In December of 2013, I participated in a workshop on "Liberalism and the Evolutionary Agenda" in Freiburg, Germany. I wrote a series of six
posts on that workshop.
Now, the
Journal of Bioeconomics (volume 17, number 1, 2015) has published some of the papers from that workshop, along with a paper by David Sloan Wilson. Here is my article, which is a shortened version of the long paper that I presented at the workshop.
The evolution of Darwinian liberalism
Larry Arnhart
Abstract From John Locke and Adam Smith to Herbert
Spencer and Friedrich Hayek, the central idea of classical liberalism has been
the thought that the social orders of morals, markets, laws, and politics can
emerge as spontaneous orders—as largely self-regulating and unintended orders
arising from the interaction of individuals pursuing their individual
ends. Darwinian evolutionary science
supports this idea by showing how evolutionary order can arise from the
evolution of self-ownership, property, and mammalian sociality and the
evolution of exchange and the division of labor. In developing these points, I argue for a
Darwinian liberalism.
Keywords Darwinism, Division of Labor, Evolutionary
Psychology, Liberalism, Neuroscience, Property
The fundamental idea of classical liberalism
is that society is largely a self-regulating, unintended order—a largely
self-enforcing order created unintentionally by the free exchanges of
individuals seeking to satisfy their individual desires (Barry 1982; Hamowy
1987; Raico 2012). In this paper,
I argue that Darwinian evolutionary science supports this fundamental idea of classical
liberalism by sustaining an evolutionary liberalism as based on two
evolutionary foundations--the evolution of self-ownership, property, and mammalian
sociality and the evolution of exchange and the division of labor. I thus add to the work of a few other
scholars who have suggested ways in which an evolutionary science of human
nature confirms liberal social thought (Rubin 2002; Turner and Maryanski 2008).
1
The evolution of self-ownership, property, and mammalian sociality
If classical liberalism is correct
in assuming that society can arise as a largely self-regulating, unintended
order from the actions of individuals seeking only the satisfaction of their
individual desires, then the naturally self-seeking desires of individuals must
lead them into social cooperation with others.
Adam Smith explains this as an expanding circle of human care rooted in
care for oneself and then extended to care for one’s property, one’s family,
and wider groups. Darwinian science supports this individualistic explanation
of social order by showing how individuals are inclined by their evolved human
nature as social mammals to care first for themselves, and then to extend that
self-care into caring for property and for other individuals to whom they are
attached.
1.1
Self-ownership as liberalism’s first principle of human nature
Classical liberalism teaches us that
even if the cosmic order of the world does not care for or about us, we care
for ourselves. Consequently, the moral
order of human social life conforms to the order of human care. And having evolved to be the smart social
mammals that we are, our human societies organize themselves through an expanding
circle of human care. Human beings
naturally care first and foremost for themselves as individuals. But as social animals who cannot live or
thrive without the cooperative concern of others, human beings also care for
and about others, and consequently they care for how they appear to
others—seeking their approval and avoiding their disapproval. Finally, through the power of our human
imagination, we project our desire for social approval into a desire for the
approval of an impartial spectator, which gives us a moral sense or conscience.
Smith
sketched that naturally expanding circle of human care. Every person is first and primarily
recommended to his own care, Smith observed, because every person is better
situated to care for himself than for any other person, and because every
person feels his own pleasures and pains more sensibly than those of
others. One’s feelings of one’s own
pleasures and pains are the “original sensations,” and what one feels of the
pleasures and pains of others is only “the reflected or sympathetic images of
those sensations.” After one’s care for
oneself, one extends one’s affections first to one’s family—parents, children,
siblings, and more distant relatives—then to one’s closer friends and
neighbors, then to social relationships of gratitude and reciprocity, then to
those individuals of high rank whom one admires, then to people whose suffering
elicits one’s fellow-feeling, then to one’s country as stirring patriotic love,
and finally, there can be some universal benevolence for all sensible beings
insofar as they are brought to our attention (Smith 1982, pp. 219-35).
At
the center of Smith’s expanding circle of care is one’s natural self-ownership,
which is the first principle of liberalism.
Perhaps the earliest clear statement of this liberal principle was by
Richard Overton in 1646. Writing as one
of the Levellers in the English Civil War, Overton began a political pamphlet
by declaring: “To every individual in nature is given an individual property by
nature not to be invaded or usurped by any.
