Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-r5fsc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T13:24:19.906Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Evolution of Spite, Recognition, and Morality

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Patrick Forber  and
Rory Smead
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Recognition of and responsiveness to the behavioral dispositions of others are key features of moral systems for facilitating social cooperation and the mediation of punishment. Here we investigate the coevolutionary possibilities of recognition and conditional social behavior with respect to both altruism and spite. Using two evolutionary models, we find that recognition abilities can support both spite and altruism but that some can only coevolve with spite. These results show that it is essential to consider harmful social behaviors as both a product of and an influence on the core features of our moral systems.

Type
50 Years of Inclusive Fitness
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 83 , Issue 5 , December 2016 , pp. 884 - 896
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

†

Both authors contributed equally to the article. We would like to thank Kevin Zollman for comments on an earlier version of the project as well as the audiences at the PSA 2014 Biennial Meeting and the Carnegie Mellon University Philosophy colloquium series for valuable feedback.

References

Alexander, R. D. 1987. The Biology of Moral Systems. New York: de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Axelrod, R. 1984. The Evolution of Cooperation. New York: Basic.Google Scholar
Axelrod, R., and Hamilton, W. D.. 1981. “The Evolution of Cooperation.” Science 211:1390–96.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Binmore, K. 2005. Natural Justice. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boyd, R., Gintis, H., Bowles, S., and Richerson, P. J.. 2003. “The Evolution of Altruistic Punishment.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 100:3531–35.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dawkins, R. 1976. The Selfish Gene. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Fletcher, J. A., and Doebeli, M.. 2009. “A Simple and General Explanation for the Evolution of Altruism.” Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B 276:13–19.Google ScholarPubMed
Friedman, J. W. 1971. “A Non-cooperative Equilibrium for Supergames.” Review of Economic Studies 38 (1): 1–12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fudenberg, D., and Maskin, E.. 1990. “Evolution and Cooperation in Noisy Repeated Games.” American Economic Review 80:274–79.Google Scholar
Fudenberg, D., and Tirole, J.. 1991. Game Theory. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Gardner, A., and West, S. A.. 2009. “Greenbeards.” Evolution 64:25–38.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gould, S. J., and Lewontin, R. C.. 1979. “The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm: A Critique of the Adaptationist Programme.” Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B 205:581–98.Google Scholar
Hamilton, W. D. 1964. “The Genetical Evolution of Social Behaviour.” Pt. 1. Journal of Theoretical Biology 7:1–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hamilton, W. D. 1975. “Innate Social Aptitudes of Man: An Approach from Evolutionary Genetics.” In Biosocial Anthropology, ed. Fox, R.. London: Malaby.Google Scholar
Johnstone, R. A., and Bshary, R.. 2004. “Evolution of Spite through Indirect Reciprocity.” Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B 271:1917–22.Google ScholarPubMed
Keller, L., and Ross, K. G.. 1998. “Selfish Genes: A Green Beard in the Red Fire Ant.” Nature 394:573–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lehmann, L., Bargum, K., and Reuter, M.. 2006. “An Evolutionary Analysis of the Relationship between Spite and Altruism.” Journal of Evolutionary Biology 19:1507–16.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lehmann, L., Feldman, M. W., and Rousset, F.. 2009. “On the Evolution of Harming and Recognition in Finite Panmictic and Infinite Structured Populations.” Evolution 63:2896–2913.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Maynard Smith, J. 1982. Evolution and the Theory of Games. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Michod, R. E., and Sanderson, M.. 1985. “Behavioural Structure and the Evolution of Social Behaviour.” In Evolution: Essays in Honour of John Maynard Smith. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Nietzsche, F. 1887/1887. On the Genealogy of Morals. ed. Kaufmann, W. and Hollingdale, R. J.. New York: Vintage.Google Scholar
Nowak, M. A., and May, R. M.. 1992. “Evolutionary Games and Spatial Chaos.” Nature 359:826–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nowak, M. A., and Sigmund, K.. 2005. “Evolution of Indirect Reciprocity.” Nature 437:1291–98.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pollack, G. B. 1989. “Evolutionary Stability on a Viscous Lattice.” Social Networks 11:175–212.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Press, W. H., and Dyson, F. J.. 2012. “Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma Contains Strategies That Dominate Any Evolutionary Opponent.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 109:10409–13.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Price, G. R. 1970. “Selection and Covariance.” Nature 277:520–21.Google Scholar
Rubinstein, A. 1979. “Equilibrium in Supergames with the Overtaking Criterion.” Journal of Economic Theory 21:1–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Skyrms, B. 1996. Evolution of the Social Contract. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Skyrms, B. 2010. Signals: Evolution, Learning, and the Flow of Information. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smead, R. 2010. “Indirect Reciprocity and the Evolution of ‘Moral Signals.’” Biology and Philosophy 25:33–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smead, R. S., and Forber, P.. 2013. “The Evolutionary Dynamics of Spite in Finite Populations.” Evolution 67:698–707.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sober, E., and Wilson, D. S.. 1998. Unto Others. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Sterelny, K. 2012. The Evolved Apprentice. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tomasello, M., and Vaish, A.. 2013. “Origins of Human Cooperation and Morality.” Annual Review of Psychology 64:231–55.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Trivers, R. L. 1971. “The Evolution of Reciprocal Altruism.” Quarterly Review of Biology 46:35–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weibull, J. W. 1995. Evolutionary Game Theory. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
West, S. A., and Gardner, A.. 2010. “Altruism, Spite, and Greenbeards.” Science 327:1341–44.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed