In the Name of God E-Book

John Teehan

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Serie: Blackwell Public Philosophy Series
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Seitenzahl: 625

Beschreibung

Religion is one of the most powerful forces running through human history, and although often presented as a force for good, its impact is frequently violent and divisive. This provocative work brings together cutting-edge research from both evolutionary and cognitive psychology to help readers understand the psychological structure of religious morality and the origins of religious violence. * Introduces a fundamentally new approach to the analysis of religion in a style accessible to the general reader * Applies insights from evolutionary and cognitive psychology to both Judaism and Christianity, and their texts, to help understand the origins of religious violence * Argues that religious violence is grounded in the moral psychology of religion * Illustrates its controversial argument with reference to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and the response to the attacks from both the terrorists and the President. Suggests strategies for beginning to counter the divisive aspects of religion * Discusses the role of religion and religious criticism in the contemporary world. Argues for a position sceptical of the moral authority of religion, while also critiquing the excesses of the "new atheists" for failing to appreciate the moral contributions of religion * Awarded Honourable Mention, 2010 Prose Awards

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Evolution and Mind

1 The Evolution of Morality

Setting the Task

The Moral Brain

The First Layer: Kin Selection

The Second Layer: Reciprocal Altruism

A Third Layer: Indirect Reciprocity

A Fourth Layer: Cultural Group Selection

A Fifth Layer: The Moral Emotions

Conclusion: From Moral Grammar to Moral Systems

2 The Evolution of Moral Religions

Setting the Task

The Evolution of the Religious Mind

Conceptualizing the Almighty

The Moral Function of Gods

3 Evolutionary Religious Ethics: Judaism

Setting the Task

Constructing Yahweh

The Ten Commandments: An Evolutionary Interpretation

Conclusion: The Evolved Law

4 Evolutionary Religious Ethics: Christianity

Setting the Task

Constructing the Christ

Setting the Boundaries: Christian and/or Jew?

The Third Race: Christians as In-Group

Putting on Christ: Christianity’s Signals of Commitment

Loving Your Neighbor and Turning the Other Cheek

5 Religion, Violence, and the Evolved Mind

Setting the Task

Devoted to Destruction: Sanctified Violence and Judaism

The Blood of the Lamb

A Case Study in the Evolved Psychology of Religious Violence: 9/11

6 Religion Evolving

Setting the Task

Varieties of Religious Expressions

If There Were No God. ..

Religion, Ethics, and Violence: An Assessment

Responding to Religion, Ethics, and Violence: Some Proposals

Conclusions

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Blackwell Public PhilosophyΛə

Edited by Michael Boylan, Marymount University

In a world of 24-hour news cycles and increasingly specialized knowledge, the Blackwell Public Philosophy series takes seriously the idea that there is a need and demand for engaging and thoughtful discussion of topics of broad public importance. Philosophy itself is historically grounded in the public square, bringing people together to try to understand the various issues that shape their lives and give them meaning. This “love of wisdom” – the essence of philosophy – lies at the heart of the series. Written in an accessible, jargon-free manner by internationally renowned authors, each book is an invitation to the world beyond newsflashes and soundbites and into public wisdom.

1. Permission to Steal: Revealing the Roots of Corporate Scandal by Lisa H. Newton

2. Doubting Darwin? Creationist Designs on Evolution by Sahotra Sarkar

3. The Extinction of Desire: A Tale of Enlightenment by Michael Boylan

4. Torture and the Ticking Bomb by Bob Brecher

5. In Defense of Dolphins: The New Moral Frontier by Thomas I. White

6. Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism: Ethics and Liberal Democracy by Seumas Miller

7. Who Owns You? The Corporate Gold Rush to Patent Your Genesby David Koepsell

8. Animalkind: What We Owe to Animals by Jean Kazez

9. In the Name of God: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Ethics and Violence by John Teehan

For further information about individual titles in the series, supplementary material, and regular updates, visit www.wiley.com/go/bpp

This edition first published 2010© 2010 John Teehan

Blackwell Publishing was acquired by John Wiley & Sons in February 2007. Blackwell’s publishing program has been merged with Wiley’s global Scientific, Technical, and Medical business to form Wiley-Blackwell.

Registered OfficeJohn Wiley & Sons Ltd, The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex,PO19 8SQ, United Kingdom

Editorial Offices350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148-5020, USA9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UKThe Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, UK

For details of our global editorial offices, for customer services, and for information about how to apply for permission to reuse the copyright material in this book please see our website at www.wiley.com/wiley-blackwell.

The right of John Teehan to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, without the prior permission of the publisher.

Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic books.

Designations used by companies to distinguish their products are often claimed as trademarks. All brand names and product names used in this book are trade names, service marks, trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. The publisher is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book. This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold on the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering professional services. If professional advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional should be sought.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Teehan, John.In the name of God : the evolutionary origins of religious ethics and violence / John Teehan.p. cm. – (Blackwell public philosophy series)Includes bibliographical references and index.ISBN 978-1-4051-8382-6 (hardcover : alk. paper) – ISBN 978-1-4051-8381-9 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Religious ethics. 2. Violence-Religious aspects. 3. Psychology, Religious. 4. Evolutionary psychology. 5. Cognitive psychology. I. Title.BJ1188.T44 2010205.01’9-dc22

2009041467

To Patricia,who makes everything I do possible

and

To Megan and Daniel,who make everything I do worthwhile

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This work is the end result of years of writing and speaking on these topics. Some of the basic ideas were first published as “The Evolution of Religious Ethics” in Free Inquiry 25, no. 4 (June/July 2005), and then were expanded upon in “The Evolutionary Basis of Religious Ethics” in Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science 41/3 (September 2006): 747–774. Comments and suggestions provided during the peer review process certainly contributed to refining those earlier musings.

