Evolution and the Ethical Brain | Templeton Foundation

The Templeton Foundation hosted a panel discussion in New York on March 4, 2009, with with Michael Gazzaniga (UC-Santa Barbara), Jonathan Haidt (University of Virginia), and Steven Quartz (Caltech). David Brooks moderated. Video and transcript are on the Templeton Foundation website.

Here are a few selections from social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, author of The Happiness Hypothesis.

[T]o talk about morality, the first step is to say there is not a single organ, it is not a single capacity. Just as we have five different kinds of taste buds, my research suggests there are at least five different kinds of or sets of moral intuitions that we can identify. There are five that really stand out as the best candidates, and each one has a separate story. Most of us secular, liberal folk, whom I presume are the largest group in this audience, but not all, those people tend to just focus on two of them, so it is harm and fairness, and that is what morality is. ...

If we are going to look at this from an evolutionary point of view, and Darwin was great on this, Darwin thought that morality was crucial to human evolution, but it was Victorian morality. If you read him, he is obviously a product of the Victorian age, and it is about loyalty and respect and obedience and the higher ethical and Victorian virtues. So, I think we have to start by realizing whatever we think we mean by morality, most people in the world actually mean a lot more. ...

I think we are going to be wrestling with the possibility that the last 10,000 years actually shaped our genes, as well and some of our morality. I think, especially ideas about purity and divinity are probably very, very new. Whereas ideas about harm and care are as old as mammals and attachment systems; and reciprocity is millions of years old. I think it is a different story for each part of our moral circuitry. ...

Darwin actually, I think, had a much more positive view of human nature and human morality than we now think of as Darwinians. ... Darwin thought that groups are real, groups compete with other groups and within any group. Sure, the free riders are going to do better than others, but actually if you look at human groups, he said, they care an awful lot about reputation. Just look at Victorian England. Reputation, conscience, religion: he listed all these mechanisms that he thought were solutions to the free-rider problem.

So, he thought that actually human nature was full of benevolence, as well, and it makes sense. If you are going to have cooperation, you have to also be punitive and vigilant. The two have to go together.