Normative self-government

This article is a response to questions raised in Christine M Korsgaard’s “Reflections on the evolution of morality” (2010), such as: how did normative self-government arise in humans? Why do we follow a moral norm for its own sake? Why are we motivated to self-govern in the direction of morality? What is the “good” towards which we are governed? or put another way, why are norms normative?

Humans govern themselves and each other in order to achieve mutually beneficial fitness goals through cooperation and sharing.

… the problem is that it is unclear how [evolutionary origin stories] can explain the emergence of what I call “normative self-government”: the capacity to be motivated to do something by the thought that you ought to do it.

Christine M Korsgaard (2010:2) – “Reflections on the evolution of morality”

I think that that, the human capacity for normative self-government, and not just good social behavior, is the thing whose evolution needs to be explained. Of course, everyone involved in these discussions grants that morality is not merely a tendency to good social behavior. If altruistic and cooperative behavior were the essence of morality, the ants and bees would be our moral heroes, and no one supposes that they are. And everyone also agrees that what these thinkers call “human morality” plainly involves something over and above altruistic or cooperative dispositions: some cognitive element such as the ability to follow explicit rules, or the self-conscious use of moral concepts, or the related capacity to make and be motivated by moral judgments.

Christine M Korsgaard (2010:6) – “Reflections on the evolution of morality”

The essence of morality is the regulation of cooperation (Tomasello, 2019) and of sharing (Perry, 2026).

Normative self-government comes in two parts:

self-monitoring, self-evaluation, personal moral identity (Tomasello, 2016);
motivation to follow moral norms (conscience) (Dill and Darwall, 2014).

Moral regulation or government within a cooperative unit is intrapersonal, interpersonal and joint/collective in origin.

Cooperative monitoring, evaluation, and identity

Collaboration with others is risky for the individual, since most people are not ideal collaborative partners all the time, and so, need to be managed, encouraged or cajoled into staying faithful to the ideals of the collaboration (partner control).

Hence, partners need to be monitored and evaluated for the quality of their cooperation. The monitoring provides the information for their public evaluation, their reputation or public moral identity.

Through cooperative self-other equivalence (fixed roles with interchangeable personnel), the individual internalises the ubiquitous monitoring and evaluation of partners as self-monitoring and self-evaluation. The results of this self-monitoring and self-evaluation form the individual’s personal cooperative identity – the individual’s view of herself as a moral being. Humans are motivated to see themselves in a good light (Kaufman, 2018).

This explains why partners want to control or govern other partners, and by equivalence, themselves.

Moral motivation

Moral norms do not bind themselves (Crisp, 2006); instead, they require some external source of binding force.

There are three classes of reasons why we do moral things:

because we have to (obligation);
because we want to (volition);
because we care (compassion).

When circumstances force me to behave morally out of considerations of my welfare and interests, this is moral obligation. Of the three motivations, obligation is the one in which the agent does not have a choice.

Compassion is a binding force in morality. We often find ourselves unable to turn away when a real-life person needs our help.

Moral volition

This is when I follow norm N because I want to – because I endorse it. In the goals-methods model of morality (Perry, 2026), moral values are methods of achieving mutual fitness benefits.

What is there about a method of achieving mutual fitness benefits that I could endorse, whether consciously or instinctively?

But a normatively self-governed being is one who is motivated to avoid wrongful conduct because it is wrong; the motivation must be produced by the wrongness itself, not merely attached to it, even if it is non-accidentally attached to it. The reasons why actions are right or wrong must be the reasons why we do or avoid them. So it looks as if nothing short of what Kant called “pure practical reason” can possibly do the job.

… My point is rather that whatever it is that makes some actions required and some wrong must also be the source of our motivation for doing and avoiding them accordingly. And what makes some actions required or wrong is not merely their content: that they are altruistic, or cooperative, or sociable, or whatever, but rather whatever it is that confers normativity on that content, whatever it is that makes it right to act cooperatively or altruistically or whatever.

