Darwinian Morality

Evo Edu Outreach (2010) 3:275–287 DOI 10.1007/s12052-009-0162-z Darwinian Morality Catherine Wilson Published online: 7 August 2009 # Springer Science + Business Media, LLC 2009 Abstract The paper explores the significance of Darwinian converged to bring our species onto the stage, and there evolution for morality and moral theory. After presenting are only the particular purposes that we establish for Darwin’s own views on the evolution of the moral sense ourselves. The universe is not in the hands of a powerful and the Victorian spectrum of opinion on the relevance of and intelligent agent whose benevolence will ensure that natural selection to morals, I argue that a consideration of everything will turn out for the best. human evolutionary history can be brought to bear Many philosophers find these views inspiring, rather meaningfully on a number of contemporary issues, includ- than bleak, liberating, rather than dispiriting. The appreci- ing the nature of work and family relations. There is no ation of our kinship with nonhuman animals and the sense reason, however, to suppose that the fact of human of the unity and coherence of the natural world that variation and the heritability of traits forces any substantial Darwinism implies arouse sentiments as respectful as those concession to apologists for social inequality. experienced by religious believers while leaving no doubt that the remediation of social injustice and the restoration Keywords Altruism . Ambivalence . Darwin . Darwinism . and repair of the environment are up to us. Steven Pinker Eugenics . Evolutionary ethics . Equality . IQ . Morality has argued recently that attention to the new human sciences and especially to “evolutionary psychology,” the study of the evolutionary history of attitudes, emotions, and Introduction mental capabilities, promises “a naturalness in human relationships, encouraging us to treat people in terms of According to the terms of Charles Darwin’s theory of how they do feel rather than how some theory says they evolution by natural selection, we human beings are the ought to feel” (Pinker 2002, xi). descendants of ape-like forebears and the remote descend- It would be a mistake in any case to think that Darwinism ants of one-celled organisms that once floated in a primeval leads to nihilism—the view that all is permitted but nothing is ocean. All that we can understand, imagine, believe, and do actually worth doing—or to suppose that the acceptance of is dependent on the anatomy and physiology of our brains, Darwinian evolution precipitated a sudden crisis in moral which are products of natural selection as much as our theory. For Darwin’s Origin of Species of 1859 was not the limbs and our other organs. We try to maintain ourselves in first book to hint at a natural as opposed to a supernatural existence for as long as possible—to achieve a respectable origin for human beings. Throughout the late eighteenth span of 70 or 80 years—and to produce offspring who will century, the evident similarity between apes and humans had themselves be capable of producing offspring. It is pointless attracted attention. German, French, and Scottish philosophy, to ask what the purpose of our existence is. Our species is medicine, and natural history contained a distinctly materi- here because a number of singly improbable events alistic and evolutionary strand, and Darwin’s own grandfa- ther, Erasmus Darwin, had posited a single common ancestor for all living creatures. Charles Darwin’s originality lay in C. Wilson (*) his giving precision to the theory of evolution and extinction School of Divinity, History and Philosophy, by reference to the principle of miniscule variation from University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen AB24 3UB, UK generation to generation, with variations that gave the e-mail: [email protected] slightest edge in reproduction retained. The quality and 276 Evo Edu Outreach (2010) 3:275–287 quantity of evidence and the younger Darwin’s ability to relations. The existence of measurable physical and address objections to the theory of evolution by variation and psychological differences between individuals and between selection were staggering. Meanwhile, for millennia, moral groups that are the result of random variation on one hand philosophers had offered accounts of virtue and moral and the selective pressures operating on early humans and motivation that did not mention a God who lays down their ancestors on the other does not defeat arguments for ethical commandments or appeal to divine reward and the moral rightness and practical possibility of greater punishment as inducements and sanctions. social equality. Nevertheless, the acceptance of Darwinism has narrowed the options where the foundations of morality are concerned. If the aim of morality is to reduce human Warnings of the Wary suffering and to guide people to act and experience in ways that minimize harms to others, the starting point of To many