Read An Introduction to Evolutionary Ethics Online
Authors: Scott M. James
Tags: #Philosophy, #Ethics & Moral Philosophy, #General
An Introduction to Evolutionary Ethics (22 page)
Of course, if the Social Darwinist does include a premise about how we ought to promote those qualities that lead to social harmony, then the deduction might go through. But in this case, it's not clear what role Darwin's ideas play in the Social Darwinist's argument. After all, the conclusion would follow even if we dropped all the business about natural selection designing creatures to be generous and the like.
To be clear, this is as true for the traits we value (like fairness and honesty) as for the traits we do not value (like indifference to suffering). Critics of Social Darwinism often point to the morally repugnant traits it endorsed. Spencer's remarks above promote a pretty uncaring attitude toward the less fortunate. This is tough love – just without the love. It's sacrificing the disenfranchised for the perfection of the human race. But after studying Hume's criticism, we can see that the problem with Social Darwinism goes deeper than this. It's not that Social Darwinism endorses traits we don't like; it's
how
Social Darwinism
arrives
at them. The path is corrupt. But if the path is corrupted for traits we don't like, the same will be true for traits that we do like. So even we could show that nature in fact tends toward virtues like justice and empathy, we could not use this fact alone to show that these are the virtues we ought to adopt.
7.5 Darwinism and Preserving the Human Species Herbert Spencer was perhaps the first Darwinian guilty of violating Hume's Law (or running into Hume's
Guillotine
, to borrow Max Black's famous phrase). But Spencer was hardly the last. In the Introduction to this book I began our discussion by citing E.O. Wilson's suggestion that ethics be “biologicized.” Part of what Wilson had in mind was the project we outlined in part I: explaining how natural selection gave rise to the human moral sense. But Wilson was not content to leave matters there. This project should, according to Wilson, lead the way to a “biology of ethics, which will make possible the selection of a more deeply understood and enduring code of moral values” (1978: 196). And what sorts of values should appear in this more enduring code? Wilson offers the following: “In the beginning the new ethicists will want to ponder the cardinal value of the survival of human genes in the form of a common pool over generations.” The philosopher Philip Kitcher interprets this as the fundamental ethical principle: “Human beings should do whatever may be required to ensure the survival of a common gene pool for
Homo sapiens
” (1985: 445).
If this is the principle Wilson intends to defend, the obvious next question is: What justifies this principle? That is, what are the premises that supposedly lead to this principle? It's fairly clear from looking at Wilson's discussion that the premises are purely biological, purely descriptive. For example, Wilson notes with alarm that few “persons realize the true consequences of the dissolving action of sexual reproduction and the corresponding unimportance of ‘lines’ of descent.” But nowhere among the premises Wilson uses to justify his fundamental ethical principle is there a value statement – nothing about what we
should
do. If this in fact is the structure of Wilson's argument, then it is no better than Spencer's, even though it aims at a different (and perhaps laudatory) conclusion. The lesson is the same: we cannot derive a claim about what we ought to do, morally speaking, simply from claims describing facts about the evolutionary process.
7.6 Conclusion I'm often struck by how many students believe that we have a moral obligation to act in ways that preserve the human species. And this isn't the simple-minded “species-ism” one might expect. It takes into account our dependence on the environment and encourages the preservation of endangered species. When I ask these students why they believe we have such a moral duty, they say something to the effect that that's how evolution works. That is how nature intends things. And we should respect that. Our discussion should make it clear why this line of thinking is mistaken. It may be that we
do
have a moral obligation to preserve the human species (at what cost, who knows?), but such an obligation cannot be derived from purely biological premises. It might be that we should preserve the human species because in doing so we promote human happiness and, morally speaking, it's ultimately human happiness that we should promote. Or maybe humans are best equipped to reduce suffering (whomever experiences it) and, morally speaking, it's ultimately suffering that should be reduced. In any event, to reach the desired conclusion about preserving the human species, Hume's Law requires the addition of a value-statement. Moving from what is the case to what ought to be the case is simply a conceptual mistake. It's the philosophical equivalent of pulling the rabbit out of the empty hat. Either we believe in magic or we reject the move as a clever deception. Hume recognized the deception, even if latter-day Darwinians fail to. In the next chapter, we consider a closely related point: any attempt to reduce moral claims to naturalistic claims commits what has come to be called the Naturalistic Fallacy. Though this fallacy is motivated by slightly different considerations, its implication for Social Darwinism is the same: no claims about what we ought, morally speaking, to do can ever be derived from biology alone. Unlike Hume's Law, however, the Naturalistic Fallacy has lost some of its force since G.E. Moore first introduced it. In chapter 9 we'll gauge the extent to which Hume's Law and the Naturalistic Fallacy succeed in demolishing any hopes of connecting ethics to biology. Some philosophers think that although the more flat-footed project of Social Darwinism does not survive Hume's and Moore's attacks, a more supple and modest project might. We'll look at what this might mean in chapter 9.