For everyone, as he is himself, so he has a self-propriety, else could
he not be himself.” He saw this claim of self-ownership as an
instinctive natural desire. And insofar
as every individual can recognize that every other individual naturally asserts
the same claim to self-ownership, everyone can see that he must respect the
natural liberty of others if he expects them to respect his natural
liberty. For if he infringes on the
natural liberty of others, he will provoke their resentment and retaliation
(Overton 1998, pp. 55-57).
Later,
Locke adopted this same principle of self-ownership as the ground of natural
rights (Zuckert 2002, pp. 3-7, 193-97, 324-26).
In his Second Treatise of
Government, Locke asserts: “Though the Earth, and all inferior Creatures be
common to all Men, yet every Man has a Property in his own Person. This no Body has any Right to but
himself. The Labour of his Body, and the
Work of his Hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the State
that Nature has provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his Labour with, and
joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his Property”
(par. 27). Locke thought it self-evident
that though the resources of nature are available in common for all, each man
as master of himself and proprietor of his own person could extend himself
through labor to claim property in those natural resources (par. 44).
Later,
in the nineteenth century, British liberals like Auberon Herbert (1978)
elaborated this principle that each person as “self-owner” was the “owner of
his own mind and body and his own property” (pp. 369-75). Today, classical liberals like Charles Murray (1997)
continue to appeal to this principle of self-ownership.
Locke’s
understanding of self-ownership was founded in a biological conception of
embodied self-awareness. Locke was a
medical doctor and a biomedical researcher who worked closely with some of the
leading medical scientists of his day, such as Thomas Sydenham, Robert Boyle,
and Thomas Willis (Dewhurst 1963; Woolhouse 2007). For
example, he contributed to Boyle's experiments with his air-pump to explore how
air provided some element necessary for respiration, which apparently sustained
the natural heat of the heart that was necessary for life. Thus, Boyle and Locke were close to the
discovery of oxygen's role in sustaining animal life. One of Locke's earliest writings was a draft
manuscript on the importance of air in respiration. He wrote: "Nature's aim seems to have
been to foster that universal heat or fire of our life. For we live as long as
we burn, and are nourished by the same fire” (Woolhouse 2007, p. 68). Here
he saw the natural teleology of functional processes in biology.
Locke also learned about how the human mind emerges
from the brain and nervous system from Willis, who was the founder of modern
neurology (Zimmer 2004). Like Aristotle,
Willis dissected monkeys and apes to study their neurological similarities to
human beings, while also looking for differences that would explain the
distinctiveness of the human mind.
In his Essay Concerning Human Understanding,
Locke identified a "person" or "self" as "a thinking
intelligent being, that has reason and reflection, and can consider itself as
itself, the same thinking thing, in different times and places." All the parts of a human body are vitally
united to this thinking self, "so that we feel when they are
touched, and are affected by, and conscious of good or harm that happens to
them, are a part of ourselves; i.e. of our thinking conscious self." So that "the limbs of his body are to
every one a part of himself; he sympathizes and is concerned for
them." "Self is that conscious
thinking thing . . . which is sensible or conscious of pleasure and pain,
capable of happiness or misery, and so is concerned for itself, as far as that
consciousness extends. Thus every one
finds that, whilst comprehended under that consciousness, the little finger is
as much a part of himself as what is most so” (1959, II.xxvii.9, 11, 17).
This Lockean conception of individual personhood as
embodied self-conscious awareness of, and emotional concern for, the survival
and well-being of the body can now be understood as rooted in the mammalian
evolution of the human nervous system.
1.2 The neurobiology of care
The biological psychology of human care can be illuminated through Antonio
Damasio’s (1994) "somatic marker
hypothesis" for explaining the importance of emotion in decision-making
and consciousness. Building on an idea
proposed by William James and Carl Lange, Damasio believes that emotions arise
from physiological states of the body, so that, for example, the emotion of
fear arises from the physiological disturbance of the body associated with some
fearful event. Emotions help us to make
decisions by assigning emotional valence to our choices. Through imaginative
projection, we can foresee the emotional outcome of a choice by anticipating
how we will feel--our somatic markers--if we make that choice, and thus we
might avoid a choice with fearful associations.
