In the Long Cool Hour: Pragmatic Naturalism

In the Long Cool Hour Amia Srinivasan The Ethical Project by Philip Kitcher. Harvard, 422 pp., £36.95, November 2011, 978 0 674 06144 6 hese English psychologists,’ ultimate explanation of morality – not to Nietzsche wrote in 1887, ‘just what mention love, sex, religion and art – in brain ‘Tdo they want?’ scans and evolutionary just-so stories. ‘It is increasingly evident that moral stand ards, You always find them at the same task, whether practices and policies reside in our neuro- they want to or not, pushing the partie honteuse biology,’ the ‘neurophilosopher’ Patricia of our inner world to the foreground, and looking for what is really effective, guiding Churchland claims. ‘Our moral nature is and decisive for our development where what it is because our brains are as they man’s intellectual pride would least wish to are.’ Steven Pinker writes that the ‘human find it (for example, in the vis inertiae of habit, moral sense turns out to be an organ . with or in forgetfulness, or in a blind and random quirks that reflect its evolutionary history coupling and mechanism of ideas, or in and its neurobiological foundations.’ Thus something purely passive, automatic, reflex- Daniel Dennett feels able to claim that Dar- ive, molecular and thoroughly stupid) – what is it that actually drives these psychologists in winism is a ‘universal acid’ that ‘eats through precisely this direction all the time? just about every concept, and leaves in its wake a revolutionised worldview’. Some Nietzsche’s complaint is not that morality neuro-evo evangelists, especially those writ- should be protected from explanation – this ing for a mass audience, take themselves passage opens On the Genealogy of Morality – not only to be explaining morality, but to be but rather that the ‘English psycholog ists’ explaining it away. All talk of persons and appear to be driven by self-loathing. Under character, just and unjust, the very idea of the cover of cool empiricism lies a ‘secret, moral reasoning, should be given up: we malicious . instinct to belittle humans’, must speak now only of brains, hard-wired or a disillusioned idealism, or maybe just ‘a through natural selection to serve the inter- bit of everything, a bit of vulgarity, a bit of ests of selfish genes. John Gray declares that gloominess, a bit of host ility to Christian- morality is a ‘myth’ obscuring the fact that ity, a little thrill, and a need for pepper’. our existence has ‘no more meaning than Nietzsche would no doubt have been just the life of a slime mould’. David Brooks, as wary of those today who look for the author of the bestselling pop-science Bil- 1 6 december 2012 dungsroman The Social Animal, explains that for moral reasons in a causal world. As a his fictional everywoman ‘Erica’ is slow to philosopher and historian of science, Kitch- trust ‘Harold’ because ‘while Pleistocene er is wedded to Naturalism, the doctrine men could pick their mates on the basis of that philosophy should posit nothing that fertility cues discernible at a glance, Pleisto- cannot be found in our best science. Like cene women faced a more vexing problem,’ many Naturalists, he is convinced of the since they had to choose a man ‘not only for power of Darwinian theory to explain not insemination but for continued support’. only biological but also cultural develop- The widespread belief that scientific ex- ment, and wants to draw on it to elucidate planation replaces morality and moral talk – morality. But he is also a humanist – he has and its corollary, that science must be re- written in the past about political philo- jected if morality is to be saved – labours sophy, the history of early modern philo- under a confusion. Consider the question: sophy, and the aesthetics of Wagner and ‘Why does Sarah believe that it’s good to Joyce – and wants to do justice to the text- keep promises?’ It can be answered in two ure of our moral lives. His goal is to provide ways: by giving a causal explanation of Sar- a meta-ethics – an account of the nature of ah’s belief, or by listing the considerations ethical truth – that respects the demands of Sarah might reasonably cite in support of both Naturalism and humanism. This isn’t her belief. When we answer the question in an easy thing to do. Most attempts to re- the first way – for example, by saying some- concile ethics with evolutionary theory thing about the evolutionary origins of offend against humanism by equating what promising – we inhabit the world of cause is morally good for persons with what is and effect. When we answer it in the sec- evolutionarily adaptive for organisms – a ond way – for example, by talking about the mistake Kitcher himself criticised in Vault- special duties that are incurred when one ing Ambition: Sociobiology and the Quest for makes a promise – we inhabit what Wilfrid Human Nature (1985). Sellars called the ‘space of reasons’. The