Book Review: Evolutionary Psychology at a Crossroads? A Review of Moral Psychology: The Evolution of Morality: Adaptations and Innateness (Vol. 1) (2007)

Moral Psychology: The Evolution of Morality: Adaptations and Innateness is the first of a three-volume series reflecting an interdisciplinary collaboration between philosophers, evolutionary psychologists and cognitive and brain scientists undertaken to advance the study of moral psychology. Each chapter consists of an essay, two commentaries on each essay by other scholars, and a reply to these commentaries by the author(s) of the original essay. The topics include naturalism (Flanagan, Sarkissian, & Wong; chapter 1), the possibility of specific neurocomputational mechanisms underlying various forms of moral reasoning (Cosmides & Tooby; chapter 2), an evolutionary psychological account of incest avoidance (Lieberman; chapter 3), the suggestion that moral virtues exist because they were sexually selected by our ancestors (Miller; chapter 4), the possibility that symbolic thought underlies our ability to distinguish right from wrong (Tse; chapter 5), and arguments for (Sekhar Sripada; chapter 6) and against nativistic accounts of morality (Prinz; chapter 7).In the current academic zeitgeist, researchers have a tendency to idealize interdisciplinary collaboration. One reason for this idealization is the conviction that bringing divergent perspectives to bear on the same problem will lead to new insights. And indeed, there is much to be gained from the issues raised in the first volume of Moral Psychology and the discussion thereof. However, one of the risks in this volume is that the various approaches to morality and evolution within it will be misperceived as independent or distinct, when they really are not as different as they might seem. More specifically, most of the authors in this book adopt a cognitivist perspective on thinking and behavior. This view is quite commonly held and therefore it is perhaps not obvious that it is indeed only one perspective within a field of hotly debated subject matter. We will present our own alternative perspective throughout this review to illustrate some of the issues that inform this debate.An essential feature of the cognitivist position reflected in the present volume is the claim that agents have cognitive structures that process sensory information in a certain way. For this reason, many researchers are interested in the neural underpinnings of such phenomena. Contributors to the present volume review many of these cognitive structures, particularly those related to moral behavior, and attempt to answer the question of how the structures arise from the perspective of Evolutionary Psychology (EP). Here the answer of most evolutionary psychologists is basically that these structures were selected in our evolutionary past, and are encoded in our genome. So, the overall focus of the book, if not much of mainstream EP, is on how we process information, the brain structures involved, and how particular capacities arose in our evolutionary history.For the most part, the intersection between the cognitivist and EP positions on these matters has offered a useful way of thinking about how organisms in general and primates in particular might have evolved basic perceptual and some higher-order cognitive abilities. The big question, however, is whether this approach can be applied more globally to moral phenomena. The critical position we will take up in this review is that no matter what kind of “cognitive mechanisms” one might have, one cannot have morality without others. Morality is not “in the head” in terms of the brain processes—it occurs in the real world, between people, and has a particular developmental, or ontogenetic, history (as opposed to just an evolutionary, or phylogenetic, history). Although the present volume focuses on the evolution of morality, it is striking that there is so little discussion attempting to synthesize EP and developmental psychology, or an “evo-devo” approach (Caroll, 2005). We contend that such a synthesis would enrich the volume by showing how social interaction during individuals’ development influences their moral growth. The significance of brain processes aside, from an evolutionary-developmental or evo-devo perspective, it is a long way between genes and a moral animal, human or otherwise.In an early chapter, Cosmides and Tooby, the founders of EP, work to show how the mind develops particular social contract algorithms related to moral functioning. Specifically, they argue that such algorithms are part of a “neurocomputational system whose design features are adaptively specialized for producing the specific kinds of inferences and goals necessary to create cooperative interactions” (p. 53). In essence, they claim that the way we make moral decisions is based on a specific set of moral equations. To support such a position, they review their own research demonstrating that reasoning about social exchange differs from reasoning about conditional rules. Unfortunately they do not acknowledge that one of the main difficulties with this approach is that formal algorithms work only to describe a general class of behaviour. That is, the sorts of formal descriptions that Cosmides and Tooby offer do not provide an explanation of