Evolutionary Intuitionism

Throughout most of human history, caring for orphans would have reduced the carers’ biological fitness because resources were scarce and using resources to care for orphans would have reduced what was available for the carers’ own offspring. It might not have reduced the carers’ viability but it would have reduced their fertility, and fitness is a combination of the two.

We have a moral obligation to care for orphans. Since caring for orphans would have reduced fitness throughout most of human history, the obligation cannot be an adaptation. Furthermore, if the obligation originated non-biologically, there would be selection for its elimination, which works very quickly. If moral truths were logical truths and therefore could not be eliminated, there would be selection for an inability to comprehend them. It follows that no morality that includes a widely accepted obligation to care for orphans can plausibly be either adaptationist or non-evolutionary in origin.

The only option left is that morality is the by-product of an adaptation to which it is inextricably linked. The adaptation confers benefits while the by-product imposes costs, but the combination persists because the benefits are greater than the costs and the combination cannot be broken down into its components.

Here is a by-product theory called evolutionary intuitionism. We believe we are of value because it improves our capacity to complete medium to long-range projects such as collecting and storing food. By definition, valuable entities should be protected and preserved and successfully completing such projects tends to protect and preserve. We believe that others are of value because doing so is a prerequisite not for cooperation per se but for cooperation on such projects. We show that we believe that others are of value by treating them as being of value. And that’s morality.

There’s a complication in that the beliefs can be “switched off” sometimes when we have to choose between ourselves and others, between our relatives and non-relatives, and between our friends and strangers. We should usually minimize harm to others but we do not have to sacrifice ourselves, our family or our friends to minimize the harm. This makes evolutionary sense. These limits would be produced by, respectively, individual selection, kin selection, and reciprocal altruism.

On the other hand, the arrangement does not permit us to sacrifice others for ourselves, our family, or our friends. We must not use others.

We should otherwise treat everyone equally.

There is no violation of Hume’s Law, which is that we cannot derive prescriptions about what we ought to do from descriptions of what has happened before, what will happen later, or what is true now. It is not the case that the beliefs are logically derived from anything. Instead, they are naturally selected for. I do not claim that they are true but that people believe them. With evolutionary intuitionism, moral facts are constituted by the relationships between the beliefs in the value of ourselves and others, and true descriptions of acts. The situation is no more problematic than the situation in which a set of false beliefs is consistent—it is a fact that some sets of false beliefs are consistent.

Not only is there no violation of Hume’s Law but also Hume’s Law probably means that the only plausible way in which to introduce ethical norms into a physical world like ours is by means of the contents of beliefs.

There is empirical evidence for evolutionary intuitionism. If the belief both improves our ability to engage in longer-term projects and makes us moral, amoral individuals should be bad at longer-term projects. The only truly amoral people are psychopaths. They are also bad at longer-term projects. Factor analysis shows that these are the predominant characteristics of psychopaths.

The trolley cases tell us that, if a runaway train is going to kill some workers no matter which way it goes, we think we should make sure it goes down the track where it will kill one and not down the track where it will kill five. We should minimize losses. In contrast, we do not think that we should throw an individual in front of the train even to save five. We should not minimize losses by sacrificing anyone. If we did, we would be committed to sacrificing ourselves or our children, depending on the circumstances. But sacrificing ourselves or our children would be contrary to our biological nature. Contrary to the thinking of utilitarians, relationships matter and not just the numbers.

In the trolley cases, the results of evolutionary intuitionism correspond to our moral intuitions. Our moral intuitions tell us what is compatible with our beliefs about our own value and the value of others. Our moral intuitions are like some grammatical intuitions. Speakers of standard English know instinctively that they should use the passive voice when they believe that they need to do so to put new information at the end of sentences. But they usually cannot explain why. Moral intuitions are similar. We ultimately have to rely on our moral intuitions and evolutionary intuitionism explains why they exist and why we can rely on them whereas other moral theories say nothing about them.

The way in which to ensure that our intuitions are accurate is to ensure that we believe all relevant non-moral truths and no relevant non-moral falsehoods. We may not always succeed but we can try. Being a critical thinker is a prerequisite to being a decent person.

