Do not treat it inappropriately, do not speak inappropriately? Morality, Evolutionary Psychology and the Essence of International Relations
Author: Brian C. Rathbun, Professor at the School of International Relations at the University of Southern California; Caleb Pomeroy, PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science at Ohio State University.
Source: Rathbun, Brian C., and Caleb Pomeroy. "See No Evil, Speak No Evil? Morality, Evolutionary Psychology, and the Nature of International Relations." International Organization76.3 (2022): 656-689.
Introduction
A central theme in international relations research is: anarchy requires states to shelve moral concerns in order to achieve security, making international relations an autonomous field without ethical considerations. In anarchy, moral considerations must be put aside, because moral constraints hinder the means of achieving self-interest through the use of threats and violence. As explained by Walz , "Foreign policy based on this image of international relations is neither moral nor immoral, but reflects a rational response to the world around it." However, this article proposes: evolutionary psychology and moral psychology believe that morality is conducive to promoting human success. It is precisely because of the anarchy that humans evolved ethics and morality to adapt to the difficult external environment. The author’s view has three empirical significance: First, it is almost impossible not to resort to morality when talking about threats and harm. Second, national leaders and the public will use moral judgment as the basis for assessing international threats (actually the most important factor). Third, foreign policy that regards international relations as an immoral field will be quite rare.The author breaks through the narrow cognition of current mainstream international relations theory in the moral field, believes that there are broad moral factors in international relations, and from the perspective of biological evolution, he believes that morality is the evolutionary result of human beings in order to overcome difficulties and promote cooperation.
Introduction
Evolutionary psychologists have always believed that human moral sense is crucial to its success as a species and is a unique part of humans among animals. moral system has functional roots and helps individual organisms survive, prosper and transmit genetic material. Moral condemnation and moral constraints are crucial to the emergence of altruistic behavior precisely because of its adaptive function in promoting material well-being, evolutionary theorists argue that morality originates from anarchy. Therefore, it is impossible to have an unethical "autonomous rule in the political field".
There are two central blind spots in moral empirical research in international relations: First, it focuses on moral conscience and ignores moral condemnation . Morality is always used to suppress excessive selfishness, that is, to make us good people, but when others do not do well, people's reactions are usually moral condemnation, punishment, and revenge. Secondly, there is no consensus moral agreement in the research literature on ethics and morality in international relations. When the "our" group conflicts with another group, out of moral obligations, we need to be loyal to the internal group, obey the group's authority, and form moral constraints.
Right and wrong in international relations
All ethical principles limit excessive egoism and encourage consideration of other people's behavior based on the consciousness of right and wrong. The author defines “morality” as “a series of interrelated values, practices, institutions and evolutionary psychological mechanisms , which work together to inhibit or regulate selfishness and make social life possible.”
The most obvious and perhaps most common understanding of morality is the focus on the welfare of others, especially those in need of help. Human beings have the obligation to avoid harming others and also care about others. In view of this, Jonathan Hayt (Haidt) calls this moral basis "harm/care" (harm/care). The principle of care is altruistic and manifested in forms of charity, benevolence and generosity, which is part of our nature as human beings. While the hurt/care principle in our daily lives is now in our donations to charity or expensive generosity, in international relations, this principle is clearly reflected in the efforts of helping those outside our borders.
Morality beyond free morality
Although care is undoubtedly moral, and it is also becoming more and more widely used in countries outside the region. But in international relations, we ignore some important and equally universal moral principles, which leads us to greatly underestimate the importance of morality in international politics. If morality is more than just caring for others, then what is moral behavior? empirical study of of moral psychology proposes two choices: (1) group-based morality, i.e. binding morality; (2) the phenomenon of moral condemn and punishment.
Free morality is personal morality, while binding morality is group morality, based on the understanding of the right and wrong of "community ethics". There are two moral requirements related to IR: respect for authority and loyalty to internal groups. Both involve supervision of selfish interests, authoritative and morality requires obeying other people's orders and doing their part for society; loyalty within the group requires us to give priority to our own group, which is manifested as a strong sense of national identity. We can see loyalty as a costly recognition of a group. Without loyalty, national identity , which marks group relationships in modern IR, will hardly work.
Retaliation is like caring for others, and is a universal ethical principle. DeScoli and Kurzban distinguish between moral conscience and moral condemnation. The former is a tiny voice in our minds, telling us to restrain our most selfish impulses and do the right thing. The latter is a response to the lack of moral conscience, and moral condemnation encourages others' behavior through external coercion. Yet moral anger and revenge are also accompanied by violations of our own interests (not just others) and human beings rely on to punish those who are overly selfish, which lacks (or replaces) the justice provided by the system.
Morality in anarchy: evolution, ethics and international relations
Moral condemnation, moral constraints and altruism are so common that evolutionary biologists have developed a strong consensus that they all emerge through choice. morality creates connections, regulates disputes, and allows greater cooperation between individuals, which improves their chances of survival. In short, without morality, we cannot explain human success.
Morality has a material basis, and there are two main reasons: is the universality of morality first. We can always find immoral individuals, and there are great cultural differences in right or wrong. However, we cannot find any human society without morality, and the importance of morality is basically similar. is followed by the cornerstone of human morality, emotion. We can feel the right or wrong of a thing, and these feelings will inspire us to take action. Since moral judgment is accompanied by physiological sensations, which is the field of biology, the author believes that morality has an evolutionary origin.
evolution is functional in nature. If morality has a biological basis, it must have played a role in helping humans deal with the "adaptation problems" of their early environments. Educators speculate that morality is a set of physiological and psychological mechanisms that arise from frequent social challenges that require cooperation to deal with, such as protection from threats and food collection.
