The Topology of Morality: How Evolution Can Help Us Understand Ethics
Introduction
People like to believe that value is mind dependent, and moral relativism is true. They’re wrong. Well, at least partially.
“We just have different values”. If you’ve ever heard this in an ethical argument, it can be frustrating. There is no refutation that you can make. You can’t argue against their values, and you can’t even justify your own in any objective sense.
But could there be some way to objectively evaluate values so that you could “prove” your values are correct? Many people seem to think so. In Ethics, these people are known as Objectivists. They might be Christians, Deontologists, Utilitarians and such. But many of these positions have no Metaethical grounding. This is a problem.
How can you have an ethical position, but not have any idea where it comes from? I will try to give a metaethical position and derive some Moral insights. But first I will have to ask some questions.
How can you objectively tell someone that your values are better? After all, we are told that no one’s values are better than anyone else, right?
The Problem with “The Trolley Problem”
The “Trolley Problem” thought experiment was invented to demonstrate the difference between ethical theories.
Concerning this problem, when you think about it; it is a peculiar thing to think you are correct about a moral theory. After all, what evidence am I, or anyone using to count towards the conclusion that a utilitarian is correct? There is no observation, or logical argument that I, or anyone is really using. But my conclusion can’t come from nowhere, can it? No, there is something there. But it is more of a feeling, or intuition…?
Intuitionism
This is what we might call a “moral intuition”. It can come from an intense feeling of emotion, or a more nuanced feeling of rightness or wrongness. Yet, if all of our moral theories were simply reflections of, and therefore attempts to describe our intuitions, then ethical questions are ultimately subjective are they not?
Perhaps this was partially but not the whole truth. We have intuitions about many different things, but it doesn’t follow that those intuitions are arbitrary. For example, I might have an intuition that someone is feeling sad, but others might have the intuition that they are happy- these intuitions may manifest themselves differently across minds, but they are guessing at an objective feature of reality: the person’s actual emotional state.
It is also true that intuitions exist to serve a purpose. We need to be able to recognize the emotions of others for the purpose of emotional regulation, strengthening relationships and so on. Further, it would be quite rare, and not make much sense to have an intuition that points to nothing. This leads me to ask the question “Why”, once again. So, why do we have moral intuitions?
Nature Vs Nurture
Moral intuitions are behaviors, and all human behavior can be boiled down to two factors: Nature and Nurture. By Nature, we usually mean genetics. Intrinsic cognitive temperaments that we are born with, and that stay with us our whole life. By Nurture, we mean memetics or parts of the brain that are plastic and capable of change. If our brain were a mix of different types of clays, the parts that are affected by Nature would be tough and difficult to mold. The parts affected by Nurture would be soft like putty, malleable and easily shapable by others.
But then, how can moral intuitions emerge from these two factors? The same way that any behavior emerges- evolution.
Evolution: Genes Vs Memes
Genes and Memes are just two different evolutionary substrates by which evolution operates. By evolutionary substrate, I mean the means by which information is encoded and natural selection operates.
Genetic selection is the classic way that we have understood how organisms evolve. How does this occur? We have information stored in a Deoxyribose-nucleic acid (DNA) molecule strand, which encode information for the amino acids and proteins which construct and effect the organisms’ behaviors. Selection occurs largely on the criteria of survival and reproduction of the information encoded in the DNA stand.
On the other hand, we have Memetic selection. Coined in Richard Dawkins book “The Selfish Gene” by which the substrate is not a DNA strand, but a cognitive neural patterning, more specifically on the neuroplastic parts of the nervous system. Memes are primarily reproduced through imitation, mimicry and then habit formation, especially in the early stages of brain development. Human adaptivity is due to our massively increased neuroplasticity. Instead of a population adapting to environmental changes over millions of years, humans might only need couple of seconds to a few days to adapt to new conditions. 1
This takes us back to moral intuitions. How can these intuitions emerge through evolution? Further, are these intuitions genetic, or conditioned through memetics?
The Teleology of Morality
Genetic-Group Selection
To explore this question, we can draw our attention to the idea of genetic selection influencing morality. In the past it was common sense that “survival of the fittest” determined the reproduction of genes, and that to survive, organisms had to remain competitive and egoistic.
This idea was challenged however, by theories that tried to explain moral behavior using evolution. Kin-selection is one of them. This theory is compelling; however, a paradigm shifting theory of selection came along.
The Theory of Multi-Level Selection was developed by biologist David Sloan-Wilson and philosopher Elliot Sober which posits that natural selection can happen at different levels of organization as a function of context. What does this mean? When we look at the dominant theory of natural selection, we understand that the level of analysis is primarily on the individual. But what if upscaling the level of analysis allows us to see things we couldn’t have seen before?
If we make an altruistic group and an egoistic group compete between themselves for resources, the altruistic group will always win. Why? Because the altruists can cooperate and coordinate themselves better as a distinct entity over the egoistic group. It follows, that egoistic traits will lose reproductive advantage, and become smaller in the genetic pool.
