8. Evolutionary Ethics Since 1975:
Dodo, Phoenix, or Firebird?
The first episode in the history of evolutionary ethics began during the nineteenth century with Darwin's and Spencer's writings. Although university dons and professors were skeptical about the relevance of this new perspective on morality, numerous scientists and writers were enthusiastic. By the beginning of the twentieth century, however, the verdict of informed opinion was negative, even though the topic had not been banished from respectable, educated discourse or from university curricula. Until the mid-1930s, the Moral Sciences Tripos at Cambridge contained such questions as "Discuss the position occupied by Evolution in Mr Spencer's system of Ethics," and "What are the principal ethical problems upon which the theory of Evolution has been supposed to throw light? Consider how far it really does throw light upon them."[1] But by the end of the First World War, the subject had encountered severe criticism and was discussed less frequently in the learned journals. Nonetheless, it had a popular appeal and reached a broad audience of general readers.
Attempts to resurrect evolutionary ethics as a subject for serious philosophical consideration in the first half of the twentieth century constituted the second episode in its history. The most thoughtful of the new contenders were biologists like Julian Huxley or C. H. Waddington who were operating with a newly formulated theory of evolution and who believed Freudian psychology supplied additional support. Their efforts, however, failed to generate widespread acceptance. Professional philosophers were dis-
[1] Cambridge University Examination Papers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1899-1987). The first question quoted is from vol. 30 (1900-1901): 359; the second question is from vol. 39 (1909-1910): 430. After vol. 66 (1936-1937), questions on evolutionary ethics do not appear in the Tripos with the single exception of vol. 79 (1949-1950): 608: "Discuss the view that a line of action is right if and only if it is in harmony with the trend of evolution."
dainful, and for the most part evolutionary ethics continued to be confined to popular literature.
Some scientists were sympathetic, but in the highly specialized intellectual environment of the twentieth century, their "amateur" writings had little impact. Like Samuel Jackson Holmes, these writers were concerned to demonstrate general issues such as the natural origin of the moral sense. Symposia at scientific meetings occasionally focused on these subjects. At one meeting of the AAAS, for example, the History and Philosophy of Science Section sponsored a panel on "Science and Ethics" at which it was agreed that biological generalizations have moral consequences. The "importance of harmonious adaptation" was typical of the "biological generalizations" thought to have ethical import, and the AAAS group proposed that "the probability of survival of a relationship between individual humans or groups of humans increases with the extent to which that relationship is mutually satisfying and advantageous."[2] This bromide was made more "rigorous" and was restated: "The probability of survival of individuals, groups, or species of living things increases with the degree with which they can and do adjust themselves harmoniously to each other and to their environment."[3] Social customs, according to this point of view, had "exhibited survival value in a Darwinian sense."[4]
These forays into philosophy elicited little positive reaction. Perhaps the lack of a new major monograph on evolutionary ethics partly explained the absence of discussion. Sporadic symposia and occasional pieces were not enough to kindle a serious debate. Huxley's Romanes Lecture was a slim work, and Waddington's Science and Ethics was only an essay and a set of responses. His more extensive Ethical Animal did not appear until 1960, by which time evolutionary ethics was beginning to take on the characteristics of an intellectual dodo bird.
Edward O. Wilson's exciting synthesis of animal behavior and evolution completely altered this situation and supplied an impetus for a reappraisal of evolutionary ethics, thus opening up a third episode in the history of evolutionary ethics that continues to the present. Wilson's book Sociobiology (1975) gives a name to
[2] Leake and Romanell, Can We Agree? 25.
[3] Chauncey Leake, "An American Opinion," in Waddington, Science and Ethics, 133.
[4] Ibid.
this approach in the study of behavior which stresses the genetic components of behavior and relates them to their evolutionary significance. "Sociobiology" had been studied by biologists before Wilson published his book, and even the term had been used, but Wilson's classic 700-page treatise was what brought the field wide recognition and perhaps more publicity than desired.[5] The final chapter of Sociobiology considers the behavior of man. It raised a storm among those who saw objectionable political and social implications in Wilson's stress on the biological bias of human behavior. Emphasis on human hereditary traits in understanding human nature carries with it an accumulated historical baggage of uncritical, often irresponsible, ideas on genetic determinism, eugenics, and race hygiene. Charges of sexism, racism, and exploitative capitalism were hurled at Wilson, and the 1978 AAAS meeting was disrupted as hecklers took over the stage at a session where he was to speak, a scandal that rivaled the famous ones of the AAAS's British cousin.[6]
A relatively short section, barely two pages, in Wilson's notorious final chapter of Sociobiology discusses ethics.[7] He comes immediately to his point: "Scientists and humanists should consider together the possibility that the time has come for ethics to be removed temporarily from the hands of the philosophers and biologicized."[8] His larger goal, raised in the introduction of the book, is that sociobiology, by explaining the biological basis of social behavior, might become the instrument through which the foundations of the social sciences and the humanities could be reformulated and integrated into the Darwinian worldview.[9] For ethics, this means understanding its "genetic evolution." As
[5] The term "sociobiology" was first used by John Scott in 1946. See Edward O. Wilson, "Introduction: What Is Sociobiology?" in Michael Gregory, Anita Silvers, and Diane Sutch, eds., Sociobiology and Human Nature (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1978): 3.
