that harm other people and those that they wouldn’t want to have done to themselves to be wrong, but it wouldn’t necessarily follow that all human societies would consider homosexuality wrong. Take the example of the Ancient Greeks and Romans. They did not view it as wrong. Some Romans felt that it was odd for a Roman emperor to not have male lovers. It varies from society to society. Ultimately, though, sexual taboos that do not involve hurting another person (like rape, molestation, even incest in the case of creating a deformed child) most likely arose simply because they were different and didn’t fit in with the whole “perfect system” of the way the world worked.

Wait….are we talking specifically about human evolution? I didn’t get that from the question….And if we are talking specifically about human evolution, “morality,” for what it is, didn’t come about until quite very, very recently (Like, a few minutes ago) in the millions of years of our evolutionary development. If “morality” had been a must-have in evolution, we wouldn’t have made it out of the one-cell stage.

@Val123 We can only safely talk about morality in terms of human behaviour as we cannot communicate with other animals about their views. For all we know they may have a working morality system as well. So when inferring about animal behaviour we have to take a functionalist standpoint and can assume that they have rudimentary functions of morality through behaviour such as altruistic actions that animals do seem to display.

And yes morality does come late in the evolution of a species, after all the basic requirements are met. An analogy is like comparing it to creating a software like a website. You get the basic features up, such as a chatbox, and then build upon this making it better. Species evolution is no different – you get feeding sorted, then move up to copulation and sexual selection and then eventually to “higher orders” like cognition.

Of course you may have to adapt earlier behaviours when your environment changes, which may slow down species and may explain why humans are “in the lead” as they may have faced less slowing down. Sort of like survival of the fittest, where humans just outrank everything because of their early adaptivity and so are not hindered by environmental changes. My evidence for this comes from the discovery of fire and tools when we were in an primates like state. It’s possible primates may discover these and then develop in a similar line to humans.

I’m not sure if this is the reason why people take the attitude that humans > animals; but that is not my attitude. I see humans as just another form of animal with different coping behaviours and strategies.

This is the first time i’ve written my views on evolution, and I haven’t read anything like this as its just my interpretation on loads of sources, so if anyone steals them I will be greatly upset.

“increased resources and copulation”
Instinctual behavior. It is not knowledge. As in thought and reason.
Lower orders of species do just fine with resources and copulation without reading a manual.

“it is just a skill hardly any different to learning a language”
“language is an evolutionary inherited ability”

Sounds contradicting.

Communication and language are not the same thing. Language is just a form of communication.
And language is not an evolutionary inherited ability. It is a developmental ability.
Certain language skills that have not been taught and developed in an individuals youth will and can never be learned. Due to how the brain develops.

“they learn these through development through their life.”
“the starting block that is inherited through genes..”

Again sounds contradictive.

And what is to say what is moral? We are no different as a species then how a biological machine works.
Is a virus or a cancer immoral? No.

We use thought and reason to make sense of our actions. I do not see how that biologically connects to how we evolve.
Wishful thinking does not make a species what it is. As much as we try to lift ourselves up with a sense of superiority, all we are doing is adapting to the biological/evolutionary changes in ourselves.

As much as we are, through thought, changing our environment. I.E. changing ourselves but creating just another form of defect. Most will die off, some will develop a better adaptation.

Pretty much back to evolutionary adaptation through natural selection.

@Ame_Evil First time, aye! This could fun!! I vill be nice in presenting my views!

No one is taking issue with the fact that humans are, indeed, animals—primates, to be exact. There are no virtually no serious physical differences between humans and, say, chimps. But morality, the way we think of it, really can be applied only to humans, and, perhaps to a lesser extent, some other higher functioning animals.

Amoebas and fleas and cockroaches, for example, don’t have “morals,” only instincts. Morals come about when you think too much!

@Val123 You can argue that instincts are the evolutionary precursor to morals though and that morals are just cognitive reasoning of these instincts. So the reason fleas and cockroaches don’t have morals is because they do not have the required cognition, which of course is developed through evolutionary means.

@Ame_Evil But, if morality was a requirement of evolution, we would have stalled out at the cockroach stage (heck…long before that), millions and millions and hundreds of millions of years ago…I can agree the morality can arise out of instinct, but more to the point, I think it arises out of cognitive thought.

