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1 C. Darwin, The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex (New York: Barnes and Noble Publishing, 2004), 88.
2 Ibid., 112.
3 And, of course, though any two species of social animals have in common the fact that they are prompted by social instincts, the resulting behavior may vary widely. It is not clear, for instance, which of the grazing Guernseys is the “alpha cow.” Wiener dogs seem not to come equipped with the obsessive herding instincts of border collies and would likely endure derisive laughter from the sheep if they did.
4 Darwin, Descent, 81.
5 M. Ruse and E. O. Wilson, “The Evolution of Ethics,” in Religion and the Natural Sciences, ed. J. E. Huchingson (Orlando: Harcourt Brace, 1993), 310–11.
6 R. Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker (New York: Norton & Co., 1986), 6.
7 Ibid., 1.
8 T. Sommers and A. Rosenberg, “Darwin's Nihilistic Idea: Evolution and the Meaninglessness of Life,” Biology and Philosophy 18/5 (2003): 653–88.
9 Darwin, Descent, 91.
10 I cannot resist including a personal anecdote here. I once rescued a young man from drowning in the Mississippi River. After I swam out and pulled him to shore, his mother, who had watched helplessly from the beach, explained that she would have saved him herself but she could not go into the water because her toe was infected. She produced the sore toe. I had to agree that it did look very sore.
11 The Chinese philosopher Mencius seems to have maintained that the possession of at least the rudimentary “seeds” of the virtues (e.g., the feeling of commiseration is the seed of the virtue of jen, “human-heartedness”) are essential to humanity so that anyone lacking them would not be human.
12 Consider Gary Larson's cartoon depicting a group of cave men. To the left is a small group huddled around a fire, roasting drumsticks by clenching them in their fists directly over the flames. They are all obviously in agony. To the right is another fire with only one cook. He has the meat roasting on a stick and is seated at a comfortable distance. A member of the group to the left has noticed this, and is saying, “Look what Og do!”
13 Darwin, Descent, 94.
14 Ibid.
15 Ibid., 95.
16 So if the impulse either to save the child or one's own hide is a first-order inclination, second-order inclinations would include feelings of, say, guilt or pride regarding the first-order propensities and resulting actions.
17 M. Shermer, The Science of Good and Evil (New York: Times Books, 2004), 56.
18 Ibid., 57.
19 D. Dennett, Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996), 486.
20 R. Joyce, The Evolution of Morality (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006), 180.
21 See M. Midgley, Beast and Man (London: Routledge Press, 1979).
22 Taken from P. G. Wodehouse, Right Ho, Jeeves (New York: Penguin, 2000), chap. 2.
23 Darwin, Descent, 82.
24 Here's why. This would imply, for instance, that human mothers are possessed of a powerful maternal instinct for the prior reason that they have a moral duty to care for their children. But, given naturalism, the simpler explanation for the maternal instinct is just that it confers reproductive fitness. Why think that moral facts have any role to play, particularly when we observe similar instinctual behavior in animals that are not plausibly thought of as moral agents? Further, to what mechanism could the naturalist plausibly appeal to explain how reproductive fitness “tracks” moral truth? For more on this, see S. Street's excellent paper, “A Darwinian Dilemma for Realist Theories of Value,” Philosophical Studies 127 (2006): 109–66.
25 M. Midgley, “Duties Concerning Islands,” in C. Pierce and D. VanDeVeer, eds., People, Penguins and Plastic Trees (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing, 1986), 157.
26 Reflective equilibrium involves more than this one-way move from particular beliefs to general principles. In actual practice, it begins with those prereflective beliefs, moves from there to systemizing principles and then back to other particular beliefs that are entailed by the principles. There is always a standing possibility that an entailed belief is incompatible with one or another of the beliefs with which one began. In that case, adjustment and revision is called for. The goal is to arrive at a set or system of principled beliefs that is internally consistent and plausible.
27 S. Street, “A Darwinian Dilemma for Realist Theories of Value,” Philosophical Studies 127 (2006): 125.
28 N. Daniels, “Wide Reflective Equilibrium and Theory Acceptance in Ethics,” Journal of Philosophy 76/5 (1979): 265.
29 R. M. Adams, Finite and Infinite Goods (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 70.
30 For the purposes of this argument, the appeal to “design” leaves open the question of whether the process responsible for the appearance of moral agents was evolutionary in nature. Daniels's “little story” requirement is satisfied whether the tale involves special creation or directed evolution.
31 H. Rashdall, The Theory of Good and Evil (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1907), 192.
32 As always, I wish to thank David Werther for his many helpful comments on and criticisms of earlier versions of this essay.