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The evolution of morality and the end of economic man

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Abstract

1871 saw the publication of two major treatises in economics, with self-seeking economic man at their center. In the same year Darwin published The Descent of Man, which emphasized sympathy and cooperation as well as self-interest, and contained a powerful argument that morality has evolved in humans by natural selection. Essentially this stance is supported by modern research. This paper considers the nature of morality and how it has evolved. It reconciles Darwin’s notion that a developed morality requires language and deliberation (and is thus unique to humans), with his other view that moral feelings have a long-evolved and biologically-inherited basis. The social role of morality and its difference with altruism is illustrated by an agent-based simulation. The fact that humans combine both moral and selfish dispositions has major implications for the social sciences and obliges us to abandon the pre-eminent notion of selfish economic man. Economic policy must take account of our moral nature.

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Notes

  1. This essay makes use of material from Hodgson (2013), which includes more extensive evidence and discussion. Therein I also contrast my own views on morality with others. For example, in leading accounts by Etzioni (1988) and Sen (1987) there is no attempt to explain how our moral or other dispositions evolved. By contrast, Binmore (1994, 1998) develops a sophisticated evolutionary theory but reduces morality to matters of mere convention. In writing this paper I thank two anonymous referees, David Harper, Mario Rizzo, Xueqi Zhang, participants at the 2011 GROE (Group for Research in Organisational Evolution) Workshop (at Great Offley in Hertfordshire in England), and others for comments on an earlier version of this essay.

  2. See, for example, Güth (1995), Field (2001, 2007), Henrich et al. (2001, 2004), Hammerstein (2003) and Bowles and Gintis (2011).

  3. See, for example, Fehr and Gächter (2002), Bowles et al. (2003), Boyd et al. (2003), Gintis et al. (2005), Kaplow and Shavell (2007), Bowles and Gintis (2011).

  4. See the references in the preceding footnote.

  5. The uncontroversial observation that different cultures have different ethical codes can be described as descriptive moral relativism. See Hodgson (2013) for a discussion.

  6. Bok (1978), Roberts (1979), Brown (1991), Schwartz (1994), Haidt and Joseph (2004), Nichols (2004).

  7. Utilitarians will not accept this. But I cannot develop a critique of utilitarianism here. The behavior of any real entity can be made consistent with some utility function (including, more controversially, apparently “inconsistent” behavior). For utilitarians that is enough to clinch the matter. But for the critics, fitting a function to behavioral data does not explain anything, and it overlooks that which specifically makes us human. For fuller discussions and further references see Smart and Williams (1973), Sen (1987), and Hodgson (2013).

  8. In his Moral Sentiments and elsewhere Smith emphasized moral motivations and the importance of justice in economic arrangements (Sen 1987; Evensky 2005). Darwin made notes on the Moral Sentiments but there is no evidence he read the Wealth of Nations. He famously read Malthus’s Essay on the Principle of Population, but the pages of the copy of the first volume of Capital sent to him personally by Marx remained uncut (Hodgson 1993).

  9. Major contributions to this rehabilitation include Wade (1978), Wilson (1980, 1983), Wilson and Sober (1994), Sober and Wilson (1998), Wilson and Wilson (2007).

  10. Huxley’s severance of the evolution of ethics from the evolution of humanity was countered by a number of writers including Westermarck (1891) and Kropotkin (1902).

  11. This is a major inconsistency in Dawkins’s (1976) position. The “selfish gene” metaphor supports his notion that evolutionary selection prioritizes successful genes because these are the key bits of information that replicate and program the growth and behavior of organisms. Whatever the merits and demerits of this “genes-eye view” of evolution, it cannot sustain the notion that individuals are entirely selfish as well. Inconsistently with his selfishness claim, Dawkins cites and endorses key arguments by Hamilton (1964) and Trivers (1971) that show that the individual may bear costs or even sacrifice itself, as if it were acting instead for the sake of its genes.

  12. See, for example, Güth (1995), De Waal (1996), Greene and Haidt (2002), Zak (2004), Tancredi (2005), Hauser (2006), Fehr and Camerer (2007).

  13. Consider also neural mirroring, where emotional contagion is shown to be a result of “mirror neurons” in the brain (Rizzolatti et al. 2007).

  14. See Boyd and Richerson (1992), Andreoni (1995), De Waal (1996), Ben-Ner and Putterman (2000), Fehr and Gächter (2000a, b, 2002), Gintis (2000), Field (2001), Price et al. (2002), Boyd et al. (2003), Carpenter et al. (2004), Gintis et al. (2005), Wiessner (2005), Henrich et al. (2006), Fehr and Gintis (2007), Guzmán et al. (2007), Carpenter and Matthews (2009), Henrich et al. (2010), Bowles and Gintis (2011).

  15. But their extent is a matter of dispute among psychologists and linguists (Pinker 1994; Deacon 1997; Sampson 2005; Evans and Levinson 2009).

  16. As Arrow (1994) argues forcefully, while economists often make contrary claims, all known economic analyses involve social relations or structures as well as individuals. Hodgson (2007, 2013) shows that “methodological individualism” is a highly ambiguous and lamentably imprecise doctrine, and plausible versions treat social relations as well as individuals as part of the explanantia.

  17. Compare with the figures in Bowles et al. (2003, pp. 142–143).

  18. See Hodgson (2013, esp. ch.3). Even apparently inconsistent or intransitive preference rankings can be forced into a utility function, by taking into account that different choices always take place in an (at least slightly) different context or with different information.

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    Geoffrey M. Hodgson

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Hodgson, G.M. The evolution of morality and the end of economic man. J Evol Econ 24, 83–106 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00191-013-0306-8

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