Condemnation before conscience
The combination of moral conscience and moral condemnation promotes cooperation. The former creates the impulse to help others, while the latter punishes excessive self-aware behavior. With these, humans can benefit from conditional cooperation and rule the planet. As De Waal wrote, “Without morality, reciprocity can exist; without reciprocity, there is no morality.”
In evolutionary theory, what guides us toward moral condemnation and punishment is not for self-interest, but a kind of moral indignation and anger. Moral condemnation is emotional and automatic because it is good for our evolution. Evolutionary theory scholars believe that without moral condemnation, moral conscience cannot develop. Conscience is an evolutionary adaptation to moral punishment, especially group punishment, as anthropology evidence suggests that such punishment can be quite violent.Conscience guides us to internalize a commitment to abide by moral norms in order to avoid moral condemnation from others. Our conscience is like an intuitive, but unconscious reputation monitor. To avoid moral condemnation and punishment, evolutionary pressures drive true altruism—that is, considering the welfare of others to some important extent.
In addition, moral conscience not only keeps us away from trouble, it also opens up opportunities for you by signaling to those who interact directly with you and those who observe your behavior, which is called “indirect reciprocity.” This also creates an evolutionary motivation that prompts people to participate in costly third-party "altruistic" punishment to protect others.
is this internalized feeling of doing the right thing, guided by our emotional intuition, that distinguishes "evolutionary explanation" from rationalist cooperative theories in IR (such as neoliberal explanation). KiOhan tries to study to what extent can reciprocal self-interest induce cooperation without introducing moral obligations. Yet our moral conscience is not based on self-interestedism of calculation and self-awareness, and if so it is not so effective, because character tendencies that consider the well-being of others are a more reliable signal of cooperation. Conscience and condemnation lay the foundation for maintaining a wider, diffuse reciprocity in human society, which cannot be explained by the concept of rationalism. This requires "moral trust", that is, believing that other people are born trustworthy and kind, rather than "strategic trust".
Moral Screening in front of the audience
These evolutionary pressures explain why morality is the key attribute of our image, not other attributes such as enthusiasm or ability. For our safety and prosperity, whether a person is honest and fairer than whether they are funny or polite. Humans generally gossip, which is another phenomenon related to moral evolution. We exchange reputational information about who is dangerous, who is not, who can trust, who cannot trust. Therefore, those who blindly pursue their own interests are doomed to fail. Even if you think charitable donations are selfish at the end of the day – some think that people donate charity just to improve their reputation – you still have to explain why it improves reputation. We are deeply immersed in the ocean of moral assumptions, and it is hard to imagine a world without them.
The impact of morality on international relations
All these studies show that moral psychology is an evolutionary mechanism for coping with anarchy, not a luxury that can only be enjoyed after surpassing it. Since morality is an inherent component of human experience (and human body), there is no realm of human interaction that is separated from morality. In classic realist terms, there is no separation between public and private morality. In fact, many classical realists are aware of this. Human beings refuse to give up their ethical evaluation of political behavior at any time. Regardless of how some philosophers assert the amorality of political behavior, philosophical traditions, historical judgments, and public opinion refuse to deprive ethical value from the political field. For example, Morgenthau rejects such a "double morality" - "in private life, you will become a villain and a criminal, but in the international community, you will become a hero and a politician." It is precisely because there is no field that is separated from morality that these thinkers advocate the use of "consequence-based logic" as the normative standard for good foreign policy.
However, this concept of a field of self-government that is detached from morality is still common among realists. Cooperation between pure egoists, even mutually beneficial, is still sad if they simply see each other as a means to achieve their end and respond to the abuse of others in a calm manner rather than moral anger. Rationalism ignores moral ethics, and they remove moral factors from concepts through language. So, lying becomes a "cover up" and the invaders become a "revisionist".Structural realists sometimes explicitly deny the moralized nature of international politics, while rationalists de-moralize it by avoidance or negligence. Even constructivists who, to some extent, believe that free progress constitutes a transition from immoral to morality, have acquiesced this position.
Although according to research, there is a natural tendency to gather respect for authority and intragroup loyalty, and society may show strong intragroup solidarity. But the evolutionary approach to viewing ethics as moral intuition is different from the explanation of constructivism , because it does not consider human beings essentially a blank slate. Morality is not entirely produced by practice or social interaction, our culture is not a random collection of habits, they are the channelized expressions of our instincts.
Conclusion
Ethical-centered biological approach improves several previous rough applications of Darwinism on IR, which do not mention human unique ethical consciousness. As evolutionary theorists emphasize, no creature can generously donate people outside their immediate family as humans do. Morality is not a transcendence of material reality, but a material reality. It helps us to deal with adaptive challenges posed by the physical environment—to stop threats, promote cooperation, and allocate resources. Most normative literature is constructivist, and morality is determined by a society at any given time. However, many have noticed that this position ultimately resembles moral relativism, because morality in this case lacks an objective basis. Evolution tells us that this radical subjectivism is not a necessary condition for explaining morality.
Vocabulary accumulation
moral condemn
moral condemn
moral condemn
autonomous sphere
autonomous sphere
moral obligations
moral obligations
moral obligations Psychology
Translator: Meng Xiaoyu, a scholar-in-law compiler of the national politics, a master's degree in international politics at Shandong University, and his research interests are marine politics and Sino-US relations.
proofreading | Ding Weihang
review | Ding Weihang
typeface | Ma Shuxian Xiao Rui
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