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richard joyce philosophy j o the richard joyce is a Research Fellow in the Philosophy “Joyce’s book is brilliant.There is nothing more important than knowing what we are doing y Evolution Program at the Research School of the Social Sciences at when we speak in the language ofvalue.We are animals that judge with cognitive and affective c e the Australian National University.He is the author ofThe equipment.Joyce explains who we are.Nothing matters more.” Myth of Morality. —Owen Flanagan,James B.Duke Professor ofPhilosophy,Duke University Morality T of “Morality is often considered the opposite of human nature:our main tool to keep human h nature in check.Yet the moral sense likely evolved along with the rest of human sociality. e richard joyce Exploring this evolutionary angle,Richard Joyce provides a revealing philosopher’s account of E what makes us moral primates.” v —Frans de Waal,author ofOur Inner Ape o l the Moral thinking pervades our practical lives,but where did “Why do humans not just help each other and feel bad when they harm each other but also u this way of thinking come from,and what purpose does it make specifically moral judgments about helping and harming? I know ofno better discussion t i Evolution serve? Is it to be explained by environmental pressures on ofthis central question than Joyce’s admirably clear,concise,and critical survey.Joyce’s answer o our ancestors a million years ago,or is it a cultural invention and his arguments will challenge philosophers and move the debates to new levels.” n ofmore recent origin? In TheEvolution of Morality,Richard —Walter Sinnott-Armstrong,Professor ofPhilosophy and Hardy Professor ofLegal Studies, o Joyce takes up these controversial questions, finding that Dartmouth College f the evidence supports an innate basis to human morality. Morality M Asamoral philosopher,Joyce is interested in whether any “In his enjoyable and informative book The Evolution of Morality,Richard Joyce distinguishes implications follow from this hypothesis.Might the fact that between explaining how natural selection might explain socially useful behavior in animals o of thehuman brain has been biologically prepared by natural and what more is needed to explain morality, with its thoughts about right or wrong, in r selection to engage in moral judgment serve in some sense human beings.Contrary to what others have said,Joyce argues plausibly that,to the extent a l tovindicate this way ofthinking—staving offthethreat of that our moral concepts and opinions are the results ofnatural selection,there is no rational i t moral skepticism, or even undergirding some version of basis for these concepts and opinions.” y moral realism? Or if morality has an adaptive explanation —Gilbert Harman,Department ofPhilosophy,Princeton University in genetic terms—if it is, as Joyce writes,“just something that helped our ancestors make more babies”—might such “This book is a tour de force,synthesizing disparate literatures into a pleasing whole.Joyce’s an explanation actually undermine morality’s central role writing is clear,articulate,and enjoyable,and his presentation masterful.” in our lives? He carefully examines both the evolutionary —William D.Casebeer,Associate Professor ofPhilosophy,U.S.Air Force Academy “vindication of morality”and the evolutionary“debunking of morality,”considering the skeptical view more seriously the mit press than have others who have treated the subject. Interdisciplinary and combining the latest results from Massachusetts Institute ofTechnology the empirical sciences with philosophical discussion, The Cambridge,Massachusetts 02142 Evolution of Morality is one of the few books in this area http://mitpress.mit.edu written from the perspective of moral philosophy.Concise Cover image: Nicolas Beatrizet, Anatomia, from Juan de and without technical jargon, the arguments are rigorous Valverde de Hamusco’s “La anatomia del corpo humano,” .Courtesy Wellcome Library,London. ,!7-IA2-G2-b-abbch!:t;K;k;K;k but accessible to readers from different academic back- grounds. Joyce discusses complex issues in plain language while advocating subtle and sometimes radical views. The Life and Mind series a bradford book Evolution of Morality lays the philosophical foundations for furtherresearch into the biological understanding