It is well known that there are differences in moral opinions between societies and between individuals within societies. The main reason, according to evolutionary intuitionism, is that people have different non-moral beliefs. Some are “sticky” because rejecting them would make it clear that the believer had done something that is objectively wrong and people do not like to admit that they are wrong-doers, or that those whose preceded them are. Others are “sticky” because it is in the interests of the believers to believe them.

Thus, what evolutionary intuitionism describes is analogous to the genotype of morality; the same genotype in different environments can result in different phenotypes. Relativists must show not just that there are different phenotypes but also that they do not result from the same genotype in different environments.

Since morality is the by-product of an adaptation, it does not always provide an answer—anymore than our immune system provides perfect protection from disease. So, when a soldier says that he will kill ten innocent people unless you kill one, evolutionary intuitionism provides no answer because such situations were non-existent in the environment of evolutionary adaptation. Evil individuals can invent dilemmas for decent people. The fact that they can do so does not falsify evolutionary intuitionism, however. The theory is not a universal generalization and cannot be falsified by failures to provide answers when the failures can be explained evolutionarily; the evidence for it is found in its empirical implications.

In summary, only an evolutionary by-product theory of morality can explain some aspects of morality. Evolutionary intuitionism is the only developed by-product theory. It is the only theory that explains moral intuitions as well as how normativity can exist in a physical world. It has empirical and intuitive support. It is good enough until someone develops a better theory.

Commentary on Chapter One of Evolutionary Intuitionism

I think I would use the orphan example more now. Some people do raise unrelated orphans. Others approve of them doing so. And the more selfless and generous are the people raising orphans, the more praiseworthy they are.

By devoting themselves to unrelated orphans, people lose the opportunity to use resources for their own offspring and, throughout most of human history, resources were very limited. Consequently, adaptationism cannot explain why any people would raise orphans rather than their own children, let alone why we would regard such people as particularly praiseworthy. There simply would be no selection for a willingness to raise orphans. And, if a non-evolutionary morality included the propositions that it was praiseworthy to raise orphans and that we should do so, there should be selection for the elimination of such a morality by eliminating those who adhered to it. It would be a fitness reducing characteristic and organisms with such characteristics tend to be eliminated very quickly.

One point that I would add to my original presentation is that if moral truths were logical truths, there would be selection for an inability to apprehend them. Evolution cannot eliminate logical truths but it can eliminate our capacity to grasp them. Not everyone can understand all the truths of mathematics and evolution could ensure that we did not grasp moral truths that reduced our fitness either -- even if the truths were logically eternal.

Since there would be no selection for a willingness to care for orphans and there would be selection for its rapid elimination, the only realistic option for explaining a human morality that inclines us to care for orphans and that praises caring for them is that it is the inseparable by-product of an adaptation. Consequently, most philosophical work in ethics is not even in the right area. There is no reason to take it seriously.

Commentary on Chapter Two of Evolutionary Intuitionism

In the first section of the chapter, I list the characteristics of intuitionism. I make the claim that my version is different from other versions in that there is a way to distinguish reliable from unreliable intuitions. I am not as original as I thought I was at the time I made the claim. In the 18th century, William Blackstone pointed out that our intuitions are fallible because ‘[our] reason is corrupt and [our] understanding full of ignorance and error’ (William Blackstone. 2001. Commentaries on the Laws of England. Vol. 1. Ed. Wayne Morrison. London: Cavendish, p. 31). What appears to have happened is that Jeremy Bentham attacked a straw man and philosophers fell in line, not challenging Bentham's false claims. I suspect that politics had a role because, in the struggle between parliament and the judiciary over whether judges could void statutes, Bentham was useful to the parliamentary side.

In the second section, I invent foundational attitudes so that I would not have to contradict all the philosophers who say that beliefs aim at the truth, which has the implication that false beliefs are defective. I would use the term belief now, because I have developed an account of belief that does not involve beliefs necessarily aiming at the truth. See my paper “Hypocrisy and the Nature of Belief,” Ratio 28(2) (2015), 175-189. There's nothing wrong with what I actually did but it is unnecessary except to avoid a philosophical battle that would detract from the aim of the book.

One notion that some people find challenging is the idea that we can act consistently with both a proposition and its negation. It is challenging because they assume that I am saying that we can act consistently with the contradiction that is the conjunction of a proposition and its negation. What I am saying is that both {P, Q} and {P, ~Q} are consistent sets. Examples should make it completely clear. "I am writing" plus "I am drinking coffee" are consistent, and "I am writing" plus "I am not drinking coffee" are also consistent. When I am writing, I am acting consistently with both "I am drinking coffee" and its negation, "I am not drinking coffee."

