Source
Curry (2016), LIT-503, the founding chapter, read in full in NOTE-408. Its two tests: Curry, Mullins & Whitehouse (2019), LIT-047, read in NOTE-034; and Curry, Jones Chesters & Van Lissa (2019), LIT-496, read in NOTE-412.
What was actually shown
The account (LIT-503). Morality is “a collection of biological and cultural solutions to the problems of cooperation and conflict recurrent in human social life” (pp. 29, 44). Nonzero-sum game theory gives seven such problems: kin allocation (Hamilton), coordination (Lewis, Schelling, Skyrms), exchange (Trivers, Axelrod), hawkish and dovish contest displays, division (Nash, Skyrms) and possession (Gintis). Each gives a domain: family, group loyalty, reciprocity, bravery, respect, fairness, property. The chapter reports no data. Its evidence is quotations chosen to show each solution praised.
The predictions (pp. 39–40). The seven are morally good, and their failures bad, “in every human culture, at all times and in all places”. “Behaviour that has nothing to do with cooperation … will be regarded as morally neutral”, and there is no culture where morality “is about something other than cooperation — say, aesthetics or nutrition”. Sexual, political and religious morality, food taboos included, will turn out to be cooperative.
The positive half, tested. In the ethnographic record of 60 societies the seven are described as good in 961 of 962 valenced mentions (LIT-047; THEORY-653). Questionnaire items written for the seven form seven factors as relevance ratings in the UK, the US and Turkey (LIT-496, LIT-513; THEORY-505).
The negative half, untested. Neither test codes any non-cooperative content. The only place the programme’s data meet it is the MFQ’s purity items in LIT-496, Studies 2 and 3a. Those items are rated as morally relevant as loyalty and authority, which the authors say “appear[s] to contradict” the theory (p. 27; THEORY-632).
What could have come out otherwise. A society could have condemned one of the seven, and non-cooperative content could have been rated morally irrelevant. The first is barely detectable by the coding used. The second did not happen.
What this does not say
- That morality is only about cooperation. That is the claim, and the evidence for it so far is evidence for the positive half alone.
- That there are exactly seven domains. The count is the list of games known in 2016, and new games are expected to add domains (p. 40). A further cooperative domain does not count against the account; only a non-cooperative one does.
- Why cooperation is moralized rather than merely liked. The chapter identifies morality with the solutions, so it has no account of what makes a solution moral. Bloom’s question in LIT-047’s comments stays open.
- That the falsifier is live yet. The page that names nutrition as a domain no morality is about also predicts that food taboos will turn out cooperative. Until a cooperative account of a given taboo is written and tested, that prediction cannot fail.
- That the seven are a combinatorial system. Moral Molecules (LIT-509, NOTE-399) fits a concept to each of 21 pairs by search for confirming instances, with no protocol, and says the theory does not predict which molecules exist. It is not evidence for this account.
Connections
- Rivals. Moral Foundations Theory (THEORY-539) keeps Sanctity as a foundation with a non-cooperative, pathogen-avoidance origin. The two lists differ in both directions: MAC has bravery and property, MFT has Sanctity and care for non-kin. Baumard, André & Sperber (THEORY-457) start from cooperation too but count only fairness as moral proper, defining kin altruism and group loyalty out.
- Rescues. Fitouchi, André & Baumard (THEORY-494) argue that puritanical norms are cooperative after all. That rescues “morality is about cooperation” for some purity content. It does not rescue “morality is these seven domains”, since it reduces puritanism to harm and fairness. Rai & Fiske (THEORY-626) put purity under Unity, a relational motive, which is another cooperative home for it.
- The hawk–dove attribution. The chapter credits hawk–dove contests to Maynard Smith & Price (1973). That paper (LIT-505, NOTE-404) has no Hawk–Dove game, so the display and deference domains need a later source. What it does show is filed as THEORY-466.
- The games it borrows. The kin, exchange and reciprocity domains rest on results the record files separately: Hamilton’s inclusive fitness (THEORY-408), Trivers’ reciprocal altruism (THEORY-663), the stability of TIT FOR TAT (THEORY-672) and Nowak’s five mechanisms (THEORY-567). Each holds under its own conditions, which this account does not restate.