Although only implicit in Politics for the New Dark Age, my current research interests lean heavily towards evolutionary understandings of political and social science. In short, generalised Darwinism proposes that the evolution of species, the development of individual biological organisms, and the growth and spread of cultural norms, practices and beliefs are all controlled by the same processes of variation, selection and replication. Evolutionary approaches explain the emergence of order from anarchy, of function from randomness, and of cooperation from conflict. What such an approach seeks to understand is the success of strategies or decision-rules: ideas that transform information about the external environment into motivated action. So far, so good.

Philosophical conundrums

The key component of all evolutionary approaches is selection by consequences, or as it is commonly (and inaccurately) known, survival of the fittest. Strategies that are effective (or neutral) relative to their peer competitors will survive or even expand their frequency in the next generation, and strategies that are ineffective will reproduce or be copied less often. Thus, over time evolved strategies can converge on certain optimised mathematical equilibria. But doesn't an evolutionary approach to understanding social and political life then merely offer a justification for a utilitarian "ends justify the means" ethical philosophy? Since utilitarianism is the best-known school of consequentialist philosophy, isn't a model of social life governed by consequences hypocritical given my opposition to utilitarian governance and preference for liberal, democratic processes?

The short answer is no. Evolutionary models do not guarantee that strategies with the highest payoff will prevail. They suggest (at best!) that those strategies which are resistant to attack from alternatives can become dominant or 'fixed' in a population (an 'evolutionary stable strategy'). In the classic iterated prisoners' dilemma, for example, there are strategies that can perform better than the classic 'tit-for-tat' solution, by exploiting its short memory and capacity for forgiveness. But in a population-level model, exploitative strategies cannot do better than tit-for-tat in the long run, and cannot themselves work together to prevent being exploited by others.  

Many simplified or hedonistic forms of utilitarianism, predicted on the maximisation of some common currency such as utility or pleasure, do not concern themselves with the importance of procedure and social resilience to decision-making (but see "rule utilitarianism"). Often, inefficient social practices and norms make societies better off in the long run, likely because they allow competing signals to be taken into account or because they encode relevant information below the level of conscious awareness. Moreover, rapid variation in social and ecological circumstances may suddenly change the definition of fitness that a given strategy must produce. A decision rule that produce optimal results may not survive against a decision-rule that is less efficient but more robust in a variety of contexts, if the selection pressures are sufficiently strong.

What evolutionary thinking is not

There is a fundamental philosophical difference between ethics and material determinism: or in other words, between is and ought. Cultural evolution, like class analysis, may suggest what social and economic strategies ultimately prevail, but it is an entirely different question for us to ask what sort of strategies should prevail.

It’s impossible to use evolution as an ethical philosophy because the consequences of decisions can only be known as probabilistic likelihoods, and even then only poorly. Evolution is consequentialism under conditions of uncertainty: we have imperfect information about future events and our beliefs about the likely consequences of our decision-making are irrevocably tinged by our innate moral preferences and personal experiences. Under these conditions, as I have written in the past, the ethical thing to do to is to advocate for one’s beliefs as strongly possible and let the chips fall where they may. Each of us finds our own ethical should from within ourselves, and by own power and agency we can shape social outcomes to increase the likelihood of our preferred outcome. Importantly, by adding our power together with like-minded others, we can substantially change the probability of our preferred strategy becoming fixed in the population.

Two Critiques

Two critiques can be levelled against the evolutionary perspective from a progressive ideological worldview. Firstly, while an evolutionary understanding provides no ethical guidance for decision-making, it may imply that existing social norms and roles are already effective ways to govern a society. An evolutionary view can offer partial support to a conservative worldview, because any decision-rule that currently exists must be hypothesised to be effective for the society in which it evolved. Secondly, an evolutionary approach can be considered a rejection of enlightened humanism, since on its face it discounts the possibility that reason alone can improve society: it subjects human optimism about the future to structural forces of history and biology that are beyond individual control.

These critiques are valuable, but repeat the naturalist fallacy of basing what ought to be on the basis of what is. Evolved cultural norms and institutions can and should be routinely challenged by progressives using reason. Doing so creates the very selection pressures cultural evolution needs to operate - not challenging the status quo may allow poorly adapted (or unethical) norms to survive longer than necessary. Existing beliefs and practices may preserve biological or cultural prejudices that were adaptive, neutral or merely competitive in an earlier period in human history, but which have become maladaptive, harmful or illiberal today.

This goes to my earlier post about ethics, adaption and maladaption: how do we know if a particular social rule is worth preserving? We don’t! Social norms and institutions may be historically and culturally contingent; they may have no overall effect on social outcomes, or they may be maladaptive in modern contexts which they could not envisage when first evolved. The only way to know for sure is to seek to change them and see what happens.