Evolutionary metaethics

 

 

Metaethics is defined as the study of the nature and structure of morality, its form as opposed to its content.  This article is informed by The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy – “Metaethics”; and The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy – “Metaethics”.  

 

 

In this article we will attempt to answer these questions from the perspective of evolutionary theory and anthropological science.  The main difference with this approach is that it is both top-down (theory) and bottom-up (data), while traditional metaethics seems to be top-down only, with moral content hardly mentioned.  In evolutionary metaethics, the content dictates the form and causative structure of morality, as we would expect if evolutionary ethics is a branch of biology.  As with biology, morality has an everyday level that we all experience, a “meta” level of human understanding (philosophy or science), and a genetic or evolutionary level.  

 

Evolutionary model of morality

 

Life begins when molecules start making copies of themselves. These “replicators” are “selfish” in the technical sense that they promote their own replication (Dawkins … [1976]).  

Curry, Mullins, and Whitehouse (2019:2) – “Is It Good to Cooperate? – Testing the Theory of Morality-as-Cooperation in 60 Societies”

 

Living systems actively sustain and renew themselves despite the natural tendency toward decay, a process sometimes termed autopoiesis in the literature … . Recent research has investigated this concept within broader frameworks of cognition and adaptive behavior … . Central to this research is the idea that living systems are agents that possess intrinsic goals … , such as viability (maintenance of the living state), growth, and replication. In fact, the presence of goals that are intrinsic, rather than externally assigned, distinguish organisms from most nonliving systems considered in the natural sciences … .

Bartlett et al. (2025:1) – “Physics of Life: Exploring Information as a Distinctive Feature of Living Systems” (references in original)

 

The fundamental premises in this version of evolutionary ethics are that:

Normativity is the pressure to achieve goals.  The reason that benefit is normative – that there is normative pressure to achieve benefits – is that natural selection selects for organisms that “try” to achieve their own evolutionary fitness goals, as behaviour that promotes my proximate well being, survival, and reproduction can be eventually “cashed out” as reproductive success.  Evolutionary fitness means being able to thrive, survive and/or reproduce.  Fitness benefits can be proximate (jointly: utilitarian morality), reproductive (jointly: reproductive morality), or genetic (family morality).  Benefit, or an increase in well being, can also be categorised as biological, psychological, social, and moral.  

Moving towards the achievement of a goal produces pleasure.  Utilitarian goals are a subset of pleasure goals.  Fitness goals are a subset of utilitarian goals.  Some utilitarian goals are maladaptive anti-fitness goals (e.g., recreational drugs), instead of adaptive fitness goals (e.g., working for a living).  

Humans are required to share and cooperate with each other, since we live in a harsh and risky foraging niche to which we are physically not well adapted – we are not very strong, and don’t have horns, claws, or big canines, for example.  Our adaptations are all towards surviving on the savannah – upright walking, endurance running, cooperation and sharing, etc.  

If you and I are working together, and we both benefit from this, then I don’t mind helping you, as it helps me.  This is in the nature of collaboration for mutual benefit.  Morality is the collaboration to regulate collaboration (Tomasello, 2019a); moral norms are formulaic ideals of sharing and collaborative behaviour, squarely aimed at mutual benefit.  One-way helping, altruism, counts as “restoring or maintaining” mutual benefit.  According to Curry, Mullins, and Whitehouse (2019), moral norms are solutions to recurrent problems in collaboration for mutual benefit, such as how to exchange like for like (reciprocity), how to divide the rewards of a collaboration on an equal basis (fairness, distributive justice), and avoiding conflict (for mutual benefit).  

 

Moral norms, moral facts, legitimacy, and is/ought

In this account, moral norms exist as ideals, like morally perfect Platonic formulae of behaviour, aimed at mutual benefit.  Mutual benefit is the goal; moral norms are the methods of achieving it.

Their factual status is abstract schema of real behaviour.  They are impartial, mind-independent ideal standards by which to (factually) measure morally relevant behaviour.  

Because the goal of moral norms (mutual benefit) is psychologically legitimate, and a moral norm is a proven, successful method of achieving this goal, then each norm is correct according to itself, in that it really is a method of achieving mutual benefit.  Fairness is correct according to fairness; real behaviour is measured against this impartial, mind-independent ideal, to see how fair it is.  Patriarchy is correct according to patriarchy, but wrong according to utilitarian mutual benefit (including fairness and compassion), since its joint goal of reproduction is achieved to the benefit of men at women’s expense.  

