Stanford seeks to explain why humans tend to externalize or objectivize moral obligations and other aspects of morality. His proposal is that externalization helped humans solve an adaptive challenge – namely, the challenge posed by a context in which cooperating flexibly, in a variety of circumstances, with potentially unknown partners, would be adaptive if one could avoid partnering with likely exploiters.
However, there are two distinct phenomena involved in what Stanford terms externalization, and it is worth distinguishing more explicitly what role each of these could have played in creating the conditions under which characteristically human cooperation evolved.
One phenomenon is the experience of moral demands as externally imposed. A weak version of this presents moral demands as independent of one's own desires or preferences. A stronger version presents moral demands as independent of the desires and preferences of any other agent, such as an authority or members of a social group. Sometimes this idea is discussed under the label of the conditionality or categoricity of moral principles (Southwood Reference Southwood2011); it is also related to the idea of response-independence (Nichols & Folds-Bennett Reference Nichols and Folds-Bennett2003). A second phenomenon is the tendency to generalize – to believe that any moral demand that applies to oneself also would apply to any other sufficiently similar agent in similar circumstances. Southwood (Reference Southwood2011) characterizes this idea as a matter of the scope of moral principles.
Conceptually, these two phenomena are separable. Agent-specific (non-generalized) moral demands can be experienced as externally imposed; generalized obligations (applicable to any agent in the relevant circumstances) can be experienced as authority-imposed. The distinction between these two phenomena appears in Tomasello's (Reference Tomasello2016) characterization of objectivity: He presents objectivity as involving a “three-way generality – agent, target, and standards” (pp. 102–103). Tomasello's standards generality corresponds to the idea of moral demands as externally imposed, and agent generality corresponds to the belief that an obligation applies to any agent in the relevant circumstances. (His third form of objectivity, target generality, involves a tendency to treat one's partners and members of one's community as equals; Stanford's account of the evolution of cooperation does not involve this form of objectivity, nor do I think it should.)
More needs to be said about the relationship between these two phenomena and the specific role that each could have played in helping produce correlated interactions among humans inclined to cooperate. Here I will suggest that neither tendency would be adequate on its own to sustain the necessary correlated interactions, but combined they could be adequate.
At first glance, it might appear as if the tendency to experience moral demands as externally imposed contributes to the evolution of cooperation in the following way: Having a reputation for experiencing moral demands as desire/preference independent makes one a more attractive partner, by making it less likely that one's perception of one's own obligations – on which a partnership relies – will shift. By itself, however, the tendency to experience one's own moral obligations as desire/preference independent is not enough to resolve the adaptive challenge, because it supplies no mechanism for ensuring selective cooperation: one remains vulnerable to exploitation. This part of the problem, then, must be addressed via the disposition to generalize moral demands: For example, if one believes one is obliged to share excess resources with others in need, then one believes others in similar circumstances are obliged to do the same. Presumably, the tendency to generalize obligations produces or comes with a preference for cooperation partners who believe themselves to be subject to the same obligations that one believes oneself to be subject to (and perhaps, more specifically, for cooperation partners who generalize the same obligations that one generalizes oneself). This sort of preference, it seems, is what would produce the correlated interactions that are necessary to explain the origins of characteristic human cooperation.
So, is the tendency to experience moral demands as desire/preference independent actually required for explaining cooperation – could cooperation have come about just via generalization and a resulting preference for partners who generalize the same obligations? I suggest that the tendency to experience obligations as externally imposed supplements the generalization tendency by stabilizing it.
Experiencing generalized obligations as externally imposed can preserve one's perception of obligations as generalized, and thus preserve both a preference for others who generalize their obligations and one's attractiveness to others who prefer partners that generalize their obligations. If one treats a generalized obligation as desire/preference independent, one experiences the obligation to be externally imposed both on oneself and on others in similar circumstances; one may also take the obligation's generality itself as an externally imposed feature. By contrast, imagine that one does not treat the generalized obligation as desire/preference independent – one experiences the generalized obligation to share excess resources with others in need as contingent on, for example, the changeable command of an authority. In such a case, one remains a risky partner for others: in the future, one may cease to believe that anyone has such an obligation, or one may come to de-generalize the obligation and believe that it does not apply to oneself. In addition, for different reasons, the instability of the generalization in such a case also poses a risk to oneself. Suppose the relevant authority de-generalizes the obligation to share excess resources – specifically, by suspending it for others but not for oneself. One would be made vulnerable to exploitation in the sense that one would lose one's preference for partnering with others who take themselves to have this obligation; one would lose one's mechanism for avoid exploitation by partner selection.
So, I propose that the tendency to experience obligations as desire/preference independent and the tendency to generalize obligations each play a distinct role in the explanation for characteristically human cooperation. The generalization tendency can bring about correlated interaction, via a preference to partner with those who generalize their obligations. However, the generalization tendency is not inherently stable. Experiencing generalized obligations as externally imposed can stabilize one's tendency to generalize those obligations, thereby reducing the risks of exploitation that arise if one's own or one's partner's experience of the obligation shifts away from generalization.
