Is “right” or “wrong” fixed?

Wilson thinks that modularization is pre-homo sapiens, probably starting with homo habilis. I think that's speculative, since there is no evidence one way or the other that homo habilis had ethical predelections. There is some evidence that Neanderthals had regard for each other, since they buried their dead and seem to have taken care of their infirm. A Neanderthal skeleton found at La Chapelle, France, was missing most of its teeth and had back and hip maladies that would have made it hard for him to get around without assistance. The idea that Neanderthals were lumbering brutes came from over-generalization about a skeleton of an adult man with arthritis so bad that he also probably wouldn't have made it without assistance. Since these pre-human hominids were able to mate with homo sapiens and produce viable offspring, the lines of speciation would seem to be fuzzy.

Not quite sure what you mean about a distinction between group interest and society's interest. Do you mean a distinction between groups within a society and the society as a whole? Anthropologists think the earliest human societies were extended kinship groups, with solidarity based on genetic ties. It is consistent with evolutionary theory that individuals sharing genetic material will make personal sacrifices to preserve the genes. Wilson called this "kin selection", which is consistent with Dawkins' notion that the "selfish gene" rather than the organism is the important unit in natural selection. Through the process of "inclusive fitness", genes that benefit the survival of the genetic line are selected for survival. But what about more complex societies that consist of more than one kinship group? That level of social complexity would come in the Upper Paleolithic and Neolithic periods, in which several kinship groups (clans and lineages) co-existed in sedentary communities. In 2010, Wilson revised his theory and broke with Dawkins by arguing for "multi-level selection"--i.e., the theory that natural selection acts at the level of the group as well as the individual, and that altruism evolved for the good of the community rather than for the benefit of individual genes. Societies containing more altruistic members--i.e., those willing to make personal sacrifices for the benefit of the tribe or collectivity-- will prevail over those whose members are rugged individualists. This "group selection" theory is essentially the theory of evolution put forward in the nineteenth century by T.H. Huxley, "Darwin's bulldog". So in answer to your question, if that is your question, evolutionary thinking is divided on the matter of group (multi-level) selection, and the division is quite intense and acrimonious.
https://blog.oup.com/2015/01/kin-group-selection-controversy/
The Evolutionary Biology of Altruism
Edward O. Wilson on The Biological Basis of Morality - The Atlantic
Far be it from me to jump into this fray., since I lack the necessary expertise to do so. Dawkins added to the complexity of the situation by introducing the concept of memes--units of cultural information that act like genes. Like genes, memes are willing to throw individual adherents under the bus to preserve themselves, as any follower of ISIS can attest. As societies become larger and more complex, the leaders of these societies propagate systems of memes to legitimate their rule and promote the solidarity of their chiefdoms, kingdoms or empires--usually by means of religion. Through conquest and commerce, these memes are spread, co-mingle and compete with others, and perpetuate themselves in new combinations. The advent of universalistic religion was a major breakthrough in this process which has been analyzed by various scholars. (Bellah, Religion in Human Evolution; Wright, The Evolution of Religion; Armstrong, The Great Transformation.) On this basis, I wouldn't say that society's interest is merely an extension of group interest, but something far more complex and dynamic. I believe in emergent evolution, in which the whole becomes qualitatively different from the sum of its parts.http://web.cecs.pdx.edu/~mm/EncycOfEvolution.pdf

 

I mean that groups develop before societies develop and depending on how strict we want to be with the term society, we might suggest that societies only exist amongst humans, or at least our most immediate evolutionary ancestors, which is implied by Wilson's work, if he is placing the modularization at homo habilis.

I guess my only qualm with that notion from my non-evolutionary biologist background is that it seems like a dramatic step going from just self-interest to a developed society interest. I think with Harris's point in mind, that aspects of morality developed in other species, I envision more of a gradual developing of structures from self-interest to group interest in many of the other social mammals, where some of the precursors and/or base qualities of morality are developed before the unfolding of society-interest and "conceptual morality" realized in humans.

