Bowles And Gintis: An Analysis

For Bowles and Gintis (2013), the principle of morality has evolutionary roots. These theorists see moral feelings and behaviors as the result of a sort of natural selection. The authors claim that the reason humans are moral beings can be traced to their ancestral environments that were both naturally and socially constructed. In these environments, groups of individuals who were predisposed to cooperate and uphold ethical norms tended to survive and expand relative to those who did not. This cooperative behavior allowed prosocial motivations to proliferate over time, and to slowly establish certain values in society, many of which are still held today. They argue that individuals are moral because they have evolutionarily engrained desires
Though the theorists understand morality in different ways, and through different lenses particular to their discipline, they both acknowledge the historical success of cooperation. In A Cooperative Species – Human Reciprocity and Its Evolution, Bowles and Gintis (2013) cite the ambitious hunting practices of ancient African tribes people, who would often seek to kill gargantuan buffalo, as evidence that humans have been working collectively since the emergence of our species. Pinker (2008) argues that the capacity for cooperation is hardwired in an ancient region of our brains. The anterior cingulate cortex is located at the base of the inner surface of each cerebral hemisphere. This portion of the brain allows humans to register a conflict between a “primitive” urge coming from one part of the brain and an advisory message coming from another. Here, Pinker (2008) takes an evolutionary stance similar to that of Bowles and Gintis (2013), claiming this primitive region in the cortex would not have remained virtually unchanged for thousands of years had it not been extremely important in contributing to the evolutionary success of
For Bowles and Gintis (2013), acting morally is an essential component to ensuring the success of the group or society as a whole. Modern day examples include the joint pursuit of political and military objectives, as well as the more prosaic foundations of everyday occurrences, such as collaboration among employees in a large corporation. Without cooperation, these interdependent ventures would be hopelessly fraught with difficulties, and economic stability would be tremendously precarious. To avoid such catastrophes, Bowles and Gintis (2013) argue that at some point in time humans must have adopted elaborate systems of socialization that allowed them to internalize the norms that induce cooperation, so that contributing to common objectives and punishing those who were motivated by personal agendas became second nature. Together, the collective internalization of prosocial norms and the devout protection of the altruists from exploitation serve to indemnify the competitive handicaps born by those who were motivated to sacrifice personal luxuries to benefit