User:Elembis/Ethics and evolutionary psychology


 * This page contains the former content of Ethics and evolutionary psychology, deleted on 2007-03-18. Relevant content that can be sourced should be added to Evolutionary ethics''.

A major concern of evolutionary psychology is the basis of psychological traits and behaviors related to ethics (morality). Evolutionary Psychology in general attempts to explain major features of psychology in terms of species-wide evolved (via natural selection) predispositions. In many species, this involves altruistic behaviors, or, conversely, deceptive or harmful behaviors. In humans and possibly some other species, it can include phenomena such as a sense of right and wrong, feelings of kindness or love related to altruism and self-sacrifice (including "brotherly love"), feelings related to competitiveness and moral punishment or retribution, moral "cheating" or hypocrisy, and inclinations for any of those actions judged morally good or bad by (at least some within) society.

A key question for evolutionary psychology to address is how altruistic feelings and behaviors evolved when the process of natural selection is based on competition between different genes.

Kin selection
Altruism between close relatives can be selected for (i.e. the genes disposing an organism towards the behavior could have succeeded) if the donor and recipient are significantly more related than two individuals picked from the population at random. This can occur when there is a sufficiently large probability that copies of the genes predisposing the organisms towards the altruistic behavior are contained in the genome of both parties involved.

Reciprocal altruism
Reciprocal altruism describes "You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" relationships and explains altruistic behavior toward non-relatives. It states that by helping others at some cost to ourself, we can receive help in return which can make the altruism ultimately beneficial to the genes that predispose organisms towards it. As one example of reciprocal altruism in nature, Frans de Waal's 1996 book Good Natured mentions blood-sharing among vampire bats, who cannot survive more than two consecutive nights without having fed. A bat who has had a successful night of feeding will return to its roost and regurgitate some blood for its "buddy" if he or she has not been so lucky. Each bat has an incentive for altruistic behavior which keeps its buddy, a potential lifeline, alive.

Indirect reciprocal altruism expands this concept to include reciprocation by third parties, and indicates the possible evolutionary importance of 'moral' reputation.

Group selection
Group selection theories argue that genes which dispose organisms to benefit the entire group or species, regardless of any benefit to the individual concerned relative to others in the group, may still have succeeded during evolution, thus providing an additional, and possibly 'higher' basis for ethics. Group selection was favored by V.C. Wynne-Edwards and has been criticized by George C. Williams, John Maynard Smith, and Richard Dawkins.