Also important to the development of my thinking on these issues was the feedback I received at the numerous conferences where different stages of the book took shape. Conversations with Robert Hinde at the Religion, Cognitive Psychology and Evolutionary Psychology Conference, sponsored by the New England Institute, were not only enjoyable but shaped some of the discussions in Chapter 6. The Moral Brain: Evolutionary and Neuro-scientific Perspectives Conference, at Ghent University, Belgium, directed by Johan Braeckman and Jan Verplaetse, was a wonderful opportunity to explore the possible impact of neuroscience on religious psychology, and conversations with Adrian Raine, William Casebeer and Randolph Nesse all raised questions that spurred me to further refine my thinking.

I also benefited greatly from an academic leave from Hofstra University which allowed me to spend a semester studying the Law and the Hebrew Bible, with Danna Nolan Fewell at Drew University. That course of study, along with Danna’s aid in negotiating the voluminous literature on the topic, and her comments on the material that became Chapter 3, allowed me to wade more confidently into the world of Ancient Judaism, and limited whatever missteps I may have taken.

During the writing of the book I received more support than I can acknowledge. Arthur Dobrin was a constant source of encouragement throughout the long gestation period of this work. Stephanie Cobb not only provided an insightful review of my writing on Christianity, but was an invaluable source of support throughout the final stages of the project. I need to thank Stan Nevins for starting me on the philosophical path that brought me here. I also owe a debt of gratitude to Patrick Alexander, Balbinder Bhogal, Ann Burlein, Julie Byrne, Steven Clarke, Hank Davis, Chris DiCarlo, Warren Frisina, Terry Godlove, Deena Grant, Stewart Guthrie, Joseph Henrich, James Levy, Linda Longmire, Pete Richerson, William Rottschaefer, Azim Shariff, David Livingstone Smith, and Tim Smith, for their comments on various sections, chapters, and ideas in this work; an additional thanks to Stewart Guthrie for his help in working through some of the issues in Chapter 2. The flaws that remain in this book are of course mine, but they would have been embarrassingly greater without these contributions.

I also benefited from the comments provided by various readers at Wiley-Blackwell, and I greatly appreciate the editorial support and advice that Jeff Dean provided along each stage of development; this helped me turn an undisciplined manuscript into a book.

I also owe more thanks than I can express to my wife, Patricia, without whose support, encouragement, and great patience, this book would not have been written.

INTRODUCTION: EVOLUTION AND MIND

In the distant future I see open fields for far more important researches. Psychology will be based on a new foundation, that of the necessary acquirement of each mental power and capacity by gradation. Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history. (Charles Darwin, 1859)

Charles Darwin showed great restraint in extending the process of natural selection to the human animal. He clearly saw there was nothing to prevent an application of the evolutionary process to the history of human beings, but Darwin was a cautious man and not prone to making claims that outran the available evidence. Still, he could see that his theory had the potential to reform the human sciences radically. What makes the above quotation from On the Origin of Species so prescient is that in 1859 psychology had just taken its first steps toward becoming an empirical discipline. It was then barely distinguishable from philosophic speculation on the mind, on the one hand, and the crude, initial research into brain physiology, on the other. Yet Darwin foresaw the possibility of approaching the study of the human mind from a whole new perspective. Rather than treat the mind as some sort of disembodied “thinking thing,” as Descartes termed it, that transcended the natural world, Darwin recognized a much more intimate integration of mental powers and the brain. By situating the mind in nature it too could be conceived of as a product of natural selection.

This approach to psychology was immediately tantalizing to nineteenth-century pioneers of the new discipline. However, the move toward first Freudian and then behaviorist psychological paradigms forestalled the full application of the Darwinian method to the human mind – even though major figures in both of these traditions saw themselves as developing a naturalistic theory of mind that had some connection to evolution, at least as they understood evolution. There were other efforts to bring psychology in line with evolutionary theory, but it really was not until the 1970s, with the publication of E. O. Wilson’s seminal work, Sociobiology: A New Synthesis, that the application of Darwinian processes to animal behavior, including the human animal, became a full-fledged research project. Wilson’s work set off almost as much controversy as did Darwin’s, as people responded to what they perceived to be the biological determinism inherent in the approach.

We need not rehearse the various stages of this controversy – a controversy that still rages in one form or another. What we are interested in here is that one result of the efforts to refine and improve the theoretical approach set out in Wilson’s work was the emergence of a new discipline: evolutionary psychology. Here, at last, we find Darwin’s prediction coming to fruition.

The foundational premise of evolutionary psychology is that behavior, belief, emotions, thinking, and feeling are all functions of a fully embodied brain. As the brain is a physical organ, it, like all other physical organs, has an evolutionary history. The brain that we have today is the product of evolutionary processes that shaped this organ in response to environmental selection pressures. Evolution, as we know, does not work by making dramatic, wholesale changes in organs or organisms. It works in slow, piecemeal fashion, shaping the physical structure on a strictly “as needed” and “as far as the materials already available will allow” basis. Given this view of brain evolution we can expect the brain to be a composite organ, whose constituent parts and powers arose in response to problems that needed to be addressed in order for humans to survive and reproduce successfully. If this is accurate, then the brain we work with today is a collection of task-oriented, problem-solving mental tools – tools, however, that were designed to respond to an ancient environment. Evolutionary psychologists believe that this evolutionary history has left its marks on our contemporary behavioral and cognitive patterns. Therefore, to understand how the mind works today we need to try to understand what tasks it needed to solve in order to allow our ancestors to survive.

This view of human nature runs directly at odds with two theories that continue to exert influence on psychology. One is the “rational actor model,” in which humans are conceptualized to be motivated by a rational maximization of their own interests. As you might imagine, this is a model favored by many economists. The other view conceives of the human mind as a “blank slate,” waiting for experience to write upon it. In this view, the mind is a general purpose intellectual device that is maximally flexible in response to the directions of culture. Both of these views are undermined by evolutionary psychology, which holds that the mind is populated by a number of cognitive and emotional predispositions that channel the input from the environment into identifiable cognitive and behavioral patterns, patterns that are now being revealed by the cognitive sciences. These evolved patterns do demonstrate a kind of rationality – if we understand them as ultimately responses to evolutionary challenges – but this is not the same thing as acting rationally, as might be predicted by the rational actor model. We will have ample opportunity to demonstrate that an evolutionary approach to human behavior is a better explanation and predictor of that behavior than a rational model, as there is a growing body of literature, much of it conducted by economists, to support this claim.