Kitcher’s attempt to devise a scientific- mistake is to think that living in a world of ally and philosophically cogent meta-ethics causes precludes our also inhabiting the draws inspiration from Pragmatism, the space of reasons. We are indeed creatures American philosophical tradition developed of cause, living within and as part of the by William James, C.S. Peirce and John natural order; but at the same time we are Dewey. Pragmatists urged philosophers, creatures of reason. Our capacity to justify and culture as a whole, to let go of their pre- ourselves to each other, to persuade with- occupation with truth. Do not ask whether out coercion, is constitutive of our person- beliefs or theories are true, they suggested, hood, and as important for the scientist as but whether they are useful. Truth is a sec- for anyone else. ondary matter; progress, understood as the In The Ethical Project, Philip Kitcher at- more efficient satisfaction of human needs, tempts to show that there is adequate room is the fundamental concern. What makes a 2 6 december 2012 given belief true, according to Pragmatism, ancestors – unlike our primate cousins – to is that it survives progressive transitions in check the selfish dispositions that interfere human development, proving itself useful with altruism, first through the fear of soc- before the court of history. Kitcher augments ially regulated punishment, then through Pragmatism with the conceptual apparatus more refined mechanisms like respect for of 21st-century evolutionary theory, and authority (including divine authority), the then applies it specifically to ethics. The setting up of moral exemplars – saints, result is a view according to which ethical heroes and the like – and, ultimately, fully- beliefs are true if they survive the course of fledged moral codes transmitted through human evolutionary and cultural develop- language and social institutions. The moral ment. Moral truths evolve along with us, and truths, according to Kitcher, are those be- because of us: the space of reasons is an liefs, for example in the importance of evolutionary product of the world of causes. keeping promises, that both resulted from Kitcher’s case for this view, which he and made possible this progress towards calls Pragmatic Naturalism, begins with our increased social harmony. early hominid ancestors roaming the sav- In evolutionary accounts of human psych- annah fifty thousand years ago. He argues ology, much hangs on how strong we take that psychological altruism – acting in the the connection between ourselves and our interest of another, in virtue of its being in prehistoric ancestors to be. Once it is con- the other’s interest to do so – evolved as an ceded that we are far more complex creat- adaptation that allowed our ancestors, like ures than they were, and that culture is not present-day bonobos and chimpanzees, to exhaustively determined by biology – Kitch- live in co-operative communities.* (This may er insists on both things – it’s reasonable to seem obvious, but many evolutionary theor- ask what we stand to learn from evolution- ists insist that displays of altruism among ary history. Can our contemporary moral our primate cousins are really just instances concerns – the trade-offs between liberty of Machiavellian self-interest. Some of these and security; the injustices of global capit- theorists like to argue that the same goes alism; clashes of values and beliefs; the for humans.) However, our ancestors’ altru- negotiation of desire; the formation of ident- ism had its limits. There was always a ity – really be said to resemble anything temptation to cheat or defect when the pay- that went on in the savannah fifty thousand off was big enough. Resulting snags in the years ago? And if our problems are essent- social fabric had to be repaired through ially different from those of our ancestors, painstaking sessions of mutual grooming. why should we care what innovations they (Chimpanzees spend up to six hours a day came up with to solve theirs? They would huddled together in moments of group presumably be in no better position to deal stress.) A new psychological adaptation was with climate change or gender politics than needed, which Kitcher calls ‘the capacity chimpanzees are today. for normative guidance’. This allowed our Anticipating this worry, Kitcher proposes 3 6 december 2012 that we think of ethics as a technology we adapted to facilitate the participation of have inherited from our hominid ancest- everyone in the global community. Kitch- ors. Technologies are refined over time the er’s is a utopian vision according to which better to discharge their original function. everyone would enjoy not only material In the process, new problems arise, whose equality but also an equal opportunity to solution requires further refinement of contribute to the ethical project.

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