[6] Some of the initial intellectual debate can be found in Arthur Caplan, ed., The Sociobiology Debate: Readings on Ethical and Scientific Issues (New York: Harper and Row, 1978). See Degler, In Search of Human Nature, for the background for discussions on human nature in this century; and Ullica Segerstrale, "Colleagues in Conflict: An 'In Vivo' Analysis of the Sociobiology Controversy," in Biology and Philosophy 1, no. 1 (1986): 53-87, for a sociological analysis of the controversy.
[7] Edward O. Wilson, Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975): 562-564.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Ibid., 4.
Wilson explains, "Ethical philosophers intuit the deontological canons of morality by consulting the emotive centers of their own hypothalamic-limbic system. . . . Only by interpreting the activity of the emotive centers as a biological adaptation can the meaning of the canons be deciphered."[10] Or, in simpler language, biology can explain in evolutionary terms those moral intuitions that philosophers have so desperately tried to justify.
Although Wilson's specialty is the social insects, he has considerable interest in the scientific explanation of man and his culture.[11] Like Darwin, he sees that a complete evolutionary picture of the world requires an account of man's cultural evolution, specifically, his moral sense. Whereas Darwin was working in a period of hopelessly inadequate genetics, no population biology to speak of, and only the crudest data on ethology, ecology, and psychology, Wilson has the fruits of this century's spectacular progress in these areas. He also shares with numerous other intellectuals a common sense of frustration over the Anglo-American philosophical community's failure to illuminate the rational foundation of ethics. His other motives, whether crypto-sexist, racist, vegetarian, or whatever, need not concern us. Wilson's interest in a complete Darwinian worldview is clear, and he has devoted three books to the topic since publishing his magisterial synthesis on sociobiology.[12]
In these books some of the key concepts of the modern study of the genetic basis of social behavior are popularized. Wilson argues for an understanding of culture from a biological perspective. Central to his discussion is the nature of altruism and the evolution of culture. The two subjects are linked through a study of genetics. A major topic for ethologists has been altruistic behavior, which is defined as behavior that increases the fitness of another at the expense of the actor's fitness. Fitness is understood as genetic fitness,
[10] Ibid., 563.
[11] Wilson is one of the most creative and wide-ranging biologists alive today. He has made contributions to population biology, written very intelligently on the future of biological research, and is a leading spokesman on the importance of bio-diversity.
[12] Edward O. Wilson, On Human Nature (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978); Charles J. Lumsden and Edward O. Wilson, Genes, Mind, and Culture: The Coevolutionary Process (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981); and Charles J. Lumsden and Edward O. Wilson, Promethean Fire: Reflections on the Origin of Mind (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983). On the broader context of Wilson's ideas, see Segerstrale, "Colleagues in Conflict."
that is, the relative genetic contribution of one genotype to the next generation compared to other genotypes. That an animal should sacrifice its life for the sake of its neighbors has been a puzzle for over a century. Darwin and his contemporaries relied on the concept of group selection. A group that harbored such individuals would have an advantage over those groups that did not. In recent years, however, the concept of group selection has been strongly criticized. Assaults by George C. Williams, Richard Dawkins, and William Hamilton have nearly destroyed the notion, although some still give the concept a limited value.[13] Sociobiology, for the most part, has emphasized individual selection and builds on the work of biologists who have emphasized the central importance of an individual passing on its genes. For example, through Hamilton's concept of kin selection or "inclusive fitness," the selective value of an altruistic act can be explained by showing how the act results in a greater number of an individual's genes being passed on to the next generation. This can happen, even at the expense of an individual's life or fertility, when the "altruistic" act leads to the survival and reproduction of near relations with whom he shares common genes. Since we share half our genes with siblings (an eighth with cousins), if we sacrifice ourselves so that one of our siblings more than doubles his reproductive rate, copies of our genes in the next generation will be increased. A related concept, "reciprocal altruism," introduced by Robert Trivers, accounts for those cases involving individuals not closely related by coupling "unselfish" behavior to the likelihood of future benefit to the good samaritan.[14]
To be sure, the use of terms like "selfish," "altruistic," and "good samaritan" is misleading, for it suggests conscious intention, choice,
[13] See William Hamilton, "The genetical Theory of Social Behaviour," 2 pts., Journal of Theoretical Biology 7 (1964): 1-16, 17-52; George C. Williams, Adaptation and Natural Selection: A Critique of Some Current Evolutionary Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966); and Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976). The concept of group selection has had a long and tangled history. The modern critique was aimed at the formulation of V. C. Wynne-Edwards who, in his 1962 Animal Dispersion in Relation to Social Behaviour (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1962), attempted to explain the regulation of population size by hypothesizing that individuals in Mendelian populations sacrifice their survival and limit their reproduction to help control population growth.