This phenomenon is called Group-Selection and posits that groups can be selected for by natural selection, and can explain certain traits, such as altruistic and cooperative traits that individual level selection can’t. Multi-level selection expands this idea, to understanding that selection can happen at all organism levels, from micro-organism, to animal, to group, species and even biosphere.2 If this theory is true, there are intrinsic biological factors which make people act in just and moral ways.
Cultural-Group Selection
Over Millennia, human beings have built advanced civilizations, technologies and art. Over time, these inventions only became more and more complex, efficient and convenient. This is because of our capacity to learn as individuals and groups. It is the reason why I have a laptop to type into right now. When we learn as a child, we mimic those around us, more often our parents, then we form habits. When we learn as adults, we sometimes must unlearn the habits we built as children, to behaviors that are more adaptive in the moment. Those new habits are then passed on to our children. How did Einstein discover special relativity? He learned from Niels Bohr and Earnest Rutherford and Aristotle and many more that came before him. Our knowledge is built on a multi-generational mountain. The same is true for culture.
What is culture exactly? There are many definitions, however I propose that Culture is the manifestation of “group-learning” through what we call “Cultural-Group selection”. When we understand the idea of the individual learning how to become more adaptive through the aid of generational knowledge- we can treat the “group” or society as an organism on its own, that learns on its own.
The adoption of cultural traits through group-selection is a complex and multifaceted process influenced by social learning, trial and error, cultural transmission, evaluative mechanisms, and the social and environmental context. These mechanisms collectively allow populations to assess and decide on the adoption of new traits.
Cultural group selection can and often does produce altruistic social systems. These systems emerge and are maintained because they provide significant advantages in terms of group cohesion, survival, and success in competition with other groups.
Control Systems and Homeostasis
I argue that, when an evolutionary pressure is applied on a given substrate, that pressure will produce mechanisms that function to regulate the organism at the given level of organization. For example, when I have a substrate of genes, and selective pressures at the level of the individual, mechanisms that attempt to regulate the individual, such as self-preservation instincts will manifest themselves in the population. On the other hand, when I have a substrate of memes (neuroplasticity), and I apply selective pressures at the level of the group, mechanisms will manifest to regulate that group. In our cases, certain social rules integrated into culture, such as “don’t murder”, or “don’t steal” emerge which turn out to be advantageous to group fitness.
In other words, the consequences of group-level selection, produce group level homeostatic mechanisms. Morality is thus, a group-level homeostatic mechanism that’s purpose is to regulate group collective action and coordination.
It is no coincidence that matters concerning morality always involve a collective action problem. Morality is a control system for group adaptation. This makes Morality a coordination system for solving collective action problems.
The Four Pillars of Human Motivation
Now that we understand the different drivers of moral behavior, we can start to visualize the situation. On one hand, we have genetic, and memetic substrates. Then we have group, and individual selection which can act on either one of those substrates. The combination of both selective mechanisms acting on these substrates produces unique behaviors which I have categorized below as pillars:
Depending on the environment, nature will have a different selective intensity for each of these pillars. This creates a sort of, shape or topology if you will. I have graphed what it could look like below. I call this the “Moral Topology” of a population.
The Moral Topology: Descriptive Ethics Vs Normative Ethics
Descriptive ethics is the study of how people do make ethical decisions. Normative ethics is how we think people should make ethical decisions.
Is using evolution to understand ethics confusing how people do make ethical decisions with how people should make ethical choices?
While it may seem like it, this is not what is occurring. What we are doing is deriving normative ethics from descriptive ethics. Just like we are looking at what the function of a hammer is; to drive nails into surfaces, we can use this functional understanding to figure out a means of maximizing/optimizing the function. Perhaps, we can make more improved tools, such as a nail gun to achieve the function. This is similarly applicable to ethics.
So then, where does normative ethics fit in? In the little schema I have laid out, normative ethics would be the attractor that selection attempts to optimize towards. What does this mean? Imagine a surface, now imagine you are trying to make a mold of that surface. The surface represents the ethical decisions that we should make, the mold represents the ethical decisions we do make. In our case, the mold is going to be very imperfect, and there is going to be a gap between the two as below:
The better our moral systems, the closer we get to approaching the normative topology.
This model represents the overall adaptive attractors for a population. However, this doesn’t mean that the topology is the same for every individual in a population.
The Emergence of Specialization and Rules
Why doesn’t everyone simply use a utility calculus to determine what is the best “moral path” that would benefit the group? This is due to a problem of prediction interdependence. The moral success of my actions depends on the actions of others, so I must predict the actions of others in my calculus. But this is a problem, because the people you are predicting are also doing the same thing to you; attempting to predict your behavior to determine which action to take. This results in stalemate dynamics and ultimately inaction. This is another example of prediction deadlock, see the El Farrol Problem in economics to learn more about this. There are two ways the system can solve this problem:
One way to solve this problem is to instantiate rules. These are universal directives that the everyone follows so that prediction is not required to produce action. These rules must produce sustainable population dynamics, otherwise the population wouldn’t survive.
Another way is by adding specialization. Some people may be predictors, some may not do any prediction at all. Some may use a completely different method for determining the “moral path”. This could explain the variety of moral theories we see today.
