Evolution, Games, and God: The Principle of Cooperation

“If you are interested in the latest in philosophical thinking (informed by science and religion) on nature versus nurture, and if you are a patient reader, you can’t go too far wrong with Evolution, Games, and God.”

Evolution, Games, and God is an edited collection of papers and presentations given at Harvard between 2005 and 2008 that represent an ongoing interdisciplinary discussion on the philosophical, ethical, and theological implications of the evolutionary phenomena of cooperation.

The contributors assume that readers have advanced knowledge of philosophy, game theory, and mathematical modeling of cooperation. But before you click away to another page in horror—although requiring patience and effort— this book is not as awful as you might predict.

The introduction provides the main themes and also warnings to readers. The editors, who are skeptics, warn that readers will encounter extreme biases and beliefs, and are intentionally ironic in calling the more extreme claims, “burgeoning scientific creativity.” The editors point out that one contributor claims that altruism is no more than a disguised form of selfishness, and another promotes Social Darwinism. The editors note as well the failure of modeling to explain cooperation from the lowliest slime mold to lofty human society, and ask their readers to evaluate their personal tolerance of metaphysics, noting “. . . it might seem that one of the main morals of this book is the evolutionary biologists working on cooperation need to take a cold philosophical bath, but that advice should not be taken punitively . . .”

In what other collection can readers find such wise editors?

The main theme of Evolution, Games, and God is the philosophical conflict between cooperation and non-cooperation as principle factors in evolution. At its lowest level biology follows the rules of physics and chemistry, here cooperation comes down to the rules of chemistry and physics; see Cells to Civilizations by Enrico Coen (previously reviewed here). There is no mind at this level. Cooperation and non-cooperation are what we make of physical and chemical interactions.

While morality is judgment, biology just is. This distinction is very important. If selfishness were to be attributed to the biological instead of choice, then “I couldn’t help it” becomes the rationalization for morally bad behavior.

In between the primitively organic and the ability to make choices, behavior at some level is wired in—reflexive. As there is a wide gap in understanding just where genetics ends and intent (learned behavior, reasoning, trial and error) begins, just where this “line” is if it is indeed a line, is not well understood. This is the unresolved “nature versus nurture” question, and the nature versus nurture conundrum in turn leads to many, many other interesting questions.

From a game-theoretical perspective, given a mind and choice, there can be tradeoffs, “costs” and “benefits” that an individual might “choose”, including whether or not to cooperate. From another perspective, the idea of reducing complex human behavior to mathematics is just wrongheaded.

While those who hold strong religious belief feel that religion is needed for cooperation—that altruism can only arise from the fear of judgment in the afterlife. Yet others see biological roots to cooperation as expressed in “mirror neurons”—that empathy is wired in, though that too is subject to debate. And if you are given to a philosophical, metaphysical, and ethical stance, Kant, Kierkegaard, Chomsky, Rawls, and Aristotle must be brought into the mix. And on and on it goes.

One final note before this reviewer delves into the individual articles: cooperation and non-cooperation are social terms and this reviewer prefers cooperation and non-cooperation to more overtly biased terms such as, altruism, defector, and selfish. Of course, being human, this will dictum not be followed slavishly but only as far as it remains advantageous to making a point.

Darwin knew that the idea of evolution was polarizing; even though a non-believer, he did not leave out the possibility of God, and so left open the interpretation that natural causes were part of a divine plan. To no surprise, people (then as today) interpret evolution through the lens of their own beliefs.

In the first set of papers comprising Evolution, Games, and God, the reader will read reactions to evolution filtered through the Victorian era sensibilities of altruism, psychology, morality, and Christianity. For some, evolution rather than undermine Christian beliefs offered a rationalization for enhancing theology and ethics, providing ammunition for combating laissez faire capitalism, social crisis, poverty, crime, racism and class conflict.

Anglican clergy of the Victorian era would see theological advantages to evolution and interpret Darwin’s theory as an embrace of God and morality. Henry Drummond, a Scottish naturalist and evangelical minister claimed that if altruism were embedded in the evolutionary process then it was God who put it there. Though not all religious leaders saw good in evolution. “. . . in Belfast Darwin’s theory would be . . . seen as a vehicle for materialism and atheism . . .”

The next set of essays offers game theoretical explanations of cooperation. For an economist, a choice, any choice hangs on the definitions of cost, benefit and perceived value. The outcome of such models is limited to statistics over time, with results requiring interpretation. It’s not the model so much as the interpretation of the model that makes game theory both useful and abuseful.

Simple models of cooperation may be made to show just about anything and although more complex models can be made, there are limits. Game theory cannot model emergent behaviors (surprises that occur in the real-world) because such behaviors have to be known ahead of time to have statistical value. Nor can game theory model intent, as intent cannot be objectively measured. As a consequence, game theory is outcome-oriented, and says nothing about ethics.

Game theory models players who by their choices win or lose something of value, for economists this is typically money. In the model called the Prisoner’s Dilemma, players win freedom by choosing whom to cooperate with. A prisoner will be sentenced to fewer years in jail if he cooperates with the jail-keep but a greater number of years if he cooperates with his fellow prisoner. For one prisoner to “win” (by being a rat), the other prisoner spends a greater time in jail. The optimal choice will be to never cooperate with the jail-keep (equal penalty) or be the first to cooperate (lesser penalty).

The Prisoner’s Dilemma identifies choices without considering moral values (to rat or not to rat). This is an example of the philosophy of utility—the philosophy of Jeremy Bentham, while Immanuel Kant provides the counter-philosophy. Kant proposes that a choice that is moral has greater value than a choice that is immoral, even if the immoral choice has practical advantages. And so game theoretic models have greater explaining power of utility in social cooperation than for ethics or for cooperation in biology or genetics, where there is no mind to make choices.

Concluding the collection are essays on God and religion, which will not persuade those who don’t already believe. One contributor points out that, “God can never be dead in a world in which every child is born with a disposition to see supernatural agency at work all around them.” Though the claim that one has to be educated to let go of religious or superstitious belief has ample contrary evidence.

There are many who are educated who will not be persuaded by science that there is no God. Here, the dialog from The Big Bang Theory and Philosophy edited by Dean A. Kowalski (and previously reviewed here) comes to mind:

Sheldon’s Mother: You watch your mouth, Shelly. Everyone’s entitled to his or her opinion.

Sheldon: Evolution isn’t an opinion. It’s a fact.

Sheldon’s Mother: And that is your opinion.

Readers may come to the conclusion that Evolution, Games, and God doesn’t answer questions so much as raise even more questions. Nor does any single contributor successfully tie the diverse threads together. Perhaps that unification of such a wide range of ideas is impossible—“when confronted with even the idea of a theory of cooperation or altruism that runs all the way from unicellular organisms to religiously motivated sacrificial behaviors among humans, one may begin to wonder whether any significant commonalities actually extend across such a range of phenomena.”

Of that quote this reviewer finds himself in agreement with the sentiment if not the bloviation.

If you are interested in the latest in philosophical thinking (informed by science and religion) on nature versus nurture, and if you are a patient reader, you can’t go too far wrong with Evolution, Games, and God.