Matthijs van Veelen : The evolution of morality and the role of commitment
DySoC / Exeter Webinar Series
Evolution and Social Systems
The Center for the Dynamics of Social Complexity and Exeter is happy to announce a series of free webinars for Fall 2021 on Evolution and Social Systems. This series is a continuation of the past semester seminars: DySoC/NIMBioS Webinar Series on Cultural Evolution and DySoC/NIMBioS Webinar Series on Human Origins and Cultural Evolution.
https://www.dysoc.org/ess_webinars
Speaker: Matthijs van Veelen (Evolution and Behaviour at CREED, University of Amsterdam, Netherlands)
Topic: The evolution of morality and the role of commitment
Abstract: A considerable share of the literature on the evolution of human cooperation considers the question why we have not evolved to play the Nash equilibrium in prisoners' dilemmas or public goods games. In order to understand human morality and pro-social behaviour, we suggest it would actually be more informative to investigate why we have not evolved to play the subgame perfect Nash equilibrium in sequential games, such as the ultimatum game and the trust game. The "rationally irrational" behavior that can evolve in such games gives a much better match with actual human behaviour, including elements of morality such as honesty, responsibility, and sincerity, as well as the more hostile aspects of human nature, such as anger and vengefulness. The mechanism at work here is commitment, which does not need population structure, nor does it need interactions to be repeated. We argue that this shift in focus can not only help explain why humans have evolved to know wrong from right, but also why other animals, with similar population structures and similar rates of repetition, have not evolved similar moral sentiments. The suggestion that the evolutionary function of morality is to help us commit to otherwise irrational behaviour stems from the work of Robert Frank, which has played a surprisingly modest role in the scientific debate to date.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/blog/2...
The seminar series is funded by grants from the John Templeton Foundation and the European Research Council.
(European Research Council (ERC) funding awarded to Thomas Currie under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (The Cultural Evolution & Ecology of Institutions, grant agreement no. 716212).)