[14] Robert Trivers, "The Evolution of Reciprocal Altruism," Quarterly Review of Biology 46, no. 4 (1971): 35-75. Suggestive as this concept has been, many biologists doubt the extent of reciprocal altruism in nature.
and human values. Georg Breuer, in a very perceptive discussion of the debate surrounding sociobiology, cites the sloppy use of language as partly responsible for some of the many misunderstandings that bedevil the subject.[15] But language is not the sole problem. If we accept the idea that human populations evolved like other social organisms, a clear invitation to consider human behavior in evolutionary terms exists. Might not concepts that shed light on the altruistic behavior in animals be used to understand human altruism also?
But that raises the issue of the origin of culture, for discussions of altruism, values, and kinship relations have to be related to the cultural milieu in which they occur. Here the topic gets cloudy, for during much of this century "cultural" has been used as a term in conscious contrast with "biological."[16] Like Darwin, however, most sociobiologists maintain that there is a continuity between animals and man and that rudiments of culture are to be found among animals. But, equally, sociobiologists concede that culture is primarily a human property. The key issue is, to what extent is culture genetically determined? Sociobiologists differ in their assessments, and these differences are vital. Wilson published two books on the relationship between culture and genes. He argues, along with his collaborator Charles Lumsden, that although a genetic component in humans is responsible for behavioral "tendencies," cultural evolution has to be seen as a coevolution of genes and culture. Culture has units that can be "inherited" in a manner analogous to genes but by a process that is faster, more directed, and more flexible.
Richard Dawkins, a leading popularizer of the evolutionary perspective on societies, animal and human, agrees that concepts like reciprocal altruism and inclusive fitness are inadequate to explain fully cultural evolution. He also accepts the idea that cultural units called "memes" exist, and that "memes and genes may often rein-
[15] Georg Breuer, Sociobiology and the Human Dimension (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982). Also see the interesting discussion of altruism by David Sloan Wilson, "On the Relationship between Evolutionary and Psychological Definitions of Altruism and Selfishness," Biology and Philosophy 7 (1992): 61-68.
[16] See Degler, In Search of Human Nature, for an interesting discussion of the history of the distinction. Also see Hamilton Cravens, The Triumph of Evolution: American Scientists and the Hereditary-Environment Controversy 1900-1941 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1978).
force each other, but they sometimes come into opposition."[17] Such an admission, in the tradition of Thomas Henry Huxley, opens the door to a view of culture as a human phenomenon that goes beyond biological evolution. In spite of a general perception that Dawkins espouses a "selfish" vision of man, he ends his book on the selfish gene with a statement of hope and a discussion of man's freedom to rebel against his "selfish" legacy.[18]
Considerable debate centers on this point. If culture is independent of biological evolution, then who needs sociobiologists intruding into the domains of sociology, anthropology, history, and philosophy? Human geneticists like Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza believe that a theory of culture can be constructed which makes use of analogies to Darwinian evolution and to patterns discovered in epidemiology. And ecologists such as Robert Boyd and Peter Richerson have attempted to construct a Darwinian theory of the evolution of culture.[19] Anthropologists like Marshall Sahlins, however, stridently oppose incursions of sociobiology into anthropology and argue that culture has to be understood on its own terms.[20] More accommodating, Ashley Montagu accepts a genetic basis for much behavior but dismisses the approach of sociobiology as narrow "biologism."[21] If, however, sociobiology can tell us something about human nature, or about human social activity, might it not be relevant for moral discussion? Even philosophers who verge on the intemperate in sociobiology bashing appreciate the value of an expansion of our understanding of human nature. Mary Midgley,
[17] Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, 213. Also see Juan Delius, "The Nature of Culture," in M. S. Dawkins, T. R. Halliday, and R. Dawkins, eds., The Tinbergen Legacy (London: Chapman and Hall, 1991): 75-99.
[18] Mary Midgley, for example, in her article "Gene-Juggling," in Ashley Montagu, ed., Sociobiology Examined (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980): 108-134 (originally in Philosophy 54, no. 210 [1979]: 439-458), has a rather savage discussion in which she refers to Dawkins's position as "slapdash egoism" (132). She argues that Dawkins's central point is that the emotional nature of man is exclusively self-interested and that he attempts to make this point by claiming that all emotional nature is self-interested (109).
[19] See L. L. Cavalli-Sforza and M. W. Feldman, Cultural Transmission and Evolution: A Quantitative Approach (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), and Robert Boyd and Peter Richerson, Culture and the Evolutionary Process (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985).
[20] See Marshall Sahlins, The Use and Abuse of Biology: An Anthropological Critique of Sociobiology (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1976).