A norm justifies itself, but I will not uphold a norm that I do not endorse.  If I endorse it, then subjectively, to me, the moral agent, it is legitimate.  Hence, a moral norm requires my endorsement for its shouldness to be “activated”, and made legitimate in my mind.  

Michael Tomasello (2016) proposes that when you and I agree to collaborate, this forms a united “we”, with united goals, a joint agent that then legitimately regulates you and I in the direction of our joint goals.  He calls this the dual-level psychology of collaboration: level 1) you and I; and level 2) “us”.  Thus, regulation is on behalf of “us”, and is intrapersonal (I govern myself), interpersonal (you and I govern each other), and collective (the group governs you and I).  The regulation is joint and legitimate because it comes from “us”.   

Being moral entails more than just upholding moral norms.  It requires a whole orientation of the person, in the direction of being an ideal collaborative partner, which itself requires upholding moral and instrumental standards.  This entails things like my supporting my partner when he is having difficulty; or my staying faithful to the collaboration in the face of more interesting temptations; or my not telling tales on my partner out of loyalty.  

Moral norms are thereby descriptive facts that give rise to shouldness, normative pressure, for human beings.  We are saying, descriptive fact A exists (“N is a norm”), therefore you should X (“uphold N”).  Does this violate the is/ought divide?  

Norm N is the method of achieving mutual benefit goal G, and if I want to achieve goal G, then I should conform to N.  

 

  1. norm N is the method of achieving mutual benefit goal G;
  2. I want to achieve G   (because benefit is normative);

 

This is therefore a conditional ought whose conclusion does not violate the is/ought divide, since there is a goal (“value”) in the premises.  

 

Value and goodness

Something is instrumentally good if it has instrumental value: i.e., if it promotes my own thriving, surviving and/or reproduction.  

Something is morally good if it has moral value: i.e., if it promotes “our” mutual thriving, surviving, and/or reproduction.  A moral value is a moral norm.  So, for example, it is morally good to uphold a moral value such as fairness, because this promotes mutual well being.  

According to Crisp (2006), welfare is the highest good, presumably because, for the individual, nothing is possible without this.  

 

Rightness of action and rightness of goal

It is morally right (according to the definition of morality as the regulation of collaboration) to be an ideal collaborative partner and to uphold moral norms.  But to what end?  The goal has to be ethical too in order to count as being an ethical action.  In other words, the goal also has to be mutual benefit, and not at someone’s expense.  An example is the Nazis, who were great cooperators, but had unethical ends.  

 

Why morality-as-cooperation?

 

Evolution has equipped humans with a range of biological—including psychological—adaptations for cooperation. These adaptations can be seen as natural selection’s attempts to solve the problems of cooperation. …

Which problems of cooperation do humans face? And how are they solved? Evolutionary biology and game theory tell us that there is not just one problem of cooperation but many, with many different solutions … . Hence morality-as-cooperation predicts that there will be many different types of morality. Below we review seven well-established types of cooperation: (1) the allocation of resources to kin; (2) coordination to mutual advantage; (3) social exchange; and conflict resolution through contests featuring (4) hawkish displays of dominance and (5) dovish displays of submission; (6) division of disputed resources; and (7) recognition of possession.

… we show how each type of cooperation explains a corresponding type of morality: (1) family values, (2) group loyalty, (3) reciprocity, (4) bravery, (5) respect, (6) fairness, and (7) property rights.

Oliver Scott Curry, Daniel Austin Mullins, and Harvey Whitehouse (2019) – “Is It Good to Cooperate? – Testing the Theory of Morality-as-Cooperation in 60 Societies” (references in original)

 

It is not intuitively obvious that morality exists within a human social framework of collaboration and sharing.  If it was, philosophers would have worked it out a long time ago.  However, we may note that almost everyone lives embedded within multiple communities, groups, teams, partnerships, etc., and these are collaborative “foraging parties writ large” (Tomasello, 2016).  

Moral theory only makes sense within a framework of collaboration and sharing.  The present moral theory matches reality closely, and it is based on these things.  

Altruism outside the family is unsustainable without communal cooperation and sharing, yet we see non-kin altruism all the time.  It is unsustainable for me to keep giving without something being given back to me in return.  Altruism within the family is sustainable because family relatives carry copies of my own genes, so that helping them is helping my own genes (Dawkins, 1976).  

The strongest evidence for the link between collaboration and morality comes from the experiments of Michael Tomasello and his team at the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig, Germany, comparing the behaviour of chimpanzees (the closest living relatives of Homo sapiens along with bonobos), and young human children, with respect to morality and collaboration.

