Reaction: Marcus Arvan's Morality as an Evolutionary Exaptation
it's exaptations all the way down
A list of reactions to other evolution~morality papers and chapters and stuff can be found at Reactions to papers on evolution~morality. And this post is cross-posted at whyweshould.loofs-samorzewski.com
Arvan, Marcus. “Morality as an Evolutionary Exaptation.” 2021. via academia.edu. Web. This is a preprint of a chapter published in Johan De Smedt & Helen De Cruz & (eds.), Empirically Engaged Evolutionary Ethics, Springer – Synthese Library. The final published version is available at: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-68802-8_5Exaptation as used in evolutionary theory describes a feature which is originally selected for in one evolutionary context but proves to be very well suited or is 'at hand' for a later context and selection. Sometimes with a bit of work, the example of feathers as insulation becoming useful in adapting to flight.
I do not know how useful the term is because at this date some billions of years into evolution, I do not know what could possibly be excluded from its coverage. Tells us more about how we think I guess and our need to split it from ‘adaptation’. Or tells us how we teach others in the world. The difference between them is a POV and its knowledge base.
Evolution is the ultimate recycler or upcycler. Even has a ‘rollback’ option.
Marcus Arvan runs a philosophy outreach substack : New Work in Philosophy. This substack was the first I ever subbed to (under another name). Thank you Marcus.
However, I found his chapter "Morality as an Evolutionary Exaptation" by way of academia.edu where I plonked my why we should essay nearly a decade ago. It came my way only this week but I have move it up the priority tree. That platform makes reading suggestions which I react to here.
My reading begins now Marcus Arvan's Morality as an Evolutionary Exaptation
“What did moral cognition evolve for—, that is, what is its evolutionary function?”
Immediately I am struck by the term cognition and need to type— …something. When I see the word cognition I reach for my dictionary. But here we get a lot of references which is more useful in collating usage, summed up as “moral cognition is a biological adaptation to foster social cooperation”.
I am still stuck on ‘cognition’.
Marcus replies to this summing up with
‘moral cognition is likely an evolutionary exaptation…’.
Above I’ve already put my position that any practical difference, outside of teaching people about evolution in the world, between adaptation and exaptation as being moot, so I don’t know if this will get us anywhere. At this stage, a few billion years into evolution, I repeat, is anything ever an adaptation? Surely it exaptations all the way down now.
Marcus continues,
“a form of cognition where neurobiological capacities selected for in our evolutionary history for a variety of different reasons—many unrelated to social cooperation—were put to a new, prosocial use after the fact through individual rationality, learning, and the development and transmission of social norms.”
Pretty sure I do not disagree with this, but that word ‘cognition’ bugs me.
“My argument has three steps. First, I provide a brief overview of the emerging behavioral neuroscience of moral cognition.’
Ah, the evidence he is using provides the context for use of 'cognition'. Or rather field of study providing the evidence does. Okay then.
“I then outline a theory of moral cognition that I have argued explains these findings better than alternatives (Arvan, 2020). Finally, I demonstrate how the evidence for this theory of moral cognition and human evolutionary history together suggest that moral cognition is likely not a biological adaptation. Instead, like reading sheet music or riding a bicycle, moral cognition is something that individuals learn to do—in this case, in response to sociocultural norms created in our ancestral history and passed down through the ages to enable cooperative living. This chapter thus aims to set evolutionary ethics on a new path, identifying the evolutionary function of moral cognition with a complex interplay between neurobiological and cultural evolution.”
Sure. I think I lump or ‘identify’ that “complex interplay between neurobiological and cultural evolution” as ‘worlding’ not ‘moral cognition’.
At this point I read the rest of the chapter and learned quite a few things, so you should read it too.
I’ll just add that in a lumpy ‘worlding’ definition the ‘neurobiological’ is more embodied than the term ‘neuro’ allows. The self the body worlds (cogitates) is what the body also worlds physically (eats, niche constructs, extendes the phenotype) into and/or of the ‘self’, in a Janus dance (sometimes called umwelt).
A Janus dance over the— …gaps, as I put it:
the self the body worlds,
the world the body selfs,is a mytho-poetic way to say “ complex interplay between neurobiological and cultural evolution” but focuses on all the stuff in between (and below and above) the circuitry of the neurons and memology of culture).
I.E. sure there is 'cognition', keep the studies coming, but both the circuitry and the culture are outcomes of the worlding urge. One to do the other I guess.
This urge, is currently not talked about very much (both extended pheotypes and niche construction are outcomes of it) is like hunger, makes you do stuff as a body, i.e. hunger and thirst make you eat and drink for energy and growth, whereas the worlding urge makes you organise stuff around you to make eating and drinking more likely: prosocial is as prosocial does.
One might be tempted to say the template for this ‘worlding’ is the body’s organisation, but this urge is older than our multicellular lifeform's sphere of reference. For both the body and the world arises out of this ‘organisation’ when the first life floated free of its substrate, and the cell body and its landscape first appeared. Back when adaptation was still exaptation all the way down.
Olivetta, Marine et al. “A Multicellular Developmental Program in a Close Animal Relative.” Nature 635.8038 (2024): 382–389. www.nature.com. Web.
Here, by combining time-resolved imaging and transcriptomic profiling, we show that single cells of the ichthyosporean Chromosphaera perkinsii—a close relative that diverged from animals about 1 billion years ago3,4—undergo symmetry breaking and develop through cleavage divisions to produce a prolonged multicellular colony with distinct co-existing cell types.
Yes, it’s exaptation all the way down.
Sreepadmanabh, M., Ganesh, M., Sanjenbam, P. et al. Cell shape affects bacterial colony growth under physical confinement. Nat Commun 15, 9561 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-53989-6
"As a result, the population growth of high aspect ratio bacteria is, under the tested conditions, more robust to increased physical confinement compared to that of low aspect ratio bacteria. Thus, our experimental evidence supports that environmental physical constraints can play a selective role in bacterial growth based on cell shape."