A Brief Philosophy of Biology Assignment where I Subtly Attack Singer and Review Recent Work on Human Altruism

Singer and the Evolution of Altruism

Biological Assumptions in Peter Singer’s Ethics and Intuitions:

In this 2005 paper, Peter Singer uses decades-old research in theoretical evolutionary biology and some recent results in cognitive psychology and neuroscience to argue that we should, in general, be highly suspicious of our intuitions when engaging in moral reasoning, since they will tend to lead us astray from the impartial application of abstract moral principles in favour of philosophically indefensible ‘gut’ reactions.  

In the first section of the paper, Singer argues that modern science backs up many of the bleak descriptions of ‘human nature’ contained in the works of Enlightenment philosophers like David Hume and Thomas Hobbes. Singer begins the section by praising the following conjecture of Hume’s: “A man naturally loves his children better than his nephews, his nephews better than his cousins, his cousins better than strangers, where every thing else is equal” [Hume, 1739/1896: 251; Singer: 334]. Singer takes for granted that this is an accurate observation, and gestures towards the Hamiltonian/Dawkinsian, gene-centric kin selection theory of altruism as the explanation for it. Next, Singer begins to make some vaguely-scientifically-tethered claims about prehistory: à la Hobbes, Singer asserts that early human life was “more often a struggle for survival between different human beings” than a struggle against other species [335]. This leads him onto a (once more) unsourced account of the most general evolutionary theory for the origin of extra-genetic altruism, reciprocal altruism; in particular, he claims that “Many features of human morality could have grown out of simple reciprocal practices such as the mutual removal of parasites from awkward places” [336].

Finally, he refers to the empirical work of Jonathan Haidt on moral rationalisation, and Joshua Greene’s very well-publicised studies on the Trolley Problem, along with some neuroscientific studies about the link between abnormalities in the prefrontal cortex and “anti-social behaviour”, to make clear that there is a strong emotional element to the way we typically make moral judgments, and no sense in which our intuitions are based on consistent application of principle [339]. 

Singer uses all these considerations from disparate areas of scientific inquiry for a methodological conclusion about moral philosophy: specifically, he opposes his stance against John Rawls’ (fairly middle-ground) methodological approach to moral reasoning, the principle of “reflective equilibrium” pioneered in A Theory of Justice. Reflective equilibrium is, in Singer’s words, the principle that “where there is no inherently plausible theory that perfectly matches our initial moral judgments, we should modify either the theory, or the judgments, until we have an equilibrium between the two” [344]. Singer disagrees with this because he thinks that it is often most rational often to ignore entirely our pre-theoretic judgments (intuitions) when we encounter a moral dilemma. He thinks that we should concern ourselves only with applying the “plausible theory” (he more or less ignores the complication that a moral theory wouldn’t be plausible in any sense if it ran totally against our moral emotions). Crucially, he thinks the science lends a lot of support to this methodological conclusion, since it shows that our intuitions are not useful “data” when it comes to the process of rigorously reasoning about what we ought to do, and lead us instead towards ethical ‘parochialisms’ and inconsistencies.

Two Scientific Papers Examining Evolutionary (including Multi-Level Selection)_Theories of Co-operation:

1.)    “Human Co-operation” (2013), by David Rand and Martin Nowak.

This paper is a discursive review of laboratory experiments and field studies of human behaviour by a Yale cognitive scientist (Rand) and a Harvard evolutionary biologist and mathematician (Nowak). It focusses on how the empirical evidence bears on the relative strength of the five mechanisms proposed to explain the evolution of human co-operation: direct reciprocity, indirect reciprocity, spatial selection, multilevel selection, and kin selection. The discussion in this paper relates directly to the vague scientific references made by Singer towards theoretical evolutionary biology, and his apparent belief that kin selection and direct reciprocity are the only games in town.

