Is Evolutionary Psychology Pure Bunk?

[Kylyssa]

A recent comment on my blog in response to this post suggested that evolution plays no part in morality but that individuals figure out what is moral for themselves using reasoning.  What do you think?

[Heretical Rants]

The moral nihilists on here will agree entirely...

..there are no morals, actions are based upon desires, anything is fair game if you are willing to accept the consequences, etc.

Of course, this results in something resembling morality.  Most people don't want to kill other people, if they really think about it.  Why?

The consequence of murder and war is death.  It may bring prosperity for some, but if you are bloodthirsty you have a lower chance of surviving in a population of social animals that care for each other.  If you kill someone's brother, they exact a vendetta against you.
Those who live by the sword, die by the sword--and after they do, their genetic sequences die, too.

Furthermore, I believe I possess the quality of empathy.  Why is that, if my only basis for morality is reason?

[Whitney]

Furthermore, I believe I possess the quality of empathy.  Why is that, if my only basis for morality is reason?

I think both empathy and reason control what we consider to be moral.  Some use more of one that the other.

[AlP]

I agree with Whitney. I think morality comes partly from reason, partly from empathy and partly from a host of other things I know nothing about. I think I read somewhere that a portion of our brain controls empathy. I think it was the "mirror neurons" but I might be remembering wrongly. If that's the case, it seems that evolution plays an important part of what people call morality. Reason also plays a role. Look at religious morality. That's all all about reasons.

In response to Heretical Rants, I suppose I'm a moral nihilist. As I said I accept that empathy can play a role in ethics. What the nihilist in me objects to is that morality is other people's reasons. Sometimes other people's reasons are fine but I will not reduce something as defining as my ethics to group think and dogma, especially when I think it's bullshit. I don't like to be nihilistic. I like to create things. Sometimes to create something new you have to first demolish what was there before, painful as it may be.

[Sophus]

The way our brains evolved have everything to do with our morality. Considering that we see morality in mammals of much lower EQs I think evolution has everything to do with morality - not our own reasoning. Feelings, empathy, how our brains have been wrought and even pride or a search for oneness play large roles in the morality of most people. Some people apply more reason to their morality than others but underneath there are always assumptions or prejudice.

As I've mentioned before, I am an Ethical Nihilist in the sense that morals are not absolute and no action is therefore wrong.

[iNow]

Morality is mostly innate, and is simply sculpted by culture. Even 3 year olds have been shown trying to comfort other children who were sad or in tears.  That alone suggests that it has more to do with "nature" than it does with "nurture."  Also, readers should note that monkeys and other apes understand concepts of fairness and equality, as demonstrated time and again in experiment after experiment.

My own position on the topic is that morality stems from our evolved condition being pack animals. The dominant animal in the group (the alpha), as well as the larger collective mentality of the group members, together will set the expected behaviors... and those that choose not to follow those behaviors get ostracized from the group. This ostracization/separation from the group decreases their likelihood of survival (less access to food and protection), and also drastically decreases their reproductive potential (less access to mates). Over the long-term, those animals which acted according to the pack values out-reproduced those who did not.  The one who acts inline with the group psychology is more successful (as a general rule) than the one who does not (strangely, this actually helps to explain the commonality of religious practice to some extent... group behavior, ideological expectations, and access to mates and resources... it's all related to the prominence of religious practice in our culture ).  This logic about group cohesion and common morality/values applies also to apes, to wolves, to penguins, and to countless other animals.

In short, we're pack animals who exist in troops.  Morality evolved because... at it's heart... morality is about successfully being part of a larger group, whereby success is contingent upon understanding the expectations which exist about your behavior coming from your fellow pack members.


Speaking of the evolution of morality, here was a cool story:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/e ... 733638.ece

Some researchers believe we could owe our consciences to climate change and, in particular, to a period of intense global warming between 50,000 and 800,000 years ago. The proto-humans living in the forests had to adapt to living on hostile open plains, where they would have been easy prey for formidable predators such as big cats.

This would have forced them to devise rules for hunting in groups and sharing food.

Christopher Boehm, director of the Jane Goodall Research Center, part of the University of Southern California's anthropology department, believes such humans devised codes to stop bigger, stronger males hogging all the food.

"To ensure fair meat distribution, hunting bands had to gang up physically against alpha males," he said. This theory has been borne out by studies of contemporary hunter-gatherer tribes.

In research released at the AAAS he argued that under such a system those who broke the rules would have been killed, their "amoral" genes lost to posterity. By contrast, those who abided by the rules would have had many more children.

