I am preparing a paper presently titled “How Morality as Cooperation Can Help Resolve Moral Disputes” for submission to a peer-reviewed journal that focuses on biological and cultural evolution and its insights into prosocial behaviors. The editor has OK’d the abstract but has not yet seen the paper. Before I submit it, perhaps some here could comment on the extracts below —the parts most relevant to moral philosophy, a subject I have studied only superficially.


How Morality as Cooperation Can Help Resolve Moral Disputes
Oct 11, 2025

Abstract:
There is a growing scientific consensus that the primary reason cultural moralities exist is that they solve cooperation problems. This paper proposes how insights from evolutionary game theory and moral psychology into the origins and functions of cultural moral norms can help resolve disputes about their enforcement. Case studies include “homosexuality is evil” and “abortion any time after conception is wrong”. Revealing the shameful origins of these two norms in exploitation of outgroups to increase the benefits of cooperation for ingroups could help groups decide if they will be enforced. Starting with The Golden Rule, “do not kill”, and the above disputed norms as examples, I show how a behavior’s morality can be categorized as descriptively moral, universally moral, and immoral (within a morality as cooperation framework) based on if they solve or create cooperation problems within groups and between groups. Reasons are given for why rational people might prefer to advocate the three principles implied by this categorization as a moral reference for refining cultural moral norms. No claims are made that all rational people will or somehow ought (except as an instrumental ought for achieving their goals) to advocate for morality as cooperation’s implied principles. Such claims are assumed to be beyond science’s domain.
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I make four main claims that may not have previously been explicitly stated. First, virtually all the contradictions and strangeness of past and present cultural moral norms can be explained by evolutionary game theory and moral psychology as parts of cooperation strategies. Second, cultural moral norms are those norms whose violation is commonly thought to warrant punishment of at least reputation damage. Third, these explanations imply three cultural-independent moral principles that define what is descriptively moral, universally moral, and immoral within the framework of morality as cooperation. Fourth, the ultimate source of our moral psychology and cultural moral norms lies in cooperation strategies that are as innate to our universe as the simple mathematics on which evolutionary game theory is based.

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To illustrate how this perspective can be culturally useful, I will explain what this perspective reveals about 1) the Golden Rule and “do not kill”, 2) the sometimes fervently defended norms “abortion is wrong from the moment of conception” and “homosexuality is evil”, 3) the strange norm “eating pigs is morally wrong”, and 4) “women must be subservient to men” and “slaves must obey their masters”.

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These categories define three culture-independent moral principles:
1) Descriptively moral behaviors solve cooperation problems in groups but may exploit, and thereby create cooperation problems with, outgroups.
2) Universally moral behaviors solve cooperation problems without exploiting others.
3) Immoral behaviors create cooperation problems.

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Why might people prefer the proposed morality as cooperation principles as references for understanding and refining cultural moral norms?

1) Based on their explanatory power for the superficially chaotic data set of past and present cultural moral norms, these moral principles are arguably true in the usual scientific sense, making them uniquely valuable as objective references for resolving disputes about cultural moral norms.
2) These principles reveal that cultural morality is not a mysterious burden (Blackford 2015) but rather a powerful means for increasing the benefits of sustained cooperation with family, friends, and community.
3) They will be more harmonious with our moral sense than other options because, for the most part, the cooperation strategies they employ are already encoded in the biology underlying our moral sense.
4) In addition to its material benefits, increased cooperation can reliably trigger innate psychological rewards, feelings of well-being and moral elevation (Haidt 2003; Von Hippel, W. 2018), that evolved to help motivate cooperation with family, friends, and larger ingroups.
5) By defining only moral ‘means’ (cooperation strategies) and not ‘ends’ (the goals of that cooperation), these principles are compatible with common ultimate moral goals from moral philosophy. Variations of well-being for all and Stoicism’s personal eudaimonia are goals that could be well served by refining cultural moral norms to more effectively solve cooperation problems.

Implications for moral philosophy

The morality as cooperation scientific consensus explains why cultural moralities exist. This is not a philosophical claim about what morality ought to be. Answering moral philosophy’s ‘ought’ questions such as “How should I live?” and “What are my obligations?” requires assumptions about imperative moral oughts and ultimate moral goals that are beyond science’s domain.

However, some philosophers might find that the emerging understanding of what moral means ‘are’ provides useful insights into what moral means ought to be.

For example, consider the ultimate source of our moral psychology and cultural moral norms. That source is not in our semi-random biological and cultural evolution. These evolutionary processes merely encoded morality. The ultimate source of cultural moralities is in evolutionary game theory. Evolutionary game theory is independent of biology or culture because it is as innate to our physical reality as the simple mathematics it is based on. Perhaps a culture, species, and time independent definition of what cultural moralities ‘are’ could be useful?

Conclusion and recommendations for further work

Morality as cooperation implies three moral principles that, with insights from game theory and moral psychology, may be culturally useful for helping to resolve disputes about cultural moral norms.

However, work is needed to 1) more firmly establish that the three moral principles proposed here are grounded in robust science, 2) explore how kin altruism, hierarchies, network reciprocity, group selection, rule of law, and money economies (none of which are addressed in this paper) help solve cooperation problems and how to use that knowledge to refine cultural moral norms to better meet human needs and preferences, and 3) integrate morality as cooperation into moral philosophy’s toolkit for resolving disputes about enforcing cultural moral norms.