More controversial, and continually contentious, is the proposition that the human mind comes prepackaged, as it were, with a series of mental tools. These mental tools are expressed differently in different environments, but by their very existence they overthrow the blank slate view of human nature. Now, part of the controversy stems from a healthy debate over just what the evidence can support. That there is such a debate, and that it is often heated, is to be expected in response to such a relatively new discipline, and one that treads on so much turf claimed by other disciplines. However, it is undeniable that part of the heat in this debate is generated by the fact that this view of human nature – the very idea that there might be a human nature – smacks up against some strongly held political, moral, religious, and ideological positions.

I will admit up front that I find the evidence and the arguments in favor of an evolutionary psychology completely persuasive. If we want to develop a truly scientific study of the mind, and of human behavior, then we must start with the premise that these can be studied naturalistically. If we work with that premise, known as methodological naturalism, then we must apply the best theory we have for explaining the living world, and that is evolutionary biology. Now, as many will be eager to point out, methodological naturalism does not entail metaphysical naturalism. Methodological naturalism says that science must take as its proper domain only those objects that can be studied through empirical means – that is, objects that are part of the natural, physical universe. Therefore, if we are to develop a scientific psychology we must seek to understand the mind as part of the natural, physical universe. Metaphysical naturalism says that the only things that exist are things that are part of the natural, physical universe. In that case there can be nothing more to the mind than what can be understood in physical terms. This metaphysics also rules out religious concepts such as an immaterial soul and gods.

Obviously, making a distinction between the two is important, particularly in a work about religion. When it is said that methodological naturalism does not entail metaphysical naturalism, this means that just because science can work only with natural objects it does not follow that there are no non-natural, or supernatural, entities. There may in fact be non-natural realities that are beyond the scope of science. I accept this distinction without any qualms. Nothing I say in the following chapters should be taken to entail that there is no God. But the methodological approach I employ requires that we bracket any commitment to the existence of such a being. I believe this is also required of a scientific approach. We should apply the methods of science as rigorously and extensively as we can. Once this is accomplished, then it is fitting to ask how the findings of science can be reconciled (or not) with belief in God. I agree that no matter how effective science may be in explaining the universe naturalistically, it does not logically exclude the possibility of a non-natural realm and/or supernatural entities. However, I do believe that the findings of the sciences – physical, social, and historical – can impose constraints on what we may claim about such non-natural possibilities.

The thesis this book intends to develop and defend is that evolution has designed the human mind in such a way that we possess a set of mental tools that shape our moralities and our religions. More specifically, I contend that religious moral traditions are cultural expressions of underlying cognitive and emotional pre-dispositions that are the products of evolutionary processes. They evolved because they helped us in our struggle to survive and reproduce. In effect, we all possess common moral and religious cognitive frameworks that give rise to identifiable patterns in our moral religious traditions. This thesis does not deny the great cultural diversity in both morality and religion found throughout the world, and throughout history, nor does it deny the possibility for true moral innovation. However, it does imply that the power of culture to shape human behavior, while impressive, is limited – and in fact, as we shall see, there is good evidence to support the claim that the human ability to create culture is itself a result of evolved mental tools. It also implies that effecting a lasting moral innovation is harder than we imagine.

I believe that the project of uncovering the evolved psychology beneath religious morality is not merely an academic project, because religion is not merely an academic subject. Religion is one of the most powerful forces in human history, and its power makes itself known in ways both dramatic and intimate in our world today; unfortunately, the impact of religion is often divisive and violent. If we want to truly understand religion’s ability to influence human events, we need to grasp its psychological bases, and to take a scientific approach to religious psychology means using our best theories of how the mind works.

Chapter 1 sets out the bases of our evolved moral psychology. In it I try to describe how evolution has shaped the cognitive and emotional predispositions that give rise to morality. I do not claim to be doing anything original in this chapter, and those well versed in the literature may want to skim through it. But what I am attempting in Chapter 1 is not simply to provide an introduction to the uninitiated (although I am trying to do that) but also to pull together some of the best and most recent research from evolutionary psychology, cognitive psychology, behavioral economics, and neuroscience – disciplines all grounded in an evolutionary context, and which together constitute cognitive science – and organize it in a way that presents a cognitive framework for human morality. While this discussion is far from exhaustive, it is rather detailed. I beg the reader’ s patience, but the topic is complex and I believe we need a solid foundation in moral psychology in order to proceed with our study.

With that moral framework established, in Chapter 2 I turn to the evolutionary bases of religious belief. I am fully aware that talk of a scientific theory of religion will raise suspicion in scores of religious studies professionals that I am going to move forward with a conception of religion lacking in nuance and sophistication. I am certainly going to try to avoid that. However, within the discipline of religious studies the very term “religion” is passionately contested. An important aspect of this contestation is the insistence that “religion” is itself a relatively recent concept, and one shaped by Western sensibilities and experiences. To apply this term to the experiences of people not part of that modern, Western worldview is a problematic move, even more so when we try to apply it to ancient peoples. What complicates things even more is that even within a Western perspective “religion” denotes such a wide range of experiences, practices, beliefs, and traditions that we must be very careful not to reduce the richness of religion by privileging any one aspect of it. Furthermore, even within a religious tradition, how that tradition will be understood and lived by its various adherents is so varied that it is not possible to identify a core set of elements that constitutes any particular religion. In other words, there is no essence to a particular religious tradition that allows us to say that, for example, “this” is real or true Christianity.

