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Example
Five: Evolutionary Ethics
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Disconnect
between biology and ethics
Ruse
and Wilson in “Moral Philosophy as Applied Science” give the
example of brother-sister incest avoidance as being an ethical
code motivated by an epigenetic rule that confers an adaptive
advantage on those who avoid intercourse with their siblings. In
this discussion, Ruse and Wilson argue that moral laws
disallowing incest are redundant relics of mankind’s
evolutionary history that provide nothing
to mankind but explanations of a hard-wired evolutionary
trait (179). I reject this argument. While Ruse and Wilson are
undoubtedly correct in believing that mankind’s capacity for
moral reasoning is a result of natural selection pressure and
that most ancient moral laws have an evolutionary basis, I
believe that describing the genesis of moral reasoning in this
way provides no information about the content of our moral
beliefs now. While our capacity for moral reasoning may have
evolved for the purpose of informing our otherwise unjustifiable
acts with a sense of objective certitude, it is not hard to
imagine that this capacity, once evolved, would be capable of
much more than simply rubber stamping mankind’s collective
genetic predisposition. In this paper, I will use the example of
an evolutionary explanation against intentional killing for
personal gain to argue for the existence of a disconnect between
evolutionary biology and ethics.
Ruse
and Wilson might argue that human beings evolved with a genetic
predisposition against murder for convenience. It is easy to see
how this might be true. A person who kills others for
convenience must live apart from society and apart from
potential mates or else must be killed by society. This
epigenetic rule “predisposes us to think that certain courses
of action are right and certain courses of action are wrong
(180).” These motivate ethical premises which “are the
peculiar products of genetic history” and can “be understood
solely as mechanisms that are adaptive for the species that
possess them (186).”
I
reject this notion that evolution completely prescribes ethics.
Nature is amoral absent intelligent beings who make moral
judgements. Once the capacity for moral reasoning is
established, it does not follow that our ethical laws must
necessarily mimic our evolutionary predisposition. While in the
cases of selection against brother-sister incest avoidance or
against murder for convenience it is easy to see how evolution
can bring about an outcome that we now judge to be moral, it can
just as easily effect traits that we now believe immoral. Few
people would believe that man’s evolutionary desire to
replicate his genetic material in children would ethically
justify licentiousness. Few would believe that women should be
dominated by men simply because in nature males tend to be
stronger and dominant. Discovering
a scientific explanation for man’s dominance of women in human
history would not justify humanity reverting to sexism. This is
a simple counterexample suggesting that discovering a scientific
basis for a trait does not a
priori suggest the desirability of its expression in
society.
The
authors do not free themselves from the naturalistic fallacy of
the is-ought distinction. We may consider their argument as
follows:
1. Humans tend not to murder for convenience because a
naturally selected genetic trait tends to make people not
murder for convenience.
2.
Humans have good reason not to commit murder.
This
argument seems strong. Our genetics cause us not to murder for
convenience; we later conceive of an ethical code to rationalize
this evolutionary preference in terms of objective truth.
However, we still need an ought statement to justify statement
two. In particular we need:
3.
Humans have a good reason to follow their epigenetic
tendencies .
Ruse
and Wilson have not freed themselves from the naturalistic
fallacy. They instead have a suppressed normative premise: that
humans should follow their genetic predispositions. They in fact
supppose an evolutionary ethics, that the proper course of
action is the one we are genetically predisposed to follow. They
claim that “the quest for scientific understanding replaces
the hajj and the holy grail.” They have conceived of a new
ethics that will supersede mankind’s misplaced faith in “imagined
rulers in the realms of the supernatural and eternal (86).”
The new ethics is based on the simple premise that we should act
according to our evolutionary nature.
This
may or may not be a useful system of ethics. It will certainly
lead to some outcomes, like sexism, that would seem to
contradict the advice of other ethical systems like
contractualism or utilitarianism. However, a follower of a
system of evolutionary ethics might believe that it is the only
system which allows man to act according to his genetic nature.
Perhaps, by not acting according to our genetic natures, by
forcing man by societal convention to maintain a monogamous
relationship with a woman for example, mankind is worse off.
While this may or may not be true, we have discovered that it
does not follow from evolutionary biology that mankind should
act in accordance with his genetic predisposition without the
suppressed normative premise that mankind has a reason to follow
and not ignore his genetic predisposition.
Ruse
and Wilson have us sometimes ignoring our genetic predisposition
and sometimes embracing it. If they believe that a proper
ethical system will have us acting according to our genetic
natures since moral truth is a redundant rationalization arising
only after the existence of the trait, they must not talk about
being “deceived by your genes (89).”
