A Naturalist Rejoinder
A Naturalist Rejoinder
A familiar objection to my line of argument is that it assumes what is almost certainly false: that all significant and widely observed human behavior is genetically determined as the result of natural selection. Daniel Dennett refers to this assumption as “greedy reductionism.” Dennett observes that all tribesmen everywhere throw their spears pointy-end first, but we should not suppose that there is a “pointy-end first gene.”19
The explanation rather resides in the “nonstupidity” of the tribesmen. And when C. S. Lewis's character, Ransom, was at first surprised to discover that boats on Malacandra (Mars) were similar to earthly boats, he caught himself with the question, “What else could a boat be like?'” (The astute Lewis reader might also have noticed that Malacandran hunters throw their spears pointy-end first, despite being genetically unrelated to humans, just as Dennett might have predicted.) Some ideas are just better than others and, assuming a minimal degree of intelligence, perhaps we have been equipped to discover and implement them.
One might thus insist that perhaps all that evolution has done for us is to equip us with the basic capacities for intelligent decision-making and problem-solving, and the enterprise that is human morality is the product of human rationality, not the mere outworking of some genetic program. If the process that has led to our having the moral beliefs we do has involved conscious rational reflection, then we have reason for optimism regarding our facility for tracking truth. We have no more cause for moral skepticism than we do, say, mathematical skepticism.
The same greedy reductionism might be thought to plague my argument that Darwinian accounts of human morality are merely descriptive. I have said above that, “unless we import normative considerations from some other source,” we are left with a merely descriptive rather than a normative account. My critic may insist here that we do bring in normative considerations from elsewhere, namely, from moral theory. If there are true moral principles that yield moral directives and values, then, regardless of how one does feel and behave, it will remain the case that he ought to behave in a certain way. For example, should it prove true that humans have a natural propensity for xenophobia as a part of their evolutionary heritage, we might nevertheless conclude that, say, a respect-for-persons principle requires that they overcome such fear and potential mistreatment of strangers. The mere fact that people have a propensity for a behavior does not entail that it is justified.
I plead not guilty to the charge of greedy reductionism. The argument in no way supposes that well-formed moral beliefs are somehow programmed by our DNA. Richard Joyce considers the belief, “I ought to reciprocate by picking up Mary at the airport.”20 He then asks, “What does natural selection know of Mary or airports?” Or consider a mother's belief, “I ought to ensure that my child gets plenty of fruits and vegetables.” There is, of course, no imperative regarding the dietary needs of toddlers that may be read off the DNA. One might as well suppose that there is a genetically programmed human tendency directed specifically at popping bubble wrap.
But Darwin's account certainly does imply that the basic predisposition for repaying kindness with kindness or for caring for one's offspring is programmed and that such programs run as they do because of the reproductive fitness that is, or was for our remote ancestors, achieved by the resulting behaviors.
Philosopher Mary Midgley speaks of instincts as “programs with a gap.”21 Consider, for instance, the migratory instinct of the sandhill crane. The basic drive to follow the sun south every winter is genetically programmed. But a “gap” allows for variations in the itinerary. Midgley notes that the more intelligent the species is the wider is the gap, so that room is available for deliberation and rational reflection. Less psychologically complex creatures may be strictly determined in their behavior by their genetic hardwiring. As P. G. Wodehouse's newt-loving character, Gussie Fink-Nottle explains to Bertie Wooster, “Do you know how a male newt proposes, Bertie? He just stands in front of the female newt vibrating his tail and bending his body in a semi-circle.”22 Assuming Gussie's description is accurate, we may also safely assume that newt courting behavior, unlike that observed in aristocratic British bachelors, is genetically choreographed. In humans, the “gap” allows for countless ideas and beliefs that clearly are the products of culture rather than biology.
Still, the basic programming itself is, on Darwin's scheme, determined by our genetic makeup, and, therefore, so is the range of rational options in that “gap” of deliberation. Given the perennial problem of tribal warfare, early tribesmen reasoned that thrown spears are far more effective than thrown bananas. But had humans evolved to be nonaggressive herbivores, spears might have been, well, pointless. Had the course of human evolution been such that human infants, like baby sea turtles, were self-reliant, the human maternal instinct might never have evolved as a means to the end of reproductive fitness. Indeed, Darwin thought that, had the circumstances for reproductive fitness been different, then the deliverances of conscience might have been radically different. “If…men were reared under precisely the same conditions as hive-bees, there can hardly be a doubt that our unmarried females would, like the worker-bees, think it a sacred duty to kill their brothers, and mothers would strive to kill their fertile daughters, and no one would think of interfering.”23 As it happens, we weren't “reared” after the manner of hive bees, and so we have widespread and strong beliefs about the sanctity of human life and its implications for how we should treat our siblings and our offspring.
But this strongly suggests that we would have had whatever beliefs were ultimately fitness producing given the circumstances of survival. Given the background belief of naturalism, there appears to be no plausible Darwinian reason for thinking that the fitness-producing predispositions that set the parameters for moral reflection have anything whatsoever to do with the truth of the resulting moral beliefs. One might be able to make a case for thinking that having true beliefs about, say, the predatory behaviors of tigers would, when combined with the understandable desire not to be eaten, be fitness producing. But the account would be far from straightforward in the case of moral beliefs.24 And so the Darwinian explanation undercuts whatever reason the naturalist might have had for thinking that any of our moral beliefs is true. The result is moral skepticism.
If our pretheoretical moral convictions are largely the product of natural selection, as Darwin's theory implies, then the moral theories we find plausible are an indirect result of that same evolutionary process. How, after all, do we come to settle upon a proposed moral theory and its principles as being true? What methodology is available to us?
By way of answer, consider the following “chicken and egg” question. Which do we know more certainly: the belief, It is wrong to stomp on babies just to hear them squeak, or some true moral principle that entails the wrongness of baby-stomping? In moral reflection, do we begin with the principle and only then, principle in hand, come to discover the wrongness of recreational baby-stomping as an inference from that principle? Or do we begin with the belief that baby-stomping is wrong and then arrive at the principle that seems implicated by such a belief? Pretty clearly, it is the latter. We just find ourselves with certain beliefs of a moral nature and actually appeal to them as touchstones when we engage in conscious moral reflection. Indeed, if we were to conclude that some philosopher's proposed moral principle would, if true, imply the moral correctness of recreational baby-stomping, then we might say, “So much the worse for that proposed principle.” As philosopher Mary Midgley has put it, “An ethical theory which, when consistently followed through, has iniquitous consequences is a bad theory and must be changed.”25 This methodology, which begins with deep-seated, prereflective moral beliefs and then moves to moral principles that are implicated by them, is sometimes called reflective equilibrium.26
Presumably, reflective equilibrium, employed by bee-like philosophers in those worlds envisioned by Darwin, would settle on moral principles that implied the rightness of such things as siblicide and infanticide. Thus, the deliverances of the moral theories endorsed in such worlds are but the by-products of the evolved psychologies in such worlds. But, again, this suggests that our pretheoretical convictions are largely due to whatever selection pressures happened to be in place in our world. If this is so, then the deliverances of those moral theories that we endorse, to which we might appeal in order to introduce normative considerations, are, in the final analysis, by-products of our evolved psychology. The account, as it stands, thus never takes us beyond merely descriptive human psychology.