how organisms operate in more specific instances. Moreover, even if we assume that these algorithms are operating, this does not answer the question of how they emerged in the first place. Such developmental issues take a back seat in Cosmides and Tooby’s chapter—a problem that surfaces throughout the standard EP and cognitivist notions that inform the volume.A secondary focus on developmental issues stems from EP’s emphasis on natural selection, adaptation, and genes. The focus on natural selection is apparent when Cosmides and Tooby stateIn one sense this is true because we are the product of evolutionary processes. The problem is that natural selection is not the whole story, nor does it give an account of how morality develops. Natural selection only acts on existing variability in a population. It does not account for how such variability arises in the first place. Therefore, an evolutionary account focusing on natural selection alone cannot tell us how morality actually arose—only that it did and then spread through the population.Similar to Cosmides and Tooby’s contribution, Tse’s chapter detailing how the human capacity for symbolic manipulation underlies our moral decision begins with the misguided assumption that natural selection can explain variability. As such, Tse’s account also suffers from similar limitations. Tse suggests that in our evolutionary past, dedicated neuronal circuits that process certain kinds of information became interconnected, a process he calls cross-modular binding. Essentially, the same input can be processed by multiple modules, leading to new and unique cognitive connections. Tse claims that cross-modal binding did not only lead to symbolic thought, but also underlies “the human capacities for metaphor and analogy” (p. 280), our appreciation of beauty (p. 282), and abstract, religious and causal cognition (p. 283).The commentary that follows Tse’s chapter, although very short (covering just less than two sides of a single page) sums up the critical problem we are trying to describe. Dietrich, the author of the short commentary, essentially asks “does this really tell us anything?” This sort of caution is worth reflecting on and considering in more detail. How does Tse account for the origins of cross-modal binding, potentially the factor that underlies many of our seemingly unique human capacities? Unfortunately, all that Tse has to offer is that cross-modal binding arose due to “genetic mutation.” In an account focusing strictly on natural selection and genes, random chance in gene mutation is credited as the creative force in evolution. Deitrich concludes that “Tse’s top-down theorizing may be useful and is certainly interesting, but without more work from the bottom up it will not qualify as an evolutionary explanation” (p. 300). Indeed, Deitrich’s comments are applicable to nearly every EP chapter in this book. How variation actually comes about is a developmental issue, and this insight is the basis of the burgeoning new field of evolutionary developmental biology.Evolutionary developmental biology or evo-devo’s (Carroll, 2005; Robert, 2004; Sansom & Brandon, 2007) success is due, at least in part, to a change of focus to developmental issues in evolution, rather than relegating developmental issues to the sidelines of evolutionary theorizing. For example, evo-devo problematizes the particular EP way of conceptualizing the relation between heredity and behavior. EP focuses on the selection of adaptations in the Pleistocene epoch and how these adaptations afforded a differential reproductive advantage over conspecifics. What do we have in common with these ancestors? Well, we have in common the genes that lead to the development of these adaptations. In this perspective, genes are taken to be the source of developmental information. What may be surprising to many psychologists and lay persons alike, however, is that the genome is not, in fact, the sole source of “developmental information.” This way of thinking has long been considered obsolete in comparative psychology and evolutionary developmental biology, yet it forms the basis for theorizing in many contemporary cognitive accounts, and, of course, EP (Griffiths, 2007; Lickliter, 2008). From an evo-devo perspective, organisms do not only inherit genes; they inherit a multitude of epigenetic (nongenetic) factors that lead to the reliable species-specific development (Gottlieb, 2002; Lablonka & Lamb, 2005).Many factors need to be in place before and during development in order for a fertilized egg to become a human infant. Genes are just one part of the developmental system. So any trait we develop is not simply due to similar genetic factors, but also similar epigenetic factors as well.Of the contributions to the present volume, Miller’s comes the closest to offering an evo-devo alternative. Finding current evolutionary theories of morality based on kin or reciprocal altruism inadequate, Miller argues that, at least in humans, moral traits are sexually attractive and can serve as indicators of mental fitness. Miller suggests that moral virtues, therefore, could be a product of sexual selection. Unfortunately, Miller still offers the standard EP account in which our moral virtues are products of the Pleistocene past, instead of arising over the course of an