Ultimately, this emotional decision-making mechanism is an evolutionary
adaptation to secure the survival and well-being of the body.
This line of thought has been extended by A. D.
(Bud) Craig, a functional neuroanatomist.
He has traced out the fundamental neuroanatomical basis for all human
emotions, and he has argued that this shows how the neural substrates for human
self-awareness or consciousness are based on the neural representation of the
physiological state (the homeostasis) of one's body. This manifests the embodiment of emotional
self-consciousness. In particular, he
argues that there is a phylogenetically novel sensory pathway in primates, most
fully developed in human beings, that provides for a self-conscious integration
of the physiological condition of the body (the material "self") with
one's sensory environment, with one's motivational condition, and with one's
social situation in the anterior insular cortex (AIC) (Craig 2002, 2003, 2008).
In imaging studies of emotion, the AIC is jointly
activated with the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). The AIC seems to be the primary site for
generating self-awareness from representations of the feelings from the body,
while the ACC seems to be the site for the initiation of behavior, which thus
provides volitional agency.
This could be the evolutionary neurophysiological
basis for Locke's account of natural rights.
Reasoning about natural rights ultimately depends on discerning natural
human inclinations, such as self-preservation, property, social attachment,
practical judgment, and intellectual understanding, which correspond to what I
have identified as the twenty natural desires.
Evolutionary neuroscience explains how the human nervous system has
evolved to serve those natural inclinations or desires. The concrete expression of those natural
inclinations varies according to individual temperament, individual life
history, and cultural circumstances. But
there is a universal human pattern that manifests the evolved natural needs of
human beings as the smart social mammals that they are.
The evolution of mammalian social behavior depends
on the evolution of pain or "negative affect," which includes pain,
fear, panic, and anxiety. In all
vertebrates, fear and pain are represented in the brainstem and hypothalamus as
signals to elicit self-preserving behavior.
In mammalian evolution, these neural mechanisms are modified so that
animals care for their offspring as well as themselves. This includes modifying the cortex of the
mammalian brain to elaborate the representation of pain to include anxiety tied
to separation from or threat to loved ones.
Craig's research clarifies this neural evolution of
pain by classifying pain as a homeostatic emotion rather than as a sensation of
touch. Pain belongs to
"interoception"--the sense of the physiological condition of the
body--and it is therefore part of the evolved mechanisms for
self-preservation. The insular cortex
receives signals from all the tissues of the body, and these signals are
integrated with physical and social stimuli from outside the body and with the
memory of past experiences as well as imaginative projections of future
experiences. This supports a general
awareness of the body's condition in space and time. The ACC can then be activated to motivate
behavior to correct whatever is wrong.
This neural processing mechanism seems to be unique to primates, but
it's more highly developed in human beings.
Both the insular cortex and the ACC respond not only
to physical pain from bodily injury but also social pain from social
injury. In mammalian evolution, the
neural circuitry for physical pain was appropriated for registering social pain
in animals adapted for social attachment.
Mammals have evolved to care for the survival and well-being not only of
themselves, but also of others to whom they are attached. Extending the neural mechanisms originally
evolved for individual self-preservation to include the welfare of offspring
and social partners secures mammalian social order. The uniquely human evolution of the neocortex
elaborates this mammalian development to sustain human love and concern for
others. When we use the language of
physical pain to metaphorically describe our social pain, as when we speak of
suffering "a broken heart,” we suggest the embodiment of our natural
social consciousness, in which our mind, our brain, our body, and our social
life are inseparably intertwined. After
all, being rejected by others really does hurt us, and we can see how this is
rooted in our evolved nervous system (Eisenberger and Lieberman 2004).
Social neuroscience is beginning to explain the
neurochemistry of mammalian attachment as the natural ground for human morality
and social order as rooted in human care (Zahn, Oliveira-Souza, and Moll 2011;
Churchland 2011, 2013). As shaped by
evolutionary history, nervous systems are organized to take care of the
body. Animals with neural adaptations
inclined to care for themselves and for their well-being are selected over
those that neglect their self-preservation.
In mammals, this caring for oneself is extended into care for others--for
one's offspring, for one's mate, for one's kin, and for others in one's
group. We are now beginning to explain
how this works through the neurochemistry of factors such as oxytocin and
vasopressin, which support attachment and bonding. This sustains the basic social desires or
sentiments that lead to human morality.