 

Is there an anthropologist in the house? A society is "a group of people who live in a common territory, more or less sharing the common culture and other social institutions". A social group "consists of two or more individuals who share similar attitudes, values and interests."

• "When we consider about the differences we can identify that societies are comparatively larger than a social group.

• Also, a society is a collection of various social groups.

• Within a particular society, there can be a lot of social groups.

• Society may enjoy people who have different values, beliefs and cultural practices but in a social group, the members more or less share common characteristics."Difference Between Society and Social Group | Society vs Social Group

So from this, I gather that the relative distinction between a group and a society is size and degree of commonality--groups tending to be smaller and more closely bound by common ties. But in the case of prehistoric peoples the "societies" were small bands of geneticlly related people--i.e., kinship groups. And these would have been the settings in which evolution of altruism and social consciousness took place.

It might have been dramatic, as per Gould's "punctuated equilibrium", but could have been rather gradual as well. The original groups were non-human apelike creatures who evolved human characteristics through such processes as genetic mutation, gene flow, genetic drift, etc. Somewhere along the line, these processes led to the development of more altruistic, socially-oriented individuals (genes for reciprocal altruism having been already selected in non-human, even non-hominoid species) who came to predominate in the kinship bands by passing their genes for cooperation on to their kids. The greater altruism and empathy--ie. cooperativeness, at least for biological kinsmen, was apparently effective in giving these individuals and their bands an edge in the struggle for survival. Wilson posits modularization to explain the internal struggle within these hominoid individuals between their individual self-interests and the group interests, to the extent these come into conflict. This could have been gradual as well, in the course of biological and social differentiation. I think.

 

You've got me goin'. At the risk of straying off topic, I thought I'd mention some of the behavioral differences among our cimpanzee and bonobo primate cousins as they relate to cooperation. There are four subspecies of chimps in Africa: eastern, western, central, and Cameroon-Nigerian. The eastern chimps have been the most studied, thanks to Jane Goodall. Cooperation among chimp group members occurs in inter-group encounters. Chimps live in the forest in groups of typically about 50 members, and are territorial; and the territorial borders are patrolled by groups. if one group encounters another, the interaction is hostile. If one group outnumbers another, they will be quite violent and lethal, and groups will raid each other's territories. The eastern chimps seem to be particularly aggressive in this regard. The western chimps in Senegal, which diverged from the others nearly 500,000 years ago, live in savanna areas, use caves as places to gather and sleep, share plant foods, and fashion spears to hunt other primates. Are Western Chimpanzees a New Species of Pan? The bonobos, who prefer to make love instead of war (relating to one another through a variety of sex acts), are less aggressive than common chimps, but will fight with rival groups. (Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature, p. 39). We don't know which of these relatives our common ancestor was.James Harrod (2007) Appendices for Chmpanzee Spirituality reports evidence for a variety of altruistic and emotive behavior among chimps. Other researchers at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center report that when given a choice between cooperating and competing, chimps choose cooperation five times more often than competition.

Within chimp groups, males compete over status and access to fecundable females. Females may compete mainly over food. (Muller & Mitani, Advances in the Study of Behavior, 35: 275-331). Among chimps, high-ranking males monopolize mating with females during periods when the latter are most likely to conceive. For the matriarchal bonobos, the reverse is true, with the dominant female monopolizing reproductive sex. Boehm argues that humans are distinguished from chimps and bonobos in forming "reverse dominance hierarchies"--in other words, coalitions to prevent the dominant member from hogging access to the females. This critical form of co-operation, perhaps the original social contract, enabled the development of stable pair bonding and the nuclear family which were crucial for human social development. C. (Boehm,1999. Hierarchy in the Forest.) Freud's theory of the origin of religion from patricide in the primal horde (Totem and Taboo) might not be as farfetched as it may seem.