Beyond the Sociobiological Dilemma: Social Emotions and the Evolution of Morality

Author: Rosas, Alejandro

Source: Zygon, Volume 42, Number 3, September 2007 , pp. 685-700(16)

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Abstract:

Is morality biologically altruistic? Does it imply a disadvantage in the struggle for existence? A positive answer puts morality at odds with natural selection, unless natural selection operates at the level of groups. In this case, a trait that is good for groups though bad (reproductively) for individuals can evolve. Sociobiologists reject group selection and have adopted one of two horns of a dilemma. Either morality is based on an egoistic calculus, compatible with natural selection; or morality continues tied to psychological and biological altruism but not as a product of natural selection. The dilemma denies a third possibility—that psychological altruism evolves as a biologically selfish trait. I discuss the classical treatments of the paradox by Charles Darwin ([1871] 1989) and Robert Trivers (1971), focusing on the role they attribute to social emotions. The upshot is that both Darwin and Trivers sketch a natural-selection process relying on innate emotional mechanisms that render morality adaptive for individuals as well as for groups. I give additional reasons for viewing it as a form of natural, instead of only cultural, selection.

Keywords: altruism; Charles Darwin; group selection; morality; selfish-gene theory; social emotions; sociobiology; Robert Trivers

Document Type: Research article

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9744.2007.00860.x

Affiliations: 1: Associate Professor of Philosophy at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Ciudad Universitaria, Bogotá, Colombia;, Email: arosasl@unal.edu.co.

Publication date: 2007-09-01