Caring Capacity and Cosmocultural Evolution: Potential Mechanisms for Advanced Altruism

Abstract

This chapter proposes a model for “advanced altruism,” building from what are fairly well understood biological-genetic dynamics (“biological altruism”) leading to more complex social and cultural forms of altruism (“biocultural altruism”), which can act as a springboard for “advanced altruism” that sufficiently transcends biological self-interest. Two mechanisms are emphasized: increasing caring capacity and cosmocultural evolution, both of which can lead to advanced forms of altruism. Increasing caring capacity involves making cost-benefit ratios of altruistic acts increasingly favorable to all actors—especially by reducing the cost of caring. Cosmocultural evolution emphasizes the coevolution of culture and cosmos and suggests the universe can be a common objective framework. Cosmocultural evolution appeals to the more “subjective” power and value of cultural evolution, which can result in a broad-based respect for the universe and all beings in it. The model may have general applicability to beings that have evolved via natural selection, including possibly single “collective” biological or machine intelligences. However, the model appears to be only marginally applicable to a single being that never evolved through phases of social evolution, requiring additional speculation, some of which is provided to address, for example, how a notion of self and others could develop in such an extreme example.