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EECS%20690

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EECS 690 April 18 Evolutionary ... (partially) the study of how and why to get out of the prisoners dilemma The Naturalistic Fallacy This term is owed to G.E. Moore. – PowerPoint PPT presentation

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Title: EECS%20690


1
EECS 690
  • April 18

2
Evolutionary approaches to morality-building
  • The authors in this chapter provide us with two
    types of bottom-up approaches one of them
    being analogous to evolution as studied by
    biologists and another being analogous to child
    development as studied by psychologists.
  • These notes cover the first of those approaches.

3
The Evolutionary Approach
  • Through study of digital simulations of
    environments and organisms, involving the
    paradigm elements of evolutionary biology
    (selection, random mutation, and environmental
    change) we are to gain some insight into what
    morality is, or even to witness the evolution of
    moral agents.
  • Common misconception Evolution entails progress.
  • Further caveat One must approach the study of
    how ethics arises with a theory of ethics in mind
    already. This means that though it sounds like
    researchers are scientifically discovering
    morality, they arent.

4
Merits of the approach
  • When viewed as microcosms of larger and more
    complicated situations, these simulations and
    studies can shed light on the operation of some
    of the component aspects of morality, and how
    they might have arisen.

5
Game Theory
  • Insofar as cooperation is a major element of
    morality, game theory as a study of cooperation
    is very interesting.
  • The chief contribution of game theory to the
    study of cooperation is in the prisoners dilemma
    and the iterated prisoners dilemma.

6
The Prisoners Dilemma
  • In this situation, cooperation is the most
    mutually beneficial action, while mutual
    defection is the least mutually beneficial
    action, yet from the perspective of either party,
    the most rational decision is defection.

7
The Iterated Prisoners Dilemma and the Tragedy
of the Commons
  • An iterated prisoners dilemma is one in which the
    situation is repeated with the same players.
  • The tragedy of the commons is a concept in
    environmental ethics that relies on the concept
    of the iterated prisoners dilemma. In short,
    the tragedy of the commons is that any communally
    held resource gets trashed because every
    individual has incentive to use (and over-use)
    the resource, but has no stronger incentive to
    maintain and sustain the resource.
  • In some very real sense, ethics is (partially)
    the study of how and why to get out of the
    prisoners dilemma

8
The Naturalistic Fallacy
  • This term is owed to G.E. Moore. The
    naturalistic fallacy is applied to any attempt to
    straightforwardly reduce value questions
    (normative questions) to naturalistic (positive)
    questions.
  • Certainly, the kind of beings we are and the
    environment in which we operate have some
    relationship to ethics, but that relationship is
    not one of straightforward reduction. (dependence
    does not entail reduction)

9
The Limits of the Evolutionary Approach
  • Ignores cultural diversity Genetics is not
    enough to explain or account for cultural moral
    diversity, and cultural moral diversity does not
    even loosely map onto genetic diversity.
  • Is at best a Just So Story
  • At its worst, evolutionary ethics is racism,
    eugenics, and social darwinism.
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