This neurobiology of mammalian sociality confirms the argument of Locke,
Smith, and other liberal thinkers about the importance of mammalian biology as
the natural ground for the unintended social order of family life (Locke 1988,
I.86-88, II.77-79; Smith 1982b, pp. 141-43, 438).
Because of our evolved human nature, we care not
only for ourselves and other persons to whom we are attached, but also for the
physical goods that have some value for us, and thus we have a natural desire
for property.
1.3 The biology of property
A Darwinian view of human nature sustains the liberal commitment to private
property as a natural propensity that is diversely expressed in custom and
law. The particular rules for property
rights are determined by customary traditions and formal laws that vary across
history and across societies, but that variation is constrained by the natural
desire for property. We need to
understand the complexity of property across three levels--natural property,
customary property, and formal property (Arnhart 2009, pp. 59-67).
This is illustrated in the historical case of mining
law in California. Once gold was
discovered in northern California in 1848, hundreds of thousands of people went
there to search for gold, and they showed their natural instinct for property
by claiming land for mining by taking possession of it, although they were only
squatters on land officially owned by the federal government of the United States. To settle disputes over mining claims, the
miners developed customary rules that they enforced among themselves by social
tradition. Then, finally, in 1866, the
United States Congress passed a federal mining law that formally legalized
these local customs of the miners.
Thus, the property claims of the miners moved
through three levels--natural possession, customary rules, and formal
laws. This manifests the general
structure of Darwinian social order as the joint product of natural desires,
cultural practices, and deliberate judgments.
In recent years, a growing number of law professors
have become interested in the evolutionary analysis of law, and one prime area
of research has been the evolutionary analysis of property law. This research confirms the Darwinian account
of property (Krier 2009; Stake 2004; DeScioli and Wilson 2011).
This research provides a scientific confirmation for
the evolutionary explanation of property laid out originally by Locke (in his Two
Treatises of Government), William Blackstone (in his Commentaries on the
Laws of England), and Adam Smith (in his Lectures on Jurisprudence) (Smith 1982b, pp. 13-39). First, among ancient foraging bands, hunting
territory was owned communally by the band--excluding other bands--and personal
property (such as weapons, tools, and clothing) was owned individually. These original claims to property were based
on possession and occupancy, so that the first person or group to take and hold
possession of some scarce resource was presumed to own it. This was enforced by customary
agreement. But, then, when agriculture
was developed, the growing scarcity and demand for land made it necessary to
settle property disputes through the formal institutions of government, and the
invention of writing facilitated this.
Finally, with the expansion of commerce and trade, property rights
became ever more subject to rules of sale, grant, or conveyance.
We might explain part of the evolutionary logic for
property through John Maynard Smith's (1982) evolutionary game theory analysis
of how the "bourgeois" strategy develops among animals to settle
disputes over territory and resources.
If we imagine two animals competing for access to a particular breeding
territory, and if they have an equal opportunity of arriving first and
possessing it or arriving later and being an intruder, we might imagine two
possible strategies: the Hawk who fights until one animal is injured and
retreats, and the Dove who bluffs but never fights. Under certain conditions, the
best strategy is a "bourgeois" strategy that mixes the other two:
"if owner, play Hawk; if intruder, play Dove." In fact, many animals do seem to play this
strategy, so that the possessor of a territory tends to have an advantage over
an intruder, and consequently there is a kind of instinctive rule of property
that favors possessors over intruders, because possessors will risk injury to
defend their possessions, while intruders will retreat in response to the
threat of injury. Of course, explaining
territorial behavior among animals requires weighing many factors that
influence the costs and benefits of defending territory, which goes beyond a
simple choice between two strategies (Alcock 2013, pp. 142-52). But the general point is that it is adaptive for
animals to defend their possession of appropriated resources.
The primacy of possession runs through much of our
property law, and this could be because it is rooted in the evolved structure
of our brains so that it feels right to us.
One lawyer concludes: "Possession, as any property lawyer knows,
remains the cornerstone of most contemporary property systems--nine points of
the law, the root of title, and the origin of property” (Krier 2009, p. 159). Included in the right of possessing property
is the right of exchanging one’s property for the property of others, which
allows for the mutual gains from trade (Westermarck 1906, vol. 2, pp. 1-71).
