Sexual Selection and the Evolution of Moral Belief

Ben Fraser
Philosophy Program, Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University

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     Last modified: June 15, 2005
     Presentation date: 07/14/2005 2:00 PM in ROZH 105
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Abstract
Session Title: Topics in Evolutionary Epistemology

Historically, evolutionary explanations of human moral behaviour have proceeded in terms of kin selection, reciprocity (direct or indirect) and various forms of group selection. Recently, Miller (2000) in 'The Mating Mind' has argued that the mechanism largely responsible for the evolution of moral behaviour was in fact sexual selection. Moral behaviour and sexually-selected ornaments like the peacock’s tail do pose evolutionary biologists an interestingly similar explanatory problem; how could such apparently costly traits possibly evolve? Miller’s claim that moral behaviour evolved via intersexual selection (mate choice) as a costly and therefore reliable signal of mate quality is promising, albeit in need of elaboration and defense. One problem is that although Miller’s hypothesis may explain why humans engage in certain sorts of costly other-benefiting behaviour, this is not enough to qualify it as an explanation of moral behaviour. I suggest that this problem could be addressed by positing sexual selection for the capacity to make characteristically moral assessments of such behaviour, on the assumption that one’s believing some action to be morally good increases the probability of one’s performing that action. Miller’s claim elaborated in this way has interesting implications for the evolutionary epistemology of moral belief. Evolutionary genealogies of moral belief are taken by some to be undermining of the truth of moral beliefs (e.g. Joyce 2001, 'The Myth of Morality'). One reply offered to such is that an evolutionary genealogy does not necessarily undermine and may in fact support the truth of moral beliefs, since adaptive advantage often accrues to accurate representations of the world; this is essentially the Evolution of Epistemological Mechanisms (EEM) idea that selection produces a ‘fit’ between our beliefs and our environment. However, moral beliefs and behaviour on the sexual selection-based account are just one way of playing a ‘signaling game’, one way amongst many, and just as the peacock could well have borne not a tail but a flashy crest instead, so too could humans have signaled mate quality in some way other than via morality. Thus, I argue that if moral beliefs are the products of sexual rather than natural selection – if they are fitness indicators rather than survival adaptations – then we have even less reason to suppose moral beliefs ‘track’ features of the external world (aside perhaps from the mate preferences of opposite sex conspecifics).

Multiple Paper Session:
Other papers in this session:
The Justificatory Role of (Evolved) Moral Intuitions
Evolutionary Biology and the Epistemology of Metaphysical Modality
Kissing Cousins: Mental Representation and Biological Mimicry
How Evolutionary is Evolutionary Economics?