Specialization and Personality Variance
Just as evolution creates cells, and animals with organ and organelles interacting in different heterogeneous ways, it also creates societies with vastly different individuals that function in specialized ways. These functions group people into certain roles. For example, some people seem to just have a certain talent for artistic expression. Others are not. Some people seem to be talented at mathematics. Others are not. A lot of these “talents” come down to innate personality differences that evolution has allocated us to fulfill specific social roles. 3
So, what does this mean? On one hand, as a part of a whole or superorganism, we have to fulfill specific social roles so that we can coordinate with each other. This means going on to specialize in what you are temperamentally attracted towards. However, there is the possibility that we do not have the optimal social configuration of personality. Like in a factory, sometimes there are not enough welders. Or perhaps we have too many carpenters. As an individual, you may need to use your epistemic capabilities to determine what type of person you need to be. Other times culture will communicate this to you. However, culture can be wrong, (it often is).
On the other hand, we need to be crafting rules, or policies that promote sustainable population dynamics. These rules can manifest in the cultural, or governing domains. These rules can either be crafted by a select group of people who use reason, or these rules can emerge from the population organically.
Metaethics Transmission Errors
One of the main issues with non-state enforced morality, is that you cannot tell the people who follow certain rules the reasons why they are following them. You must, in essence, brainwash them into following them, convincing them that they will receive some punishment if they do not (or a reward if they do). This sounds quite horrible, doesn’t it? Yes, but you can see the utility in doing this.
For one, it would be too difficult to explain what a collective action problem is to the general population. The energy expended on education would be, at least historically, incredibly inefficient.
Secondly, if people knew why they had to follow a rule that was not enforced, then there’s no reason to follow the rule in the first place. If the rule is that “If everyone hunts all the elk in the forest, then we will all run out of food” - then individuals, particularly of the egoistic bent, will think “Well, its ok of only I hunt all the elk then”. And then everyone does this - and no more elk in the forest.
It is much more useful to make the rule be “If you hunt more than X elk in the forest, you will go to HELL”. That would work on most uneducated 17th Century farmers.
Conclusions
So, is morality objective, as the Christians, Deontologists and Utilitarians believe? Or is it really subjective, as the Postmodernists, Cultural Relativists and Social Constructivists believe? Well, as usual, the truth lies somewhere in between. Morality is neither subjective, nor objective. It is neither completely universal, nor particular. Motivated by altruism, nor egoism. All these theories pick at some aspect of morality but never fully encapsulate it. This is because it is impossible to completely boil it down into an essence, since it has none. As an evolutionary outcome, it is borne of a mess and tangle of selective pressures that overlap and intertwine, synergize and feed off each other. There is no complete moral theory. There is no equation to figure out the “Moral path”, because the equation yields an indeterminate answer. But that does not mean that a moral path doesn’t exist.
The conclusion that the subjectivist position implies, is that the Normative Topology simply doesn’t exist. Yet as I have shown, that is like saying that a Thermodynamic system doesn’t have an equilibrium state. Yes, the equilibrium state doesn’t exist Metaphysically, but the whole point of Morality is to strive towards that Ideal state.
On the other hand, objectivists might claim that their Moral rules are universal, that we can have perfect moral knowledge through reason. But that is like looking at Gaussian Distribution and saying that the average is the only thing that matters. There will always be variance, that is an indisputable fact of statistics. Objectivists might have a lack of critical thinking skills, but that is no excuse. The Moral solution space for one culture will look completely different in another. Likewise, there will be variance in that solution space. Further, there will be variance in the fact not all people have to follow the Moral solution space for it to be effective at its job.
If I am being completely honest, the fact that this whole article thesis is relatively novel is a frightening thing.
Evolution, functioning as a fitter to the environmental attractor, will continually attempt to find the attractor. But in situations where the attractor changes rapidly, the organisms that cannot adapt fast enough will die out. In this case, the most competitive organisms are the ones that can evolve the fastest. This change forces a jump from genetic substrate to a dominant memetic substrate, creating culture and learning.
There is an objection to this theory. With the altruistic group, egoistic individuals within the group would inevitably outcompete all the altruists - meaning that that altruists would slowly turn into egoists anyways. The scenario would only ever work in a group of only Altruists, an introduction of one egoist could destabilize the population dynamics. This is a critique by Richard Dawkins. However response to this objection is, if we modify the model to be dynamic, and to conditions where altruists have a “clumping” property, (kind of like how blood cells clot) when, if an altruist finds another altruist, they stick together, eventually forming their own mini-group, rejecting an egoist when they are identified- this mini-group will outcompete all the egoists in the larger group, eventually gaining reproductive market share, and spreading altruistic traits through the entirety of the system.
As you see below, the quadrants representing the different motivational structures map neatly onto the judging Cognitive Functions of Carl Jung.
Now, if we take the difference between the Normative and Descriptive topology, we will call this the “Encoding Accuracy”, and graph it against the degree of memetic structures, we get either Intuitive epistemic structure or sensing epistemic structures. When the Epistemic gap is too large, we get intuitive structures emerging to, in a sense, become better “guessers” about how to approach the normative topology.