ofhuman morality. The Evolution of Morality Life and Mind: Philosophical Issues in Biology and Psychology Kim Sterelny and Robert A. Wilson, editors Cycles of Contingency: Developmental Systems and Evolution, ed. Susan Oyama, Paul E. Griffiths, and Russell D. Gray, 2000 Coherence in Thought and Action, Paul Thagard, 2000 Evolution and Learning: The Baldwin Effect Reconsidered, Bruce H. Weber and David J. Depew, 2003 Seeing and Visualizing: It’s Not What You Think, Zenon Pylyshyn, 2003 Organisms and Artifacts: Design in Nature and Elsewhere, Tim Lewens, 2004 Molecular Models of Life: Philosophical Papers on Molecular Biology, Sahotra Sarkar, 2004 Evolution in Four Dimensions, Eva Jablonka and Marion J. Lamb, 2005 The Evolution of Morality, Richard Joyce, 2006 The Evolution of Morality Richard Joyce A Bradford Book The MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England © 2006 Massachusetts Institute of Technology All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any elec- tronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher. MIT Press books may be purchased at special quantity discounts for business or sales promotional use. For information, please email [email protected] or write to Special Sales Department, The MIT Press, 55 Hayward Street, Cambridge, MA 02142. Set inStone Sans and Stone Serif by The MITPress. Printed and bound in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Joyce, Richard, 1966– The evolution of morality / Richard Joyce. p. cm. —(Life and mind) “A Bradford book.” Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 0-262-10112-2 (alk. paper) 1. Ethics, Evolutionary. I. Title. II. Series. BJ1311.J69 2006 171'.7—dc22 2005049649 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 for my mother, in gratitude for letting me think for myself Contents Acknowledgements ix Introduction: Human Nature 1 1 The Natural Selection of Helping 13 2 The Nature of Morality 45 3 Moral Language and Moral Emotions 75 4 The Moral Sense 107 5 The Evolutionary Vindication of Morality 143 6 The Evolutionary Debunking of Morality 179 Conclusion: Living with an Adapted Mind 221 Notes 231 Bibliography 247 Index 269 Acknowledgements Initial research on this project was supported by a much-appreciated grant from the UK Arts and Humanities Research Board and by a sabbatical leave from the University of Sheffield’s Department of Philosophy. During this time I was aided by the diligent efforts of my occasional research assistant, Ali Fanaei. By the time the sabbatical was over I had a new job at the Australian National University (Research School of the Social Sciences), allowing me to devote a large portion of my energy to completing the book, and for which I am forever grateful to Michael Smith. I thank the Leslie Humanities Center at Dartmouth College for inviting me for a semester in 2004, and Walter Sinnott-Armstrong most especially for making this possible. I am appreciative for all the feedback and stimulating exchanges I had with those involved in our weekly reading groups at Dartmouth, and in particular Owen Flanagan, Don Loeb, and Chandra Sripada. Back at the RSSS, I bene- fited enormously from weekly meetings with a group of graduate students working through my penultimate manuscript, and I thank all concerned. I owe a great debt to those who read all or portions of the manuscript, but must single out for praise Kim Sterelny, for suffering through an early and much flawed draft (and wearing out several red pens on marginal expletives in the process). Others who gave invaluable feedback include George Botterill, Brett Calcott, William Casebeer, Oliver Curry, Tyler Doggett, Ragnar Francén, Ben Fraser, Daniel Friedrich, Peter Godfrey-Smith, Gil Harman, Marc Hauser, Shaun Nichols, and Walter Sinnott-Armstrong. In the course of my traveling sabbatical several people in one way or another helped me find quiet (and often beautiful) spaces to think and write: Pierre and Mary Boulle, Patricia Robinson, Jackie and Frick Atkins, and Jim and Kayo Nolan. Thanks also to Michael Whitehead for unearthing a copy of Frances Cobbe’s Darwinism in Moralsin Canberra (of all places). Finally, I am deeply thankful for the constant love and support of my wife, Wendy, and for the mere existence of Max—who, arriving halfway through chapter 5, made finishing the book a great deal harder but a lot more fun.