The foundational attitude is a human organism's belief that he or she is of value, where the belief is not accompanied by an explanation of the nature of the value or a justification for the belief. The belief exists not because the believer wants to say something true about him- or herself but because it improves the believer's ability to start and to complete projects whose benefits accrue later, sometimes much later. It is useful to the believer even though it is not true. Indeed, it is more useful false than it would be if it were true. The argument for that point comes later in the chapter.

It will have been noted that I also have projects in which I argue that we should not believe anything without sufficient evidence. Of course, that is an over-generalization. To be pedantic, we should not acquire beliefs without sufficient evidence but a naturally selected belief is not an acquired belief, so the lack of evidence is not a defect. The positions are compatible with a little clarification and a modicum of qualification.

Someone who believes that they are of value is not going act as though they are not of value. Since valuable things should be preserved from damage and destruction, individuals who believe they are of value are going to be more likely to act in ways that preserve them from damage or destruction. This increases the probability that they will start and complete projects that are in their interest even though there may be more tempting options. Thus, the belief improves biological fitness.

Co-operation among believers can also improve biological fitness. Hence, there is selection for a disposition to acknowledge some other believers as being of value.

Once someone has acknowledged some other believers they are committed to acknowledge all others. This cannot be because value supervenes on other properties and because others share the subvenient properties. But there are symptoms of believing that one is of value that believers take to be symptoms of being of value. It is logically inconsistent to attribute value to some others on the basis of symptoms they exhibit and to withhold the attribution from yet others who exhibit the same symptoms. Physicians would be inconsistent to diagnose patients with the same symptoms differently even if they do not know what causes the condition with those symptoms. Likewise, believers would be inconsistent if they diagnosed some other believers differently from yet others even though they all exhibited the same symptoms.

I use a cause-condition-symptom analogy to the subvenient properties-condition(-symptoms). Subvenient properties vis-a-vis value are like the cause of a condition. It is inconsistent to posit the same cause but to deny the existence of the condition in some of the cases. But it is also inconsistent to deny the existence of the condition in all cases where the same symptoms exist. Proponents of the supervenience model of moral standing assume that it is the only game in town but it is possible to rely on symptoms instead when attributing value to another.

The last wrinkle in the arrangement is that we attribute value not just to those who actually exhibit the symptoms of believing and therefore being of value (as far as we are concerned) but also to those who do not yet but who will exhibit the symptoms. In the book, I say that individuals with symptoms have to be of value throughout their entire existence, that they come into existence with the completion of the process of conception, and that therefore we are of value starting then. It is possible to have a condition before symptoms develop.

However, I might now prefer an approach more like the one I took in my paper “The Evolution of Moral Standing without Supervenience,” Philosophical Papers 51, 2022, 333-349. In that paper, individuals with the symptoms acknowledge each other but demand that others acknowledge their offspring as well as a condition for their acknowledging the others. They negotiate a moral community that includes their newborns as well as adults. On this view, human beings become members of the moral community at birth. Prior to that, they are protected by the moral status accorded to their mothers--it is generally not possible for others to harm the unborn without harming the mother. It would be reasonable to distinguish children who have already been born from the unborn. It would enable us to avoid addressing the problem that a large proportion of fertilized ova abort spontaneously. If individuals became members of the moral community at birth, abortion would not pose a moral problem at all, let alone a difficult one. In contrast, if membership in the community started at conception, abortion would be limited to cases in which it was necessary to preserve the life or health of the mother, on the grounds that nobody had an obligation to sacrifice themselves for another and that health care professionals had an obligation to prevent such sacrifices. (I discuss why we don't have obligations to sacrifice ourselves below.) The membership begins at conception position is more abstract and less practical than the membership begins at birth position. Consequently, I now think that it is more probable that an at birth community would develop. Once someone acknowledged another individual with the symptoms and their offspring, they would be logically committed to acknowledge the rest of humanity.