In their very diplomatic treatment of the evidence supporting each of the five mechanisms, Rand and Nowak seem to suggest that there is good reason to suppose that all five mechanisms have played a role in the evolution of human co-operation. Their analysis therefore doesn’t seem to support more hegemonic views: for example, Hume’s strong claim about the disproportionate power of familial affection (at least if “love” is interpreted in the broad sense that Singer himself seems to want to interpret it). In fact, as Rand and Nowak discuss in the section on multilevel selection, it has been experimentally shown that unrelated strangers can be readily induced to co-operate effectively with each other simply if they are told they now ‘belong to a team’ in competition with another [Rand and Nowak, 419-420].

Singer, of course, is aware of research on the power of group-loyalty and tribalism, as evinced by his references to Jonathan Haidt. However, he seemed unware (in 2005) that this well-studied phenomenon actually constitutes very good evidence for a kind of (probably cultural) group selection towards within-group co-operation, thus undermining purely gene-centric views about the evolution of human co-operation (which tend to downplay the existence of widespread human co-operation).

2.)    “The evolution of extreme cooperation via shared dysphoric experiences” (2017), by Harvey Whitehouse et al (12 contributors).

This paper is a recent interdisciplinary research article in Nature in which the authors lay out a new mathematical model which they claim shows how “conditioning cooperation on previous shared experience can allow individually costly pro-group behavior to evolve”, with evidence provided in the form of the testing of the predictions of the model in a range of sample populations (including military veterans, college fraternity/sorority members, football fans, martial arts practitioners, and twins) [1]. Overall, they obtain strong support for the conclusion “that shared dysphoric experiences are a powerful mechanism for promoting pro-group behaviors which under certain conditions can be extremely costly to the individuals concerned” [6].

This finding doesn’t directly undermine Singer’s biological assumptions in any direct way, although the explanadum of the paper’s thesis (that humans sometimes engage in pro-group behaviours which are “extremely costly to the individuals concerned” (like suicide terrorism and fighting for ‘king and country’ in deadly conflicts [1])) is something that Singer’s human-nature-related assertions in Ethics and Intuitions completely miss out.  Furthermore, one subsidiary empirical conclusion of the article, used as evidence against the notion that self-sacrifice for the group can be fully explained by the so-called “psychological kin” phenomenon, does directly undermine one of Singer’s claims: namely, the Humean one.  As the authors point out early in the piece, a recent survey of participants in the Libyan uprising of 2011, thousands of whom died in combat, found that “frontline fighters were more likely to choose genetically unrelated fellow revolutionaries in preference to family as the group with which they are most fused” [2].

Singer would probably argue that, though these new results do impugn some parts of his generally vague scientific discussion in Ethics and Intuitions, they do not undermine the view that our moral “intuitions” can steer us away from a more rational and universalised morality. Indeed, the idea that powerful, large-scale co-operation tends to be group-based and highly context-dependent, typically reliant on extreme events and highly dependent on the existence of enemy groups, only lends support to the general thesis that we should try our best to transcend our more immediate moral emotions in favour of the application of general principles. On the other hand, it may be that Singer’s own distorted cognitive science has misled him as to the real-world plausibility of a co-operative and altruistic ethic which doesn’t rely psychologically on some kind of group identification. Singer may well overlook the extent to which even non-parochial moral systems rely on the commandeering of group-based moral sentiments; for example, achieving a successful ‘expansion of the circle’ may require the stigmatisation of those who don’t.

Bibliography

Rand, D.G. and Nowak, M.A. “Human cooperation”, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, Vol. 17: 8, August 2013, pp. 413-425.

[Google citations: 348; Journal Citation Reports lists its 2013 Impact Factor at 21.147.]

Singer, P.J. “Ethics and Intuitions”, The Journal of Ethics, Vol. 9: 3, October 2005, pp. 331-352.

[Google citations: 460; Impact Factor of journal: unavailable].

Whitehouse, H, et al. “The evolution of extreme cooperation via shared dysphoric experiences”, Nature: Scientific Reports, 7, Article number: 44292, February 2017.

[Google citations: 1; Impact Factor of journal: 5.228.]