… But the more general point is that whatever confers a normative status on our actions – whatever makes them right or wrong – must also be what motivates us to do or avoid them accordingly, without any intervening mechanism. This may seem to imply that we cannot explain the evolution of morality until we have the correct moral theory – until we know what it is that actually makes our actions right or wrong. Among other things, that would mean giving up any hope that thinking about the evolution of morality could throw any light on morality itself. But I do not take the implication of what I have just been arguing to be quite that strong. Rather, I take the implication to be that no account of the evolution of morality can be complete unless it includes an account of why we assign normative properties – rightness or wrongness – to our actions in the first place: that is, to say, of why we think of our actions as the sort of thing that must be morally or rationally justified. And for this we need to know what the problem is to which justification, or the assignment of a normative status, is a response. For an animal who is motivated to do or avoid certain actions depending on whether or not they can be morally justified must see himself as faced with the problem of justifying his actions in the first place, and must be motivated to do what he judges to be right by the fact that it solves that problem.

Christine M Korsgaard (2010:15…16) – “Reflections on the evolution of morality”

Normativity and the good

Normativity is defined as the pressure to achieve goals.

We may observe at least three main kinds of normativity:

1. instrumental;

2. cooperative-moral;

3. competitive.

Biological or instrumental normativity is the pressure for "me" to achieve "my" goals of personal benefit.

Cooperative normativity is the pressure for "us" to achieve "our" goals of mutual benefit, and this pressure is regulated by morality.

Competitive normativity is the pressure for "me" to achieve "my" goals of personal benefit at "your" expense.

Cooperative and competitive normativities are simply the individual achievement of instrumental goals, socially: for the individual, acting together with, or against, other people. Hence, when you and I collaborate to achieve goals of mutual benefit, each of us is aiming to achieve our own instrumental goals, maximally, albeit in a fair and impartial way.

The claim is that instrumental normativity corresponds to Kant’s “pure practical reason” in Korsgaard’s account.

Instrumental or biological normativity evolved as an overwhelming drive towards which the entire organism is oriented, because natural selection favours those individuals that seek to maximise their own fitness benefits. This would have been a “runaway” evolutionary feedback loop. Instrumental normativity translates as the pressure to do the things that will allow the individual to thrive, survive, and/or reproduce: the pressure to achieve fitness goals.

Consequently, “the good” (instrumentally) is defined as that which promotes “my” thriving, surviving and/or reproduction. The “moral good” is defined as that which promotes “our” mutual thriving, surviving, and/or reproduction. Competitive good, competitive utility, is that which promotes “my” fitness at “your” expense.

Why endorse norms?

I endorse a moral norm N because:

it is a legitimate method of achieving mutual fitness benefits; and/or
my culture endorses it, and I endorse my culture.

Legitimacy of method, goodness of goal

I endorse norm N because it is a legitimate method of achieving, restoring or maintaining mutual fitness benefit. Fitness benefit is an instrumentally normative good, the goal, the thing we evolved to want; and mutual benefit is a morally good goal.

I endorse the method associated with norm N because I see the method as legitimate – it’s OK to do. Hence, norm N represents an acceptable method of achieving a good goal, and so, I endorse it as a general course of action.

This means, of course, that legitimacy can change according to context. I may consider it legitimate to steal to feed my starving family, when otherwise I would never countenance theft.

The claim is that my knowledge of norm N’s mutual fitness goals is either explicitly and consciously known, or instinctive and unconscious. I know intellectually that it will lead to mutual benefit, or I have evolved to instinctively act, think, and feel in such a way as to promote the achievement of “our” mutual fitness benefits.

Cultural membership and expectations

I am a member of my culture, and since I was born into it and have participated in it all my life, I consider myself a co-author of it. Therefore, I endorse my culture. If my culture endorses a moral norm, then it means that all rational, morally correct people (i.e., “us”) should follow it, and so I endorse it too (Tomasello, 2016).

References

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

Dill, Brendan; and Stephen Darwall (2014) – “Moral Psychology as Accountability”; in Justin D’Arms & Daniel Jacobson (eds.), “Moral Psychology and Human Agency: Philosophical Essays on the Science of Ethics” (pp. 40-83). Oxford University Press

Kaufman, Scott Barry (2018) – “The Pressing Need for Everyone to Quiet Their Egos – Why quieting the ego strengthens your best self”; Scientific American online, 21 May 2018; https://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/beautiful-minds/the-pressing-need-for-everyone-to-quiet-their-egos/

Korsgaard, Christine M (2010) – “Reflections on the evolution of morality”; Amherst Lecture in Philosophy. The Department of Philosophy at Amherst College. http://www.amherstlecture.org/korsgaard2010

Perry, Simon (2026) – “Understanding morality and ethics (2nd edition)”; https://orangebud.co.uk/web_book_2.html

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

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