In class we recently revisited the concept of evolutionarily stable strategies and their relation to Nash equilibriums. Now evolutionarily stable strategies and game theory are being integrated into the philosophical field of ethics.

The article I linked to is written by Tim Dean, a philosophy PhD candidate at the University of South Wales. He deals with ethics from an evolutionary standpoint and introduces game theory to hypothesize how certain moral and ethical systems may form. Looking at moral philosophy from the standpoint of evolution challenges some of the older philosophers such as Immanuel Kant. To generalize, Kant thought morals were the result of calculated judgments, and the actions of a person followed suit. However, the more recent understanding, backed by current psychology, is that moral intuitions are natural and immediate responses to a situation, and the moral principles are just an extension of the original intuition. Dean notes that not all intuitions are moral in a positive sense, since sometimes is it would be evolutionarily beneficial to be selfish or violent.

Where game theory really starts to play a role is when you consider how and what different moral intuitions evolve. For the sake of simplicity, Dean generalizes moral intuitions into two categories: egalitarian and authoritarian. The egalitarian intuition is based on trust, tolerance, and selflessness, while the authoritarian intuition is based on selfishness, exclusion, and personal reward. It is noted that egalitarian and authoritarian intuitions aren’t the exact analogues to the dove and the hawk, but the game theory still applies when considering evolutionarily stable ethics strategies.

An individual with an egalitarian intuition would do well against other egalitarians, because each would behave in a way to benefit the whole society. So in a utopian paradise, all individuals would have egalitarian intuitions. But this is not an evolutionarily stable strategy. All it would take is one mutation toward a more authoritarian tuition for the egalitarian intuition to “lose”. In other words, in a utopian society with no crime or selfishness, one selfish individual could wreck havoc be taking advantage of everyone. Due to the evolutionary nature of morals, less trusting, more authoritarian intuitions have developed as the most evolutionarily stable.

link:
http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/treder20090404/