Reaction to 'The Most Demanding Moral Capacity: Could Evolution Provide Any Base?' by Teresa Bejarano
before alignment, enlightenment, entitlement?
Bejarano, Teresa. “The Most Demanding Moral Capacity: Could Evolution Provide Any Base?” Isidorianum 31, no. 2 (November 24, 2022): 91–126. https://doi.org/10.46543/ISID.2231.1056.
Abstract: The attempts to make moral and evolution compatible have assimilated moral capacity either with complex self-control in favour of one’s own goals or with spontaneous altruism. Those attempts face an easy problem, since those two senses of moral are adaptively advantageous resources. But let us focus on the decisions made in favour of another person which the subject, when making them, feels are contrary to his own goals: Could a base for this capacity arise in evolution, however poor and weak? I propose that such base, while it is not an adaptive advantage but quite the opposite, arises from the convergence between two abilities which in their respective origins were adaptively very advantageous: the advanced mode of ‘theory-of-mind’ (ToM) and inner speech.
Keywords: others’ mental contents; speech directed to oneself; spontaneous altruism; Advanced Theory of Mind; vicarious expectations.
So again we have the hurdle of altruism as the main event to explain in morality with reference to evolution working via natural selection… with individuals as the bottleneck.
From further along in the paper:
If I am allowed a biographical note, let me tell you that I read the famous statement by Ghiselin (“If the hypothesis of natural selection is both sufficient and true, it is impossible for a genuinely disinterested or altruistic behaviour pattern to evolve”22) many years ago, precisely when I was deciding on the topic for my dissertation for my PhD. Nowadays, that statement (and even Ghiselin’s work23) is certainly highly discredited. It is clear that scholars at that time were not aware of the broadness of spontaneous altruism. But, in spite of all such limitations, I continue to believe that the challenge proposed by Ghiselin contains a nucleus to which we must respond. Indeed, I was greatly affected when I read his statement. More concretely, with regards to my dissertation, it led me to lean towards a topic which was —as I saw it— difficult and daring.
Altruism is one part of the world, we also have to explain all the other things that are outcomes of a wolding urge, when seen as a way to describe the extended phenotype. In this introduction there is no sense of that context as an environment in which evolution takes place. There are only individuals, and not even families (to reduce Margaret Thatcher’s statement boosting Homo economicus even further). And they are a problem.
So, anyway I’ll now look at this argument for a ‘weak base’ for altruism, an altruism described as “decisions made in favour of another person which the subject, when making them, feels are contrary to his own goals”. Which are ‘understood as the most demanding type of moral capacity’. This is further restricted to “spontaneous altruism”.
More concretely, Grossmann et al. show the independence between this altruism and self-control: In 18-months-old infants a “link between low latency and high frequency ofprosocial behaviour exists independently of infants’ ability for inhibitory control”.13
Interesting.
But —returning to my point— the task of explaining in such a way the base for the most demanding moral capacity involves a degree of difficulty that is not found when we try to explain, for example, mathematical or artistic creativity.
Wow, key point of difference between us here. Worlding definitely includes those items, and more. Explanations for moral capacity only involves a greater ‘degree of difficulty” if one is thinking analytical/mathematically and reducing the issue to a individual without an extended phenotype, of which the world is an extra-extension (in the name of simplifying or is it just forgetful).
[Taking it for granted?] Thinking with/in one’s world it just obviously makes sense, as long as one makes an allowance for the effort such values require, and the econo-emotional trade-offs that effort negotiates. This would mean spontaneous altruism is no such thing however, as it depends on the prior world an individual grows up and lives in. It is in short, some sort of context-dependent short-cut.We then get bogged down in Christian theology. And the the writer’s biographical note presented above.
At this point we have an interruption of grammar and communication (the writers main field of study,) with speakers correcting each other, leading to an intersubjective pooling of experience which assume a diversity of points-of-view and thus theory-of-mind (ToM). AKA the world.
Syntax is key to this process.
