Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Evolution and Construction of Moral Systems

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Games, Groups, and the Global Good

Part of the book series: Springer Series in Game Theory ((SSGT))

  • 1563 Accesses

Abstract

A moral system is an adaptive system for conflict management based on prescriptive, internalized social rules. We decompose moral systems into the sense of fairness, moral judgments, and rules at the aggregate level. We explore how each of these levels is constructed, including how this process is influenced by cognitive and organizational constraints and social architecture. We consider feedback across these levels as well as the implications of partial time-scale separation for reducing uncertainty about behavioral outcomes. We suggest that an appropriate theoretical framework for treating these issues is an extended theory of niche construction.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 129.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 169.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 169.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    Group selection/multi-level extensions, modeled using the price equation for example, do take into account contributions from different levels, but typically neglect the dynamics generating each level.

  2. 2.

    We are grateful to Steve Frank for this phrase.

  3. 3.

    Under this view, the conflict management mechanisms that individuals build become part of their social niches. This means that the social niche construction process involves both building edges in social networks that provide resources, and investment in conflict management mechanisms that allow for more efficient social edge building.

  4. 4.

    Content-specified and process-based senses of fairness are related to, but do not map clearly onto, deontological and consequentialist ethics, two prominent concepts in the moral philosophy and psychology literatures. Deontological ethics focuses on the rightness of actions themselves, whereas consequentialist ethics argues that the rightness of an action is given by its consequences, regardless of the intent.

  5. 5.

    Whereas economic sanctions constitute withholding access to material resources, ostracism constitutes withholding access to social resources.

References

  • Alexander RD (1987) The biology of moral systems. Aldine Transaction, New Brunswick

    Google Scholar 

  • Anderson SW, Behara A, et al. (1999) Impairment of social and moral behavior related to early damage in human prefrontal cortex. Nat Neurosci 2:1032–1037

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Asch S (1956) Studies of indenpendence and conformity: a minority of one against a unanimous majority. Psychol Monog 70

    Google Scholar 

  • Ay N, Flack JC, et al. (2007) Convergent complexity and robustness in multimodal signaling networks. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci 362:441–447

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ay N, Krakauer DC (2006) Geometric robustness theory and biological networks. Theory Biosci 125:93–121

    Google Scholar 

  • Bargh J, Chartrand TL (1999) The unbearable automaticity of being. Am Psychol 54:462–479

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bendor J (1993) Uncertainty and the evolution of cooperation. J Conflict Resolut 37:709–734

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Berger PL, Luckman T (1967) The social construction of reality. Doubleday, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Binmore KEN (2005). Natural justice. Oxford University Press, Oxford

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Blaisdell AP, Sawa K et al. (2006) Causal reasoning in rats. Science 17:1020–1022

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Boehm C (2000) The origin of morality as social control. J Conscious Stud 7:149–184

    Google Scholar 

  • Boehm C, Flack JC (In Press) Power: insights from evolutionary biology, primates, and other animals. The Social Psychology of Power A. Guinote

    Google Scholar 

  • Bowles S (2006) Group competition, reproductive leveling, and the evolution of human altruism. Science 314:1569–1572

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bowles S, Gintis H (In Press) Cooperative homo economicus. In: Levin SA (ed) Games, groups and the global good

    Google Scholar 

  • Brosnan SF, de Waal FBM (2003) Monkeys reject unequal pay. Nature 425:297–299

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Campbell DT (1975) Conflicts between biological and social evolution and between psychology and moral tradition. Am Psychol 30:1103–1126

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Castelli F, Happe F, et al. (2000) Movement and mind: a functional imaging study of perception and interpretation of complex intentional movement patterns. Neuroimage 12:314–325

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Clutton-Brock TH, Parker GA (1995) Punishment in animal societies. Nature 373:209–216

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cosmides L (1989) The logic of social exchange: has natural selection shaped how humans reason? Studies with the Wason selection task. Cognition 31:(187–276)

