Reaction to Gebhard Geiger's "Evolutionary Anthropology and the Non-Cognitive Foundation of Moral Validity"

A reaction to a paper that came my way. I am working my way through a to-do list of them.

Abstract: This paper makes an attempt at the conceptual foundation of descriptive ethical theories in terms of evolutionary anthropology. It suggests, first, that what human social actors tend to accept to be morally valid and legitimate ultimately rests upon empirical authority relations and, second, that this acceptance follows an evolved pattern of hierarchical behaviour control in the social animal species. The analysis starts with a brief review of Thomas Hobbes' moral philosophy, with special emphasis on Hobbes' “authoritarian” view of moral validity and of the common political origins and ultimate basis of legitimacy of moral and legal systems. Hobbes' philosophical conceptions are then put into the context of Max Weber's influential empirical theory of legitimacy, especially charismatic revelation and authority as the ultimate source of all moral, legal and religious obligations. Weber's concept of charismatic authority is given a biobehavioural interpretation in terms of ritualised status signals indicating an individual's superior physical and emotional dispositions to control the social actions of others. Various conclusions are drawn concerning the concept of moral validity and its possible evolutionary interpretations.

So this is from 1993. I was in my late twenties. Never read any of this stuff back then.

This is before primatologists and paleo-anthropologists came up with the idea of the Egalitarian Revolution of the Paleolithic among Homo species. (My reading of that theory here.)

In the light of that thesis, any attempt to find, or found, or forge, a human nature as hierarchical is somewhat fraught, despite the recidivist evidence from more recent societies which follow agricultural and nomadic expansions out and over the more negotiated worlding of what can be described as the [hunter|gather] compact among Homo species over the long ages of big history. Hierarchical stratified societies are a throw-back, complexity does not lead to progress or apotheosis.

Finding such a nature for morality, as base or explanation, by way of derived stable attractors (subsequent outcomes of processes arisen in the paleolithic) which Hobbes and Weber describe, and ascribe matters to, seems to me a little cute, if not dangerous (c.f. primate embodiment). (I do not deny the possibility of the pathways to meliorisation of primate display, but it seems rather calciferous to discuss it centrally.)

So now I’ll jump to the conclusions to see where we jumped to.

They thus assign a markedly utilitarian connotation to the concept of moral commitment, insinuating that human social actors feel obliged to do what is "good" in fitness terms. […] including manifestations of relentless egoism and competitiveness (Alexander, 1987; Vogel, 1989; Geiger, 1992). Second, many important adaptive patterns of co-operation in the social animal species are ritualistically reinforced rather than moral-analogous in the substantive sense of morality.[page 147]

Yeah well, yes, narcissists and psychopaths don’t do this obliged empathy thing (relentlessly ego-ed).

We feel they should though, thus we world it. Hobbes is one way, describing how we should as we should (goodness/shouldness division). Weber’s charismatic focus put the workload onto the school principle or their ilk, but this presupposes an institution of some sort. I think we were doing it before we had institutions (the “remoteness” is a colonised sense of the world when it removed from us and our local agency I guess: to the sacred or imperial or courtly or just pomposity generally.)

In cultural history, moral norms and customs apparently retain the ritualistically induced subjective belief in one's duty to much higher degrees than even primitive legal systems tend to do (Weber, 1972, p. 19; Service, 1975). page 147

Usual use of ritual when practice or making-do or making-special would be a better bet. The removal of activity and practice (let alone reflective agency) is a constant in thesis-lead discourses and analysis. Where we seek gnosis and understanding we remove people’s lives from the life, work and play, in the name of a general explanation. General understanding would work better if we included those removes.

Curiously here, we remove them at the behest of the worlding urge itself, especially where we double-down on coherence or consistency, thus removing the coherence with life/lives, where we try to understand the world and we end up ignoring it in the name of knowledge. (A new type of sacred/ritual/prayer).

So Weber, charisma just floats around by itself does it, directing humans the way Bruno Snell reckons the pre-Homeric Greek culturally regarded the Gods directed every move we make, without exception, and the best we could do about it was to pray.

Weber’s examples, as with Hobbes, are too derived to be useful in originary explorations of Evolutionary Anthropology, but can be interesting closer in time to their exemplars. Perhaps these examples can be used in a taphonomy or genealogy of such complexes of practice and their contexts where we are cognisant of the worlding we do even as we seek mechanical certainty (even if only for ritual purposes).

Geiger, Gebhard. “Evolutionary Anthropology and the Non-Cognitive Foundation of Moral Validity.” Biology and Philosophy Vol. 8, no. 2. 1993 doi.org

Holmes, Brooke. “On Bruno Snell, The Discovery of the Mind (Undead Texts).” Public Culture (2020): via academia.edu. Web.

Snell, B. The Discovery of the Mind in Greek Philosophy and Literature. New York: Dover, 1953.

A list of reactions to other evolution~morality papers and chapters and stuff can be found at Reactions to papers on evolution~morality.