I recognize the worth of all these points. Discussions of religion – in public debates and even in books by respected intellectuals and supposed religious authorities – often work with a simplified or overly generalized conception of religion, and this is an obstacle to a clear understanding of the nature and workings of religion. In my discussion of religion I hope to clarify and qualify what I am referring to with enough nuance to do justice to the topic. I do not expect this to satisfy everyone. But I believe that an attitude of intellectual generosity is required of readers on any complicated topic – and by this I mean we must be careful not to read too much of our own theoretical presuppositions into the work in front of us. This does not mean we should not bring a theoretically informed reading to the text, but rather we should be careful of conjuring windmills to battle. Whether or not what I refer to with the term “religion” or “religious” matches your understanding of the term, what is really at stake is not how we use terms but the phenomena at hand.

For example, I focus largely on religious texts and I work with the premise that these texts are accorded a moral authority that shapes behavior. Now, this is obviously not true for all believers, nor is it an equally relevant claim for all religious traditions, but it is true that the texts have been accorded moral authority and have been used to shape behavior, and that they continue to do so. This is the point that is important for my purposes. I make no larger claims about the centrality of the texts to behavior or of belief to religion. The fact that religious beliefs play a role in shaping behavior, for at least some people, and that religious texts shape belief, for at least some people, is I believe a sufficiently significant fact in its own right to justify a serious evaluation.

So, in Chapter 2 I bring together some of the cutting-edge research on religion coming out of the cognitive sciences. My focus is on the evolution of cognitive predispositions that give rise to belief in gods and to beliefs about gods. As with Chapter 1 the contribution of this chapter is not to present any original findings but to organize the fascinating work being done on this subject into a serviceable model of the cognitive framework for god-beliefs. The significant event for the purposes of this book is that the framework for our morality and the framework for god-beliefs, under certain conditions, become entwined, so to speak, and give rise to belief in gods as moral agents – parties interested in the moral affairs of humans – who can assume the roles of moral legislator and moral enforcer. This underlies the development of religious moral traditions.

Having set out the framework for religious moral traditions, I then set out to detect the elements of these evolved cognitive frameworks within diverse religious traditions. In Chapter 3 I test this thesis by applying an evolutionary analysis to Judaism, specifically, to Judaic ethics as expressed in the Mosaic Law. I first explore the character of Yahweh, as portrayed in the Hebrew Bible, to see how this portrayal fits the evolved framework for god-beliefs, and then I examine how the moral law of Yahweh follows the contours set out by our evolved moral psychology.

In Chapter 4 I engage in the same exercise but look at Christianity. Here the focus is the character of Christ, as a divine being whose portrayal fits within the framework for god-beliefs, and the moral teachings of Christ, as set out in the Gospels and elaborated on in the letters of Paul. Christianity is an important test case because it has been claimed that Christian ethics are an explicit repudiation of the type of ethics that flows from evolutionary sources. An evolved morality makes reciprocation a key moral motivation and focuses special moral concern on those in one’s community; Christ advocated an ethics in which one is to do good without thought of reward, and which extends to the whole human race. Such an ethics, it is held, could not have evolved. So, the key challenge in Chapter 4 is to demonstrate how even Christ’ s teachings fit within an evolutionary framework.

In Chapter 5 I turn to the grave problem of religious violence. This is a deeply troubling phenomenon for us all, but it is a particularly difficult one for believers to have to face. Religion is often presented as a force for good in the world, and yet it is too often implicated in some of the greatest evils of which humans are capable. A popular, and understandable, strategy for reconciling these facts is to exonerate religion by distancing it from the violence done in its name, to shift the focus to the individuals who abuse religion by twisting its good teachings to their own corrupt ends. I argue that this move is unwarranted. As we develop an insight into our evolved religious moral psychology, we will see that the same processes that generate the pro-social, constructive morality found in religion also generate prejudice and violence. It is not a question of whether religion, or any particular religion, is peace-loving or violent; they are both, inherently. The issue then is to understand the conditions that trigger one or the other response. I seek to explicate this position by again reading the religious texts of Judaism and Christianity from an evolutionary perspective.

I conclude this chapter applying the insights we have gained into religious violence to a case study: the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the response to them. The purpose of this exercise is to argue that the evolved psychology that gave rise to religious texts is not something we outgrow. We can see it at work in the moral mindset of the major players involved in 9/11, both the terrorists and the President. To make this case I first spend some time showing how our evolved moral and religious frameworks structure Islam, as well as Judaism and Christianity. This unfortunately is a comparatively brief and concise evaluation, given limitations in time, and the author’ s expertise, but sufficient, I believe, to make the case that the thesis of this book is applicable to all three monotheistic traditions. (Whether it is applicable to non-Western, religious traditions must be left an open question, although my sense is that it is, although the details of the analysis would likely be quite different.)

In the sixth and final chapter I try to elucidate some of the lessons to be gained from the evolutionary analysis of religion, ethics, and violence. I consider what this analysis says about the nature and authority of religious morality, as well as what it says about the possibility of doing without religion. I conclude by trying to draw out some practical, albeit general proposals about how we might use an evolutionary understanding of religion to respond to the dangers of religious violence, and what might be the prospects for developing a moral system that accesses the best that religions can offer, while avoiding the worst.

Before proceeding I want to make one more point about the project I am engaged in, that is, reading religious texts, in this case the Bible, from an evolutionary perspective. An evolutionary reading of these texts does not necessarily conflict with the readings of other hermeneutical approaches; in fact it often is consistent with other approaches, although at other times it may suggest a very different understanding. But even in those instances of compatibility, an evolutionary perspective can make a contribution by uncovering the psychological processes that generate particular social and behavioral patterns that find expression in religious texts and that shape the production of the texts we have. What I am presenting, but not claiming to originate, is a new method of Biblical criticism that employs the methods and conclusions of the cognitive sciences, a cognitive-critical method for textual analysis that may be considered an extension of the historical-critical methodologies.

The developing cognitive sciences, grounded in sound evolutionary thinking, are opening up a new phase in our study of religion. I believe the frameworks set out in this book allow us to gain insight into the workings of the religious mind and offer a fresh perspective on religious texts that may allow us to better understand the complexities and contradictions we find throughout these texts. It is my hope that this new perspective on religion may be translated into a more effective response to the roles religion plays in the world today.

