Hostname: page-component-89b8bd64d-9prln Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-05-08T11:40:55.484Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Moral externalization may precede, not follow, subjective preferences

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 May 2018

Artem Kaznatcheev  and
Thomas R. Shultz
Artem Kaznatcheev
Affiliation:
Department of Computer Science, University of Oxford, Oxford, OX1 3QD, United Kingdom. kaznatcheev.artem@gmail.com https://egtheory.wordpress.com/ Department of Translational Hematology & Oncology Research, Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland, OH 44195.
Thomas R. Shultz
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, McGill University, Montreal, Québec, H3A 1G1, Canada. thomas.shultz@mcgill.ca www.tomshultz.net School of Computer Science, McGill University, Montreal, Québec, H3A 0E9, Canada.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

We offer four counterarguments against Stanford's dismissal of moral externalization as an ancestral condition, based on requirements for ancestral states, mismatch between theoretical and empirical games, passively correlated interactions, and social interfaces that prevent agents’ knowing game payoffs. The fact that children's externalized phenomenology precedes their discovery of subjectivized phenomenology also suggests that externalized phenomenology is an ancestral condition.

Information

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 41 , 2018 , e107
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Decety, J. (2010) The neurodevelopment of empathy in humans. Developmental Neuroscience 32(4):257–67.Google Scholar
Dondi, M., Simion, F. & Caltran, G. (1999) Can newborns discriminate between their own cry and the cry of another newborn infant? Developmental Psychology 35(2):418–26.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hoffman, D. D. (2009) The interface theory of perception: Natural selection drives true perception to swift extinction. In: Object categorization: Computer and human vision perspectives, ed. Dickinson, S., Tarr, M., Leonardis, A. & Schiele, B., pp. 148–65. Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Joyce, R. (2006) The evolution of morality. MIT Press.Google Scholar
Kaznatcheev, A. (2010) Robustness of ethnocentrism to changes in interpersonal interactions. In: Papers from the AAAI Fall Symposium (FS-10-03): Complex Adaptive Systems–Resilience, Robustness, and Evolvability, pp. 71–75. Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence. Available as pdf file at: https://www.aaai.org/ocs/index.php/FSS/FSS10/paper/download/2314/2630Google Scholar
Kaznatcheev, A., Montrey, M. & Shultz, T. R. (2014) Evolving useful delusions: Subjectively rational selfishness leads to objectively irrational cooperation. Proceedings of the 36th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society 36:731–36. (Online article published in April 2014; available at: arXiv:1405.0041v1 [q-bio.PE]).Google Scholar
Nichols, S. & Folds-Bennett, T. (2003) Are children moral objectivists? Children's judgments about moral and response-dependent properties. Cognition 90(2):B23–32. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/s0010-0277(0300160-4).CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Roth-Hanania, R., Davidov, M. & Zahn-Waxler, C. (2011) Empathy development from 8 to 16 months: Early signs of concern for others. Infant Behavior and Development 34(3):447–58.Google Scholar
Schmidt, M. F., Gonzalez-Cabrera, I. & Tomasello, M. (2017) Children's developing metaethical judgments. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 164:163–77.Google Scholar
Wellman, H., Cross, D. & Watson, J. (2001) Meta-analysis of theory-of-mind development: The truth about false-belief. Child Development 72:655–84.Google Scholar