One of the more depressing aspects of revealed morality is how frequently it has taken two inconsistent and often antithetical forms, depending on whether the context is "us" or "them". This is something which seems to present more of a problem for moral realism than it does for the notion that a capacity for moral judgement may have arisen, contingently, as a response to evolutionary pressure, as the latter would have been inherently local (physically and culturally) in scope.
In *slight* defense of Huemer, I think what he’s talking about from the beginning of your excerpt to 7:40 is somewhat defensible. Namely, group selection (of genes) vs individual selection (of genes). It is the individual reproducing individuals that pass on their genes and are selected for by other individuals, not the group. This is a point of disagreement in evolutionary biology where most scientists (as far as I can tell!) side with individual selection, not group selection.
So in this regard, I think 1) You’re slightly misunderstanding him but also 2) He’s still wrong!
He is correct in that individual selection is likely the mechanism of selection (over group selection) but he’s wrong that this would predict egoism being the baseline expected moral psychology. As you correctly point out, this does not mean that our moral psychology is selected for selfishness.
I’m not a biologist, but I imagine group selection may be a thing in insects colonies because of a sort of “hive mind” aspect of socialization. Similarly, on the other side of the spectrum, carnivorous reptiles like snakes are probably maximally egoist, and so individual selection is obvious. Mammals are somewhere in the middle, but because of the varied social environment, group selection is still probably true (because we aren’t as collectivist as insects). That’s my impression of why evolutionary biologists favor individual selection explanations in humans.
To get a little more specific, the human(s) that mutates a sense of benevolence or altruism and aligns those senses with their own egoist interests will cooperate better with other humans, helping them meet goals, including surviving and reproducing. But this strategy will not be “all or nothing,” because there will still be circumstances where selfish behavior is rewarded with survival and reproduction.
But still, there are possible “group selection” dynamics that may have happened in our evolutionary history. I can’t remember the biologist who put forward this idea, but the idea is that we domesticated ourselves as a species, using capital punishment to remove our more aggressive and violent members of our species, where over time we shaped our culture and moral intuitions to be more cooperative and less violent.
What’s more, contra Huemer, we can test some of these theories! We can find external datapoints of other species who we have domesticated, comparing them to cousin or ancestral species, and look for parallel anatomical characteristics, and how we differ from our cousins and ancestral species who were more violent and less social. For instance, dog teeth, size, strength, biting, and other characteristics aren’t nearly as dangerous as wolves, their cousins and ancestors. The same is true of human teeth, size, strength, biting, etc relative to our primate cousins. What’s more, when you observer human behavior relative to other primates (I think it may be bonobos who are the exception that are more social than us), as well as dogs relative to wolves, you clearly see that the more domesticated species has an easier time cooperating than the others.
None of this is to say that humans or dogs don’t have the capacity to be selfish or downright sociopathic or dangerous to other humans/dogs, but most dogs and humans you can train to not bite you unless they feel threatened. For non-domesticated species, this is not a true! A wolf may be tame but it will bite you!
A lot of people misinterpret his words on purpose to use it for their own means. Funny coincidence I’m literally listening to him talk about the title as I saw your article. I’m listening to “Books do furnish a life”. Aside from the selfish part being misunderstood, Sapolsky suggested it should have been called the Selfish Genome.
Regardless of all of this, The Selfish Gene is one of the most paradigm shifting books/ideas I’ve heard. Thinking of life forms as conduits for the genes they have.
I really do think the title was a mistake. Many people lock in on the names of things. The title was too clever. It should have been more direct and explicit, and I think Dawkins has come to realize this. Then again, in a strange way, perhaps the misleading title prompts misinterpretations and corrections in a way that has increased the book's reach.
One of the more depressing aspects of revealed morality is how frequently it has taken two inconsistent and often antithetical forms, depending on whether the context is "us" or "them". This is something which seems to present more of a problem for moral realism than it does for the notion that a capacity for moral judgement may have arisen, contingently, as a response to evolutionary pressure, as the latter would have been inherently local (physically and culturally) in scope.
In *slight* defense of Huemer, I think what he’s talking about from the beginning of your excerpt to 7:40 is somewhat defensible. Namely, group selection (of genes) vs individual selection (of genes). It is the individual reproducing individuals that pass on their genes and are selected for by other individuals, not the group. This is a point of disagreement in evolutionary biology where most scientists (as far as I can tell!) side with individual selection, not group selection.
So in this regard, I think 1) You’re slightly misunderstanding him but also 2) He’s still wrong!
He is correct in that individual selection is likely the mechanism of selection (over group selection) but he’s wrong that this would predict egoism being the baseline expected moral psychology. As you correctly point out, this does not mean that our moral psychology is selected for selfishness.
I’m not a biologist, but I imagine group selection may be a thing in insects colonies because of a sort of “hive mind” aspect of socialization. Similarly, on the other side of the spectrum, carnivorous reptiles like snakes are probably maximally egoist, and so individual selection is obvious. Mammals are somewhere in the middle, but because of the varied social environment, group selection is still probably true (because we aren’t as collectivist as insects). That’s my impression of why evolutionary biologists favor individual selection explanations in humans.
To get a little more specific, the human(s) that mutates a sense of benevolence or altruism and aligns those senses with their own egoist interests will cooperate better with other humans, helping them meet goals, including surviving and reproducing. But this strategy will not be “all or nothing,” because there will still be circumstances where selfish behavior is rewarded with survival and reproduction.
But still, there are possible “group selection” dynamics that may have happened in our evolutionary history. I can’t remember the biologist who put forward this idea, but the idea is that we domesticated ourselves as a species, using capital punishment to remove our more aggressive and violent members of our species, where over time we shaped our culture and moral intuitions to be more cooperative and less violent.
What’s more, contra Huemer, we can test some of these theories! We can find external datapoints of other species who we have domesticated, comparing them to cousin or ancestral species, and look for parallel anatomical characteristics, and how we differ from our cousins and ancestral species who were more violent and less social. For instance, dog teeth, size, strength, biting, and other characteristics aren’t nearly as dangerous as wolves, their cousins and ancestors. The same is true of human teeth, size, strength, biting, etc relative to our primate cousins. What’s more, when you observer human behavior relative to other primates (I think it may be bonobos who are the exception that are more social than us), as well as dogs relative to wolves, you clearly see that the more domesticated species has an easier time cooperating than the others.
None of this is to say that humans or dogs don’t have the capacity to be selfish or downright sociopathic or dangerous to other humans/dogs, but most dogs and humans you can train to not bite you unless they feel threatened. For non-domesticated species, this is not a true! A wolf may be tame but it will bite you!
A lot of people misinterpret his words on purpose to use it for their own means. Funny coincidence I’m literally listening to him talk about the title as I saw your article. I’m listening to “Books do furnish a life”. Aside from the selfish part being misunderstood, Sapolsky suggested it should have been called the Selfish Genome.
Regardless of all of this, The Selfish Gene is one of the most paradigm shifting books/ideas I’ve heard. Thinking of life forms as conduits for the genes they have.
I really do think the title was a mistake. Many people lock in on the names of things. The title was too clever. It should have been more direct and explicit, and I think Dawkins has come to realize this. Then again, in a strange way, perhaps the misleading title prompts misinterpretations and corrections in a way that has increased the book's reach.