1THE EVOLUTION OF MORALITY

Many lands saw Zarathustra, and many peoples: thus he discovered the good and bad of many peoples. No greater power did Zarathustra find on earth than good and bad. No people could live without first valuing; if a people will maintain itself, however, it must not value as its neighbour valueth. (Friedrich Nietzsche1)

Setting the Task

Evolution via natural selection is a fairly simple, straightforward process. You may be forgiven if you find this strange given all the fireworks surrounding public discussions of evolution, as well as the confused caricatures offered by its foes.2 But, in fact, it is a fairly simple, straightforward process. Ernst Mayer commented that Darwin’s theory of natural selection is the conclusion of “one long argument,” as Darwin himself put it, and is based on three uncontroversial principles – inheritance, variation, and competition – that are simple to state and comprehend:3

Inheritance: Offspring tend to inherit the characteristics of their parents. Variation: Offspring will also vary from their parents and from their siblings. In addition, individuals from different families and different species also vary.

Competition: Life is a competition for limited resources in which it is not possible for all individuals to succeed. Not all individuals can reproduce and have offspring who themselves successfully reproduce.

From these simple observations Darwin deduced the principle of natural selection: variations that provide an advantage in the competition for resources tend to be passed on (inheritance) to the next generation.

The corollary to this is that those variations that are not advantageous may not be passed on. “Advantageous” is a relative term. In evolution, a trait provides an advantage if it contributes to an individual surviving to the age of reproduction and reproducing successfully. Success is measured in terms of differential reproduction: which variation(s) allows an individual to out-reproduce its competitors. In the next generation the genes of the successful reproducers will be better represented than those of less successful reproducers. This accumulation of this differential reproductive success, carried out generation after generation, is evolution.

The strength of Darwin’s theory is not simply the overwhelming evidence that supports it, evidence supplied by diverse fields such as genetics, microbiology, anthropology, ethology, botany, and paleontology, but also the undeniable logic of the argument. Daniel Dennett argues that what Darwin discovered is the algorithm of natural history. As Dennett puts it, “An algorithm is a certain sort of formal process that can be counted on – logically – to yield a certain sort of result whenever it is ‘run’ or instantiated.”4 Given that there is differential reproduction (not all individuals will be equally fecund) and that certain traits contribute to successful reproduction, and that parents pass their traits to their offspring, it follows necessarily that those traits will be better represented in the next generation. That Darwin saw this when no one else had is the basis of his genius.

What is not quite so obvious is just how much can be explained by this process of natural selection. What we know, and Darwin did not, is that inheritance works by passing genes from one generation to the next. Genes underlie traits that lead to successful reproduction and get passed on to the next generation. Evolutionary change is driven by differential representation of genes in the gene pool, and here we can begin to see the challenge to an evolutionary account of morality. What makes for a successful gene? In strict evolutionary terms a successful gene is one that gets more copies of itself into the next generation – that’s it. Richard Dawkins sets it out as follows:

Genes are competing directly with their alleles for survival, since their alleles in the gene pool are rivals for their slot on the chromosomes of future generations. Any gene that behaves in such a way as to increase its own survival chances in the gene pool at the expense of its alleles will, by definition, tautologously, tend to survive. The gene is the basic unit of selfishness.5

Before proceeding we need to be clear on the use of language when discussing genes and evolution. Using metaphors is almost unavoidable when discussing these issues (or almost any issue, really), particularly if we want to avoid overly technical and tedious qualifications every time the issues come up. Let it be stated here: Genes do not behave selfishly, or morally, or in any other way. Genes encode the directions for the production of proteins, which are the material for the construction of phenotypic structures, such as bodies and brains, which do all the behaving. In more technical language, to say that a gene is “selfish” is to say that it leads to conditions that tend to make its own reproduction more likely than that of an alternative gene.6

Here is the problem for an evolutionary account of morality: If successful genes are “selfish” genes, then it seems to follow that these genes will lead to organisms and traits that are also “selfish.” After all, it is the behavior of the organism that determines whether its genes succeed. Organisms should behave in ways that promote their own reproductive success – and this is what we find throughout the living world. However, in certain species this “selfishness” is tempered by cooperative behavior, and cooperation needs to be explained. Some cooperative behavior can be explained as mutualism. For example, you and I join together to hunt an animal neither of us could kill alone. We share the risks and then we share the meat. Neither of us is really making a sacrifice for the other, and we can explain this strictly in terms of self-interest. But not all cooperation is like this; take, for example, fighting off a predator. If a dangerous animal attacks us we will be better able to defeat it if we join together and share the risks. I, however, would be better off allowing you to fight the animal by yourself and assume all the risks, while I run for safety. But perhaps I am not fast enough to get away and my only chance is to stay and fight, so I join forces with you. In that case, why would you stay and assume the risks instead of running for safety? Remember the old joke about two friends confronted by a bear in the woods. One turns to the other and asks, “What should we do?” The other says, “Run.” The first friend then asks, “Do you think we can outrun the bear?” To which his friend replies, “I don’t need to outrun the bear, I only have to outrun you!” It seems evolution would favor genes that support the “run” strategy rather than the “cooperate” strategy.

