Assessing Sociobiology
So the biological purpose of morality is to make us look good. It seems to me that you could write a whole book on evolutionary meta-ethics, and perhaps you should. In any case, I think I am finally starting to get intrigued by evolutionary ethics.
Why were you not intrigued before?
Mainly, I was influenced by Lila: An Inquiry Into Morals by Robert M. Pirsig. Pirsig was skeptical about attempts to justify morality in terms of biology. His example in the book was between the Victorians and the modern permissive society. He argued that Victorians were more moral because they were less permissive. Raised in an environment of that discipline encouraged self-control. Simply allowing people to do whatever they wanted let their biological nature predominate over their social nature. Their biological nature was more primitive and it resulted in greater immorality. Hence, the increase in violent crime, degeneracy, and so on. He thought that we would be better off with firm social sanctions. I thought that this sounded pretty well right, and it persuaded me for many years that biology was a dead end as a basis for ethics. Sociology would probably be the more fruitful option. In this regard, however, the external reviewer highlighted a difficulty, of whether society could be specified non-morally. To combat this, I reviewed some of the functionalist literature. What I read suggested an attempt to illustrate the primacy of morality in creating society. This did indeed suggest that nonarbitrary properties to morality stemmed from human nature. In this regard, an obvious book to read was The Moral Animal. If nothing else, the title alone was highly appropriate.
Why did you not come around to the sociobiological view much sooner?
I probably would have if I had persisted with my philosophical studies much longer. But from 1996 to 2003 I gave almost no thought to philosophical matters. I have only just this year come back into thinking about them. But with the accumulated life experience that I have had in the meantime, I am definitely making up for lost time.
What does evolutionary ethics seem to promise to you?
A convincing rejection of value realism. The idea behind value realism is that values exist "out there" in the world, rather than "in here" in the beings that value. I find this notion to have little plausibility independent of the fact that it happens to solve certain certain problems in meta-ethics. For example, it explains why ethics is not arbitrary and is to be taken seriously. It seems to me, however, that sociobiology also explains these things. To put it crudely, ethics is not arbitrary to us, and we take it seriously, because it is "in our nature" to do so. Morality is an evolutionary adaptation of child-rearing animals to enable them to cooperate for mutual benefit1. Of course, value realism also explains why moral arguments are legitimate. But sociobiology also suggests a legitimation of moral arguments. Part of our apparatus of norms in society is also an apparatus of meta-norms2. As I have argued elsewhere, we do not merely value certain states of affairs; we also value that others value those states of affairs as well. The evolutionary advantage of these intuitions is to reinforce the presence of an established moral system. It also provides an obvious incentive to arrive at a consensus of values. If this consensus is to be non-coercive, it much be achieved through moral arguments.
And where would a rejection of value realism lead for you? What form do your anti-realist views take, for example? You already believe that (1) ethics is not arbitrary, (2) ethics is to be taken seriously, and (3) moral arguments are legitimate. Does it, therefore, really matter whether ethics inheres in subjects or objects? You have elsewhere argued passionately that it does not. Why do you want to risk alienating part of your audience by arguing against something in which they believe?
First, you have to take a stand one way or the other on various issues. For example, Kant intended his work to be a synthesis between rationalism and empiricism. Yet it seems clear that even Kant had eventually to take a stand one way or the other. He decided that the ultimate groundings of human knowledge had to be in rationalism. But he could provide a rationalistic foundation for empirical knowledge as well. He convinced philosophers of his school that the debate about rationalism and empiricism was fruitless because it was based on a false alternative. I mean to establish the equivalent point in the debate about realism and anti-realism. But in the course of this argument, I must still take a stand in anti-realism. It is simply that my brand of anti-realism still preserves the edifice of what a realist would consider to be "moral knowledge". Second, the claims of various realists about the necessity of believing that values exist "out there", well, annoy me. It annoys me that people think they have to believe in such an outlandish idea just to take ethics seriously. If ethics really depended on such silliness, then we would have abandoned it long ago. Sometimes a man just wants to put in his two cents' worth to shut someone else up. I know that expressing my disagreement like that is not exactly going to win friends and influence people. But annoyance at what people say that cannot possibly be true seems a major incentive for engaging them in a debate.
1"Evolutionary Ethics", The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "Charles Darwin".
