That’s forgetting that morality doesn’t come from nowhere, it comes from genes too. Because life is full of iterated prisoner’s dilemma, because gene survival requires the survival of your close relatives, because of the way the brain is shaped (like the fact the empathy very likely comes, at least in part, from the way we reuse our own brain circuits to predict the behavior of others).
Moral theories are “artificial constructs”, as are all theories. They are generalization, they are abstraction, they can conflict with the “genetic morality”, and yes, memes play a huge role in morality. But the core of morality comes from our genes—care for our family, “tit-for-tat with initial cooperation” as the winning strategy for IPD, empathy, …
That’s forgetting that morality doesn’t come from nowhere, it comes from genes too.
Even if ultimately everything comes from the genes, we have to learn some things, while other things come rather automatically.
We educate children to behave nicely to others—they don’t get this ability automatically just because of their genes. On the other hand, children are able to create “Lord of the Flies”-like systems at school without being taught so. Both behaviors are based on evolution, both promote our genes in certain situations, but still one is the default option, and the other must be taught (is transferred by memes).
And by the way, Prisonners’ Dilemma is not a perfect model of reality, and the differences are very relevant for this topic. Prisonners’ Dilemma or Iterated Prisonners’ Dilemma are modelled as series of 1:1 encounters, where the information remains hidden between the interacting players; each player tries to maximize their own utility; and each encounter is scored independently. In real life, people observe what others are doing even when interacting with others; people have families and are willing to sacrifice some of their utility to increase their family’s utility; and results of one encounter may influence your survival or death, your health, your prestige etc., which influence the rules of the following encounter. This results in new strategies, such as “signal a membership to a powerful group G, play tit-for-tat with initial cooperation against members of G, and defect against everyone else” which will work if the group G has a majority. Now the problem is how will people agree what is the right group G? In small societies, family can be such group; in larger societies memetic similarity can play the same role—if you consider that humans are not automatically strategic, why not make a meme M, which teaches them this strategy and at the same times defines group G as “people who share the meme M”? Here comes the morality, religion, football team fans, et cetera.
That’s forgetting that morality doesn’t come from nowhere, it comes from genes too. Because life is full of iterated prisoner’s dilemma, because gene survival requires the survival of your close relatives, because of the way the brain is shaped (like the fact the empathy very likely comes, at least in part, from the way we reuse our own brain circuits to predict the behavior of others).
Moral theories are “artificial constructs”, as are all theories. They are generalization, they are abstraction, they can conflict with the “genetic morality”, and yes, memes play a huge role in morality. But the core of morality comes from our genes—care for our family, “tit-for-tat with initial cooperation” as the winning strategy for IPD, empathy, …
Even if ultimately everything comes from the genes, we have to learn some things, while other things come rather automatically.
We educate children to behave nicely to others—they don’t get this ability automatically just because of their genes. On the other hand, children are able to create “Lord of the Flies”-like systems at school without being taught so. Both behaviors are based on evolution, both promote our genes in certain situations, but still one is the default option, and the other must be taught (is transferred by memes).
And by the way, Prisonners’ Dilemma is not a perfect model of reality, and the differences are very relevant for this topic. Prisonners’ Dilemma or Iterated Prisonners’ Dilemma are modelled as series of 1:1 encounters, where the information remains hidden between the interacting players; each player tries to maximize their own utility; and each encounter is scored independently. In real life, people observe what others are doing even when interacting with others; people have families and are willing to sacrifice some of their utility to increase their family’s utility; and results of one encounter may influence your survival or death, your health, your prestige etc., which influence the rules of the following encounter. This results in new strategies, such as “signal a membership to a powerful group G, play tit-for-tat with initial cooperation against members of G, and defect against everyone else” which will work if the group G has a majority. Now the problem is how will people agree what is the right group G? In small societies, family can be such group; in larger societies memetic similarity can play the same role—if you consider that humans are not automatically strategic, why not make a meme M, which teaches them this strategy and at the same times defines group G as “people who share the meme M”? Here comes the morality, religion, football team fans, et cetera.