Even in situations where mutual advantage seems to justify cooperation, things are not as clear as they first appear. Say you and I have hunted successfully for food. Why should I share the meat rather than take it all for myself? Again, I may not be strong enough to overpower you and so it may be safer for me to share; but then why would you share the meat with me? If one of us is strong enough to take all the meat, sharing seems to be a selfless act inconsistent with “selfish” genes. Evolution should favor genes that lead to abilities that allow one to take all the food, rather than to a willingness to share. This has some dire implications. As Thomas Hobbes reasoned, if I am rationally self-interested I will never share when I can take it all, and neither will you. This means it will never make sense to enter into a cooperative venture unless I am confident that I can exploit your trust; and since you are equally rationally self-interested, and will recognize the same logic, you will never trust me, and so cooperation can never get off the ground.7

This is captured nicely in the famous Prisoner’s Dilemma game. There are many variations, but the basic scenario runs something like this: Brian and Joe are arrested for committing a crime. The police do not have enough evidence to put either away on the most serious charge, which would carry, say, a five-year sentence, but could put both away for one year on a lesser charge. So they separately offer the two a deal: If they each testify against the other they will reduce the penalty to three years. However, if one testifies against the other who refuses to confess, then that person gets to go free, while the one who keeps quiet gets the full five years in prison. Both know the other has been made the same offer, but they cannot communicate with each other.

The best outcome for Brian and Joe as partners is for them to cooperate and both keep quiet; but the best outcome individually is for them to take the deal and testify against their partner, that is, to defect from their partnership. For Brian knows that if he talks while Joe keeps quiet (the cooperation option), then he (Brian) gets to go home, but if he decides to cooperate with Joe, and Joe does not reciprocate, then he is in deep trouble and is looking at five years in jail. So, regardless of what his partner does, Brian’s best outcome is to not cooperate, and evolution should favor creatures that make the decision that best serves their self-interest.

However, despite considerable barriers, we know that cooperation does occur; humans have always lived in groups, and are descended from ape-like ancestors that also lived in groups. Group living requires cooperation and so we must have devised strategies to get around these selfish barriers. In fact, the large-scale cooperation characteristic of human societies may be our defining human trait. Theorist Martin Nowak points out, “From hunter-gatherer societies to nation-states, cooperation is the decisive organizing principle of human society. No other life form on Earth is engaged in the same complex games of cooperation and defection.”8 The challenge is to discover how such strategies evolved.

The Prisoner’s Dilemma game has generated a great deal of experimental work.9 A significant insight into developing an account of how a cooperative strategy might evolve is the recognition that in nature such cooperative dilemmas are often not one- shot deals, particularly for social creatures. Individuals often have repeated opportunities for cooperative interactions, with the possibility of having future interactions with the same partners. In iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma games, cooperation can develop because the costs and benefits of cooperation are averaged over repeated events. In this scenario the long-term benefits of cooperation can outweigh the potential immediate costs. There is much discussion on how cooperation in the Prisoner’ s Dilemma may evolve, that is, which strategy poses the winning formula. For now, let’s grant the possibility that repeated opportunities to interact with the same pool of individuals may allow cooperation to develop as a long-term rationally self-interested strategy, and so be consistent with the evolution of “selfish” genes. But this does not capture the extent of the human tendency to cooperate. There is a wealth of experimental data that indicate that humans are predisposed to cooperate and share resources with others, even when there is no possibility of meeting that individual again. To get a sense of this we need to introduce the Ultimatum game.

In the Ultimatum game two subjects have to make individual decisions on the division of a sum of money. One individual, Sue, is first given a sum, for example, $100, and is instructed to divide the money between herself and a second individual, Pat, who Sue knows will be given the option of accepting or rejecting the offer. If Pat accepts the offer, both individuals receive the sums proposed by Sue. If Pat rejects the offer, neither one gets anything. This is a one-shot interaction, there is only one round of play and the subjects do not know each other. What should they do? If both are rationally self-interested individuals, then Sue should offer Pat a small cut of the money and Pat should accept it. Even if Sue offers only $1, Pat should accept because the options are to accept and get $1 or reject and get nothing. If Sue believes Pat is rationally self- interested, then she should never offer anything above $1 because to do so would unnecessarily reduce her own benefits in order to benefit another. This is just what should happen if we are Hobbesian individuals, but in fact it is not what happens. The experimental data show that individuals regularly reject low offers.

Studies show that “a robust result in this experiment is that proposals giving the responder shares below 25% of the available money are rejected with a very high probability”10 – suggesting that responders “do not behave to maximize self-interest” but instead reject what they consider to be unfair offers. Furthermore, the proposers seem to recognize this, as the most common proposal in these games is close to 50/50.’ 11 Joseph Henrich and colleagues conducted a cross-cultural study of this effect. They had participants from fifteen diverse cultures from Africa, Asia, Oceania, rural America, South America, and that most peculiar population, U.S. college freshmen, play the Ultimatum game. While they found “substantial differences across populations” they also discovered “a universal pattern, with an increasing proportion of individuals from every society choosing to punish [i.e. reject offers] as offers approach zero.”12

In one sense, the Ultimatum game is not testing the willingness to cooperate as much as the willingness to punish those who do not cooperate. But this willingness to engage in “costly punishment” also needs to be explained as it meets evolutionary challenges as well as cooperation does.13 In each case the individual makes a choice that is costly in terms of resources. In cooperation, I invest my resources in another’s well-being; in punishment, I commit resources to punish, thereby incurring a cost. From a rationally self-interested position, to punish someone who has treated me unfairly is simply to further waste my resources.

These studies are all addressing the problem of altruism, defined as “behavior that benefits another organism – while being apparently detrimental to the organism performing the behavior,” with benefits and costs determined by the effects on an individual’s reproductive fitness.14 The problem is to understand how behavior that lowers an agent’ s fitness in order to raise the fitness of another can arise from a process driven by so- called selfish genes. As Dawkins has put it, “at the level of the gene, altruism must be bad and selfishness good.”15

The Ultimatum game suggests one way to promote altruistic or cooperative behavior: Punish those who do not cooperate. As noted, the typical offer in an Ultimatum game is nearly an even split. Why would this be? To return to our scenario, Sue realizes that if she offers Pat too little, Pat may reject the offer and Sue will end up with nothing. In effect, Sue recognizes Pat’ s ability to punish Sue’ s greediness and so offers a fairer distribution of the goods. A variant of the Ultimatum game, known as the Dictator game, supports this interpretation. The Dictator game works the same as the Ultimatum game, except the second subject cannot reject the offer (the Ultimatum game: Take it or leave it; the Dictator game: Take it!). As we might expect, “the average amount given to the responders in the dictator game is much lower than that in the ultimatum game.”16 The role of punishment in promoting cooperation turns out to be of great significance, and I return to this topic later.