[21] Montagu, Sociobiology Examined, 5. Also see Degler, In Search of Human Nature, 310-327.
for example, who rakes Dawkins over the coals for his "fatalism"[22] and argues that one cannot reduce all of ethics to an understanding of altruism, reminds her readers that she is not "by any means opposed to every aspect of sociobiology, but only to some of its excesses."[23] Wilson and others who feel that the study of sociobiology can contribute to our understanding of the origin of culture and some of the possible tendencies to which our genes predispose us do not make the same mistake as many of their nineteenth-century predecessors, that is, in confusing the discussion of the origin of morality with its justification. If anything, they stress an opposite point: that an understanding of our genetic endowment may show us problems we need to confront. If a gender-based tendency toward aggression in humans exists, and if the roots of other behaviors are deeper than the environmental influences that are said to produce them, then stronger measures than environmental modification may be needed to control them. This tilt toward "nature" in the nature/nurture debate has been a source of much acrimonious contention and has often warped the discussion. Attacks on sociobiology, for example, have stressed alleged racist and sexist readings, and critics of sociobiology have concentrated on what they believe are its inherently conservative biases. But just as Social Darwinism in the nineteenth century took a liberal as well as a conservative form, so, too, the "data" of sociobiology can be used to justify radically different social programs.[24] These ideological skirmishes, unfortunately, often have diverted attention from other more serious conceptual issues. For if the origin of ethical codes is not what justifies them, what does? If our genes contain directions that were useful to ancient man and are maladaptive now (especially in liberal environments like Cambridge, Mass.), are we justified in labeling them "bad"? How exactly do we determine which natural dispositions are "good" and which "bad"? These issues have been principal stumbling blocks for earlier versions of evolutionary ethics.
The appearance of numerous books with sensational popularized
[22] Mary Midgley, "Rival Fatalisms: The Hollowness of the Sociobiology Debate," in Montagu, Sociobiology Examined, 15-38.
[23] Midgley, "Gene-Juggling," 132. Midgley argued for the importance of animal behavior for philosophers and specifically mentions Wilson's work as useful to consider in Beast and Man: The Roots of Human Nature (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1978).
[24] Degler makes this point in his recent book, In Search of Human Nature.
versions of possible evolutionary moral lessons has also clouded the discussion of the ethical value of sociobiology. But they have little bearing on the issue. Any new and exciting perspective will have its opportunists, and in our contemporary atmosphere, vulgarization has been a profitable and well-rewarded activity.[25]
Sociobiology's relevance for ethics is analogous to that of the psychoanalytic movement or of cultural anthropology. It provides a description of influences on individuals, pressures exerted by groups on moral development, and unconscious motivation, all of which need to be understood in assessing individual action. Insight into the historical development of moral codes, and even of the beliefs of historical figures, may result from investigations in the social and natural sciences. But to go beyond description, to enter the arena of the normative, that is, to say what ought to be, involves an important shift that requires justification.
Here, sociobiology provides no new basis, no new foundation, no new hope. There is, nonetheless, a wide range of opinion on the ethical and cultural significance of sociobiology. Dawkins, on the one hand, states that culture can be independent of our genes in the sense that once culture comes into existence it may evolve "in the way that it has, simply because it is advantageous to itself."[26] He believes that man has the conscious foresight and the means so that "we, alone on earth, can rebel against the tyranny of the selfish replicators."[27]
Richard Alexander, who, like Dawkins, studies animal behavior, takes a middle position and argues that "evolutionary analysis can tell us much about our history and existing systems of laws and norms, and also about how to achieve any goals deemed desirable; but that it has essentially nothing to say about what goals are desirable, or the directions in which laws and norms should be modified in the future."[28] Alexander says that evolution has a lot to say about why people do what they do (i.e., they often act to
[25] Philip Kitcher distinguishes popularized from serious sociobiology in his critique, Vaulting Ambition: Sociobiology and the Quest for Human Nature (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1985).
[26] Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, 214.
[27] Ibid., 215.
[28] Richard D. Alexander, Darwinism and Human Affairs (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1979): 220. This book was the result of the Jessie and John Danz Lectures at the University of Washington, 1977. Alexander elaborates on his position in The Biology of Moral Systems (New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1987).
maximize their inclusive fitness), but he is emphatic that when it comes to what people ought to do, it says "nothing whatsoever."[29] Although Alexander is inclined to believe that the existing moral systems of thought do promote individual reproductive success, he states that such a result has come about unconsciously. Moreover, and more significant, he holds that there is no warrant for using inclusive fitness maximizing behavior as a consideration in normative ethics.[30]
Wilson, on the other hand, takes a harder line that recalls the earlier traditions of Waddington and Clifford. In his first elaboration of the moral implications of evolution, On Human Nature, he suggests that even though the genetic component of human behavior is partial, "ethical philosophy must not be left in the hands of the merely wise. . . . Only hard-won empirical knowledge of our biological nature will allow us to make optimum choices among the competing criteria of progress."[31] It is a curious argument. Wilson wants to maintain a modern Darwinian picture that envisions man as structured by his genetic heritage, which determines the epigenetic rules through which he must operate. But he also claims that man can go beyond the legacy of his nature, which is "a hodgepodge of special genetic adaptations to an environment largely vanished, the world of the Ice Age hunter-gatherer."[32] Moreover, in attempting to meet the challenge of the future, "we are forced to choose among the elements of human nature by reference to value systems which these same elements created in an evolutionary age now long vanished."[33] But there is a way out. "Fortunately, this circularity of the human predicament is not so tight that it cannot be broken through an exercise of will."[34] Through a deeper knowledge of our biology we can fashion a biology of ethics, "which will make possible the selection of a more deeply understood and enduring code of moral values."[35] Wilson is claiming that a better understanding of evolution can lead us to be more in harmony with nature; thus we might harness our reli-
[29] Ibid., 271.