2"Laws of Life", The Sciences, 1987, Vol. 27, pp.44-51, cited in The Moral Animal by Robert Wright, London:Abacus, 1994, p.357.
Why were you not intrigued before?
Mainly, I was influenced by Lila: An Inquiry Into Morals by Robert M. Pirsig. Pirsig was skeptical about attempts to justify morality in terms of biology. His example in the book was between the Victorians and the modern permissive society. He argued that Victorians were more moral because they were less permissive. Raised in an environment of that discipline encouraged self-control. Simply allowing people to do whatever they wanted let their biological nature predominate over their social nature. Their biological nature was more primitive and it resulted in greater immorality. Hence, the increase in violent crime, degeneracy, and so on. He thought that we would be better off with firm social sanctions. I thought that this sounded pretty well right, and it persuaded me for many years that biology was a dead end as a basis for ethics. Sociology would probably be the more fruitful option. In this regard, however, the external reviewer highlighted a difficulty, of whether society could be specified non-morally. To combat this, I reviewed some of the functionalist literature. What I read suggested an attempt to illustrate the primacy of morality in creating society. This did indeed suggest that nonarbitrary properties to morality stemmed from human nature. In this regard, an obvious book to read was The Moral Animal. If nothing else, the title alone was highly appropriate.
Why did you not come around to the sociobiological view much sooner?
I probably would have if I had persisted with my philosophical studies much longer. But from 1996 to 2003 I gave almost no thought to philosophical matters. I have only just this year come back into thinking about them. But with the accumulated life experience that I have had in the meantime, I am definitely making up for lost time.
What does evolutionary ethics seem to promise to you?
A convincing rejection of value realism. The idea behind value realism is that values exist "out there" in the world, rather than "in here" in the beings that value. I find this notion to have little plausibility independent of the fact that it happens to solve certain certain problems in meta-ethics. For example, it explains why ethics is not arbitrary and is to be taken seriously. It seems to me, however, that sociobiology also explains these things. To put it crudely, ethics is not arbitrary to us, and we take it seriously, because it is "in our nature" to do so. Morality is an evolutionary adaptation of child-rearing animals to enable them to cooperate for mutual benefit1. Of course, value realism also explains why moral arguments are legitimate. But sociobiology also suggests a legitimation of moral arguments. Part of our apparatus of norms in society is also an apparatus of meta-norms2. As I have argued elsewhere, we do not merely value certain states of affairs; we also value that others value those states of affairs as well. The evolutionary advantage of these intuitions is to reinforce the presence of an established moral system. It also provides an obvious incentive to arrive at a consensus of values. If this consensus is to be non-coercive, it much be achieved through moral arguments.
And where would a rejection of value realism lead for you? What form do your anti-realist views take, for example? You already believe that (1) ethics is not arbitrary, (2) ethics is to be taken seriously, and (3) moral arguments are legitimate. Does it, therefore, really matter whether ethics inheres in subjects or objects? You have elsewhere argued passionately that it does not. Why do you want to risk alienating part of your audience by arguing against something in which they believe?
First, you have to take a stand one way or the other on various issues. For example, Kant intended his work to be a synthesis between rationalism and empiricism. Yet it seems clear that even Kant had eventually to take a stand one way or the other. He decided that the ultimate groundings of human knowledge had to be in rationalism. But he could provide a rationalistic foundation for empirical knowledge as well. He convinced philosophers of his school that the debate about rationalism and empiricism was fruitless because it was based on a false alternative. I mean to establish the equivalent point in the debate about realism and anti-realism. But in the course of this argument, I must still take a stand in anti-realism. It is simply that my brand of anti-realism still preserves the edifice of what a realist would consider to be "moral knowledge". Second, the claims of various realists about the necessity of believing that values exist "out there", well, annoy me. It annoys me that people think they have to believe in such an outlandish idea just to take ethics seriously. If ethics really depended on such silliness, then we would have abandoned it long ago. Sometimes a man just wants to put in his two cents' worth to shut someone else up. I know that expressing my disagreement like that is not exactly going to win friends and influence people. But annoyance at what people say that cannot possibly be true seems a major incentive for engaging them in a debate.
1"Evolutionary Ethics", The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "Charles Darwin".
2"Laws of Life", The Sciences, 1987, Vol. 27, pp.44-51, cited in The Moral Animal by Robert Wright, London:Abacus, 1994, p.357.
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