Theories Of Natural Selection

Natural selection is mainly thought of as being applied to the biological and physical features of organisms during evolution. The traits that help humans survive through different circumstances will continue to be passed to the next generations because through natural selection the fittest survive. Charles Darwin then applies natural selection to morality in societies. I agree that natural selection can also be applied to the moral faculties of humans. A society’s viewpoint on rationality, and what is right and wrong, can be affected by natural selection ending with some societies being better than others. Darwin discusses natural selection being applied to moral faculties of humans in chapter five of Descent of Man. Darwin uses the example
With primeval man the weak and unhealthy were eliminated and those who survived were usually very healthy. Civilized nations, on the other hand, work to help the weak and slow down the process of elimination. Cooperation emerging in society is a big topic with regards to natural selection because the moral of selflessness is demonstrated with cooperation, which puts the selfless person at risk to help others, and natural selection is not thought to allow this. As said by Rosenberg, “we expect natural selection to penalize such risk-taking, since risk-takers lower their prospects of survival and reproduction” (321). Civilized nations often perform altruistic actions, which result in the raised fitness of one organism and a decreased fitness in another. This action goes against the common idea that natural selection is survival of the fittest and shapes beings to maximize their individual fitness. When altruistic acts are reciprocated there is an emergence of cooperation because the net benefits to cooperation are greater than the pay-offs of
The reason for this and the answer to the objection refers to a microeconomics’ topic called the Prisoner’s Dilemma. A basic example of the Prisoner’s Dilemma is a story of two criminals who were taken into custody by the police. The police have enough evidence to convict them of the minor charge of carrying an unregistered gun, which would put each criminal in jail for a year. The police believe the criminals also committed a robbery, but do not have enough evidence to convict them. They take each criminal in a separate room and give them the same deal of if they confess to the robbery and implicate their partner then that person will not go to jail at all, but their partner will go to jail for twenty years. If both criminals confess to the crime, then they will both go to jail for ten years. There are a couple of different results that could happen depending on what each criminal decides to