Stop That Crow!

This post will deal with ideas which seem so obvious to me that I’m sure they must have been thought up by somebody before me, though I have not read them in any other source. I will argue that there is a fundamental similarity which underlies both vengeance and justice, and that the only differences which exist between these two principles lie primarily in the way in which this common underlying principle is implemented in reality.

Much has been made of the Axelrod’s tit-for-tat strategy and its success in game theory, especially when used in an evolutionary setting. The main idea of the strategy is that when interacting with another player in a prisoner’s dilemma game, if the last time I interacted with this person they cooperated, then this time I will cooperate with them as well. If, however, the last time I interacted with them that person defected, then I will defect this time as well. Axelrod has held many tournaments with strategies matched up against the tit-for-tat strategy, but every time, the tit-for-tat emerges as the dominant strategy.

We can see the rationale in the tit-for-tat strategy, though it is more likely the case that the success of tit-for-tat determines our notion of rationality rather than the other way around. The reason why tit-for-tat works so well is that it is a method of punishing defectors and thereby encouraging cooperation in the population of interactors.

This rationale would be what Dennett calls a “free-floating rationale.” This may seem to be anthropomorphizing the evolutionary process a bit too much, but that is exactly the point which he wishes to make in his book “Darwin’s Dangerous Idea.” Evolution by natural selection does not create “pseudo-design” or even mere complexity which has the appearance of design. No, evolution creates actual, full-fledged design only without a designer however difficult this is to imagine. Biology, by this reasoning, is simply reverse engineering, in that biologist look for the reasons or rationales which justify certain “moves” by way of research and design.

The rationale of encouraging cooperation by means of punishing defectors is a good one, and evolution discovered it for man a long time before man ever discovered it for himself. The desire in men for vengeance, I will suggest, is biologically inbuilt in man. When somebody “defects” against us in some way (call it stealing, injuring, killing, violating, etc.) I want to suggest that it is part of our biological human nature to “defect” against them in some way as a means of punishment.

Furthermore, I will suggest that the “eye for an eye” strategy, which was native to the near east, rather than being an embodiment of a cultures refusal to forgive others their trespasses, was in fact a limitation on how harshly defectors were to be punished. Eye for an eye is far more forgiving than “kill-you-and-your-entire-family for an eye” is. The main point which I want to claim is that vengeance is the biological implementation of punishing defectors in order to promote cooperation.

Justice, I will argue, is simply a different manifestation of the same rationale of punishing defectors in order to encourage cooperation. Justice, however, differs from vengeance in two significant ways. First of all, justice is not implemented at the biological level, but is rather embodied at the cultural level by way of traditions, institutions and customs. Whereas biological evolution works, according to Dennett, with free-floating rationales, justice is a rationale of which we are at least somewhat conscious. This is not to say, however, that our sense of justice is not highly influenced by our sense of vengeance. Indeed, I think that our sense of vengeance, for better or for worse, acts as a biological tether from which the cultural ball of justice cannot roll very far.

The second way in which justice differs from vengeance is perhaps even more important. Vengeance, operating at the biological level, is very concerned with strict parsimony; evolution simply cannot make too large of “jumps” in design space. Thus, vengeance operates at the level of the individual feeling compelled to punish those who have defected against him himself, regardless of what those around him may have to say on the matter. The problem with this strategy, as you might have foreseen, is that the punishment to a defector is itself a form of defection which merits punishment. This is the embodiment of the saying “eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.”

Skyrms attempts to deal with this problem by suggesting that the introduction of positive correlation eventually “weeds out” the defection from the population, but this is where I think the tit-for-tat model simply parts with practical reality. Defections, or for that matter, perceived defections will tend to happen within population and it would seem that such a fact of human interaction would lead to innumerable, endless feuds between the involved parties, unless either one of the two parties was removed from the population or some sort of forgiveness mechanism entered into play at some time. Neither one of these options seems to mirror human reality very well.

The second difference between justice and vengeance, finally, is that while vengeance is an instance of the tit-for-tat rationale being carried out by a single individual, justice is an instance of this same strategy being carried out by the population itself. Thus, there is no single person who is responsible for the punishment which be interpreted as an instance of defection meriting punishment in return. Of course the punished defector could attempt to exact vengeance upon the entire population, but 1) vengeance does not seem to work this way biologically speaking and 2) such a decision would most assuredly lead to the punished defector’s own demise before that of the entire population.

This account may provide some insight into the debate between retributive theories and deterrence theories regarding social justice. As can be seen, the free-floating rationale of tit-for-tat in the case of biological evolution is an entirely forward looking one, although it can only be implemented in a backward looking way since there is no foresight in the evolutionary process. It is the backward implementation of the rationale which makes man interprets their biological inclinations as being retributive in nature. “We punish a criminal because he deserves it” is simply the cognitive report we offer when asked to justify our actions. Inasmuch as the rationale is free-floating in the case of cultural evolution then people will still see punishments as being retributive in nature. However, as we come to understand the rationale which has shaped both our biological as well our cultural evolution we will see that punishment for defection is essentially forward looking, and therefore deterrent in nature.