    Google Scholar 

  • Cushman F, Young L, et al. (2006) The role of conscious reasoning and intuition in moral judgments. Psychol Sci 17:1082–1089

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dawkins R (1982) The extended phenotype: the gene as the unit of selection. W.H. Freeman, San Francisco & Oxford

    Google Scholar 

  • de Waal F (1991) The chimpanzee’s sense of social regularity and its relation to the human sense of justice. Am Behav Sci 34:335–349

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • de Waal F (2005) Our inner ape. Riverhead, NY

    Google Scholar 

  • de Waal F (2006) Primates and philosophers. Princeton University Press, Princeton

    Google Scholar 

  • de Waal FBM (1996) Good natured: the origins of right and wrong in primates and other animals. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA

    Google Scholar 

  • de Waal FBM, Brosnan SF (2006) Simple and complex reciprocity in primates. In: Kappeler PM, van schaik CP (eds) Cooperation in primates and humans: mechanisms and evolution. Springer Berlin, Berlin

    Google Scholar 

  • Dupoux E, Jacob P (2007) Universal moral grammar: a critical appraisal. Trends Cogn Sci 11:373–378

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Durrett R, Levin SA (2005) Can stable social groups be maintained by homophilous imitation alone? J Econ Behav Organ 57:267–286

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ehrlich PR, Levin SA (2005) The evolution of norms. PLoS Biol 3:943–948

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ellsberg D (1961) Risk, ambiguity and the savage axioms. Q J Econ 75:643–669

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Flack JC, de Waal F (2000) Being nice is not a building block of morality. J Conscious Stud 7:67–78

    Google Scholar 

  • Flack JC, de Waal FBM (2000) ‘Any animal whatever’ – darwinian building blocks of morality in monkeys and apes. J Conscious Stud 7(1–2):1–29

    Google Scholar 

  • Flack JC, de Waal FBM, et al. (2005) Social structure, robustness, and policing cost in a cognitively sophisticated species. Am Nat 165:E126–E139

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Flack JC, Girvan M, et al. (2006) Policing stabilizes construction of social niches in primates. Nature 439:426–429

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Flack JC, Jeannotte LA, et al. (2004) Play signaling and the perception of social rules by juvenile chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes). J Comp Psychol 118(2):149

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Flack JC, Krakauer DC (2006) Encoding power in communication networks. Am Nat 168:97–102

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Flack JC, Krakauer DC, et al. (2005) Robustness mechanisms in primate societies: a perturbation study. Proc R Soc Lond B 272:1091–1099

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Flanagan J (1989) Hierarchy in simple egalitarian “societies.” Annu Rev Anthropol 18:245–266

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Frank S (1995) Mutual policing and repression of competition. Nature 377:520–522

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Frank S (2003) Repression of competition and the evolution of cooperation. Evolution 57:693–705

    Google Scholar 

  • Frank S (In Press) Evolutionary foundations of cooperation and group cohesion. In: Levin SA (ed) Games, groups and the global good

    Google Scholar 

  • Godelier M, Strathern M (1991) Big men and great men: personifications of power in melanesia. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Green J, Haidt J (2002) How (and where) does moral judgment work? Trends Cogn Sci 6:517–523

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Green J, Sommerville RB, et al. (2001) An fmri study of emotional engagement in moral judgment. Science 293:2105–2108

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gruter M (1986) Otracism as a social and biological phenomenon. Ethol Sociobiol 7:149–158

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Haidt J (2001) The emotional dog and its rational tail: a social intuitionist approach to moral judgment. Psychol Rev 108:814–834

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Haidt J (2003) The moral emotions In: Davidson RJ, Scherer KR, Goldsmith HH (eds) Handbook of affective sciences Oxford, Oxford University Press pp 852–870

    Google Scholar 

  • Haidt J, Joseph C (2004) Intuitive ethics: how innately prepared intuitions generate culturally variable virtues. Daedalus 55–66 (Special Issue on Human Nature)