There are some who think it is a defect that evolutionary intuitionism does not create a moral community that encompasses animals. But the belief that animals should be included depends on two assumptions. It depends on the assumption that moral standing is a supervenient property, which is unaccompanied by evidence, and that the subvenient properties are such and such, where there is no agreement on what the subvenient properties are and statements of the subvenient properties are pure supposition. The fact that the belief predates evolutionary intuitionism and that its assumptions are usually unquestioned is no good reason to give precedence to its conclusions. And it is illogical to complain that evolutionary intuitionism does not succeed in justifying the inclusion of animals in the moral community when no one else has succeeded at doing more than creating the illusion of inclusion. With all that said, evolutionary intuitionism does not require us to treat animals badly or to use them or to consume them. It is compatible with vegetarianism, etc.

The beliefs that I am of value, and that others are, are generally advantageous. But not always. So I posit that it can be switched off in certain circumstances. The beliefs depend on people's being able to desire to avoid injury at least as much as anything else. This prevents people from being obligated to sacrifice themselves to save a greater number. They can't do that while desiring to avoid injury. This "desire-dependence" acts like a circuit breaker, cutting the power to our obligations. We can prefer ourselves to others. We can also prefer our kin to non-kin and friends to strangers. I explain how desire-dependence could evolve in the next chapter.

If the beliefs were true, they could not be switched off. This would be disadvantageous. At the very least, others could argue that someone should sacrifice him- or herself for a greater number of others. At any rate, falsity in this naturally selected belief is not a flaw and certainly not a flaw that would justify rejecting the notion of naturally selected foundational attitudes.

Acting consistently with our desire-dependent extended beliefs is morally permissible. Acting inconsistently with them is impermissible. We are obligated to act consistently when all other options are inconsistent. Self-sacrifice is supererogatory--it is possible because we can desire some righteous ends more than we desire to avoid injury or death, where righteous ends are compatible with others being of value. It can also be negatively supererogatory--for instance, some people can desire to get revenge more than they desire to survive and get revenge by killing the innocent offspring of the individual who wronged them. We laud positive supererogation but we condemn negative supererogation--even as we understand what would cause someone to commit acts of negative supererogation.

I rather like the term, negative supererogation, which I did not use in my book. It captures the phenomenon nicely and makes obvious the analogy with positive supererogation.

It is possible for someone to commit suicide because it is possible for them to desire something more than to avoid death, such as suffering. If their belief in their own value is switched off, the theory lacks a way to justify condemning someone who murdered them out of malevolence when their belief was switched off. Some people are scandalized by this implication. However, the theory is not a universal generalization that is falsified by a few unwelcome results. The evidence for the theory is the confirmation of what it predicts, like a scientific theory. Given that morality is a product of evolution, there are bound to be situations like this. This kind of situation is so rare at any time, let alone in the environment of evolutionary adaptation, that it is unsurprising that evolution does not provide an answer. So, I guess my response has to be "So what?"

The final section of the capture concerns reflexive rationalization. You can get away with acting inconsistently with your beliefs about your own and others' value if you believe falsely about the nature of your actions. Since doing the wrong thing is often advantageous, reflexive rationalization lets you get the advantages while avoiding the disadvantages. It does not become an adaptation because others are inclined to keep you honest and not to get away with the lies you want to tell yourself. I talk more about this elsewhere in the book.

It is a complex picture, describing how to build moral agents and a moral community in a completely physical world. Such complexity is not out of place in such a context. Instead, it is what we should expect. Part of what one ought to do when developing an evolutionary theory is provide a plausible account of how the causal processes involved in evolution could bring bring the situation about. I provide such an account in Chapter Three. It has testable empirical implications that are confirmed by observation.

Commentary of Chapter Three of Evolutionary Intuitionism

I am not trying to discover a principle that subsumes all and only true moral judgments when combined with descriptions of relevant facts. It is more like I am trying to show how moral agents and a moral community could be constructed.

Evolutionary thinking is a form of causal reasoning. All the features must either provide an advantage, or offset a disadvantage, so as to make the individual organism either more viable or more fertile. Of course, there can be trade-offs between viability and fertility. Some of the trade-offs can be be trade-offs between an organism's viability and the fertility of its kin. What matters in evolutionary terms is getting more copies of your genes into the next generation by whatever means possible.

Foundational attitudes make individuals more likely to complete some projects that are in their interest, which is an advantage. Extended foundational attitudes make it more likely that individuals will co-operate with others when it is to their mutual advantage. Accepting that others are of equal value prevents the breakdown of relationships with others. Desire-dependence with respect to self, kin, and friends offsets the disadvantage that one would otherwise be committed to self-sacrifice in certain circumstances.

