Darwin's Dangerous Idea (92 page)

access to females (Hrdy 1977)—so even our closest relatives engage in Moving beyond the most businesslike and brutal forms of reciprocal horrible behavior. Williams points out that, in all the mammalian species that altruism towards a world in which genuine trust and sacrifice are possible is have so far been carefully studied, the rate at which their members engage in a task that has begun to be explored theoretically. The first major step was the killing of conspecifics is several
thousand
times greater than the highest Robert Axelrod's (Axelrod and Hamilton 1981, Axelrod 1984) Prisoner's homicide rate measured in any American city.8

Dilemma tournaments, which invited all comers to submit strategies—al-This dark message about our furry friends is often resisted, and popular gorithms—for competing against all comers in a reiterated Prisoner's Di-presentations of nature (in television documentaries, magazine articles, and lemma tournament. (Among the many discussions of this topic, two of the popular books ) often engage in self-censorship to avoid shocking the squea-best are Dawkins 1989a, ch. 12, and Poundstone 1992.) The winning strat-mish. Hobbes was right: life in the state of nature
is
nasty, brutish, and short, egy became justly famous: Tit for Tat, which simply copies the "opponent's"

for virtually all nonhuman species. If "doing what comes naturally" meant previous move, cooperating in reward for past cooperation, and defecting in doing what virtually all other animal species do, it would be hazardous to the retaliation against any defections. Basic Tit for Tat comes in a variety of health and well-being of us all. Einstein famously said that the dear God subspecies. In Nice Tit for Tat, one begins by cooperating, and then just does unto the other as the other has done unto oneself on the previous move. As can be readily seen, two Nice Tit-for-Tatters playing opposite one another 7. Complications abound, as usual. In some species of beetle, for instance, the males make make out splendidly, cooperating indefinitely, but a Nice Tit-for-Tatter who a huge investment in a food plug (with sperm attached) that females compete for. This encounters a Nasty Tit-for-Tatter who throws in an unprovoked defection at is a sort of parental investment, but not the sort we are discussing here.

any point is in for a debilitating round of endless retaliatory defection (it 8. Gould draws attention to the same striking statistic in "A Thousand Acts of Kindness,"

serves them both right, of course, as they keep reminding themselves).

in Gould 1993d.

480 ON THE ORIGIN OF MORALITY

Sociobiology: Good and Bad, Good and Evil
481

The simple situations explored by Axelrod's initial tournament have given required to get us here. At one extreme, it could turn out that there is an way to much more complex and realistic scenarios. Nowak and Sigmund impressive bottleneck; a quite improbable but crucial series of happy acci-

(1993) have found a strategy that outperforms Tit for Tat under an important dents were required. (White's analysis offers some plausible reasons for variety of circumstances. Kitcher (1993) examines a world of
non-believing that the conditions are really quite stringent.) At the other extreme
compulsory
Prisoner's Dilemma games (if you don't fancy a particular it might turn out that there is a rather wide "basin of attraction" that will lead opponent, you can decline to play ). Kitcher shows, in careful mathematical almost any cognitively sophisticated creatures, whatever their circumstances, detail, how "discriminating altruists" (who keep a tally on who has defected into societies with recognizable ethical codes. It will be fascinating to see in the past) can flourish under certain—not all—conditions, and also begins what large-scale computer simulations of these complex social interactions to sort out the conditions under which varying policies of forgiveness and tell us about the constraints on the evolution of ethics. But we can already be forgetfulness can hold their own against the ever-present prospect of a virtually certain that mutual recognition and the capacity to communicate a resurgence of antisocial types. Particularly fascinating in the directions promise—stressed by both Hobbes and Nietzsche—are necessary conditions opened up by Kitcher's analysis is the emergence of groups in which the for the evolution of morality. It is conceivable if unlikely on present strong and the weak would tend to segregate themselves and prefer to evidence, that whales and dolphins, or the great apes, meet these necessary cooperate with their own sort.