As per the thread title... No.  It's not pure bunk.  There is a lot of solid work occurring in evo psych.  Look at the publications of Steven Pinker and David Buss, for example.  While (just like all other sciences) it's important to be cautious with specious claims and questionable people, most of the field is pretty solid.

[Squid]

Monkeysphere...

[jbeukema]

A recent comment on my blog in response to this post suggested that evolution plays no part in morality but that individuals figure out what is moral for themselves using reasoning.  What do you think?

Evolutionary psychology is little more than the study of instance and the development of the brain and mind

[AlP]

Morality is mostly innate, and is simply sculpted by culture. Even 3 year olds have been shown trying to comfort other children who were sad or in tears.  That alone suggests that it has more to do with "nature" than it does with "nurture."  Also, readers should note that monkeys and other apes understand concepts of fairness and equality, as demonstrated time and again in experiment after experiment.

I'm interested now iNow. You've made some high quality posts such as this one. What is your background?

As an aside, I've been reading a college 101 psychology textbook. It's interesting and somewhat disturbing in an interesting way. Today I was sitting on some steps smoking a cig. Something landed on my head. I swiped it away and it handed between my feet. Fear. A wasp. I squashed it with my foot. What disturbed me the most was not that I killed an insect or that I had come close to being stung but that I squashed it before the concept of wasp had even entered my conscious thought. It was the fact that my operant conditioning unconsciously made the decision for "me" =).

Anyway, the OP was about evolutionary psychology. In this one instance, I think I was evolutionarily predisposed to be more susceptible to this kind of operant conditioning with respect to yellow and black striped insects (the ones that often sting) than, for example, flowers. I have the same predisposition with spiders.

[jbeukema]

Anyone read The Origin of Minds?

[Arctonyx]

A recent comment on my blog in response to this post suggested that evolution plays no part in morality but that individuals figure out what is moral for themselves using reasoning.  What do you think?

Look at animals that live in groups, they have a sense of equality and fairness, and will look out for each other because it is beneficial for the whole group (and therefore themselves). This is behaviour that in humans most people would call morality (why many refuse to call it morality in animals and instead call them instincts baffles me), which to make us a successful species, must have come into play long before we had the capabilities of reasoning through language. The argument that reason is the only reason for morals is complete rubbish, because moral behaviour evolved, long before complex language and reasoning skills did. Because if we didn't have an innate moral behaviour, we would have never been a successful species, because 1 human, by itself cannot accomplish much.

Moral behaviour is simply a mix of self preservation and group work ethics, and not as some would claim the result of reason or religion.

[iNow]

I'm interested now iNow. You've made some high quality posts such as this one. What is your background?

Thank you for your kind words, AIP.  I appreciate that.  I only have an undergraduate degree.  I studied psychology, but had an emphasis in statistics and research design (I couldn't stand the counseling/therapy stuff, so stuck with the "science of the mind" and neuroscience side of things).  When I was in school, I worked as a research assistant in about five different labs (human cognition, the perception lab, human sexuality, and also worked closely with many grad students/friends on their dissertations).  One of the courses I took was actually Evolutionary Psychology taught by David Buss.  It was fascinating.  I then graduated, did work on a research project with the American Cancer Society, then did work on Phase 1 clinical trials of pharmaceuticals, and now I work for a large global manufacturing corporation in their training department doing a lot of database and finance work as member of a business management team.

Long story short, most of what I know is self-taught.  I have a curious mind, and I've been participating at various science forums for many years now, absorbing as much as I can.  Anyway, I caught the "science and research is awesome" bug when my (hot) human sexuality teacher asked for assistants to work in her lab.  I was like, "sex research?  hell's yeah!"  ... and I've been studying, researching, and learning about science ever since... even been noted by name on 3 different peer-reviewed publications for my efforts with these other researchers.

Thanks again for the kind words regarding my posts.  It's much appreciated.  Cheers.  

[Squid]

I studied psychology...

...ah a fellow social scientist in background...

...but had an emphasis in statistics and research design (I couldn't stand the counseling/therapy stuff...

Neither could I...I did it for almost 4 years and never want to do that again...I love the research side - working on a study proposal for the Army right now   .

[jbeukema]

The reason people object is because EP leaves no gaps for god to hide in and makes Man 'just another animal'

[curiosityandthecat]

I miss the time I used to have to make long, elaborated, well referenced posts...but I don't miss being a broke grad student