If it is in our evolutionary nature to be deceived by our
genes, they should not denigrate those who are acting according
to their nature by believing in religion and superstition. It
would seem that genetic self-deception is one
evolutionarily-bred characteristic that Ruse and Wilson would
like humankind to surmount. Only a normative premise could
conceivably justify such a statement as ignoring our
evolutionary nature. We thus see that only with an underlying
system of ethics, one that believes man should act according to
his evolutionary nature, can the discovery of an evolutionary
explanation for behavior provide people with a reason to take
their prior moral attitudes more seriously.
We
will now address the question of whether or not a discovered
evolutionary basis for moral behavior gives us reason to take
our moral attitudes less seriously. Certainly nothing mentioned
thus far would suggest this. We might however think that by
uncovering a process that discourages brother-sister incest or
murdering for convenience, we make deterministic and explainable
what we first considered free will. We might become like the
tropistic wasp Sphex, with our hard-wired responses to certain
inputs (Dennett 171).
This
argument commits the deterministic fallacy. Genetics only
influences human behavior through interactions with the
environment. For an individual person, it makes no sense to say
that a certain gene compelled a person to act in a certain way
because genes and our environment jointly determine our
behavior. Discovering that we have a predisposition to not
murder does not compel us not to murder anymore than discovering
that we have a predisposition to murder compels us to murder. We
might think of a rectangle with length determined by genetics
and width determined by the environment. Clearly both length and
width are crucially necessary to formulating the area of the
rectangle, or by analogy, of our individual behavioral patterns.
Finding out the length of the rectangle by uncovering our
genetic makeup does not tell us what behavior will actually be
expressed. Given the seemingly endless environmental conditions
that can influence our behavior, it is unlikely we merely
possess genetic subroutines programmed to handle any (or most)
environmental eventualities. The environment and our genetics
jointly lead to the expression of our behavior. Finding out we
possess a genetic predisposition to an ethically damnable
behavior does exculpate us as our environment, including such
things as our internal reaction to finding out we have such a
trait, can affect the actual expression of the phenotype.
Having
established that discovering a scientific basis for aspects of
our behavior does not give us reason to take our moral attitudes
more or less seriously without additional normative statements,
I will now argue that discovering such a scientific explanation
has no relevance at all to shaping our moral attitudes.
Elliott
Sober in “Prospects for an Evolutionary Ethics” argues
convincingly that “An explanation for why someone believes a
proposition may fail to show whether the proposition is
justified, and a justification of a proposition may fail to
explain why someone believes the proposition (94).” We can
thus assert the following:
“Evolution underlies our moral beliefs regarding murder
for convenience but says nothing about why I believe that I
should not murder someone.” I do not have to know that
evolution occurred to explain why I do not murder people for
convenience. Having knowledge of evolution, I need not believe
that I do not murder someone because of an evolutionary process.
However,
Ruse and Wilson believe that evolutionary biology can answer
both the questions of “Why do people have the views they do
concerning when it is morally permissible to kill?” and “When
is killing morally permissible?” For example, in the case of
brother-sister incest avoidance, we can imagine that natural
selection selected in favor of people who don’t have
intercourse with siblings but instead have a genetic tendency to
seek oral sex with them. Over time, people could have developed
different reasons to prohibit all sexual relations among
siblings. Perhaps, sexual relations within a family fractures
the family or perhaps parents (because of other moral reasons)
could not bear to see their kids engaging in sexual relations
for no point but self-gratification. In any case, evolution only
sets the stage for adoption of a moral law. Discovering that
evolution only selects against incestual intercourse and not
incestual oral sex has no relevance at all because people have
adopted entirely different reasons justifying their ethical
conduct. Few people would say that the reason they do not engage
in intercourse with family members is because the kids would
possess genetic diseases. In the same way, most people do not
say that the reason they do no kill for convenience is because
they might get caught. Discovering an evolutionary basis for
this conduct does not have any relevance to continuing to follow
it.
In
addition, Ruse and Wilson seem to commit the genetic fallacy,
which states that one cannot conclude from the facts surrounding
the genesis of a belief whether or not the belief is valid. By
believing that evolution somehow invalidates moral arguments by
explaining the existence of the capacity for moral reasoning,
Ruse and Wilson argue that the genesis of the genetic
predisposition not to commit murder invalidates all ethical
codes related to why people do not murder for convenience.
Unfortunately,
Ruse and Wilson have gone too far in assessing the
cross-disciplinary potential of evolutionary biology. The fact
of uncovering a scientific basis for one of our moral codes does
not have any relevance on whether or not we should continue to
follow them. Ethics and biology inhabit different realms;
biology may be able to explain the genesis of ethics, but it
cannot explain the content in any way. My parents may be able to
explain the circumstances surrounding my birth, but they cannot
explain my thoughts or dreams at all. They may have been
responsible for my existence, but they have no connection to my
decision-making process. So it is with ethics and biology.
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