Many social species of non-human animals possess elements of morality in their behaviour: empathy and perspective taking, helping in response to need, long-term “buddy” reciprocity, sharing, and cooperative breeding (Bekoff and Pierce, 2009; Hrdy, 2009).  Humans have all these, together with the only (known) instance among species of a “fully fledged” cooperative morality of fairness, social norms, and joint self-regulation.

The crucial points are that: 1) young children perform this moral behaviour where chimpanzees do not, and then 2), they perform it mainly in a cooperative context and not outside it.  Chimpanzees only very little put their heads together to cooperate, if at all.  They have no need to cooperate to find their food of ripe fruit.  Their social structure of dominance prevents the development of cooperation – a dominant will not share with a subordinate, so there is no reward for a collaborative partner.  Humans, by contrast, have been egalitarian (we believe) from 4-6 million years ago, and so were always ready to cooperate and share the benefits freely with a band of fellows.  

 

If an ape has food resources in its possession, it very seldom gives up any of them to anyone else – and certainly not for no reason. Young children are a bit more generous, but not much; on average, in dictator games where they are free to share what they will, 3-year-olds across cultures offer peers about one in four items in their possession … . But when the resources to be divided are the fruits of a collaborative effort, we see a very different pattern. When chimpanzees pull in a board together with food clumped in the middle, typically the dominant individual simply takes it all, and collaboration breaks down over trials … . In contrast, human 3-year-olds in the same situation divide the spoils more or less equally on more or less every trial, and they can continue to collaborate in this manner indefinitely … . Most dramatically, when 3-year-old peers collaborate to pull in resources and, by “luck,” one of them ends up with more than the other, the unlucky child often verbally notes the inequity (e.g., “I only have one”), and the lucky child often (about three quarters of the time) hands over the extras so as to equalize the rewards among partners … . They almost never do this in a control condition with no collaboration, suggesting that the sense of shared agency in producing the rewards is crucial. In contrast, chimpanzees, in a study designed to be as similar as possible to this one, shared rewards (i.e., allowed the partner to take them) equally often inside and outside the context of a collaboration, presumably because they have no sense of shared agency in producing the spoils. In a related set of studies, children who received all of the rewards from pulling in a board with sweets on it shared those sweets more often with a collaborative partner than with a peer who was simply nearby (i.e., was a free rider to the spoils; … ). Chimpanzees in the same experimental situation shared equally infrequently with partners and free riders alike … .

Michael Tomasello (2019b:5) – “The moral psychology of obligation” (references in original)

 

Finally, we demonstrate pathways by which a collaborative life can give rise to a regulatory morality of altruism, respect and fairness.  The morality of sharing interacts with and complements this.  

 

Pluralism, universality, and non-WEIRD morality

A moral judgement of action A is made according to a particular norm N.  This judgement is factual: A has factually performed better or worse according to impartial standard N.  This means that there is one factual judgement for each norm N1, N2, N3, … to which A is relevant.  This is moral pluralism: a plurality of norms and potential judgements come into play at any one time.  

Collections of moral norms, all with the same joint mutual-fitness goal, are called moral domains (Perry, 2025).  There are five evolved moral domains and a stand-alone incest taboo:

  1. collaborative foraging for proximate mutual benefit;
  2. parenting;
  3. pair-bonding;
  4. patriarchy;
  5. family genetic fitness.  

Moral behaviours are solutions to recurring problems in cooperation (Curry, Mullins, and Whitehouse, 2019).  It is assumed that in every culture, people want proximate mutual benefit; they parent; they pair-bond; they are patriarchal (in almost every culture); and they have families.  Hence, we propose that moral domains, at least, are universal to the human race.  

There are some variations:

According to this version of evolutionary ethics, the main differences in morality between Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich, Democratic cultures, and non-WEIRD ones, all stem from the size and complexity of the family/tribal group to which the individual belongs (Henrich, 2020).  In WEIRD countries, the unit of society is the nuclear family, and individuals are, socially, relatively atomistic and disconnected from others.  In non-WEIRD cultures, the individual is embedded within a large family/tribal group, and their identity consists of many different selves, one for each social role with its particular obligations.  In WEIRD cultures, the governing joint agent can be ad-hoc and flexible in form, created as and when required.  In non-WEIRD cultures, the governing joint agent is always the individual’s extended family/tribal group, and her loyalty is to this joint agent only.  WEIRD and non-WEIRD exist on a spectrum, and both may exist within the same country.  In WEIRD cultures, partner choice is relatively free and unfettered, while in non-WEIRD cultures, collaborative partners are chosen from and retained within the family/tribal group, and partner control is relatively intense.  WEIRD cultures emphasise (individual) accountability and guilt, while non-WEIRD cultures emphasise (collective) accountability and shame.  

