Abstract
A moral system is an adaptive system for conflict management based on prescriptive, internalized social rules. We decompose moral systems into the sense of fairness, moral judgments, and rules at the aggregate level. We explore how each of these levels is constructed, including how this process is influenced by cognitive and organizational constraints and social architecture. We consider feedback across these levels as well as the implications of partial time-scale separation for reducing uncertainty about behavioral outcomes. We suggest that an appropriate theoretical framework for treating these issues is an extended theory of niche construction.
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Notes
- 1.
Group selection/multi-level extensions, modeled using the price equation for example, do take into account contributions from different levels, but typically neglect the dynamics generating each level.
- 2.
We are grateful to Steve Frank for this phrase.
- 3.
Under this view, the conflict management mechanisms that individuals build become part of their social niches. This means that the social niche construction process involves both building edges in social networks that provide resources, and investment in conflict management mechanisms that allow for more efficient social edge building.
- 4.
Content-specified and process-based senses of fairness are related to, but do not map clearly onto, deontological and consequentialist ethics, two prominent concepts in the moral philosophy and psychology literatures. Deontological ethics focuses on the rightness of actions themselves, whereas consequentialist ethics argues that the rightness of an action is given by its consequences, regardless of the intent.
- 5.
Whereas economic sanctions constitute withholding access to material resources, ostracism constitutes withholding access to social resources.
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Flack, J.C., Krakauer, D.C. (2009). Evolution and Construction of Moral Systems. In: Levin, S. (eds) Games, Groups, and the Global Good. Springer Series in Game Theory. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-85436-4_7
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