Further Reading Hume, David (2009/1882)
A Treatise on Human Nature
(General Books LLC).
Kitcher, Philip (1985)
Vaulting Ambition: Sociobiology and the Quest for Human Nature
(MIT Press).
Rachels, James (1990)
Created from Animals: The Moral Implications of Darwinism
(Oxford University Press).
Spencer, Herbert (2004/1879)
The Principles of Ethics
(University Press of the Pacific).
Thomson, Paul (ed.) (1995)
Issues in Evolutionary Ethics
(SUNY Press).
Wilson, E.O. (1978)
On Human Nature
(Harvard University Press).
Moore's Naturalistic Fallacy
If I am asked, “What is good?” my answer is that good is good, and that is the end of the matter.
(G.E. Moore, Principia Ethica) I noted in chapter 7 that one of the implications of Hume's Law was the
autonomy
of moral theory. If no moral conclusion (i.e., a claim about what
ought
to be the case) follows deductively from purely descriptive claims (i.e., claims about what
is
the case), then every moral claim must rest on some other moral claim – assuming it is not self-supporting. This seems to imply that moral theory must always look “within itself” for justification. Hume had his own ways of spelling this out (and it wasn't good news for those hoping to ground a “science of morals”). In the twentieth century G.E. Moore developed a different set of arguments designed to reveal explicitly why morality was autonomous. And in Moore's sights was Herbert Spencer. Moore left little doubt as to what his opinion of the Social Darwinist project was. He accepted Darwin's ideas insofar as they applied to fields
outside
moral theory, but he strongly rejected any effort to use Darwin's ideas to justify a system of morality. In fact, Moore's argument went further. If successful, the argument promised to show that no attempt to identify moral properties with naturalistic properties
could possibly
succeed. The gap between (natural) facts and values is not merely hard to bridge; it's unbridgeable.
Of course an argument that purports to establish a claim like that immediately arouses philosophers' suspicions, and in the next chapter we'll consider the possibility that maybe Moore bit off more than he could chew. In the meantime, we'll take apart Moore's argument to see how it works. To get the ball rolling, I'm going to repeat the strategy I employed in the previous chapter: I'm going to start with an analogy.
8.1 The Open Question Test Let's take an old philosophical chestnut: the concept of
bachelor
. By definition, bachelors are unmarried, marriageable males. Once you grasp the concept of bachelor, you know that if Smith is a bachelor, then Smith is (among other things) unmarried. That's part of what it
means
to be a bachelor. Thus, for someone who truly understands what it means to be a bachelor, it would be nonsensical to ask: Even though Smith is a bachelor, is he unmarried?
1
Huh?
To establish that Smith is a bachelor is to
close
any question of Smith's marital status. After all, given that the concept of
bachelor
contains in part the concept of
unmarried
, the question amounts to little more than this: Even though Smith is unmarried, is he unmarried? Someone who asks this question is experiencing the cortical equivalent of a hard-drive crash. (Or he's trying to make a philosophical point.) This little excursion into bachelorhood should reveal then the following lesson. (I'll start with a kind of formal definition.) If A is truly defined in terms of A's having some property P, then we cannot intelligibly ask of something X: “X is A, but does it have P?” In other words, if A just
means
(in part) having P, then it should
not
be an open question whether something that is A has P. Since bachelor is defined in terms of unmarried (marriageable) male, assuming we grasp the concept of bachelor, we cannot intelligibly ask “Is some bachelor unmarried?” That's not an open question.