I use the term supervenience loosely in my book. I deny that the value that people attribute to themselves is like the value of things that are instrumentally valuable. With things that are instrumentally valuable, their value is a function of their other properties. A dull knife is less instrumentally valuable than a sharp one, given the purpose of knives. Supervenience is one possible explanation of the relationship between value and the properties of which the value is a function. I don't think that my loose usage vitiates my position.

The phenomenon of supervenience is there being no difference in value without a difference in other properties. One can accept the existence of the phenomenon without accepting any one the analyses of the phenomenon. There is no difference in the complete and accurate description of an individual without a difference in the individual but none of the extant supervenience analyses capture the phenomenon. One analysis is the strong possible worlds analysis, which is that value supervenes on other properties just in case, if one entity in one possible world and another entity in a different possible world are indistinguishable in terms of their other properties, then if they are indistinguishable in terms of value as well. The analysis permits the existence of value without the other properties, but there cannot be a description without the individual described. So, we can accept the phenomenon while rejecting the analysis. And we can do the same with the other analyses. So, we can reject the supervenience analyses while accepting the supervenience phenomenon. Proponents of supervenience probably equivocate between the phenomenon and the analyses. It cannot vitiate my position that I have not stated a mistaken meta-physical notion as precisely as its proponents would like me too. So, I admit my guilt and say "So what?"

To be continued

Commentary on Chapter Four of Evolutionary Intuitionism

I describe evolutionary intuitionism as a consequentialism with deontological side-constraints. Each member of the moral community has a relationship to all other members. No one has an obligation to increase the number of members of the community but every member has an obligation to save every other member from damage or destruction, which amounts to an obligation to minimize losses. But no one can minimize losses by sacrificing some people for others. On the contrary, they have a duty not to do so.

The same structure that determines the moral facts causes our moral intuitions, so the moral facts ought to be intuitively acceptable. The correspondence does not have to be perfect because the moral facts are not the only determinants of our intuitions. Other determinants include other beliefs, and we may lack some relevant true beliefs and possess some relevant false ones. Reflexive rationalization and other factors can promote resistance to relevant true beliefs and susceptibility to relevant false ones. Also, the theory does not need to rely exclusively on intuitions because it has empirical implications. What the point boils down to is probably that the theory should not have seriously counter-intuitive results.

In the section entitled Minimization, I explain why we have to minimize rather than maximize or satisfice. I don't have any new comments on that. I also point out that we probably have to organize to provide institutions that enable us to minimize more together than we do individually.

I would add that, correlatively, we should all take reasonable measures to avoid needing excessive help from others. If we do not, we end up using others, which is wrong.

I would further add that it is not always obvious who is exploiting whom. Many people think that unemployed people are free-riders. But, in societies with modern market economies, it has been believed for the last half century that a certain level of unemployment must be maintained to prevent an accelerating rate of inflation, which must be prevented in order to keep the market economy functioning. So, governments raise interest rates to "cool" the labor market, that is, to throw people out of work. In these circumstances, it is the unemployed who are being exploited by everyone else. Consequently, they deserve compensation.

It might be argued that we all have obligations to avoid unhealthy diets, to exercise, and to keep up with our vaccinations, and obligations not to do anything that would impair our health. But it is not obvious what we should do when people do what they shouldn't do and don't do what they should do.

The average person who follows a healthy lifestyle will still require healthcare in old age. If smokers, say, do not on average cost more in terms of healthcare, because they die at a younger age, say, then there is no reason to treat them differently. The same goes for other unhealthy habits and practices. We should discourage unhealthy habits and practices because we value people, but there is no reason in terms of cost in such circumstances not to do what we can to preserve their health and lives.

If there were increased costs, deterrent fees would be justified. For instance, people who refuse the COVID vaccine are liable to incur far greater costs for hospitalization and for care when they have long COVID. The deterrent fees need not equal the care costs provided they discourage people from refusing vaccination qua recommended medical treatment. The level at which they are set would be an empirical matter, determined by how effectively they change people's behavior. Deterrent fees would have to be publicized. They would not impair freedom; they would tend to discourage free-riding.

I have no comments on the next section. I think it's right.

To be continued ...