@Val123 Oh I am not saying morality is a required thing, I am saying that it is a benefit to have. Benefits are useful as they create a higher chance of mating and survivability, hence they are more likely to be passed on.

@Ame_Evil Ah! Benefit to whom? If you’re talking specifically about “the primary motive of any individual in a species is to reproduce”, as the question said, morality is certainly a benefit to female humans, not so much of a benefit to male humans!

@ChazMaz I define adaptive behaviour as: any that promotes the ability of an individual to survive predation; ability to get enough food, water and other resources like these to survive; and the ability to find a mate and pass on genes; and to a lesser extent the ability to rear this child until they can pass on their genes. The latter is to a lesser extent because the parent could die, yet good genes can still enable the survival of that individual through the previous 3 adaptive behaviours.

Thus when I say that language and empathy as adaptive behaviour, I am saying that there is a construct below them which creates the language and empathy later in the individuals life. The construct below them I would say is some form of learning but specific in the language domain and emotional domain. Each individual starts their life knowing nothing but the basic rules needed in order to gather the information from the environment into these domains in order to become adapted to the current environment. This is the adaptive behaviour – (and sorry if I am sounding confusing here) – being able to fit into ANY environment you are thrown into.

Thinking and cognition are just there as processes in order to avoid conflict, find food, communicate with others etc etc etc. These are all beneficial and help promote survivability of the individual and thus pass on the genetic makeup which holds these behaviours. Just to make it clear here, it is my view that genetic codes can be changed through an individual lifetime and there is research providing evidence.

I am sorry that I am sounding vague as its rather late here and if you want any evidence I can perhaps find it but not right now. Maybe this will clear what I am saying up for you in combination with other posts.

@Ame_Evil – Doing good.

Good stuff. :-)

@Val123 Benefit to the individual and his genes.

Yes its mostly a benefit to females, but Machiavellian intelligence is the benefit that males can get through empathy. It could be possible that both genders just develop the single empathy ability rather than separate ones which allows them to achieve what they need. In the same way that you can put a Chinese person into an English country and they will still be able to learn and understand English.

I mentioned this loosely before in another post – that empathy is just a long list of stimulus-response associations, and to build upon this point I would just like to say that only meaningful and relevant S-R associations are made for an individual in their lifetime.

Who thinks I should write a dissertation on this? :p I have at least realised the potential of question/answering into developing deeper insight that wouldn’t have been achieved otherwise.

@ChazMaz I gave you the GA….Ame is doing great! Actually, really great. I’m researching now! :))

(However, a male mating for life with just one female cuts down drastically on his opportunities to pass his genes on…..shoot. Males in cultures who practice bigamy can have 40, 50, 60 off spring….)

In looking up the definition of “Machiavellian intelligence” (which I’ve heard of before, but never bothered to find out what it was til now) I see that it’s a theory of ”...the capacity of an entity to be in a successful political engagement with social groups.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machiavellian_intelligence

There is no doubt that having “Machiavellian intelligence” as defined above is beneficial to an individual in any social group, including horses, wolves, lions, primate groups, any animal group that congregates and lives in herds, and require participation from each member to survive. But, from what I see, “Machiavellian intelligence” is not exclusively limited to intelligence, per se, but can also be associated with who is “bigger, stronger, faster,” etc….the types of requirements an animal would need to be “politically successful”, “dominate,” i.e. having the most offspring in a herd.

Machiavellian intelligence, however, doesn’t automatically require empathy. Empathy involves understanding the emotion states of other people and acting upon that understanding, for personal gain.

The only way empathy, from a male human (to understand the need for a female to have a constant, focused provider) could be considered a benefit is if societal pressure made it that way. The rumor, among human females starts circulating….“He’ll get you preggers and dump you.” That may not lessen your chances of passing on your genes, but it sure lessens your chances of being socially successful, unless you’re in a human society that practices bigamy. Even then, if you wind up with a bigger “herd” than you can handle, you’d be considered a Machiavellian failure….

I would LOVE to see you write a thesis on it!!!!

PS. You’d be less socially successful by getting women pregnant, then moving on, because then the rest of your society would be responsible for raising your offspring…..which, actually, is a social situation we’re facing like an epidemic now, but society seems to want to blame mostly on the women.