moral philosophers, claims for the relevance and moral theorizing ought to be human beings as they exist in helpfulness of the biological sciences are hollow, false, or nature. The secular tradition in ethics derived from the dangerous (Farber 1998; Kitcher 1987). There are several pagan and atheistical philosophers of the pre-Christian era reasons for skepticism and caution. First, there is the does not seem adequate, however, to the problems of the celebrated argument of David Hume that “ought” cannot be mass societies of the industrial and post-industrial era. It is derived from “is,” that no fact about how things are in the worth asking whether the Darwinian conception of nature world, however well-established, can logically entail that can open up any new ways of thinking about the something or other ought or ought not to be done. Of foundations of morality or make any contribution to moral course, to thrive, people need fresh air, clean water, tasty, progress in a world that human beings have transformed nutritious food, and elbow room, and most do not have so thoroughly. enough of these goods. No one disputes that, if such needs Some years ago, E.O. Wilson declared that the time had could be met universally without producing some horrific come “for ethics to be removed temporarily from the hands set of side effects, it would be good to do so. However, of the philosophers and biologicized” (Wilson 1975, 562). specialized biological knowledge is not required to identify My purpose in this essay is to begin to explore this these basic goods, and to describe them as needed rather recommendation in a hopeful but also critical spirit by than as merely appreciated is to smuggle normativity into considering three interpretations of the term “Darwinian the description. Truly neutral biological facts—such as the morality.” The term can be taken as referring, first, to fact that human men are on average taller and heavier than Darwin’s own account of selection for moral conscience women—seem to carry no definite implications with them and moral behavior in human beings and their precursors in concerning what it is morally correct to do. Our evolution- other animals. Second, it refers to Darwin’s conception of arily acquired psychological attitudes and dispositions have moral virtue and moral progress, topics about which he, like an evident bearing on how persons, events, and situations many Victorians, thought a good deal. Third, “Darwinian are judged, but nothing compels us to say that the resulting morality” can be understood as the array of moral and political judgements are reasonable or correct. implications that have been drawn from his account of Second, the methodology of much popular evolutionary evolution by later theorists. In this third sense, Darwinian ethics depends on what might be called “suggestive morality includes many implications that would not have similitude.” The behavior of ducks, peacocks, and bluebirds occurred to Darwin himself or that he would have rejected is sometimes cited as though it is relevant to human rape, with indignation as incompatible with his views. display, or jealous aggression and the behavior of ants as After first presenting some of the most frequently though it is relevant to human slavery or division of labor. encountered objections to the proposed marriage of biology But as rape is not the usual mode of animal reproduction and morality, I will turn to a survey of Darwin’s own and as most animals do not make slaves, such phenomena writings on morals, following these sections with a are relevant only to the extent that the constraints and discussion of the problems and prospects for a biologically affordances of human social life can be shown specially to informed ethics. While the first half of this essay is based resemble those of ducks, peacocks, bluebirds, and ants. on material familiar to Darwin scholars, the second part Finally, there is near universal acknowledgment that the reaches into some areas of moral philosophy that remain practical application of ethical naturalism in the early to ripe for exploration. My central argument is that the mid-twentieth century was a moral blot on our species. The biological sciences can contribute to moral progress—not casual assumption of innate cognitive, moral, and emotion- just to the explanation of the origins and formation of moral al deficiencies in nonwhite humans goes back to David attitudes and dispositions—but only by working to dispel Hume and Thomas Carlyle, but, after Darwin, racism the myths and superstitions that sustain oppressive social assumed a new, pseudo-scientific form, guided by the Evo Edu Outreach (2010) 3:275–287 277 assumption that the “races” of human beings instantiated two chapters of his Descent, he drew on the secular both earlier, wilder types and later, civilized types, each tradition in ethics of Hume and Adam Smith, with its focus with the fixed characteristics of its breed.

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