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Kim Sterelny is Professor of Philosophy at Aus- Contributors EDITED BY
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tralian National University and Victoria University ii Kim Sterelny, Richard Joyce,
of Wellington, New Zealand, and author of The Sam Brown, Brett Calcott, Maciek Chudek, oo Brett Calcott, and Ben Fraser
Evolved Apprentice: How Evolution Made Humans Andrew Cockburn, Fiery Cushman, Tanya nn
Unique (MIT Press, 2011). Richard Joyce is Professor Elliot, Doug Erwin, Daniel M. T. Fessler,
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of Philosophy at Victoria University of Wellington Jessica C. Flack, Ben Fraser, Herbert Gintis, This collection reports on the latest research on an
and author of The Evolution of Morality (MIT Press, Deborah M. Gordon, Adam Hart, Joseph n increasingly pivotal issue for evolutionary biology:
2006). Brett Calcott is a postdoctoral researcher at Henrich, Katja Heubel, Cecilia Heyes, Simon d cooperation. The chapters are written from a variety
Australian National University and coeditor (with of disciplinary perspectives and utilize research tools
M. Huttegger, Richard Joyce, Daniel R. Kelly,
Kim Sterelny) of The Major Transitions in Evolution that range from empirical survey to conceptual
Hanna Kokko, David C. Krakauer, Elizabeth T.
Revisited (MIT Press, 2011). Ben Fraser is a Lecturer modeling, refl ecting the rich diversity of work in the
Malouf, Matteo Mameli, Hugo Mercier,
in the Philosophy Program at Australian National fi eld. They explore a wide taxonomic range, concen-
University. Ronald Noë, Haim Ofek, Katinka Quintelier, trating on bacteria, social insects, and, especially,
Livio Riboli-Sasco, Don Ross, Paul Seabright, humans.
Nicholas Shea, Brian Skyrms, Kim Sterelny, Part I (“Agents and Environments”) investigates
Jeffrey Stuewig, François Taddei, June P. the connections of social cooperation in social
organizations to the conditions that make coopera-
Tangney, Bernhard Voelkl, Felix Warneken,
Life and Mind series tion profi table and stable, focusing on the interac-
Kerstin Youman, Wanying Zhao
A Bradford Book tions of agent, population, and environment. Part II
(“Agents and Mechanisms”) focuses on how proxi-
mate mechanisms emerge and operate in the evo-
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D lutionary process and how they shape evolutionary
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R o e emerge that demonstrate the ubiquity of questions
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d o transitions in individuality; levels of selection, from
F yc gene to organism; and the “human cooperation
ra e explosion” that makes our own social behavior par-
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s ticularly puzzling from an evolutionary perspective.
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978-0-262-01853-1
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EDITED BY
Kim Sterelny, Richard Joyce,
Brett Calcott, and Ben Fraser
THE MIT PRESS
MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS 02142
HTTP://MITPRESS.MIT.EDU
Cooperation and Its Evolution
Life and Mind: Philosophical Issues in Biology and Psychology
Kim Sterelny and Robert A. Wilson, Series Editors
Cooperation and Its Evolution , Kim Sterelny, Richard Joyce, Brett Calcott, and Ben Fraser, editors, 2012
Ingenious Genes: How Gene Regulation Networks Evolve to Control Development , Roger Sansom, 2011
Yuck! The Nature and Moral Signifi cance of Disgust , Daniel Kelly, 2011
Laws, Mind, and Free Will , Steven Horst, 2011
Perplexities of Consciousness , Eric Switzgebel, 2011
Humanity ’ s End: Why We Should Reject Radical Enhancement , Nicholas Agar, 2010
Color Ontology and Color Science , Jonathan Cohen and Mohan Matthen, editors, 2010
The Extended Mind , Richard Menary, editor, 2010
The Native Mind and the Cultural Construction of Nature , Scott Atran and Douglas Medin, 2008
Describing Inner Experience? Proponent Meets Skeptic , Russell T. Hurlburt and Eric Schwitzgebel, 2007
Evolutionary Psychology as Maladapted Psychology , Robert C. Richardson, 2007
The Evolution of Morality , Richard Joyce, 2006
Evolution in Four Dimensions: Genetic, Epigenetic, Behavioral, and Symbolic Variation in the History of
Life , Eva Jablonka and Marion J. Lamb, 2005
Molecular Models of Life: Philosophical Papers on Molecular Biology , Sahotra Sarkar, 2005
The Mind Incarnate , Lawrence A. Shapiro, 2004
Organisms and Artifacts: Design in Nature and Elsewhere , Tim Lewens, 2004
Seeing and Visualizing: It ’ s Not What You Think , Zenon W. Pylyshyn, 2003
Evolution and Learning: The Baldwin Effect Reconsidered , Bruce H. Weber and David J. Depew,
editors, 2003
The New Phrenology: The Limits of Localizing Cognitive Processes in the Brain, William R. Uttal, 2001
Cycles of Contingency: Developmental Systems and Evolution , Susan Oyama, Paul E. Griffi ths, and
Russell D. Gray, editors, 2001
Coherence in Thought and Action , Paul Thagard, 2000
Cooperation and Its Evolution
edited by Kim Sterelny, Richard Joyce, Brett Calcott, and Ben Fraser
A Bradford Book
The MIT Press
Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England
© 2 013 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Cooperation and its evolution / edited by Kim Sterelny, Richard Joyce, Brett Calcott, and
Ben Fraser.
p. cm. — (Life and mind: philosophical issues in biology and psychology)
“ A Bradford Book.”
