Strong reciprocity 22 Sep 2007 On Friday I assessed an essay by a masters student on the evolution of reciprocity and altruism (she cleverly introduced a notion of benevolent behaviour rather than “altruism” in social contexts, to avoid confusion with genetic altruism. Then today my various feeds identified this rather excellent essay (more of a review paper, really) on strong reciprocity (the idea that we humans will behave reciprocally even if there is no individual payoff) by Benoit Hardy-Valée, of the University of Toronto. In this paper, he challenges what he calls “The Collective”, a group of conservative Darwinian thinkers who attempt to found natural rights on biology. The paper is full of insights and links and references. I strongly recommend it. Evolution Politics Social evolution
Evolution PZ is a God Botherer 12 Oct 2009 Now I just knew PZ Myers was an accommodationist. But I didn’t know he went this far… [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Clm6nlWxzc&rel=0&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&feature=player_embedded&fs=1] [From Taking bad acting to new troughs [Pharyngula]] Read More
Ecology and Biodiversity Supernatural selection 2 6 May 20104 Oct 2017 Part one is here. Rossano divides naturalistic explanations of religion into five distinct types: (1) commitment theories, (2) cognitive theories, (3) ecological theories, (4) performance theories, and (5) experiential theories.I want to discuss this taxonomy. Read More
Epistemology Some of my recent talks 30 May 201222 Jun 2018 I just discovered SlideRocket, a Google app that displays slides, and so I thought I’d put up some of my talks. Here goes. I hope they work. This is a talk about whether God could create a world in which Darwinian accidents occur. It ended up as a paper in Zygon: This… Read More
The idea of strong reciprocity has a certain emotional appeal. It leaves us warm and comfortable that we humans are kind and just because… well, just because! No need to investigate further, nothing to see here. Case closed. We’re just nice, and that’s that. I agree with the author- it’s not that neat or simple.
Interesting paper! Speaking of evolving reciprocity, have you seen this recent study? (sorry this is just a popular account of it; I couldn’t find any linkable journal version). Apparently monkeys will protest if some get unequal pay for equal work. No word if they start singing the Internationale in Capuchin. Still, it shows that evolving concepts of fairness and justice, essential in any societal reciprocity, happened a lot longer ago than those who use our innate “goodness” as evidence for some special place for humanity in the scheme of things would allow.