Now we get to the writer’s proposal:
I propose that the base that we are looking for —that is, the natural base for the most demanding moral capacity—, while it is not an evolutionarily adaptive feature but rather the opposite, arises, however, from the evolutionary convergence between two abilities —the advanced mode of ToM, and mature inner speech—, which were extremely advantageous in their respective origins.30 (I develop this proposal more widely in a book in progress).
Another book to hunt down.
Part two begins: the two modes of ToM [Theory of mind] the primitive and the advanced as they circle reality between us all. See Tomasello…
I learn a new word and concept: “Southgate proposes that human infants have an altercentric bias (“which results from a combination of the value that human cognition places on others, and an absence of a competing self-perspective”)”
Altercentric is to view things from outside one’s own POV (social learning bias? Mother-enfant dyadic POV without a POV per se???). And this is the common world of reality, though much argued in its confounded creation???
The writer moves on with this…
“But that tendency towards alter-centrism can, without losing any of its attractiveness, be refor-mulated by saying that the infant very often produces “vicarious expectations” (we will focus on these right away), which mostly correspond to the circumstances of his carers.38
Worlding begins to come in here anyways, despite the consommé of individuals, by way of goal-orientation of animals life leading to expectations (routine & ritual I guess).
At this point we get the first blush of the weak base mechanisms:
This is how the world began.
The initial restriction to spontaneous altruism is not required. But it is good to see the biographical detail which lead to this thinking about our cosmogenesis. The paper’s third section then goes back to spontaneous altruism etc, not really necessary but interesting. Pretty good publishable minecrafting that I leave others to find flaws with.
Part four is about inner speech which we have recently discovered some people don’t have, so I’ll leave it here (sorry Kant).
PArt five dives into co-evolutionary explanations:
Developmental bias, plasticity, niche construction, and extra-genetic inheritance:
Processes which invaginate the strict Darwinian evolution by natural selection which the Ghiselin quote illustrates: “If the hypothesis of natural selection is both sufficient and true, it is impossible for a genuinely disinterested or altruistic behaviour pattern to evolve.”
[The extended phenotype of the world ruined this…]At this point a neo-platonist voice arises (by way of that Christian theology mentioned above) with an explanation (by the urge to align preferences without noticing as such the alignment itself except as an ‘idea’, such, sigh, is our worlding…), that our sins/errors/misattributions in the world of experiencing TOM intersubjectivity likely result [GAP, see below] in a god like sense of deontological order.
I.E. reading this paper allows me to see that things like Kant’s categorical imperative (at least Kant is honest about his grammatical animal logic survival preferences…) can arise as an ‘idea’ when we reflectively engage with our confounded world via aligning our preferences with a sense of logical causation, that our sense of the world is then to be found in the logic of the world, for otherwise it will not make sense to us.
Ergo sum?
Leading to those thoughts as example by ‘without god/karma morality is impossible’ thoughts which in a moment shrink the worlding we world to the individuals we each are are worried about.
Panic is a collectivity of individuals’ sense of risk animating the world. The center cannot hold._______________
I write these few words here at the end after a GAP [see above] of a few days away from the keyboard, and those side moments of thought have been filled with ‘ideas’ about the word alignment that I have started using… it will soon be the subject of an entry in the taphonomy of worlding. <insert links here later>.
So I have had an ‘idea’ about alignment. I then worry about the order of things.
So the reaction stops.
Except, why are there so many animal logic survival preferences? Style? Inclinations? And/But one of them seems to be to feel inclined to argue about them, just because we each feel there is one intrinsic order to rule them all? Is that not also a reflective mood. Why boost it, why choose to boost it into an argument, if we all feel the need to argue it, surely we can agree that disagreeing is only apparent and not foundational, but then by disagreeing to agree we make it foundational: confoundational.
Which is bias selected by evolution, and which is “Order”?
Another reflective mood is to suspend judgement (Pyrrhonistically) and not choose to become dogmatic. I’ll let others argue whether this is of equal reflectivity, or more reflectivity than confoundational, to so count as wisdom.
But then… “let others argue” is that even wise?
I mean they will…so, let as in accept??
All my sentences, all my propositions are questions?