[30] Ibid., 278. For a similar point of view, also see Francisco Ayala, "The Biological Roots of Morality," Biology and Philosophy 2 (1987): 235-252.
[31] Wilson, On Human Nature, 7.
[32] Ibid., 196.
[33] Ibid.
[34] Ibid.
[35] Ibid.
gious impulses and channel the sources of our most intense emotions into behaviors that are informed by the knowledge of their likely consequences and evolutionary significance.
This is not genetic determinism. Wilson recognizes man's free will. He and Charles Lumsden "suggest that moral reasoning is based on the epigenetic rules that channel the development of the mind. Such reasoning appears to be ultimately dependent on the genes as well as on culture and self-conscious decision. But the rules only bias development; they do not determine ethical precepts or the necessary decisions in a fixed manner. They still require that a choice be made, and in this sense they preserve free will."[36] Each of us, no matter how well informed, must still choose.[37] However, in spite of the liberal gloss, Wilson and Lumsden emphasize the value of survival as primary. In Wilson's earlier On Human Nature, the position was more bluntly stated. "Human behavior—like the deepest capacities for emotional response which drive and guide it—is the circuitous technique by which genetic material has been and will be kept intact. Morality has no other demonstrable ultimate function."[38]
Has Wilson produced a prolegomenon for an evolutionary ethics? He does not elaborate on the specific form ethics should take, and he explicitly rejects a calculus of genetic fitness. Furthermore, he suggests that an adequate ethics will involve extensive secondary values. Indeed, a satisfactory ethics is seen as a distant goal that can be reached only via extensive research on neurophysiology, genetics, population biology, and behavioral studies. On Human Nature can be read as a first approximation, for in it he argues for certain values that he believes promote survival. However, like the "derivations" of values from Darwinian evolution in the nineteenth century, the exercise shows merely that his values are consistent with evolution. Such a vision, however, is hardly compelling. Although not as simpleminded as his critics contend, Wilson does not tell us much more than that biology should inform our choice of values and that the survival of our genes is a cardinal value. But his hope, resonable as it sounds, has little to recommend it in the twentieth century, in that it fails to recognize that genuine conflicts exist between individuals and between groups. It
[36] Lumsden and Wilson, Promethean Fire, 179.
[37] Ibid., 183.
[38] Wilson, On Human Nature, 167.
equally neglects the way in which individuals partake in different groups, often ones that are in opposition. History is the record of different hierarchies of values, of conflicts among and within groups. To choose one set of values over another is to commit oneself to a vision of human society, a concept of what justice is, and a vision of reality that goes far beyond mere survival.
The difference, then, between what we might call the strong program and the weak program of sociobiology-informed evolutionary ethics turns on the extent to which our biological knowledge should influence our values. The weaker program, typified by Dawkins and, to a lesser extent, Alexander, argues that sociobiology will help us understand the evolution of morality and why it is a part of human society but that it provides little guidance for moral choice. The stronger program, typified by Wilson and Lumsden, argues for a Darwinian worldview, which holds not only that evolution accounts for the origins of our moral sense but also that a deeper knowledge of the specifics of our biological nature will permit us to guide the evolutionary process rationally. Since human culture has evolved more quickly than human genes, only by rational self-control will we be able to channel the natural process of human development along beneficial lines.
The strong program certainly recalls earlier formulations of the relevance of evolution for ethics; the historian, in fact, has a most difficult time in not throwing up his floppy disks and wondering whether anyone has been reading the literature on the subject from the last hundred years. Is ignorance condemning us to repeat the past? Wilson's early call to biologize the subject is a call to ignore some important lessons.
But the weaker program is a different matter. Traditionally our picture of human nature has influenced the formulation of morality. And that picture has usually been informed by the science of the day. Psychology, in particular, has been closely linked with philosophy. Although some philosophers have rejected the value of psychology for an understanding of ethics, many in the Anglo-American community have used it as data in constructing their point of view. Psychology may not provide a justification for specific ethical positions, but it suggests some of the raw material that moral philosophers need to consider. Hume, the alleged author of the is/ought distinction, for example, made considerable use of his conception of the mind in formulating an ethical position. On a
more complex level, Donald Campbell, in his 1975 presidential address to the American Psychological Association, suggested that human social evolution had developed in opposition to certain biological tendencies and had to be understood in order to avoid misguided moralizing by social scientists.[39] The current state of sociobiology may be no better than a set of nested black boxes, but, along with psychoanalysis, linguistics, and anthropology, it is, at a minimum, a possible source of relevant information.