individual’s lifetime. Moral virtues may be sexy, but how do we become morally virtuous? Miller considers a more evo-devo approach to these issues when he states, “my claim is not that sexual selection created our moral virtues from scratch in our species alone, without any primate foundation. Rather, my claim is that sexual selection amplified our standard social primate virtues into uniquely elaborated human forms” (p. 221). Unfortunately, Miller does not fully investigate the implications of this statement, and so forgoes an evo-devo review of morality in nonhuman primates. Does sexual selection of moral virtues occur in other primates as well? It seems that such a comparison would help Miller’s case for the sexual selection of moral virtues in humans.Sekhar Sripada and Prinz end the book with arguments both for and against the innateness of morality, respectively. Sekhar Sripada states “nativism has been an important theoretical perspective in contemporary cognitive science” (p. 343). Although he argues that human morality is shaped by an innate structure that explains moral commonalities across human groups (p. 322), he supports a more complex Innate Biases Model in which “other cultural process may be sufficiently strong so as to negate and even countervail the effects of innate biases” (p. 343). This account therefore makes room for cultural diversity in moral rules. Yet despite the recognition of the profound influence of culture, it is not given a primary focus in the nativist framework. From our perspective, morality is fundamentally grounded in social interaction. By virtue of being members of the same biological species, certain forms of interaction will emerge between individuals. This does not mean, however, that these forms of interaction are in any way “innate.” That is, they do not derive from processes within the individuals; they derive from processes between individuals.Prinz, counter to Sekhar Sripada, argues that even if forms of innateness exist, they cannot explain moral norms. Prinz accurately states that even though “modern moral nativis- its are less prone to seeing morality as completely fixed, the nativist program certainly gives rise to the impression that morality is very highly constrained” (p. 406). Contrary to what nativists claim, he argues that morality is ubiquitous across cultures “not because it is innate … [but] because it is a nearly inevitable consequence of other capacities” (p. 404). This is where the role of human social interaction comes in. However, Prinz still at times argues within the nativist framework, giving it more credence than is necessary. Within the evo-devo framework, particularly, many of the categories that these authors use to argue both for and against innateness become obsolete. Indeed the entire debate surrounding “innateness” and “instinct” ended in comparative psychology in the 1950s and these concepts make no sense from a systems or evolutionary developmental biology perspective (Bateson & Mameli, 2007; Logan & Johnston, 2007). Any “instinctual” or “innate” capacity is the product of complicated, and sometimes nonobvious, developmental processes. Unfortunately, instinct and innateness are still invoked as explanatory concepts in cognitive psychology and EP.What does all of this mean for the researcher or practitioner who is interested in learning about the relation between evolution and moral behavior? The interest of EP in “why” moral behavior exists is really why it exists today, not about how it came to be in the course of human evolution. Their answer is essentially that our hominid ancestors had it and that’s why we have it. Our concern and indeed the concern of many of the evolutionary and developmental biologists upon whose work we have drawn in this review is that by relying on an accumulation of adaptations, EP may be oversimplifying and even distorting the actual way that moral or other behaviors come to be. Although focusing on one set of factors in the explanation of behavior can be a useful first step in understanding a particular phenomenon, systems approaches in a variety of disciplines are discovering that many seemingly good “first approximations” lead to some surprising dead ends. Such is science. We, and a growing number of researchers, believe that EP and the theorists that draw upon EP are potentially at a crossroads and must seriously reconsider the over-arching framework within which it situates itself. In our view, the value of the first volume of Moral Psychology should be judged in the light of major metatheoretical debates and shifts that are occurring in related fields of inquiry.Some may wonder why we focus on these issues and ask where does moral psychology come in? Our concern is that many researchers in cognitive and evolutionary psychology seem to have a particular take on morality that may be at odds with how these matters are conceptualized in the developmental and educational literatures. Developmentalists and educators may read this volume and come away convinced that the evolution of morality is equivalent to the Evolutionary Psychology of morality. Our goal has been to show that the evolutionary explanation of moral behavior requires more than an explication of hypothesized cognitive adaptations.

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