So the Open Question Test, as we might call it, is a way to determine whether or not a concept is truly defined in more basic terms. That is, if you want to know whether or not A is just another way of saying having property P, then perform the Open Question Test. So, for example, X is a triangle, but does it have three sides? Since this is not an open question, we can feel confident that triangle is truly defined (in part) by having three sides. Three-sidedness is, if you will, a
necessary
property of triangles: you can't be a triangle and
not
have three sides. Y is a horse, but is Y a mammal? Again, not an open question. Thus we can say that being a horse is truly defined (in part) in terms of being a mammal. Being a mammal is a necessary property of being a horse.
How about this one? Z is a fruit, but is Z sweet? Unlike the previous examples, this question is open. It's a perfectly intelligible question. We can perfectly well imagine biting into a piece of fruit but it's not being sweet (imagine biting into a green tomato). Thus we can conclude that sweetness is not a necessary property of being a fruit. The Open Question Test, therefore, apparently allows us to understand how our concepts fit together, how some are built into others. Furthermore, it seems to give us an insight into the
very nature
of a given concept. You want to know what justice is? Or mind? Or causality? Propose a property and ask whether something that has that property really deserves to be called just. Or a mind, or whatever.
If this makes sense to you, then you're 90 percent of the way toward understanding Moore's attack on naturalist conceptions of ethics – which would include, most prominently, Social Darwinism. For at the heart of Moore's attack is this Open Question Test.
8.2 Failing the Open Question Test: Desiring to Desire Moore's official position, noted above, is that “good is good, and that is the end of the matter.” If you didn't know that Moore was a philosopher (in very good standing), you might think that these were the words of an impatient parent lecturing his child. But Moore believed that he had earned the right to say this. Moore believed that
good
(as in goodness) was a “simple notion,” meaning that it cannot be reduced or broken down into simpler components. And he believed this because, with respect to goodness, no property could pass the Open Question Test. If no property can pass the Open Question Test, such that we cannot break down goodness into simpler parts, well, then, it appears that “good is good.” And that's that.
Here's Moore: “whatever definition may be offered, it may always, be asked, with significance, of the complex so defined, whether it is itself good” (1903: 15). Moore begins with a conception of good popular at the time: that which we desire to desire. On this conception, goodness is a kind of
second-order
property. We desire all kinds of things, but this isn't enough to deserve the label “good.” Being good is not identical to being merely desirable. The reason is that some of the things we desire, we don't desire to desire. Take cocaine or sleeping all day or a sixth donut. We may have strong desires for such things. But we probably also wish that we didn't have those desires. That is, we don't desire to desire a sixth donut. We wish such a desire would leave us be. On the other hand, those things that, on reflection, we
would
desire to desire seem worthy of being called good. At least this was the view of some philosophers around the turn of the last century. The concept of good is nothing more than the concept of that which we desire to desire.
So does this conception of good pass the Open Question Test? Moore thinks the answer is obvious: if we carry the investigation further, and ask ourselves “Is it good to desire to desire A?” it is apparent, on a little reflection, that this question is itself as intelligible, as the original question, “Is A good?” – that we are, in fact, now asking for exactly the same information about the desire to desire A, for which we formerly asked with regard to A itself. (1903: 16) In other words, it is an open question whether it is good that I desire to desire A. We can intelligibly wonder whether such a desiring is good. Indeed, we can come up with a case that confirms our doubts. Perhaps by dint of some gross misinformation, Debra believes that smoking actually
improves
her health. So not only does she desire this cigarette, she
desires to desire
this cigarette since she believes it will improve her health. But here we have a case in which having the property desiring to desire A is not good. According to Moore, the fact that we can pull these two notions apart shows “that we have two different notions before our mind.” Thus, goodness is
not
that which we desire to desire.
8.3 Failing the Open Question Test: Spencer Does the Social Darwinist proposal fare any better? Let's look back at one of Spencer's suggestions: “The conduct to which we apply the name good, is the relatively
more evolved
conduct; and bad is the name we apply to conduct which is relatively
less evolved
” (2004/1879: 25, emphasis in original). The Open Question Test, then, would have us ask: A is more evolved than B, but is A
good
? As we saw in chapter 7, it's not at all obvious what “A is more evolved than B” is supposed to mean. But Spencer has something particular in mind: “Just as we saw that evolution becomes the highest possible when the conduct simultaneously achieves
the greatest totality of life in self
, in
offspring
, and in
fellow-men
; so here we see that the conduct called good rises to the conduct conceived as best, when it fulfills all three classes at the same time” (2004/1879: 25–6). One way to paraphrase this might be: good is that which increases the overall quantity and quality of the human species.