2 The evolution of exchange and
specialization
The liberal idea of society as a
largely self-sustaining order assumes that this arises as an unintended outcome
of the actions of individuals naturally inclined to mutual exchange and a
division of labor. Smith explained this
in The Wealth of Nations as rooted in
the human “propensity to truck, barter, and exchange.” Darwinian science confirms this liberal idea
by showing how a natural propensity to exchange and specialization arose in
human evolution, and how the modern cultural evolution of exchange and
specialization explains the explosive growth in the prosperity, population, and
liberty of the modern world.
2.1 The evolution of the “propensity to truck,
barter, and exchange”
Smith claims in The Wealth of
Nations that the "propensity to truck, barter, and exchange one thing
for another" is uniquely human and not found in any other animals (1981,
p. 25). Is this true, and, if true, what
would it mean for our understanding of human social life?
Haim
Ofek (2001) and Matt Ridley (2010) have argued that what we now know
about human evolution confirms Smith's insight about the unique importance of
exchange for human history. The whole of
human history for the past 200,000 years can be understood as the progressive
extension of human cooperation through exchange and the division of labor--from
foraging bands to agrarian states to modern commercial societies in global
networks of trade. Both Ofek and Ridley
see this as arising from a human propensity to exchange that cannot be seen in
any other animal.
In
the first chapter of The Wealth of Nations, Smith explains the division
of labor as the primary cause for the increasing productivity, which includes
the famous example of the pin factory.
In the second chapter, he explains how this division of labor arose in
human history: "This division of
labour, from which so many advantages are derived, is not originally the effect
of any human wisdom, which foresees and intends that general opulence to which
it gives occasion. It is the necessary,
though very slow and gradual consequence of a certain propensity in human
nature which has in view no such extensive utility; the propensity to truck,
barter, and exchange one thing for another” (p. 25). Smith does not see this propensity in other
animals: “Nobody ever saw one animal by its gestures and natural cries signify
to another, this is mine, that yours; I am willing to give this for that” (p.
26). Animals beg for help, and human beings also do
this as well. But in a large civilized
society, human beings require the cooperation of a great number of strangers
who feel no love, friendship, or benevolence for them. Consequently, in such a large human society,
we must secure the cooperation of strangers through mutually beneficial
trading: “Give me that which I want, and
you shall have this which you want, is the meaning of every such offer; and it
is in this manner that we obtain from one another the far greater part of those
offices which we stand in need of. It is
not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we
expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest” (pp. 26-27).
Smith
then indicates that the emergence of a division of labor through exchange appears
originally among savages living as hunter-gatherers, where someone might
specialize in making bows and arrows that he can trade for some meat captured
by a hunter, so that each fills a particular occupation, and thus their joint
labor becomes more productive than would be the case if each were working only
for himself (1981, pp. 27-28; 1982b, pp. 347-49). This is part of Smith's understanding of
human social evolution as passing through four stages of social life--from
foraging to herding to farming to commerce.
Smith and other Scottish philosophers developed a theory of the four
stages in social evolution from their study of the reports about the native
Americans in the New World. This was the
beginning of evolutionary anthropology (Meek 2011).
At
the beginning of The Wealth of Nations,
we see the fundamental idea that is common to Smith's social thought and
Darwin's biology--the possibility of design-without-a-designer ("not
originally the effect of any human wisdom") through emergent or spontaneous
order. Smith then poses an evolutionary
question: Was the propensity to exchange an original principle of human
evolution, or was it a late by-product of earlier evolved "faculties of
reason and speech"? Although he
chooses not to take up this question here, he considers it more probable that
reason and speech came first, and then the propensity to exchange came later as
a by-product. In the Lectures on
Jurisprudence, Smith says that the "real foundation" of exchange
and the division of labor is "that principle to persuade which so much
prevails in human nature” (1982b, p. 352).
Like Aristotle, Smith
believes that human beings are more political than other political animals
because human beings have a capacity for logos--reason or speech--that
allows them to persuade one another to cooperate for common ends, which makes
exchange and the division of labor possible.
Ofek argues, however, that the evidence of human evolutionary history
now suggests that exchange was an early agent of human evolution that favored
the evolution of human reason and speech.