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-262-01853-1 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Evolution (Biology)— Philosophy. 2. Evolutionary psychology. 3. Cooperation. I. Sterelny,
Kim. II. Joyce, Richard, 1966– . III. Calcott, Brett. IV. Fraser, Ben.
QH366.2.C657 2013
576.8– dc23
2012025348
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Introduction: The Ubiquity, Complexity, and Diversity of Cooperation 1
Kim Sterelny, Richard Joyce, Brett Calcott, and Ben Fraser
I Agents and Environments 15
1 The Evolution of Individualistic Norms 17
Don Ross
2 Timescales, Symmetry, and Uncertainty Reduction in the Origins of Hierarchy in
Biological Systems 45
Jessica C. Flack, Doug Erwin, Tanya Elliot, and David C. Krakauer
3 On Depending on Fish for a Living, and Other Diffi culties of Living
Sustainably 75
Hanna Kokko and Katja Heubel
4 Life in Interesting Times: Cooperation and Collective Action in the Holocene 89
Kim Sterelny
5 The Birth of Hierarchy 109
Paul Seabright
6 Territoriality and Loss Aversion: The Evolutionary Roots of Property Rights 117
Herbert Gintis
7 Cooperation and Biological Markets: The Power of Partner Choice 131
Ronald Noë and Bernhard Voelkl
8 False Advertising in Biological Markets: Partner Choice and the Problem of
Reliability 153
Ben Fraser
vi Contents
9 MHC-Mediated Benefi ts of Trade: A Biomolecular Approach to Cooperation in
the Marketplace 175
Haim Ofek
10 What We Don’ t Know about the Evolution of Cooperation in Animals 195
Deborah M. Gordon
11 Task Partitioning: Is It a Useful Concept? 203
Adam G. Hart
12 Cooperative Breeding in Birds: Toward a Richer Conceptual Framework 223
Andrew Cockburn
II Agents and Mechanisms 247
13 Why the Proximate– Ultimate Distinction Is Misleading, and Why It Matters for
Understanding the Evolution of Cooperation 249
Brett Calcott
14 Emergence of a Signaling Network with P robe and Adjust 265
Brian Skyrms and Simon M. Huttegger
15 Bacterial Social Life: Information Processing Characteristics and Cooperation
Coevolve 275
Livio Riboli-Sasco, Franç ois Taddei, and Sam Brown
16 Two Modes of Transgenerational Information Transmission 289
Nicholas Shea
17 What Can Imitation Do for Cooperation? 313
Cecilia Heyes
18 The Role of Learning in Punishment, Prosociality, and Human Uniqueness 333
Fiery Cushman
19 Our Pigheaded Core: How We Became Smarter to Be Infl uenced by Other
People 373
Hugo Mercier
20 Altruistic Behaviors from a Developmental and Comparative Perspective 399
Felix Warneken
Contents vii
21 Culture-Gene Coevolution, Large-Scale Cooperation, and the Shaping of
Human Social Psychology 425
Maciek Chudek, Wanying Zhao, and Joseph Henrich
22 Suicide Bombers, Weddings, and Prison Tattoos: An Evolutionary Perspective
on Subjective Commitment and Objective Commitment 459
Daniel M. T. Fessler and Katinka Quintelier
23 Communicative Functions of Shame and Guilt 485
June P. Tangney, Jeffrey Stuewig, Elizabeth T. Malouf, and Kerstin Youman
24 Moral Disgust and the Tribal Instincts Hypothesis 503
Daniel R. Kelly
25 Evolution, Motivation, and Moral Beliefs 525
Matteo Mameli
26 The Many Moral Nativisms 549
Richard Joyce
Contributors 573
Index 575
Introduction: The Ubiquity, Complexity, and Diversity of Cooperation
Kim Sterelny, Richard Joyce, Brett Calcott, and Ben Fraser
The Structure of the Collection
Cooperation and its evolution has become an increasingly pivotal issue for evolution-
ary biology as the modern synthesis has developed. The result has been rich and
varied, and a glance at this book’ s table of contents will show the diversity of the work
on cooperation represented here. The chapters in this collection sample richly from
the tree of life, though with some concentration on bacteria, social insects, and, espe-
cially, hominins. The contributions depend on a wide range of research tools: empiri-
cal survey, formal theory and simulation, conceptual clarification and modeling, and
some shameless speculation (a prerogative of philosophy through the ages). They
explore a variety of themes and mechanisms. We begin here with an eagle ’ s-eye view
of the overall organization of the collection, and then identify five more specific
themes. Most of these themes arise in multiple places throughout this volume, and
hence do not map in any straightforward manner onto the internal structure of the
collection. Thus our goal in what follows is to emphasize the themes connecting the
chapters, rather than to introduce the chapters sequentially.
The volume is divided into two parts. Part I, “ Agents and Environments,” explores
a set of ideas connecting cooperation in social organization, especially complex social
organization, to the conditions that make cooperation profitable and stable. Although
the stability conditions of cooperation have been the focus of much insightful research,
that research has been somewhat one-sided. (See Calcott, 2008. ) In our opinion,
stability — especially stability in the face of the threat of cheating— has been explored
at the expense of investigating the environmental conditions and phenotypic possi-
bilities that make cooperative interaction pay in the first place. In particular, much of
the formal and experimental work on cooperation and its stability has explored the
ways that social partners give one another incentives to cooperate via the threat of
punishment or the withdrawal of cooperative relations ( Trivers, 2002; F ehr & Fisch-
bacher, 2003 ); rather less work has explored the conditions that make cooperation
potentially profitable. We do not neglect destabilizing threats to cooperation, of