So now we ask: An action X increases the overall quantity and quality of the human species, but is X
good
? Can we intelligibly ask this question? Is it an open question? Or, is this question like asking: Adam is a bachelor, but is he unmarried? It seems fairly clear that it
is
an open question. It does not seem confused. Indeed, like we did above, we can even come up with a case that seems to confirm our doubts. Suppose that there is no other way to test a new AIDS vaccine apart from exposing healthy humans to the deadly syndrome. But suppose that no one consents to being exposed to the syndrome. Imagine then that the government secretly rounds up homeless individuals in major cities and successfully performs the necessary experiments on them. An effective AIDS vaccine is thus produced. To be sure, those few homeless individuals that survive the experiments are exterminated to prevent public backlash.
So I ask you, was the decision to use those homeless people in that way
good
? (Before you answer, put yourself in the shoes of those homeless individuals for just a minute.) If you're like me, the answer seems plainly
No
. But even if you're wrestling with an answer, this merely confirms Moore's point: it's an
open
question! That's all Moore needs to do to undermine Spencer's proposal.
8.4 Failing the Open Question Test: Wilson Things don't look any better for E.O. Wilson's proposal, the one we considered in the last chapter: “Human beings should do whatever may be required to ensure the survival of a common gene pool for
Homo sapiens
.” An action Y ensures the survival of a common gene pool for
Homo sapiens,
but is Y good? Again, this question seems perfectly intelligible. It seems reasonable for us to want to hear some cases in order to determine whether or not this definition stands, but that's just to admit that the goodness of such hypothetical cases is an open question.
The philosopher Philip Kitcher (1985) has us imagine a case in which, according to unimpeachable scientific evidence, our species will become extinct in twenty generations unless we reduce the world's population by 90 percent. Since almost no one volunteers to end her life for the sake of preserving the human species, would it be good to kill off 90 percent of the population against their will? At the risk of gross understatement, let me just say: the goodness of that proposal is
not obvious
. It is (you'll agree) a very open question.
8.5 Conclusion To be clear, we're not denying that acting in ways that support the human species is usually good. Nor are we denying that acting in ways that increase both the quantity and quality of human life is usually good. We can apply the concept of good to many different activities. These are good. Moore's point is more subtle. According to Moore, whenever the phrase “is good” figures in a sentence, it is being used to
describe
something as having a certain property, never to
identify
goodness with something more basic. As philosophers will say, the “is” is the “is” of
predication
, not identity, where predicates (is green, is stinky, is over five feet tall) attach to subjects. This point is not so complicated as it sounds.
When I say that carrot cake is good, I'm saying that the cake has a certain property – in this case, goodness. What I am
not
doing (and what no one would suspect me of doing) is
identifying
goodness with carrot cake – that is, asserting that to be good is just to be carrot cake. (That would be the “is” of identity, as in: Spiderman is Peter Parker. They're one and the same dude.) This would have the absurd result that sex has the property of being carrot cake and reading a stimulating book has the property of being carrot cake and so on. The difference is the difference between “Spiderman is Peter Parker” (
identity
) and “Spiderman is agile” (
predication
). On Moore's picture, “is good” is always being used in the latter way.
On the basis of the Open Question Test, Moore concludes that any proposition that asserts that such-and-such is good must be understood as ascribing to such-and-such the property of being good – not identifying goodness with some more basic thing. To think otherwise is to commit the Naturalistic Fallacy. Says Moore: “Far too many philosophers have thought that when they named these other properties they were actually defining good; that these properties, in fact, were simply not ‘other,’ but absolutely and entirely the same with goodness” (1903: 62). They're mistaken. Social Darwinism, for all its revolutionary aspirations, falls into the same trap as any moral view that proposes to reduce goodness or rightness to something simpler. Not gonna happen, says Moore. Good is good, and “that is the end of the matter.”