conditions, but no other species come close to exhibiting the sorts of social Could this set the stage for something like the Nietzschean transvaluation cognition that true morality depends on. (My pessimistic hunch is that the of values? Stranger things have happened. Stephen White (unpublished) has main reason we haven't yet ruled out dolphins and whales as moralists of the begun to investigate the important further complexities of the
multi-person
deep is that they are so hard to study in the wild. Most of the evidence about Prisoner's Dilemma. (This is the game that leads to the tragedy of the the chimpanzees—some of it self-censored by researchers for years—is that commons, creating both depleted fish stocks in our oceans and forests of tall they are true denizens of Hobbes' state of nature, much more nasty and trees.) As Kitcher points out, the simple scenarios are analytically tractable—

brutish than many would like to believe.)

the equations of interaction and their expected yields can be solved directly by mathematical calculation—but as we add more realism, and hence complexity, the direct
solution
of the equations becomes unfeasible, so we 4. SOCIOBIOLOGY: GOOD AND BAD, GOOD AND EVIL

have to turn to the indirect methods of computer simulation. In such a simulation, you just set up hundreds or thousands of imaginary individuals, endow them with dozens or hundreds or thousands of strategies or other

...
the human brain works however it works. Wishing for it to work in
properties, and let the computer do all the work of having them play thou-some way as a shortcut to justifying some ethical principle undermines sands or millions of games against each other, keeping track of the results.9

both the science and the ethics (for what happens to the principle if the
This is a branch of sociobiology or evolutionary ethics that no one should
scientific facts turn out to go the other way?).

deride. It directly
tests
the hunches, such as those of Hobbes and Nietzsche,

—STEVEN PINKER 1994, p. 427

that there are natural, evolutionarily enforceable paths to where we are today. We may be quite sure that this is true, for here we are, but what this
Sociobiology has two faces. One looks toward the social behavior of
research promises to clarify is how much R-and-D work, of what sorts, was
nonhuman animals. The eyes are carefully focused, the lips pursed
judiciously. Utterances are made only with caution. The other face is
almost hidden behind
a
megaphone. With great excitement, pronouncements about human nature blare forth.

9. If you want to know the odds of being dealt a straight flush in poker, one way is to solve

—PHIUP KITCHER 1985b, p. 435

the equation provided by probability theory; you get a definitive answer. Another way is to deal yourself a few billion poker hands, shuffling well between each, and simply Another part of our inquiry into human nature, as a naturalistic basis for counting the straight flushes and dividing by the total number of hands dealt. That gives sound ethical thinking, would begin with the undisputable fact that we you a
very
reliable estimate, but it is not officially foolproof. The latter method is the
only
human beings are products of evolution, and consider what limitations we feasible way to study the complicated scenarios of evolutionary ethics, but, as we already saw in the discussion (in chapter 7 ) of Conway's reactions to the ways in which his Game are
born with and what variations there are among us that might have ethical of Life is being explored, the results of such simulations can be misleading, and should relevance. Many people apparently think that ethics is in deep trou-often be taken with a grain of salt.

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Sociobiology: Good and Bad, Good and Evil
483

ble if it turns out that human beings aren't, as the Bible tells us, just a little mosexuality—it might be better for us to be kept in the dark about such below the angels. If we are not all perfectly rational, and equally rational, and things. One should not dismiss this suggestion lightly. If you have ever asked perfectly and equally malleable by education, and equally capable in all other yourself whether there are facts about yourself (about your health, your regards, then our underlying assumptions of Equality and Perfectibility are competence, your prospects ) you would rather not know, and decided that jeopardized. If that were true, it would be too late to save ourselves, for we there were, you should be prepared to consider seriously the suggestion that already know too much about human frailties and human differences to the best—perhaps the only—way to ensure that such facts are not imposed on sustain that vision. But there are more reasonable visions that are also people is by prohibiting investigations likely to discover them.10 On the other jeopardized by the discoveries of scientists (not just evolutionists).

hand, if we don't investigate these issues, we forgo important opportunities.

