Encyclopedia of Evolution.pdf - Online Reading Center

evolutionary ethics
the ability to produce the desired effect. In the organism, it is
reproductive success.
Millions of people have seen the effects of evolutionary
algorithms without necessarily knowing it, in movies. In early
motion pictures, a large battle scene would require a cast of
thousands. In recent movies such as the Lord of the Rings
trilogy and Troy, the characters in battlefields were generated
by computers. Rather than a designer programming the
movement of each character, evolutionary algorithms selected
the movements of each of these characters relative to one
another to produce lifelike simulations of movements, trajectories,
and conflicts. The real power of evolutionary algorithms
is that, given enough computing capacity, they can
produce a whole battlefield of movements just as easily as the
movement of a single entity. A computer can produce what
would take a designer a very long time, or would take a lot
of designers, to accomplish.
Besides producing complex movie scenes, evolutionary
algorithms have also been used to design:
• plane wings
• jet engine components
• antennae
• computer chips
• schedule networks
• drugs (which must fit into protein or nucleic acid binding
sites)
• medical diagnosis
Both evolutionary algorithms and biological evolution
appear wasteful. But with billions of bits of random access
memory, or billions of bacteria, evolution can afford to be
wasteful. Far from being the hopelessly random process that
critics claim (see creationism; intelligent design), the
process of natural selection is both sufficiently productive
and efficient that modern industry has adopted it, in many
instances, as a replacement for intelligent design. Using evolution
allows many companies to make money. As evolutionary
scientist Robert Pennock says, “Evolution got its credibility
the old fashioned way: it earned it.”
Further Reading
Coley, David A. An Introduction to Genetic Algorithms for Scientists
and Engineers. Hackensack, N.J.: World Scientific Publishing,
1997.
Zimmer, Carl. “Testing Darwin.” Discover, February 2005, 28–35.
evolutionary ethics Evolutionary ethics is the investigation
of human evolution to determine ethical principles. Evolutionary
science investigates and explains what has happened
in human evolution, which in large measure helps scientists to
understand what is happening with the human species today.
Evolutionary science can, in turn, be used as a basis for ethics,
although this is not part of evolutionary science itself. One of
the earliest claims that ethics can be derived from an evolutionary
basis was by Charles Darwin (see Darwin, Charles) in
one of his notebooks in the 1830s, long before he published his
theory (see origin of species [book]): “He who understands
baboon would do more towards metaphysics than Locke.”
Human behavior patterns emerge from the interaction of
genes and environment, or “nature and nurture,” to use the
dichotomy first proposed in the 19th century (see Galton,
Francis). Behavior patterns, however, hardly ever result from
single genes. For example, a gene that contributes to impulsive
behavior (being violent, taking risks) has been identified
(see essay, “How Much Do Genes Control Human Behavior?”),
but it is only one of possibly many genes that influence
this aspect of our behavior. Usually, genes interact with
one another, one gene switching others on in a complex cascade
(see developmental evolution). Environmental effects
on behavior range from chemical conditions and events during
gestation, to childhood upbringing, to social conditions.
All these influences contribute to a proximate explanation of
human behavior. As with the behavior of all other animals,
there is also an ultimate explanation that elucidates the adaptive
advantage, over evolutionary time, that those behavior
patterns have conferred on humans (see behavior, evolution
of). Humans behave as they do because of genes and environment;
genes are as they are because of evolution. sociobiology
is an example of a scientific explanation of the genetic and
evolutionary basis of human behavior patterns.
Just because humans do behave in certain ways does not
mean that they should behave in these ways. The naturalistic
fallacy recognized by ethicists is that “is” is not the same as
“ought.” It is in addressing the questions about how humans
should behave, rather than just how they do, that evolutionary
ethics is different from sociobiology.
Two general approaches to ethics have been proposed.
Transcendentalism claims that standards of right and wrong,
good and evil, come from beyond humans and transcend
them. The source of ethics may be God, gods, or an overarching
universal spiritualism. Empiricism claims that humans
have invented moral standards, and that what is right in one
society might be wrong in another. Transcendentalists point
out that premeditated murder is always wrong. Empiricists
point out that, while murder may be universally wrong, polygamy
is not: Some societies (including Old Testament Israelite
society to which many modern religious ethicists turn for guidance)
say it is good, while others say it is evil. The extreme
form of empiricism is that each person makes up his or her
own standards of good and evil and can change them at will.
Michael Shermer, an American philosopher and skeptic,
claims that both approaches are deficient. Morality comes
neither from Heaven nor from the whims of individuals or
society. Morality, he claims, evolved. It provided a fitness
advantage to those who possessed it (see natural selection).
Shermer’s evidence is that human moral sense, and the
sense of shame that humans feel (and exhibit by physiological
characteristics such as blushing and the changes of electrical
conductivity in the skin that polygraphs can measure),
are deep and genetic. People from all societies, for example,
feel shame if they are dishonest. Upbringing can enhance or
reduce this feeling, and there will always be pathologically
dishonest people. For morality, as for any other trait, there is
genetic variability within populations.
The human species has existed for at least 100,000 years
(see Homo sapiens), and the sense of morality may have