 

How do humans develop morality as they grow up?  

 

The Cooperation Theory of moral development starts from the premise that morality is a special form of cooperation. Before 3 years of age, children help and share with others prosocially, and they collaborate with others in ways that foster a sense of equally deserving partners. But then, at around the age of 3, their social interactions are transformed by an emerging understanding of, and respect for, normative standards. Three year-olds become capable of making and respecting joint commitments, treating collaborative partners fairly, enforcing social norms, and feeling guilty when they violate any of these. The almost simultaneous emergence of a normative attitude in all of these interactional contexts demands explanation. We suggest a transactional causal model: the maturation of capacities for shared intentionality (adaptations for cultural life) makes possible new forms of cooperative social interaction, and these new forms of cooperative social interaction foster and guide moral development. …

Following Tomasello and Vaish [2013], I assume two ontogenetic steps in children’s early moral development (modeled on Tomasello, Melis, Tennie, & Herrmann [2012], two steps in the evolution of human cooperation): second-personal and norm-based. The focus here is on the transition between these steps at around 3 years of age. Arguably, this is the key transition in early moral development, because it is the point at which children’s prosocial behavior and cooperative interactions take a normative turn, from what the child wants to do and wants others to do to what she and others ought, should, or must do.

Michael Tomasello (2018:248…249) – “The Normative Turn in Early Moral Development”

 

Based on empirical science, Tomasello’s (2018, 2019a, 2019b) proposal is that, like the (proposed) history of human morality itself, and consistent with a framework of helping, sharing, and cooperation, young children’s moral development first consists of a simple interpersonal morality of helping and sharing.  Around the age of three, children begin to learn the skills of joint thinking and intentionality that will allow them to cooperate with others in an organised and normative way, and this is when they first become susceptible to their society’s social norms.  After they have learned to cooperate, then the requirements of cooperation itself teach children the need to be normatively moral: to be an ideal collaborative partner, to uphold and enforce norms, to be fair, to feel guilty, etc.  

Is moral development a matter of nature or nurture?  Both.  According to Tomasello (2018), socially interacting with other people informs the maturation of the growing child’s innate, ontologically developing moral capacities.  

 

The evidence we have presented suggests that, in ontogeny, the adaptation for objective and normative thinking emerges at around 3 years of age. This does not mean that [moral] normativity is “innate” as some developmentalists might have it. What we have previously called simplistic nativism – where the goal is simply to claim “it’s innate” and be done with it – is antithetical to an evolutionary approach. Biological adaptations always come into being in an individual through ontogenetic processes. A given ontogenetic pathway may be more plastic and open, or more fixed and closed, to individual experience. For example, all songbirds are biologically adapted for singing their species-typical song. But some species learn it from their parents (chicks raised in isolation do not sing as adults), whereas others clearly do not (chicks raised in isolation sing away as adults). The fact that something is a biological adaptation tells us precisely nothing about the relative plasticity and openness to experience of the ontogenetic pathway by which it comes into being.

And so developmental pathways with a strong maturational component can at the same time involve much individual learning and experience. Of special importance in the current context, many of children’s most complex competencies come into being as they interact with other people, and indeed such interactions are necessary for normal development. We thus advocate a transactional model of causality [Sameroff, 2009]. Maturational factors within the individual organism determine the kind of experiences it can have.

Michael Tomasello (2018:259) – “The Normative Turn in Early Moral Development”

 

Shouldness, obligation, motivation, regulation

Every norm possesses a “should”: mutual benefit is normative, so the methods of achieving it are also normative.  The question is whether I endorse those methods.  So, patriarchy is aimed at reproduction, but in a way that only benefits men, so I (for one) do not endorse it.  

To be an ideal collaborative partner is also normative, because mutual benefit is normative, and collaboration is a method of achieving it.  If you and I have made an agreement to collaborate, then we have also agreed to be ideal collaborative partners.  This applies whether the agreement is explicit, or implicit such as with the social contract.    

Motivation to uphold moral norms therefore comes in two parts:

  1. the normative pressure of mutual benefit;
  2. obligation, or endorsement of the methods used to achieve it.  