Smith
goes on to suggest that while other animals can seem to act in concert when
they are in passionate pursuit of the same object--like greyhounds chasing the
same hare--this is the consequence not of any contract or deliberate choice but
of "the accidental concurrence of their passions" in pursuing the
same object at the same time. Non-human
animals are unable to communicate with one another well enough to say:
"this is mine, that yours; I am willing to give this for that."
Smith
does think that non-human animals can engage in persuasion by begging for
attention within their families or their groups or even to elicit benevolent
care from human beings. But the range of
benevolence for all animals--including human beings--is limited. In human civilization, individuals need
"the cooperation and assistance of great multitudes," and for this
they must appeal not to benevolence but to self-love, by persuading other
individuals to engage with them in mutually beneficial exchanges. Indeed, Smith points out that among human
beings, even beggars cannot rely totally on charitable benevolence to secure
their needs, because they beg for money that they use to buy what they need.
We
might wonder whether Darwin would agree with Smith about barter or exchange
being unique to human beings in giving rise to the division of labor as a
spontaneous order. Remarkably, Darwin
says little about exchange in human evolution.
But there are at least two passages in Darwin's writings that both Ofek
and Ridley cite as supporting their arguments about the human evolution of
exchange.
In
the Voyage of the Beagle, Darwin described the savage people that he saw
at Tierra del Fuego, at the far southern tip of South America. He thought the Fuegians showed the most
primitive level of human social life.
"Some of the Fuegians plainly showed that they had a fair notion of
barter. I gave one man a large nail (a most valuable present) without making
any signs for a return; but he immediately picked out two fish, and handed them
up on the point of his spear. If any present was designed for one canoe, and it
fell near another, it was invariably given to the right owner” (2004a, p. 201). Darwin seems, then, to agree with Smith that
even those living in the most primitive foraging societies show "the
propensity to truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another."
In
The Descent of Man, Darwin described how man became "the most
dominant animal" through technological inventions such as tools:
To chip a flint into the rudest
tool, or to form a barbed spear or hook from a bone, demands the use of a
perfect hand; for, as a most capable judge, Mr. Schoolcraft, remarks, the
shaping fragments of stones into knives, lances, or arrow-heads, shews 'extraordinary
ability and long practice.' This is to a great extent proved by the fact that
primeval men practised a division of labour; each man did not manufacture his
own flint tools or rude pottery, but certain individuals appear to have devoted
themselves to such work, no doubt receiving in exchange the produce of the
chase (Darwin 2004b, p. 69).
Darwin
implies that the complexity of artifacts in the archaeological record could be
interpreted as evidence for a division of labor that promotes the dexterity and
inventiveness that comes from specialization.
Ofek and Ridley have adopted this line of reasoning in arguing that the
explosion of technological complexity in the Upper Paleolithic record of human
evolution is a consequence of exchange and specialization, which is confirmed
by evidence that some of the material in the human artifacts was transported
over long distances, apparently through trade.
Darwin
does not indicate, however, that this propensity for exchange and a division of
labor is uniquely human, as Smith does.
Ridley argues that recent research on the evolution of cooperation
confirms Smith's view. Other animals
cooperate with one another based on kinship, relatedness, and reciprocity
(direct and indirect), and human cooperation shows these same evolved
mechanisms at work. But cooperation
based on exchange or barter is uniquely human, and it cannot be explained as a
form of reciprocity. Reciprocity means
giving each other the same thing. I'll
scratch your back if you scratch mine (direct reciprocity). Or I'll scratch your back because you have a
reputation for scratching the backs of others (indirect reciprocity). But exchange means giving each other
different things. As Smith puts it,
"Give me that which I want, and you shall have this which you
want." Other animals can't do this.
To
support this conclusion, Ridley cites some experiments with chimpanzees:
The primatologist Sarah Brosnan
tried to teach two different groups of chimpanzees about barter and found it
very problematic. Her chimps preferred grapes to apples to cucumbers to carrots
(which they liked least of all). They were prepared sometimes to give up
carrots for grapes, but they almost never bartered apples for grapes (or vice
versa), however advantageous the bargain. They could not see the point of
giving up food they liked for food they liked even more. Chimpanzees and
monkeys can be taught to exchange tokens for food, but this is a long way from
spontaneously exchanging one thing for another: the tokens have no value to the
chimpanzees, so they are happy to give them up. True barter requires that you
give up something you value in exchange for something else you value slightly
more (Ridley 2010, p. 59).