It turns out that of the three male mating strategies (Forced copulation, dishonest courtship, and honest courtship) the one that seems to have had the most adaptive result (that is to say it produces the highest number of progeny who go on themselves to contribute to the gene pool) is, perhaps counterintuitively, honest courtship, with a side of EPC’s, especially on the part of the female(!) who gets the male to provision offspring which are not his own, but come from a sneaky fuck with a genetically superior male who is not as good a provisioner.

@pdworkin Well, there is that!

Even monkeys have a sense of fairness. It would seem that morals (a way of keeping things fair, in its simplest form) is not unique to humans.

@laureth Thanks for the link! I agree…the higher primates do have a way of thinking about things, a trait on a lower scale that’s not limited to humans. I watched a show where they have even worked together to to get something done that one monkey, by themselves, couldn’t do. The deeper we get into the brains of our cousins, the more fascinating it is….but….only humans would consider studying other animals to puzzle our own uniqueness out….

Again, I say, morality comes about because we (or somebody) thinks about it…thinks about the situations where….a different way of acting might be appropriate…

Take a look at Gordon Gallup’s work on self-awareness in chimpanzees from the 1970s. Fascinating stuff.

@pdworkin—I’m reading…but I have to tell a story. When my kids were born, my husband and I had a mirrored waterbed. Well, looking at the article, it mentions that “Mirror self-recognition typically emerges in human children in the second year of life ” About the time my daughter turned two, I remember her bouncing up on the bed, bouncing over to the mirror and going “Well, hi again!!” like, “You’re always here when I want you, aren’t you!”

That’s a cute story. Dr. Gallup is my Evolutionary Psych prof. He has gotten crusty but you still gotta love him.

Fortunately, the evolutionary prospects for “sexual morality” don’t look good. If there are future generations, they will look back on our mores with bemused incomprehension.

Evolution may not be all about morality, but morality is all about evolution.

Kevin Kelly, in his book “Out of Control” greatly expands the concept of evolution from the rather primitive 19th Century natural selection view of it most people have. You might want to look at his chapters on Artificial Evolution, the Structure of Organized Change and Post-Darwinism.

In this larger view the act of thinking is evolution in action. Books, for example, are not so much written as evolved in the mind. They are explorations of what biologists call “fitness space.” Evolution in the memesphere and the technosphere are not limited by the slow pace of natural selection, in which genetic mutations take generations to propagate througout the population’s genome. Ideas and mores can be instantly transmitted from mind to mind, changed again and tested for fitness through collective deliberation. Indeed, much of what people think and deliberate about boils down to morality—values and choices.

@Ame_Evil Sounds like you and I are on the same general wavelength… This was one of the first questions I ever asked here, and in it I was arguing that morality is born out of evolutionary need.

@augustlan For humans I agree that, after a while, “morality” became a requirement for further successful evolution. After we started spending increasing numbers of years raising our offspring, certain parameters became necessary to support that. But I don’t think morality can be applied to all animals (or plants) across the board to be necessary for further evolution.

There are two driving forces of human evolution: Competition and cooperation.

One aspect of competition is choosing the right mate. I think it’s a very moral thing for a woman to pick a man who she thinks can increase the survival chances of her baby.

Human beings are very social creatures. Cooperation increased the survival chances as well and I think it’s a very moral thing to do. Selfish men for example got less help from others. And women didn’t want to mate with them. Unfair? I don’t think so.

Evolution is full of morality.

“I think its a very moral thing for a woman to pick a man who she thinks can increase the survival chances of her baby.”

Would that not be practicality? Based more on Survivability.

“Selfish men” tend to hold the power. They just might not project themselves as selfish.
Power and with that control, when it coming to survival, is what usually is best for her and her child.

The biggest and baddest lion usually ends up with the largest pride.

I think women and female lions do have a somewhat different strategy when picking mates.

I do not think so. One just wears shoes.

@mattbrowne but could a lioness’s strategy be labeled as “morals”?

Think of it this way: 1. We are highly encephalized so that we will be better at solving problems. 2. A number of problems that we encountered over and over again during evolution are now pre-solved for us due to adaptation (e.g. mating strategies.) 3. We are not aware of these strategies at the level of ratiocination. 4. This leaves us with cerebral “room” to solve novel problems. 5. Ethics and morality are novel problems.

@Val123 – Well, in my opinion the notion of morals doesn’t apply to animals. I was just referring to mating strategies in general.

Man is the only being to have evolved to a point at which it can discuss, contemplate, practice and even attempt to legislate morality.