An Introduction to Evolutionary Ethics (6 page)

Before concluding this section, let me address a question that may have arisen in the course of this discussion: Do we need to suppose that animals who assist kin take an active interest in promoting their genes? Of course not. Non-human animals – not to mention a sizable portion of humans – are entirely unaware of their genetic legacy precisely because they have none of the relevant concepts. (And even those who
do
grasp the relevant concepts may be entirely uninterested in their genetic legacy.)

It might be said that natural selection operates on a
need-to-know
basis: to solve a given adaptive problem (such as giving preferential treatment to kin), natural selection has to work with what it has been given, and this is usually not much. In most cases, substantive deliberation on, say, who to help in a fight is out of the question: we're talking about bird brains here! Instead, solutions are likely to be crude, allowing for only a limited amount of flexibility. But this is as it should be. From the gene's-eye point of view, there's no need to turn over any more executive control to the organism than is necessary; the point is to maximize genetic replication, not score high on IQ tests. As far as inclusive fitness goes, all that's really required is a special motivational system that's triggered by recognition of kin – an instinct, if you will. From the point of view of the organism, there need be no question of
why
or
how
. In most mammals, it is enough that their behavior is internally constrained by the recognition of kin.

2.3 Love Thy Neighbor – But Love Thy Family First

When we turn to our own case, do we observe the kinds of preferential treatment to family that inclusive fitness theory predicts? We do. Indeed, the point hardly seems worth arguing for: it's almost a truism that, in times of need, family comes first.
³
Still, it's worth mentioning a few large-scale trends observed by researchers. After all, large-scale trends are what give support to the idea that evolution has played a role in explaining our moral lives, where this would include helping behavior toward family. If the theory of inclusive fitness is correct, then we should observe in humans not merely a tendency to favor family members over strangers, but a tendency to
calibrate
one's assistance according to genetic relatedness. In other words, the more closely (genetically) related you are to someone the more likely you are to offer assistance. To test this idea, researchers have subjected the inclusive fitness theory to a range of tests.

In one study (Essock-Vitale and McGuire 1985), researchers interviewed 300 adult women in Los Angeles who described some 5,000 instances of receiving help and giving help. As predicted, the women were more likely to receive and give help to close kin than to distant kin, and this trend remained even when corrected for differences in residential proximity. In another study (Burnstein
et al.
1994), researchers asked subjects to consider hypothetical scenarios in which subjects had to decide who (and who not) to help. Some of the scenarios involved life-or-death decisions; others involved more minor decisions, like picking up a few items at the store. Again, researchers found that who a subject chose to help almost always corresponded to genetic relatedness: brothers were chosen over cousins; mothers over grandmothers; nephews over second cousins.

Help of course can come in different forms. Consider financial help. According to the inclusive fitness theory, when people draw up their wills and decide who should receive their wealth, we should see the same pattern as above: all things being equal, the more closely related you are (genetically) to a benefactor, the greater the share of their estate you receive. When, in 1987, psychologists examined the bequests of 1,000 randomly selected decedents in British Columbia, Canada, this is just what they saw (M.S. Smith
et al.
1987). Of a given decedent's estate, 55 percent was bequeathed to genetically related kin. Significantly, a full 84 percent of what was bequeathed to kin went to immediate offspring and siblings. Nieces, nephews, and grandchildren received only 15 percent of what was bequeathed to kin. Cousins received less than 1 percent. Spouses received about 37 percent of a decedent's estate; this can be explained by the fact that spouses should be expected to distribute wealth to their mutually related offspring. All told, kin and those expected to care for kin (i.e., spouses) received more than 92 percent of a decedent's estate; non-relatives received less than 8 percent.

These studies indicate that humans strongly resemble other species in the favoritism they show toward relatives. According to evolutionary psychology, this resemblance at the surface level is best explained by a force acting at the gene's-eye level: namely, inclusive fitness. Early members of the human family who either never helped anyone apart from themselves or helped anyone and everyone eventually found themselves at an evolutionary dead end. We, on the other hand, are descended from those early humans who possessed that genetic mutation that disposed them to treat relatives differently. Since those individuals fared best, they passed that behavioral tendency on to their offspring, who passed it on to their offspring, who passed it on to their offspring, who … in the end, passed it on to us. If this account is on the right track, then there is a perfectly straightforward Darwinian explanation for behavior that bears at least some of the hallmarks of
moral
behavior: caring for and assisting relatives. In case you don't see the
moral
component here, put yourself in the following situation.

You're a lifeguard at a local public pool. Staff shortages require that you watch over two pools, one next to the other (your lifeguard stand is situated between them). On this particular day, your little brother is at the pool. Suddenly, the air is full of screaming: you quickly discern a small boy drowning in the east pool and a small girl drowning in the west pool. The small boy, you realize, is your little brother. You do not know the little girl. Now, setting aside for a moment what you
would
do, consider: what
should
you do? What would be the morally right thing to do?

Here's what I think you'll say: “I should attempt to save my brother first.” Or, “saving my brother first is morally justified.” Indeed, you might insist that saving the little girl first would in fact be morally
wrong.
Either way, I don't believe that we're stretching the notion of morality when we say that morality allows for, indeed requires, giving special treatment to family.
⁴
But this is precisely what the theory of inclusive fitness predicts. Giving preferential treatment to relatives makes good evolutionary sense. That we're unable to say why – to produce some cogent ethical argument in defense of that treatment – is also unsurprising. From a gene's-eye perspective, the point is to get us, occasionally, to
act
in ways that benefit relatives – not
think about why we should act
in ways that benefit relatives. (If we needed an opinion, evolution would probably have given us one.) A more direct solution to the problem is to bypass the operation of rational thought and outfit organisms with powerful
emotions
, since these are more reliably connected to motivation. After all, simply telling Jones that there's a snake in the other room won't move Jones to flee unless Jones happens to fear snakes. The subject of emotions and their role in human morality will occupy us in the next chapter, so I'll hold off on further discussion until then.