In the whirlwind of rhetoric that has surrounded the discussions of sociobiology, this point has often been lost. Social scientists, instead, have reacted with typical professional fury at the suggestion that the relationship of sociobiology to their disciplines is similar to the relationship between chemistry and alchemy, or between astronomy and astrology. Also overlooked is that the essential proposal is a research program rather than a body of interpreted data. It is not that Wilson or anyone else has cracked the genome, related specific genes, groups of genes, developmental histories, or whatever, to specific human behavior, mediated by environmental influences, interactions with other humans, or the luck of the draw. The relevant information that they claim will be of interest to ethics is yet to be had. While this may be of substantial interest to funding agencies or for faculty hiring decisions in the natural sciences, it is not surprising that philosophers have tended to ignore the uproar of their obstreperous neighbors. Although Wilson's On Human Nature received a Pulitzer Prize in 1979, his claims for the ethical value of sociobiology are ignored by most of the philosophical community. There are some notable exceptions. Mary Midgley, who was initially supportive of the potential value of animal behavior for philosophy, has come out against what she sees as a new Darwinian myth that threatens to engulf rational inquiry.[40] She fears that some writers are "obsessed by a picture so colourful and striking that it numbs thought about the evidence required to support it."[41] And her point is well taken, especially in light of the popular sociobiology that has made such speculative claims. An established picture of "human nature" from which to derive useful lessons is far away.
[39] See Donald T. Campbell, "On the Conflicts Between Biological and Social Evolution and Between Psychology and Moral Tradition," American Psychologist 30 (1975): 1103-1126.
[40] Mary Midgley, Evolution as a Religion: Strange Hopes and Stranger Fears (London: Methuen, 1985).
[41] Ibid., 5.
In contrast, a few philosophers, like Michael Ruse and the late John Mackie, have been attracted to the potential of sociobiology to provide new approaches in ethics. They are acutely aware of the many problems that invalidate earlier attempts. Ruse, in fact, critically reviews the history of evolutionary ethics and dismisses the major arguments from Spencer to Wilson. But not completely, for although he rejects most of Wilson's program for an evolutionary ethics, he believes that Wilson has raised at least one major issue that may yet prove to be of substantial value: "that moral claims must be explained by factual evolutionary claims."[42] Ruse makes this point, tellingly, in a book that adumbrates a neo-Darwinian worldview, Taking Darwin Seriously: A Naturalistic Approach to Philosophy (1986). According to Ruse, there is no objective foundation on which to construct ethics. He finds uncompelling contemporary approaches, such as emotivism. Instead he pursues his Darwinian vision, and it is to sociobiology that he turns to demonstrate the origin of altruism by way of individual natural selection. Ruse argues that morality needs to be considered among "the genetically based dispositions to approve of certain courses of action and to disapprove of other courses of action."[43] These dispositions are biological adaptations. He provocatively states that perhaps "morality is a collective illusion foisted upon us by our genes."[44] By this he means that ethics is a subjective enterprise and that Darwinism is the best approach we have for understanding why we embrace the moral codes we do. His view is a type of moral subjectivism, which stakes its hope on evolution to provide some guidance, or at least some emotional reinforcement of the values we hold. Similarly, Mackie has argued that no objective basis for morality exists and that biological concepts like "evolutionary stable strategies" may be helpful in discussing practical morality.[45] Ruse and Mackie stress that our knowledge of biological evolution provides information for informed decisions and that
[42] Ruse, Taking Darwin Seriously, 100.
[43] Ibid., 221.
[44] Ibid., 253.
[45] See J. L. Mackie, Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (London: Penguin Books, 1977), and his articles, "The Law of the Jungle: Moral Alternatives and Principles of Evolution," Philosophy 53, no. 206 (1978): 455-464, "Genes and Egoism," Philosophy 56, no. 218 (1981): 553-555, and "Co-operation, Competition, and Moral Philosophy," in J. L. Mackie, Persons and Values: Selected Papers. Vol. 11, ed. John Mackie and Penelope Mackie (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985): 152-169.
we have moral sentiments that incline us in these directions. They fail, however, to tell why we are obliged to follow those sentiments. A moral choice, after all, goes beyond merely following what we feel is correct.
A few writers take a stronger position and argue that an objective basis exists for justifying evolutionary ethics. They see it, like the quest for the firebird in Russian mythology, as a possible solution to the elusive problem of an acceptable ethics in the twentieth century. Carla Kary, for example, argues that if Wilson is correct, we have a testable view of human nature that can be used as a ground for ethics. Her point is that "ethicists can offer satisfying, normative recommendations by showing how one ethical theory is a better fit to the genetic constraints of Human Nature than others, and hence why that ethical theory will be the most fruitful theory to adopt."[46] Kary wants to ground ethics in terms of our potential knowledge of genetic constraints. But demonstrating that an ethical position is consistent with known biological facts and theories is vastly different from showing that an ethical position follows from them. If sociobiology does indeed give us information about human nature then one would expect philosophers to utilize that knowledge in any system that depends on a vision of human nature. But views such as Kary's rest on a highly simplified notion of ethics. Moral philosophy, as Midgley states, traditionally attempts "to understand, clarify, relate, and harmonize so far as possible the claims arising from different sides of our nature."[47]
The ideas of Robert Richards, an intellectual historian who has made a serious foray into these treacherous waters, are similar to Kary's. Richards argues for the theoretical possibility of a valid evolutionary ethics if we can show empirically that man has evolved a moral sense that "in appropriate circumstances move[s] the individual to act in specific ways for the good of the community."[48] His position rests on showing that if we can demonstrate altruism as part of man's nature, then we are in a position to construct an argument along the lines of those who argue from man's nature to normative injunctions. Richards uses a hypothetical sce-
[46] Carla Kary, "Sociobiology and the Redemption of Normative Ethics," The Monist 67, no. 2 (1984): 163.