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Stanford seeks to explain why humans tend to externalize or objectivize moral obligations and other aspects of morality. His proposal is that externalization helped humans solve an adaptive challenge – namely, the challenge posed by a context in which cooperating flexibly, in a variety of circumstances, with potentially unknown partners, would be adaptive if one could avoid partnering with likely exploiters.
However, there are two distinct phenomena involved in what Stanford terms externalization, and it is worth distinguishing more explicitly what role each of these could have played in creating the conditions under which characteristically human cooperation evolved.
One phenomenon is the experience of moral demands as externally imposed. A weak version of this presents moral demands as independent of one's own desires or preferences. A stronger version presents moral demands as independent of the desires and preferences of any other agent, such as an authority or members of a social group. Sometimes this idea is discussed under the label of the conditionality or categoricity of moral principles (Southwood Reference Southwood2011); it is also related to the idea of response-independence (Nichols & Folds-Bennett Reference Nichols and Folds-Bennett2003). A second phenomenon is the tendency to generalize – to believe that any moral demand that applies to oneself also would apply to any other sufficiently similar agent in similar circumstances. Southwood (Reference Southwood2011) characterizes this idea as a matter of the scope of moral principles.
Conceptually, these two phenomena are separable. Agent-specific (non-generalized) moral demands can be experienced as externally imposed; generalized obligations (applicable to any agent in the relevant circumstances) can be experienced as authority-imposed. The distinction between these two phenomena appears in Tomasello's (Reference Tomasello2016) characterization of objectivity: He presents objectivity as involving a “three-way generality – agent, target, and standards” (pp. 102–103). Tomasello's standards generality corresponds to the idea of moral demands as externally imposed, and agent generality corresponds to the belief that an obligation applies to any agent in the relevant circumstances. (His third form of objectivity, target generality, involves a tendency to treat one's partners and members of one's community as equals; Stanford's account of the evolution of cooperation does not involve this form of objectivity, nor do I think it should.)
More needs to be said about the relationship between these two phenomena and the specific role that each could have played in helping produce correlated interactions among humans inclined to cooperate. Here I will suggest that neither tendency would be adequate on its own to sustain the necessary correlated interactions, but combined they could be adequate.
At first glance, it might appear as if the tendency to experience moral demands as externally imposed contributes to the evolution of cooperation in the following way: Having a reputation for experiencing moral demands as desire/preference independent makes one a more attractive partner, by making it less likely that one's perception of one's own obligations – on which a partnership relies – will shift. By itself, however, the tendency to experience one's own moral obligations as desire/preference independent is not enough to resolve the adaptive challenge, because it supplies no mechanism for ensuring selective cooperation: one remains vulnerable to exploitation. This part of the problem, then, must be addressed via the disposition to generalize moral demands: For example, if one believes one is obliged to share excess resources with others in need, then one believes others in similar circumstances are obliged to do the same. Presumably, the tendency to generalize obligations produces or comes with a preference for cooperation partners who believe themselves to be subject to the same obligations that one believes oneself to be subject to (and perhaps, more specifically, for cooperation partners who generalize the same obligations that one generalizes oneself). This sort of preference, it seems, is what would produce the correlated interactions that are necessary to explain the origins of characteristic human cooperation.
So, is the tendency to experience moral demands as desire/preference independent actually required for explaining cooperation – could cooperation have come about just via generalization and a resulting preference for partners who generalize the same obligations? I suggest that the tendency to experience obligations as externally imposed supplements the generalization tendency by stabilizing it.
Experiencing generalized obligations as externally imposed can preserve one's perception of obligations as generalized, and thus preserve both a preference for others who generalize their obligations and one's attractiveness to others who prefer partners that generalize their obligations. If one treats a generalized obligation as desire/preference independent, one experiences the obligation to be externally imposed both on oneself and on others in similar circumstances; one may also take the obligation's generality itself as an externally imposed feature. By contrast, imagine that one does not treat the generalized obligation as desire/preference independent – one experiences the generalized obligation to share excess resources with others in need as contingent on, for example, the changeable command of an authority. In such a case, one remains a risky partner for others: in the future, one may cease to believe that anyone has such an obligation, or one may come to de-generalize the obligation and believe that it does not apply to oneself. In addition, for different reasons, the instability of the generalization in such a case also poses a risk to oneself. Suppose the relevant authority de-generalizes the obligation to share excess resources – specifically, by suspending it for others but not for oneself. One would be made vulnerable to exploitation in the sense that one would lose one's preference for partnering with others who take themselves to have this obligation; one would lose one's mechanism for avoid exploitation by partner selection.
So, I propose that the tendency to experience obligations as desire/preference independent and the tendency to generalize obligations each play a distinct role in the explanation for characteristically human cooperation. The generalization tendency can bring about correlated interaction, via a preference to partner with those who generalize their obligations. However, the generalization tendency is not inherently stable. Experiencing generalized obligations as externally imposed can stabilize one's tendency to generalize those obligations, thereby reducing the risks of exploitation that arise if one's own or one's partner's experience of the obligation shifts away from generalization.