There is no doubt that the sorts of facts we can learn about an individual, Society has a strong interest in keeping track of the drunk-driving arrests of or a type or group of individuals (women, people of Asian descent, etc.), can potential school-bus drivers and making them known to the appropriate profoundly affect how we tend to regard them and treat them. If I learn that decision-makers, and it has the same strong interest in discovering any other Sam is schizophrenic, or profoundly retarded, or suffers from dizziness and facts about its members that may enhance our lives or protect society at large periodic blackouts, I am not going to hire Sam to drive the school bus. When or particular members of it. This is what makes the research decisions we we turn from specific facts about individuals to generalizations about groups reach so critical and so likely to generate controversy. It is not surprising that of individuals, the situation is more complicated. What is the reasonable and sociobiological research is conducted in an atmosphere of unremitting just response of insurance companies to the actuarial facts about the different concern-mounting-to-alarm, and when it escalates, as it often does, the life expectancies of men and women? Is it fair to adjust their premiums propaganda sometimes buries the truth.

accordingly? Or should we treat both genders alike in the premium Let's begin with the term, "sociobiology." When E. O. Wilson coined it, he department and accept their differential rate of receiving benefits as fair?

meant it to cover the whole spectrum of biological investigations concerned With regard to voluntarily acquired differences (smokers versus nonsmokers, with the evolution of interrelations between organisms in pairs, groups, for instance), we see fairness in making the smokers pay for their habit in herds, colonies, nations. Sociobiologists study the relations among termites higher premiums, but what about differences people are just born with?

in a mound, cuckoo hatchlings and their duped adoptive parents, the mem-African-Americans are, as a group, unusually prone to high blood pressure, bers of matriarchal groups of elephants, bands of monkeys, elephant-seal bulls diabetes runs higher than average among Hispanics, and Whites are more and their harems—and human couples, families, tribes, and nations. But, as prone to skin cancer and cystic fibrosis (Diamond 1991). Should these Kitcher says, the sociobiology of nonhuman animals has always been con-differences be reflected in calculating their health insurance? People whose ducted with greater care and caution. (See also Ruse 1985.) In fact, it in-parents smoked in the home while they were growing up run a higher risk of cludes some of the most important (and widely heralded ) advances in recent respiratory disorders through no fault of their own. Young men, as a group, theoretical biology, such as the classic papers of Hamilton, Trivers, and May-are less safe drivers than young women. Which of these facts should count nard Smith.

for how much, and why? Even when we deal with facts about particular Hamilton could be said to have inaugurated the field with his introduction individuals, rather than statistical trends, there are quandaries aplenty: Are of the conceptual framework of kin selection, which solved, among other employers—or others—entitled to know whether you have ever been things, many of Darwin's puzzles about
eusociality
in insects—the way ants, married, have a criminal record, a safe driving record, a history of scuba-bees, and termites live "selflessly" in large colonies, most of them sterile diving? Is there a principled difference between releasing information on a servants to a single fertile queen. But Hamilton's theory didn't solve all the person's grades in school and releasing information about that same person's problems, and among Richard Alexander's important contributions was his IQ score?

characterization of the conditions under which eusocial
mammals
These are all difficult ethical problems. The citizenry is currently debating various restrictions on what information employers, the government, the schools, the insurance companies, and so forth may seek regarding individuals, and it is a short step to the conclusion that we'd all be better off if 10. Philip Kitcher opens his critical survey of sociobiology,
Vaulting Ambition
( 1985b), certain sorts of information were just not pursued by science at all. If there with the unanswerable tale of the damage done by the notorious British eleven-plus are big differences between the brains of men and women, or if there is a examination—now abandoned, thank goodness—which branded eleven-year-old children with an up-or-down verdict of their promise that quite inexorably fixed the gene that predisposes for dyslexia, or violence—or musical genius, or ho-subset of paths their lives might take.