3 - Kinship, reciprocity and intrinsic value

Summary

In the previous chapter, we discussed how intergroup competition promotes within-group cooperation. But this is not the only thing needed for cooperation; we must also consider mechanisms that develop and maintain cooperation within groups. The two most well-established mechanisms for enabling cooperation across all species are kinship and reciprocity. We have already touched on reciprocity in the previous chapter.

A large scientific controversy persists over whether intergroup competition and the selection of cooperation at the level of groups, as discussed in Chapter 2, or reciprocity and kinship are the primary factors that enable cooperation. As an outsider to the academic communities involved, my interpretation is that this controversy is in part due to the very same tribal instincts we discussed in Chapter 2: often the easiest way to identify yourself as belonging to a group is to clarify that you don't like “them” and what they’re doing and thinking. In his discussion of the mathematical equivalence between group selection and kinship-based selection, Wilson (2016) – arguably the primary proponent of group-based selection through his multilevel selection framework – has argued that these mechanisms do not need to be seen as mutually exclusive. My interpretation is that cooperation requires the identification of an in-group to ensure that the costs of cooperation are recouped, and that kinship and reciprocity are the two primary mechanisms for this identification. In this chapter, we discuss each of these as mechanisms for establishing and maintaining cooperation, as a means for establishing property rights, and as a way to fundamentally change how we view nature and environmental rights to nature.

Kinship and reciprocity closely relate to the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic values. Intrinsic values come from the inside, and need no external reinforcement; extrinsic values are only instrumental, and without external reinforcement, will fade. The dominant Western discourse about property rights and public policy has mostly neglected intrinsic value. This is in part due to an abridged understanding of the nature of human actors as only responding to extrinsic incentives (Bowles 2016). I believe that another reason for this is that certain aspects of intrinsic motivation are harder to implement at scale, which is an inherent goal of any public policy.