Here
Ridley is obscuring some of the complexity in these experiments (see Brosnan
2008). Brosnan and her colleagues
apparently showed that chimps do barter, at least in a situation where they can
trade very low valued items (carrots) for very high valued items (grapes). But they do not barter where the gains from
barter are small--as in trading valuable apples for slightly more valuable
grapes. One possible explanation that
they suggest is that the chimps are less inclined to take the risk from giving
up a valued food item if the possible gains are too small.
Nevertheless,
these experiments do provide some support for the Smith/Ridley position. Even if these chimps can learn to barter
under some special conditions in the laboratory, they don't seem to
spontaneously barter in the wild. This
is in contrast to the human situation where bartering comes easily as a
spontaneous behavior, even in the most primitive human conditions, as with
Darwin's Fuegians.
2.2 The neurobiology of exchange
If exchange has been an important
factor for human evolution for a hundred thousand years or more, then we can
expect that human neurobiological systems support the disposition to
exchange. Paul Zak (2012) has performed
some game-theory experiments that seem to show that this disposition to
exchange as based on trust is supported by the neuroactive hormone oxytocin,
which is found in all mammals, and which evolved originally to support maternal
care of offspring. The ancient
evolution of oxytocin in human beings and other mammals suggests deep evolutionary
roots for extended human cooperation.
Zak
argues that economic exchange depends upon moral values, because it depends
upon the trust that makes cooperation possible.
There is evidence that this disposition to trust and cooperation has
evolved to be part of human nature, although the expression of that disposition
varies in response to the cultural environment.
We are now beginning to explain the neural mechanisms of this evolved
moral nature. In particular, Zak has
shown experimentally that oxytocin supports moral cooperation by promoting
attachment to offspring, to reproductive partners, to friends, and even to
strangers. What originally evolved to
promote mammalian maternal care for offspring has been extended to embrace ever
wider groups of individuals who benefit from exchange.
Zak
sees economic exchange as rooted in evolved human nature:
Values are not specific to the West
or East, nor are there broadly distinct Western and Eastern economic
institutions. Rather, values across all
cultures are simply variations on a theme that is deeply human, strongly
represented physiologically, and evolutionarily old. Similarly, the kinds of
market institutions that create wealth and enable happiness and freedom of
choice are those that resonate with the social nature of human beings who have
an innate sense of shared values of right, wrong, and fair. Modern economies cannot operate without these
(Zak 2008, p. 276).
Zak
agrees with Friedrich Hayek (1991) in seeing the modern transition from
personal exchange to mostly impersonal exchange in markets as making possible
the great increases in wealth and population since the Industrial
Revolution. But in contrast to Hayek,
Zak sees this cultural tradition of impersonal exchange as developing an innate
potentiality of evolved human nature.
One
can see this in the research of Joseph Henrich and his colleagues (2010) who
studied the play of the Ultimatum Game in small-scale societies around the
world. Variations in the play of the game manifested variations in the cultural
norms of the societies. The higher rates
of fair offers in the game were associated with those societies that had high
levels of market activity. It seemed
that people who regularly engaged in trade learned that successful trading
required that traders agree on a fair distribution of gains. The genetically evolved neural mechanism of
oxytocin as favoring trust will fluctuate in response to the culturally evolved
social environment. Thus, a Darwinian
explanation of exchange behavior requires a coevolutionary explanation of the
interaction between genetic evolution and cultural evolution, in which cultural
evolution taps into human genetically evolved psychology.
3 Conclusion
In one of the first reviews of
Darwin’s Origin of Species, Thomas
Henry Huxley (1860) declared that “every philosophical thinker hails it as a
veritable Whitworth gun in the armory of liberalism.” The Whitworth gun was a new kind of
breech-loading cannon.
If
the fundamental idea of liberalism is that social order can arise as a largely
self-regulating and unintended order from the free exchanges of individuals
seeking to satisfy their individual desires, then Darwinian evolutionary
science truly is a powerful weapon for liberalism insofar as it supports that
idea. It does that by showing how an
evolutionary liberalism can be grounded on the evolution of self-ownership,
property, and mammalian sociality and on the evolution of exchange and the
division of labor.
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