Comments on: Altruism Is Not The Basis Of Morality

By: Altruism Is Not The Basis Of Morality | Social Brains | Scoop.it

Altruism Is Not The Basis Of Morality | Social Brains | Scoop.it — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 09:54:18 +0000

[...] "An altruism-based account of morality would appear to have a very difficult time making sense of that finding." DeScioli, P., Christner, J., & Kurzban, R. (2011). The omission strategy – Psychological Science [...]

By: Jesse Marczyk

Jesse Marczyk — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 19:36:22 +0000

The adaptive or non-adaptive value of deceit or violence in particular, while interesting topics in their own right, was not the focus of the point. The major focus is that Horgan, as well as many other critics of evolutionary psychology, seem to have no problem with what they might call “adaptive story-telling”, but are perfectly willing to engage in the very behavior they condemn so routinely with little to no justification for doing so. I happen to find the radically different standards to be irksome.

By: Borat

Borat — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 18:31:14 +0000

The argument that deceit is obviously adaptive would seem to be based on the fact that deceit is only an advantageous strategy after a previous paradigm of honesty has been established as the standard. Deceit in a dishonest environment provides no extra advantage though a single honest individual would be at a disadvantage. However, there is often an advantage to the population as a whole if all its members are honest, or if all individually share in the production of some public good, which in turn creates a paradigm that incentivizes individuals to be dishonest and take advantage of their neighbors.

Violence being being non-adaptive would seem to be based on the fact that no previous paradigm would need to be established for violence to benefit the organism. Perhaps a standard of pacifism would reduce the risk of recriminations on the individual, but the positive payoff of violence are not necessitated on this in the way that deceitfulness is on honesty.

By: Jesse Marczyk

Jesse Marczyk — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 14:36:50 +0000

I'm unconvinced that reciprocal altruism/cooperation can explain why people morally judge others for non-cooperative issues (like sexual behavior). A fine this account to be more satisfying on that front.

By: RG

RG — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 08:19:45 +0000

You’re right, an altruism based account of morality fails to explain a lot and also contradicts a lot of observed behaviour (psych lab and real world). But the same goes for a selfishness account of our instincts, which is why I always find the “are we selfish or altruistic” debate so tiresome: neither usefully characterise what’s going on.

Humans are neither straightforwardly selfish nor altruistic, but co-operative (a far better term than ‘reciprocal altruism’, which is problematic for the reasons you suggest). We are fundamentally dependant on others and conduct ourselves accordingly, behaving in ways likely to attain their positive regard. And because life isn’t a series of isolated, one-shot, interactions, but a dense network of overlapping co-operative relationships, we care even about issues which don’t obviously, directly affect us (e.g. others’ sexual behaviour).