Evolutionary Explanation for Morality

This has been explained using game theory - surprisingly enough. The prisoner's dilemma is the tool to use. The prisoner's dilemma is a non-zero-sum game, and I'll be so bold as to hash it out here in case you are unfamiliar with it.Two guys are arrested, but the evidence is thin on the ground. The police decide to offer both guys a deal: Testify against the other to avoid a harsh penalty. There are three possibilities: Both men will agree to testify against each other, they both stay silent and one testifies and one remains silent. The prisoners cannot collude.For each of these outcomes there is a consequence for the prisoners:
If both testify, they both go to prison - but they are given only a 5 year sentence for essentially cooperating with the police.If both stay silent, they both got to prison for 6 months for a lesser charge.If one testifies and the other remains silent, the silent one goes to prison for ten years and the testifier goes free.What is the best strategy for the prisoners? If you were prisoner A you don't know what your cohort is going to do. If he stays silent your best strategy is to betray him. If he betrays you your best strategy is to betray him to to avoid the harsh sentence. Thus, whatever he chooses to do - betraying him is the best option.This is the situation that most people think about when they think in terms of morality in a godless world...there is no reward for nice guys so why bother being nice?However, our social interactions are rarely so straightforward. So we imagine a more complex game in which the two prisoners face a similar dilemma 100 times. This time they get half a day added to their sentence if they both stay silent, they get 5 days added to their sentence if they both betray and if one betrays and the other doesn't, the silent one has 10 days added to his sentence and the betrayer gets 0 days added.Is it possible that cooperating with one another can emerge as a successful strategy in this environment? It is possible, yes. A successful strategy can be nice (is not inclined betray), retaliatory (punishes those that betray them by betraying them in the next round), forgiving (will become nice again if the other player stops betraying them) and non-envious (doesn't try and beat their opponent, just tries to do as good as they can).Things get even more interesting if we take the iterated prisoner's dilemma to its next level: A population of prisoners rather than just two, and they come all to play against one another. Then we see that several strategies can be successful and an equilibrium forms. If any one prisoners changes their strategy they will automatically do worse. They might not be 'winning', but given the strategies everyone else is employing it could still be the best strategy to employ.Now altruistic tendencies are based on 'rules of thumb', which is our strategy for dealing with our iterated dilemmas (ie social interactions). And we have another rule in play: advertisement.It is easier to lie than it is to detect a lie - but consistently lying and you will be found out and it could become public knowledge. So it is no good just pretending we are nice as a way to advertise we are worth being nice to - we'll generally end up getting caught. A much better strategy is to actually be nice, so evolution will tend us towards making us actually nice rather than just appearing to be nice.This has the knock on effect of making us be nice, even when technically there is no good reason to be: our action will go unnoticed or we will die (advertisement is useless), and the people we are nice to contain genetic rivals (genetic madness). Reproductive pressures to fit in to the group are much stronger than the reproductive disadvantage to occasionally being selfless without getting noticed.It is much easier to do nice things for non-relatives nowadays so it all seems paradoxical, but a mere 10,000 years ago it all makes a great deal of sense.

Yeah, and then me brudder breaks his legs.Game over.

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Ok, but don't animals (like ducks and dolphins) rape? So this is the part I'm really wondering about. I have a feeling I'm completely ignorant. But how do a bunch of individuals in a group develop an innate drive toward cooperation? And how would the ability to detect "slackers" and "cheaters" develop, especially simultaneously?Anyway, I am not talking about cooperation. Cooperation is completely different from unreciprocated altruism, although it could be classified as a form of reciprocated altruism ("you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours"). There is also a large discrepancy between true unreciprocated altruism and the "niceness" defined by Modulous as "not betraying". Unreciprocated altruism refers to a selfless concern for the welfare of others, or acts of kindness with nothing expected in return - a very real phenomenon within the human race. It is impossible to explain away all cases of seemingly unreciprocated altruism as selfish.

I don't know. Are we talking about ducks or humans?- Same way that fish develop legs, dinosaurs develop wings. Instincts and drives are basically due to the way that the brain is physically "wired" up. Genetic mutations that influence how the brain is wired will therefore influence behavior. Genetic mutations that result in behavior that leads to reproductive advantage -- or to a conducive environment for the spread of the particular gene in the case of cooperative behavior -- will increase in frequency.Perhaps I don't understand your question.-- Maybe "unreciprocated altruism" doesn't exist in the real world. Can you provide an example?

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Progress in human affairs has come mainly through the bold readiness of human beings not to confine themselves to seeking piecemeal improvements in the way things are done, but to present fundamental challenges in the name of reason to the current way of doing things and to the avowed or hidden assumptions on which it rests. -- E. H. Carr

Some genes are better at surviving than others. If a population group has individuals with the altruism characteristic, they help keep others in the group alive. If, for example, you have this characteristic, there's a good chance that it might exist in some of your siblings, cousins, etc. People who are likely to be around you.So, in being altruistic with no apparent reciprocation, you could benefit the altruism genes in, for example, a second cousin.Also, you could be genuinely altruistic without expecting reciprocation to someone who, although not so altruistic, did recognize the "you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours" system.You (and your genuine altruism genes) might then benefit a couple of years later when this person (unexpectedly) returns the favour.In this way, the tendency towards sheer altruism is a part of the cooperative side of our character. The individual wouldn't have to perceive his altruistic actions as being to his own advantage, and often they might not be. But if they sometimes were, that's enough for nature to select the genes that cause the characteristic.Perhaps it's a constant balance, because selfishness could also be advantageous in certain circumstances. It could be that the individual with the right balance of the two has the optimum character to be most likely to perpetuate his or her genes.That might explain why we have some individuals who are altruistic to the point of self-sacrifice, and others who are incredibly selfish, but the overwhelming majority are somewhere between those two extremes. They are not consciously selfish on the part of the individual. It's the tendency to be like that that must have benefited the genes in the past.Try imagining our species completely without characteristics like empathy and a moral/social conscience. It'd be chaos, and our ancestors would never have survived as a social animal that hunts, gathers and lives in groups.

Cedre is trying to start a new thread on morality. I decided to try to help him/her out by bringing thread to his/her attention.This thread is about how creatures who have feelings of ethics and morality can fit into the evolutionary framework.

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To count as an atheist, one needn't claim to have proof that there are no gods. One only needs to believe that the evidence on the god question is in a similar state to the evidence on the werewolf question. -- John McCarthy

Could you give Cedre's topic a chance? All they were saying is that, at least on the surface, "unbeneficial humanitarianism" is hard to explain, which is why scientists have researched it.