[47] Midgley, Beast and Man, 169.
[48] Richards, Darwin and the Emergence of Evolutionary Theories, 603.
nario to make his point. He assumes that early man evolved in small groups and that "they often acted to benefit other community members without expectation of reciprocation and that they prized such behavior in others."[49] The origin of such behavior could have resulted from kin selection and natural selection on small groups. In other words, early kin selection would give rise to individuals who acted altruistically not only for the benefit of close relatives but for the benefit of the group. Like Darwin, Richards then imagines group selection favoring such communities and believes that the extension of altruistic behavior to community members avoids the charge that individuals are acting out of (genetic) self-interest. Moreover, Richards contends that such a scenario provides an argument for evolutionary ethics without committing any logical error.
But even such a circumscribed position is highly problematic. For one thing, it relies on the empirical claim that the action of group selection in human history favored communities fostering individuals who acted altruistically. Group selection, however, is accepted by few scientists today. More important, Richards treats ethics as a subject that is encompassed by the notion of altruism. That is surely a simplification and overlooks the enormous moral conflicts to which any ethical system is expected to be relevant. Of equal seriousness, his sketch sidesteps the issue of justifying the foundation of ethics as "community good." Richards defines "being moral" as acting for the community good and then states that it may be possible to show empirically that evolution has resulted in animals that have just such characters.[50] But, as Sidgwick would undoubtedly have asked, why should we accept community good as the highest good? Richards tries to head off such criticism by claiming that the justification of moral principles "must ultimately lead to an appeal to the beliefs and practices of men, which of course is an empirical appeal. So moral principles ultimately can be justified only by facts."[51] Philosophers since Sidgwick, however, have contended that ethics should provide the grounds for accepting common moral principles. Although there have been a number
[49] Robert Richards, "Dutch Objections to Evolutionary Ethics," Biology and Philosophy 4 (1989): 331.
[50] Ibid., 623-624.
[51] Richards, Darwin and the Emergence of Evolutionary Theories, 619.
of articles inspired by Richards's argument in Biology and Philosophy, not many philosophers have found his hypothetical evolutionary ethics persuasive.[52]
More guarded than Richards or Kary are Neil Tennant and Florian von Schilcher, who present a careful and balanced discussion of both the biology and the philosophy of sociobiology. They conclude that sociobiology "does not offer any criteria of value or normative laws,"[53] but they regard the weaker program, nonetheless, as having considerable worth.
Even if our theories today indicate no definite policy directions, at least we should be beginning to appreciate the importance of a particular kind of consideration. This is that our basic behavioral biology now finds itself in newly created niches in which it may be ill adapted. The hope remains that we shall be able to chart the pitfalls and avalanches on our epigenetic landscape that threaten those acting in accordance with the wrong universalized maxims. This, indeed, is what determines those maxims as wrong. When Kant enjoins us to ask whether the maxim by which we are acting could consistently be willed to become a universal maxim, the sorts of possibilities considered when judging thus of consistency must be the physical possibilities admitted by the laws and facts of nature. Among these are the laws of genetics, and the fact of evolution past and future. If policymakers were to become more aware of these laws and facts, then evolutionary theory would finally become a source of grounded wisdom about our own nature.[54]
Will an evolutionary perspective on human behavior turn out to have value for ethics? By way of establishing a foundation or
[52] See Robert Richards, "A Defense of Evolutionary Ethics," Biology and Philosophy 1, no. 3 (1986): 265-293. Responses by Camilo Cela-Conde, Alan Gewirth, William Hughes, Laurence Thomas, and Roger Trigg are in the same issue, as is Richards's "Justification Through Biological Faith: A Rejoinder." See also Richards, "Dutch Objections to Evolutionary Ethics"; Bart Voorzanger, "No Norms and No Nature—The Moral Relevance of Evolutionary Biology," Biology and Philosophy 3 (1987): 253-270; Stephen Ball, "Evolution, Explanation, and the Fact/Value Distinction," Biology and Philosophy 3 (1988): 317-348; Patricia Williams, "Evolved Ethics Re-Examined: The Theory of Robert J. Richards," Biology and Philosophy 5 (1990): 451-457; William Rottschaefer, "Evolutionary Naturalistic Justification of Morality: A Matter of Faith and Works," Biology and Philosophy 6 (1991): 341-349; Michael Bradie, "Darwin's Legacy," Biology and Philosophy 7 (1992): 111-126.
[53] Florian von Schilcher and Neil Tennant, Philosophy, Evolution and Human Nature (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1984): 165. Also see Neil Tennant, "Evolutionary versus Evolved Ethics," Philosophy 58, no. 225 (1983): 289-302.