However, as we have said, punishment just repackages the problem of altruism. Punishment may turn out to be vital to large-scale cooperation, but punishing someone comes at a cost, which may or may not be paid back. As the Ultimatum game shows, there is a robust human tendency to punish unfair behavior, even when there is no possibility of being paid back. This is referred to in the literature as “altruistic punishing.”17 The problem remains: How can this be made consistent with rational self-interest? And if evolution works to maximize the reproductive interests of individuals, should it not lead to behavior that maximizes rational self-interest? To borrow a formulation from Marc Hauser,18 should it not lead to Hobbesian creatures?

The answer to this last question is an unequivocal no! To see why, we must recognize that “rational self-interest” is not the same as “maximizing reproductive interests” or even “maximizing self-interest.” Our look at the Prisoner’s Dilemma showed that the rationally self-interested move – defect from cooperative behavior – if acted on by both “rational” individuals leads to a worse outcome for both. In a one- shot Prisoner’s Dilemma game defecting may be the best choice, but the lives of social beings consist of repeated interactions, and over repeated interactions cooperation can pay off. Evolution does not shape behavior that leads to the best result in a specific interaction; it shapes behavior that tends to lead to the best reproductive payoff, in general and in the long-run, and so cooperative behavior can be selected. Still, how cooperative behavior gets off and running to such a degree that it can become an object of natural selection remains to be seen.

A clue to the unraveling of this puzzle is revealed by the Ultimatum game. The rational thing for the responder to do is to accept any offer at all – but the responder is not reading this situation in terms of rational self-interest. He or she is reading it in terms of morality: The money was given to us; for you to take more than 50% of that money is unfair and I won’t accept such treatment. Also, a proposer who offers anything near 50% similarly recognizes that this is not simply a matter of rational self-interest but is, at least for the responder, a moral situation – and morality is much more than rational calculations of self-interest. To uncover the evolutionary roots of human morality we need a foray into the contemporary scientific study of morality.

The Moral Brain

In discussing the evolution of morality we must have some conception of what we mean by morality. This is a complicated issue and we could spend a book discussing it. Fortunately, such an involved treatment is not necessary to the discussion at hand. Here we are concerned with judgments of right and wrong, good and bad, as these terms are used to judge interpersonal relations. Now this hardly scratches the surface of the philosophical issues involved in morality but may serve our purposes nonetheless.19

Philosophers, theologians, and poets have long wrestled with the nature of human morality. A perennial and central question is the relative roles of reason and emotion in moral decision making. Hauser has usefully characterized this debate as one between two conceptions of human nature: humans as Kantian Creatures or as Humean Creatures. Kantian Creatures, made in the image of Immanuel Kant’s moral philosophy, perceive an event and make “moral judgments based on conscious reasoning from relevant principles.”20 Humean Creatures, on the other hand, judge as David Hume argued people judge: “with an innate moral sense.. .. Emotions ignite moral judgments. Reason follows in the wake of this dynamic.”21 Hauser eventually rejects both of these models, as neither is consistent with what we are learning about how the human mind actually goes about making moral judgments. He proposes an alternative – what he calls a Rawlsian Creature – but we are not yet in a position to evaluate his candidate. First we need to see just what cognitive science is revealing about human morality.

For many moral thinkers, both professional and lay, reason is intimately tied up with moral judgment. We are told to “think before we act,” to control our passions with our reason, to do what we know is right, not what we want to do. Kantian philosophers charge us to act only on universal principles derived from reason, uncontaminated by emotion; Utilitarians instruct us to calculate the costs and benefits before acting; theologians present God’s Law as the ruling principle of moral life. Unfortunately for the rationalist approach, contemporary research into moral psychology seriously challenges such rules.

An emerging consensus of the cognitive scientific study of morality is that moral judgments are most often the result of intuitive, emotionally based reactions to social interactions that are then given post hoc rational justifications. This does not deny reason has a role in moral judgment but does argue that the typical role of reason – in the sense of conscious, reflective thought – is to provide justification for an intuitively pre-determined moral judgment. In terms of a causal role in moral judgment reason comes in to sort through dilemmas caused by conflicting intuitions.22

A series of clever experiments, conducted by Joshua Greene and his associates, open a window into the way the brain processes various moral dilemmas. Greene and his colleagues presented dilemmas to subjects who were being scanned by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Using this scanner, researchers study brain responses while subjects are engaged in any number of activities, and can determine which areas of the brain are more significantly involved in those activities. Greene distinguished the dilemmas into two categories: “personal-moral” and “impersonal-moral.” Personal-moral dilemmas meet three specific criteria: They involve the likelihood of serious harm; that harm befalls a particular person or set of persons; and that harm is not the result of deflecting an existing danger. An example would be to directly cause the death of one person to save the lives of many others. Impersonal dilemmas do not meet these criteria. An impersonal dilemma would be one where you had to choose between saving one person (and letting three people die) or saving three people (and letting one person die). In both examples at least one person is going to die based on your decision, but people treat personalmoral dilemmas differently from impersonal ones.23

The fMRI scans revealed what Greene suspected: Different brain areas are engaged by the different dilemmas. The personal-moral dilemmas engage areas of the brain correlated with emotion, while these areas are less engaged by impersonal scenarios. In those scenarios, areas more traditionally associated with cognition predominate.24 With this distinction in hand Greene and coworkers also analyzed subjects’ reaction times (i.e., how long it took people to come to their decisions) in a set of personal-moral dilemmas and a set of impersonal-moral dilemmas and found some important differences. In impersonal scenarios there is no significant difference in average reaction time between people who say it is appropriate to harm one in order to save three and those who say this is not appropriate. However, there is a difference in the personal-moral scenarios. In these cases those who vote to harm one to save three take significantly longer to reach that decision than those who reject this option.