    Google Scholar 

  • Haidt J, McCauley C, et al. (1994) Individual differences in sensitivity to disgust: a scale sampling seven domains of disgust elicitors. Pers Individ Dif 16:701–713

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Haidt J, Rozin P, et al. (1997) Body, psyce, and culture. Psychol Dev Soc 9:107–131

    Google Scholar 

  • Hauser MD (2006) Moral minds: the nature of right and wrong. Harper Perennial, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Hauser MD, Cushman F, et al. (2007) A dissociation between moral judgments and justifications. Mind Lang 22:1–21

    Google Scholar 

  • Hauser MD, Young L, et al. (2007) Reviving rawls’ linguistic analogy: operative principles and the causal structure of moral actions. In: Sinnott-Armstrong W (ed) Moral psychology. The evolution of morality: adaptations and innateness. vol 1. MIT Press, Boston

    Google Scholar 

  • Henrich J, Boyd R, et al. (2004) Foundations of human sociality: economic experiments and ethnographic eveidence from fifteen small-scale societies. Oxford University Press, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Henrich J, McElreath R, et al. (2006) Costly punishment across human societies. Science 312:1767–1770

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Heyes CM (1998) Theory of mind in nonhuman primates. Behav Brain Sci 21:101–134

    Google Scholar 

  • Hume D (1969 [1739]) A treatise on human nature. Penguin, London

    Google Scholar 

  • Hutchinson GE (1957) Concluding remarks. Quant Biol 22:415–427

    Google Scholar 

  • Kahneman D, Tversky A (eds) (2000) Choices, values, and frames. Russell Sage Publications, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Kahneman D, Tversky A (2000) Conflict resolution: a cognitive perspective. In: Kahneman D Tversky A (eds) Choices, values and frames. Russell Sage Foundation, Cambridge, pp 473–487

    Google Scholar 

  • Kant I (1959 [1785]) Foundations of the metaphysics of morals. Bobbs-Merrill, Indianapolis, NY

    Google Scholar 

  • Koenigs M, Young L, et al. (2007) Damage to the prefrontal cortex increases utilitarian moral judgments. Nature 446:908–911

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Krakauer D, Page K, et al. (In Press) Diversity, dilemmas, and monopolies of niche construction. Am Nat

    Google Scholar 

  • Krakauer D, Plotkin JB (2002) Redundancy, anti-redundancy, and the stability of genomes. Proc of the Nat Acad of Sci 99:1405–1409

    Google Scholar 

  • Lakoff G (1987) Women, fire, and dangerous things. University of Chicago Press, Chicago

    Google Scholar 

  • Laland K, Oldlling-Smee FJ, et al. (1996) The evolutionary consequences of niche construction: a theoretical investigation using two-locus theory. J Evol Biol 9:293–316

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lewontin RC (1982) Organism and environment. In: Plotkin HC (ed) Learning, development, and culture. Wiley, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Loewenstein G (2008) Exotic preferences: behavioral economics and human motivation. Oxford University Press, Oxford

    Google Scholar 

  • Lyons DE, Santos LR, et al. (2006) Reflections of other minds: how primate social cognition can inform the function of mirror neurons. Curr Opin Neurobiol 16:203–234

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Maskin ES (2008) Mechanism design: How to implement social goals. http://ideas.repec.org/s/ads/, Institute for Advanced Study, School of Social Science

  • Masters RD, Gruter M, (eds) (1992) The Sense of Justice: biological foundations of law. Sage Publications, Newbury Park, CA

    Google Scholar 

  • Mikhail J (2007) Universal moral grammar: theory, evidence and the future. Trends Cogn Sci 11:143–152

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Moll J, Zahn R, et al. (2005) The neural basis of human moral cognition. Nat Rev Neurosci 6:799–809

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nakamaru M, Levin SA (2004) Spread of two linked social norms on complex interaction networks. J Theor Biol 230:57–64