[54] von Schilcher and Tennant, Philosophy, Evolution and Human Nature, 163. A recent study that extends the discussion of the potential value of an evolutionary perspective on human nature is James Q. Wilson, The Moral Sense (New York: Free Press, 1993).
justification, recent constructions have not improved on earlier flawed attempts to derive an ethics from evolution. But perhaps if philosophers develop an ethical theory or ethical dialogue that is nonfoundationalist, evolutionary considerations may enter the philosophical arena. To an extent, both Ruse and Richards suggest this approach. After all, the search for a foundation for ethics has hit on hard times. Since Sidgwick confessed to his lack of success in systematizing morality without reference to premises taken on faith, Anglo-American philosophy has made little progress. Sixty years ago, C. D. Broad warned about the unlikelihood of constructing a unified rational ethic.
One lesson at least has been taught us so forcibly by our historical and critical studies in the theory of Ethics that we ought never to forget it in future. This is the extreme complexity of the whole subject of human desire, emotion, and action; and the paradoxical position of man, half animal and half angel, completely at home in none of the mansions of his Father's house, too refined to be comfortable in the stables and too coarse to be at ease in the drawing-room. So long as we bear this lesson in mind we can contemplate with a smile or a sigh the waxing and waning of each cheap and easy solution which is propounded for our admiration as the last word of "science." We know beforehand that it will be inadequate; and that it will try to disguise its inadequacy by ignoring some of the facts, by distorting others, and by that curious inability to distinguish between ingenious fancies and demonstrated truths which seems to be the besetting weakness of men of purely scientific training when he steps outside his laboratory. And we can amuse ourselves, if our tastes lie in that direction, by noticing which well-worn fallacy or old familiar inadequacy is characteristic of the latest gospel, and whether it is well or ill disguised in its new dress.[55]
Much twentieth-century ethics has avoided the issue of a unified rational ethics by focusing attention on the meaning of ethical terms, or by elaborating theories of ethics that take as their starting point the position that ethical statements are not knowledge claims but rather emotive or prescriptive statements. Although a few philosophers like Alasdair MacIntyre suggest that the attempt
[55] C. D. Broad, Five Types of Ethical Theory (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1930): 284.
to construct a rational ethics is doomed unless we make a commitment to a general worldview and once again take metaphysics seriously, a general malaise seems to hover over the entire field. For others, like Bernard Williams, for example, ethics seems to be overtaxed by unrealistic demands. Along with Stuart Hampshire, he doubts whether an adequate rational system of ethics can be successfully constructed. Pragmatists like Richard Rorty have written of returning to Dewey for guidance, but more recently, they have drawn on Nietzsche and Derrida to sketch an ethical position that circumvents any unified theory. Others, like G. J. Warnock, are more optimistic about the possibility of constructing a rational ethics, which even if it does not resolve all dilemmas, at least can provide general guidance for the amelioration of the human situation that he contends "is inherently such that things are liable to go badly."[56] Similarly, John Rawls's widely read book, Theory of Justice (1971), proposes an interesting contractual account of ethics that seeks to establish principles to guide social and political conduct.[57] What is significant for our story about the current literature is that evolutionary ethics is rarely mentioned, even by those who are optimistic about the future of research in ethics.[58]
Whether it is the death throes of ethical philosophy that we are witnessing or merely a quiet phase of its exciting metamorphosis is not the issue here. Rather, it is that for most professional philosophers, even those with a preference for a naturalistic ethics, sociobiology has not increased the plausibility of contemporary evolutionary ethics over its earlier versions. Philosophers are skeptical of any insights ostensibly gained from genetics and feel that the burden of proof rests with the biologists. And just as the evolutionary ethics of the 1940s lacked a fully formulated exposition and therefore remained unconvincing, so, too, does the newest pro-
[56] G. J. Warnock, The Object of Morality (London: Methuen, 1971): 17. Also see Bernard Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985); Stuart Hampshire, Morality and Conflict (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1983); and Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989). All pragmatists have not gone the route of Rorty. See, for example, Paul Kurtz, Philosophical Essays in Pragmatic Naturalism (Buffalo: Prometheus Books, 1990).
[57] John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971).
[58] See, for example, the overview of current research in ethics, Stephen Darwell, Allan Gibbard, and Peter Railton, "Toward Fin de siècle Ethics: Some Trends," Philosophical Review 101, no. 1 (1992): 115-189.
gram for an evolutionary ethics look not only "conjectural" but also unpromising as a theory of ethics.[59] A reflection of the lack of the impact of evolutionary ethics can be seen in the relative indifference of the antievolutionist movement. Barely a reference to evolutionary ethics is to be found in the sizable literature that fundamentalists have published in this century. Whether the scientific study of human behavior will contribute to our understanding of the nature of man and whether such understanding will augment our ethical theories are open questions.
[59] Kenneth Bock writes, "The failure of evolutionism lies in the fact that it was just what its earlier exponents called it—'conjectural history.'" See Bock, "Theories of Progress and Evolutionism," in Werner Cahnman and Alvin Boskoff, eds., Sociology and History: Theory and Research (New York: Free Press, 1964): 36.