2.4 False Positives and Core Systems

I've just argued that natural selection – by way of the processes of inclusive fitness – can account for one part of our moral lives, namely, our tendency to assist and care deeply about family members. It's natural to suppose, therefore, that any assistance to
non-
relatives must be explained by some other process. Actually, it's more complicated than this. There are two reasons to think that the processes of inclusive fitness may well explain some helping behavior to some non-relatives. First, we have to focus on a sub-problem that inclusive fitness raises: in order to give special treatment to relatives, organisms have to know who their relatives are. In most species, relatives are identified by scent. Humans' sense of smell is far less developed. So how did our earliest ancestors overcome this obstacle? So far as we know DNA tests were unavailable. Language, presumably, was also unavailable – at least to our earliest ancestors. But the problem was nevertheless solved. How? The philosopher Richard Joyce proposes the following.

Suppose some early hominid developed, as a result of some slight genetic mutation, a special concern for those around whom she lived. For example, when her closest neighbors were in trouble, she instinctively desired to help them; when she had food to share, she instinctively desired to share it with them. How would this genetic mutation have solved the sub-problem described above? The thought is this: such an individual, despite having made no judgment about her neighbors' genetic relation to her (after all, what does she know about genes?), would likely be helping her relatives because
her close neighbors would likely be her relatives
. If the people our ancestor spent most of her time with happened to be her relatives, then a disposition to care for those people is a cheap but fairly reliable means of improving one's inclusive fitness. Remember: Mother Nature is a frugal tinkerer. If a solution to an adaptive problem can be had on the cheap, chances are, natural selection will take it. But what does this have to do with
non
-relatives?

If in fact we did inherit a psychological tendency to care for and assist those around whom we live, then we should expect occasional
false positives
– especially now that we have exchanged life on the African savannah for life in densely packed cities. In densely packed cities, you are in close contact with the same people over the course of many years, many of whom are not your relatives (for example, close neighbors, shopkeepers, fellow congregants). But since the psychological mechanism we're hypothesizing does not itself discriminate between relatives and non-relatives, it's expected that you would care for these individuals
as if
they were your relatives. True, knowing these individuals are not family may temper your affection, but your affection is nevertheless real. This would also explain why the emotional bond between adopted children and their parents is typically as strong as the bond between children and their biological parents.

A second reason the processes of inclusive fitness may well explain some helping behavior to some non-relatives is that those processes may be responsible for the very structures that natural selection later bent into other tasks – such as helping non-relatives. When we recall that natural selection is an inherently conservative process, jerry-rigging new solutions out of old structures, we may well have inclusive fitness to thank for putting core psychological systems in place that made later moral (or quasi-moral) behavior possible. That is, since early humans were
already
disposed to care about those closest to them (thanks to inclusive fitness), it's not too difficult to imagine a few more mutations, aided by regular environmental pressures, delivering a disposition to care about a much wider range of folk (and fauna and flora).

What sorts of “regular environmental pressures” do I have in mind? First and foremost, the pressure to cooperate. The selection pressure on early hominids to cooperate led to what some theorists regard as the critical turning point on the road to morality:
reciprocal altruism
.

2.5 A Quick Note on “Altruism”

Up to this point I have been reluctant to make use of the term “altruism,” despite the fact that theorists routinely use it in biological discussions. My reluctance stems from what I (and other philosophers) regard as a certain terminological carelessness. In less formal settings, we can get away with describing the vampire bat or the ground squirrel as
altruistic
. But to seriously suppose that the vampire bat is altruistic implies that (a) it possesses certain motives and (b) some of those motives are other-regarding. Neither (a) nor (b) is easy to defend. I take it that, according to the standard sense, to be altruistic requires a certain
motive
– namely, a reason or desire to help someone
for her own sake
. Thus I'm supposing that someone is made altruistic not by her actions, but by her motives. After all, I can be altruistic but fail to help someone (because of some unforeseen accident), and I can help someone but fail to be altruistic (again, by some unforeseen accident). If you conflate helpfulness and altruism, this will be hard to see.

Whether I'm right about this, for the purposes of the discussion here I plan to go on the assumption that altruism is a function of an organism's motives. If an organism has no “other-regarding” motives, then (strictly speaking) it's not altruistic – even if it regularly helps others. And if an organism lacks any motives at all (because it's a cockroach, say), then obviously it's not altruistic.
⁵
I am also going to assume that typical humans are – sometimes, at least – altruistic. (I won't take a stand on whether non-human animals are sometimes altruistic.) The role that altruism plays in our own moral lives will be addressed in the next chapter. The important thing now is to see that, although biologists frequently invoke the concept of altruism (e.g., reciprocal altruism), we should be careful not to assume they mean altruism in the standard sense. Unfortunately, it's too late in the game to be changing names, so I'll continue to follow tradition and refer to the next biological process as reciprocal altruism. Perhaps the best thing to do is this: when you see the term “reciprocal altruism,” read it as
reciprocity
.

2.6 Reciprocal Altruism

We all know the expression “You scratch my back, and I'll scratch yours.” But you may not realize the power of this idea. It would not be an exaggeration to say that exercising this idea has settled labor disputes, passed legislation, put government factions in power, put government factions
out
of power; it has rearranged corporate hierarchies, saved marriages, even averted wars. The idea gets traction in those moments when we cannot get what we need or want, since what we need or want cannot, under the circumstances, be gotten alone. But even without the help of friends or family, our situation is not hopeless. Remember: others have needs of their own.