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Norwich JJ (1989) A history of Venice, Vintage, NY

    Google Scholar 

  • Nowak M, Page K, et al. (2000) Fairness verses reason in the ultimatum game. Science 289

    Google Scholar 

  • Nowak M, Sigmund K (1998) Evolution of indirect reciprocity by image scoring. Nature 393:573–577

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nowak MA, Sigmund K (1993) A strategy of win-stay, lose-shift that outperforms tit-for-tat in the prisoner’s dilemma game. Nature 364:56–58

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • O’Neill P, Petrinovich L (1998) A preliminary cross-cultural study of moral intuitions. Evol Hum Behav 19:349–367

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Odling-Smee FJ (2007) Niche inheritance: a possible basis for classifying multiple inheritance systems in evolution. Biol Theory 2:276–289

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Odling-Smee FJ, Laland KN, et al. (2003) Niche construction: the neglected process in evolution. Princeton University Press, Princeton

    Google Scholar 

  • Page K, Nowak M (2002) Empathy leads to fairness. Bull Math Biol 64:1101–1116

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pizzaro D, Bloom P (2001) The intelligence of the moral emotions: a comment on Haidt (2001). Psychol Rev 110:293–296

    Google Scholar 

  • Preston SD, de Waal F (2002) Empathy: its ultimate and proximate bases. Behav Brain Sci 25:1–20

    Google Scholar 

  • Rawls J (1971) A theory of justice. Harvard University Press, Boston

    Google Scholar 

  • Rochat M, Serra E, et al. (2008) The evolution of social cognition: goal familiarity shapes monkeys’ action understanding. Curr Biol 18:227–232

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Santos LR, Nissen AG, et al. (2006) Rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) know what others can and cannot hear. Anim Behav 71:1175–1181

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Semendeferi K, Damasio H, et al. (1997) The evolution of the frontal lobes: a volumetric analysis based on three-dimensional reconstructions of magnetic resonance scans of human and ape brains. J Hum Evol 32(4):375

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sherif M (1935) A study of some social factors in perception. Arch Psychol 2

    Google Scholar 

  • Siegal M, Varley R (2002) Neural systems involved in ‘theory of mind’. Nat Rev Neurosci 3:463–471

    Google Scholar 

  • Slovic P (2000) The construction of preference. In: Kahneman D, Tversky A (eds) Choices, values and frames. Russell Sage Foundation, Cambridge, 489–502

    Google Scholar 

  • Stark R (2001) Gods, rituals, and the moral order. J Sci Study Relig 40:619–636

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tomasello M, Call J (1997) Oxford University Press, Primate Cognition

    Google Scholar 

  • Trivers R (1971) The evolution of reciprocal altruism. Q Rev Biol 46:35–57

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wood JN, Glynn DD, et al. (2007) The perception of rational, goal-directed action in nonhuman primates. Science 371:1402–5

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Young YF, Cushman F, et al. (2007) The neural basis of the interaction between theory of mind and moral judgment. Proc Natl Acad Sci 104:8235–8240

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Sante Fe Institute, 1399 Hyde Park Road, Pod B-6, Santa Fe, New Mexico, 87501, USA

    Jessica C. Flack & David C. Krakauer

Authors
  1. Jessica C. Flack
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. David C. Krakauer
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

    Rights and permissions

    Reprints and permissions

    Copyright information

    © 2009 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

    About this chapter

    Cite this chapter

    Flack, J.C., Krakauer, D.C. (2009). Evolution and Construction of Moral Systems. In: Levin, S. (eds) Games, Groups, and the Global Good. Springer Series in Game Theory. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-85436-4_7

    Download citation

    • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-85436-4_7

    • Published:

    • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

    • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-85435-7

    • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-85436-4

    • eBook Packages: Business and EconomicsEconomics and Finance (R0)

    Publish with us

    Policies and ethics

    Search

    Navigation