As Quintin wrote, you aren’t describing a mechanistic explanation for our niceness. You’re describing a candidate reason why evolution selected for the mechanisms which do, in fact, end up producing niceness in humans.
Skyrms makes the case that biological evolution and cultural evolution follow relevantly similar dynamics, here, so that we don’t necessarily need to care very much about the distinction. The mechanistic explanation at both levels of description is similar.
I can’t speak for OP, but I’m not interested in either kind of evolution. I want to think about the artifact which evolution found: The genome, and the brains it tends to grow. Given the genome, evolution’s influence on human cognition is screened off.
Why are people often nice to other agents? How does the genome do it, in conjunction with the environment?
As Quintin wrote, you aren’t describing a mechanistic explanation for our niceness. You’re describing a candidate reason why evolution selected for the mechanisms which do, in fact, end up producing niceness in humans.
Skyrms makes the case that biological evolution and cultural evolution follow relevantly similar dynamics, here, so that we don’t necessarily need to care very much about the distinction. The mechanistic explanation at both levels of description is similar.
I can’t speak for OP, but I’m not interested in either kind of evolution. I want to think about the artifact which evolution found: The genome, and the brains it tends to grow. Given the genome, evolution’s influence on human cognition is screened off.
Why are people often nice to other agents? How does the genome do it, in conjunction with the environment?