Greene proposes that the reaction lag is caused by a conflict between an emotional response to the situation and cognitive calculation. Those who say it is appropriate to cause one death in to save three seem to be reasoning according to utilitarian principles of producing the least harm. In impersonal dilemmas that response comes very quickly, but in the personal dilemma it takes longer to do that same calculation.25 Greene’ s interpretation, supported by the neurological evidence, is that in judging whether to cause an innocent person’ s death people have a quick, intuitive, negative response. Those who say it is the right decision also have this response but override it with a cognitive evaluation. The engagement of affective brain systems interferes with cognitive calculations, slowing down the judgment.26

These studies point to a “synthetic view of moral judgment that acknowledges the crucial role played by both emotion and ‘cognition.’ ”27 It is not the case that moral evaluations are merely emotional reactions. Reason is involved in moral evaluation, but in a particular situation, that is, when there is a conflict between competing intuitions. For example, in personalmoral dilemmas there is a conflict between an intuitive negative-emotional response to taking an innocent life and an intuitive calculation that it is better to lose one life than three. Not everyone presented with this choice suffers such conflict, but those who choose the option of intervening – that is, those who override their emotional intuition that this is wrong – do. However, it is important to note that this conflict is not worked out consciously. Even the conflicted responders answered, on average, in a matter of seconds. Deliberative reasoning comes into play after the fact and is used to justify the decision already made.

It is possible, however, to slow down our moral judging to allow time for reflective consideration, and brain scans indicate that in some of the slowest responders, areas of the brain associated with deliberation were engaged.28 But numerous studies of formal and informal reasoning indicate that this is comparatively rare.29 Greene and Haidt sum this view up with a wonderful quote from William James: “A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.”30

It gets worse for reason once we move from moral evaluation to moral conduct. Studies demonstrate that the ability to recognize and apply moral principles to social and moral dilemmas is distinct from the ability to act on moral principles. The ability to understand – on an intellectual level – what constitutes morally appropriate behavior can be very high and yet not result in better behavior. As a colleague once commented to me, “a person can score at a level six on moral development [i.e., the highest level on Kohlberg’s moral scale] and still be a bastard!”

Antonio Damasio brought this to prominent public attention with his discussion of the famous head-injury patient Phineas Gage and Damasio’s own patient Elliot.31 These individuals suffered brain damage that left their intellectual skills intact but disrupted their ability to follow appropriate moral standards. Both suffered damage to the same general area of the brain: the medial pre-frontal cortex, an area that mediates the integration of cognitive and affective systems. Deprived of emotional coloring their intellectual grasp of morality was left impotent. Numerous neuroscientific studies of anti-social behavior have discovered correlations between certain types of criminal behavior and deficits in areas of the brain involved in regulating emotional impulses.32

All of this seems to tilt the scale toward the Humean Creature; Hume’s quip, “Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them,”33 presciently captures the state of affairs. Hauser believes this is not quite right.’34 The synthetic view argues for an integration of cognitive and affective systems. Without the input of affective systems moral judgments lack the motivational power to make such judgments effective, but without the mediating function of cognition these emotion-laden reactions may be directed down morally inappropriate paths. It is worth quoting at length Greene’s assessment of the current state of a cognitive scientific view of morality:

While many big questions remain unanswered, it is clear from these studies that there is no “moral center” in the brain, no “morality module.” Moreover, moral judgment does not appear to be a function of “higher cognition,” with a few emotional perturbations thrown in. Nor do moral judgments appear to be driven entirely by emotional responses. Rather, moral judgments appear to be produced by a complex network of brain areas subserving both emotional and “cognitive” processes.35

When we speak of emotional and cognitive responses we are, of course, employing convenient labels that do not correspond neatly to what is happening in the brain. Any moral judgment is going to be a complex product of various brain systems, none of which can be identified as purely cognitive or purely emotional. What we label “emotional reaction” or “rational conclusion” is our conscious perception of the output of these interacting brain systems. The output that we perceive as emotion or reason is produced through innate mental processes working below the horizon of conscious awareness. This leads us to Hauser’ s vote for the Rawlsian Creature as the best metaphor for our moral minds.

A Rawlsian Creature, Hauser says, is “equipped with machinery to deliver moral verdicts based on unconscious and inaccessible principles. This is a creature with moral instincts.”36 He adds that “at the core of the Rawlsian creature is an appraisal mechanism that extracts the relevant properties from an event. These properties are represented by physical actions together with their causes and consequences.”37 The Humean Creature perceives an event, which provokes an emotional reaction, which leads to a moral judgment. The Kantian Creature perceives an event, applies the appropriate moral rule, and issues a moral judgment. The Rawlsian Creature perceives an event, analyzes its causes and consequences, and comes to a judgment. This judgment then provokes an emotional reaction and/or rational justification.38 This is the picture of moral judgment painted by neuroscience and cognitive psychology. In the face of a moral dilemma, humans make quick, intuitive responses that they perceive as emotional or, less often, rational judgments, but such perceptions are actually the product of the judgment, not the cause of it. The judgment is caused by the workings of neurally based cognitive/affective systems. This is the “analysis” of the Rawlsian Creature.

According to Hauser, underlying this analysis is a “moral grammar,” which he takes from the moral philosophy of John Rawls. Rawls presents a model for understanding our innate moral sense analogous to Chomsky’ s notion of a biologically based language faculty. That faculty is comprised of a set of innate universal principles that underlie all human languages and led to a variety of languages in response to various cultural inputs. This faculty allows children to rapidly acquire language, far in excess of the actual linguistic input they receive from their environments. Rawls suggested that some such faculty underlies our moral judgments39 and Hauser sees this as a way to explain the often quick, intuitive moral judgments so characteristic of humans – that is, there is an innate moral grammar that underlies our ability to make moral judgments, and this is a biologically based, universally shared, human trait, that when exposed to varying cultural inputs generates the various moral systems humans have developed.