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Morality as Cooperation: A Problem-Centred Approach

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The Evolution of Morality

Part of the book series: Evolutionary Psychology ((EVOLPSYCH))

Abstract

What is morality, where does it come from, and how does it work? Scholars have struggled with these questions for millennia. But we now have a scientific answer. The theory of ‘morality as cooperation’ uses the mathematics of cooperation—the theory of nonzero-sum games—to identify the many distinct problems of cooperation and their solutions, and it predicts that it is the solutions employed by humans that constitute ‘morality’. Thus, morality turns out to be a collection of biological and cultural solutions to the problems of cooperation and conflict recurrent in human social life. This theory generates a comprehensive taxonomy of moral values—a Periodic Table of Ethics—that includes obligations to family, group loyalty, reciprocity, bravery, respect, fairness, and property rights. And because morality as cooperation makes principled predictions about the structure and content of human morality, which can be tested against those of rival theories, it reveals that the study of morality is simply another branch of science.

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Acknowledgements

I am very grateful to Helena Cronin and Daniel Mullins for their enormously helpful comments on numerous drafts of this chapter.

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  1. Institute of Cognitive & Evolutionary Anthropology, University of Oxford, 64 Banbury Road, Oxford, OX2 6PN, UK

    Oliver Scott Curry

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  1. Department of Psychology, Oakland University, Rochester, Michigan, USA

    Todd K. Shackelford

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    Ranald D. Hansen

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Curry, O.S. (2016). Morality as Cooperation: A Problem-Centred Approach. In: Shackelford, T., Hansen, R. (eds) The Evolution of Morality. Evolutionary Psychology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-19671-8_2

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