Obligation is a “must”: I must uphold this norm and I must be an ideal collaborative partner.  We are forced to do things for instrumental reasons; for considerations of welfare (Crisp, 2006).  Some common sources of obligation are:

The moral reason for being moral is that I uphold moral norms or behave as an ideal collaborative partner because I endorse these for their own sakes.  This could be because I like the results of mutual benefit and/or that I endorse a method of achieving it.  I am an ideal collaborative partner for “us” (i.e., you and I), the joint agent.  

There is a third reason for being moral – compassion – an evolved compulsion to help (or care) when we see someone in need (or vulnerable).  Even a psychopath, who is unemotional, can possess this compulsion (Walker, 2021), which shows that, for helping behaviour, there is an evolved emotional component of empathic concern based on sympathetically feeling someone’s pain, and an independent behavioural component based on appreciation of need.  

The reason for altruism itself is dependence: if I depend on you, then I need you to be in good shape, so I have concern for and help you when in need (Tomasello, 2016).  Humans became tightly interdependent, first, historically, because of sharing, then later, collaboration.  Humans also preferentially help their family relatives, because I depend on my family relatives to help me propagate copies of my own genes (Dawkins, 1976).  Thus, it makes sense for there to be en evolved behavioural and an evolved emotional component to altruism.  

We identify three kinds of moral motivation:

Regulation of our collaboration emanates from “us”, the joint agent (Tomasello, 2016), on behalf of our joint goals, and is expressed as normative pressure, intrapersonally (I govern myself) and interpersonally (you and I govern each other).  

 

References

Bartlett, Stuart; Andrew W Eckford; Matthew Egbert; Manasvi Lingam; Artemy Kolchinsky; Adam Frank; and Gourab Ghoshal (2025) – “Physics of Life: Exploring Information as a Distinctive Feature of Living Systems”; PRX Life 3, 037003; https://doi.org/10.1103/rsx4-8x5f

Bekoff, Marc; and Jessica Pierce (2009) – “Wild Justice – The Moral Lives of Animals”; The University of Chicago Press, Chicago

Crisp, Roger (2006) – “Reasons and the Good”; Oxford University Press  

Curry, Oliver Scott; Daniel Austin Mullins; and Harvey Whitehouse (2019) – “Is It Good to Cooperate? – Testing the Theory of Morality-as-Cooperation in 60 Societies”; Current Anthropology, Volume 60, Number 1, February 2019; https://doi.org/10.1086/701478

Dawkins, Richard (1976) – “The Selfish Gene”; Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK

Henrich, Joseph (2020) – “The Weirdest People in the World – How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous”; Penguin Books

Hrdy, Sarah Blaffer (2009) – “Mothers and Others – the evolutionary origins of mutual understanding”; Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA

Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy – “Metaethics”; retrieved December 2025;  https://iep.utm.edu/metaethi/

Perry, Simon (2025) – “Understanding morality and ethics (2nd edition)” https://orangebud.co.uk/web_book_2.html

Sameroff, A (2009) – “The transactional model”; In A. Sameroff (Ed.), “The transactional model of development: How children and contexts shape each other” (pp. 3–21). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association; https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/11877-001

Schäfer, Marie; Daniel B M Haun; and Michael Tomasello (2015) – “Fair is not fair everywhere”; Psychological Science, Vol 26(8), 1252–1260; https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797615586188

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy – “Metaethics”; retrieved December 2025;  https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/metaethics/

Tomasello, Michael (2016) – “A Natural History of Human Morality”; Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA

Tomasello, Michael (2018) – “The Normative Turn in Early Moral Development”; Human Development 2018;61:248–263; https://doi.org/10.1159/000492802

Tomasello, Michael (2019a) – “Becoming Human – a theory of ontogeny”; Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA

Tomasello, Michael (2019b) – “The moral psychology of obligation”; Behavioral and Brain Sciences 43, e56: 1-58

Tomasello, M, Melis, A, Tennie, C, and Herrmann, E (2012) – “Two key steps in the evolution of human cooperation: The interdependence hypothesis”; Current Anthropology, 56, 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1086/668207

Tomasello, M, & Vaish, A (2013) – “Origins of human cooperation and morality”; Annual Review of Psychology, 64, 231–255. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-113011-143812

Walker, Athena (2021) – “Would a psychopath help out a person in need? If so, what would be your motivation considering empathy is not in play? For example, if you saw a lady fall unconscious in the sun.”; 16 May 2021; https://www.quora.com/Would-a-psychopath-help-out-a-person-in-need-If-so-what-would-be-your-motivation-considering-empathy-is-not-in-play-For-example-if-you-saw-a-lady-fall-unconscious-in-the-sun/answer/Athena-Walker