An Introduction to Evolutionary Ethics (24 page)

A major attraction to my position in my eyes is that one simply cannot be guilty of committing the naturalistic fallacy or violating the is/ought barrier, because one is simply not in the justification business at all.

(Michael Ruse, “Evolution and Ethics”) Stephen Morgan and Johanna Justin-Jinich met at a New York University summer course in 2007. How it began is not clear, but Stephen started sending Johanna harassing e-mails. Johanna in turn complained to the authorities. But Stephen disappeared, apparently returning to his home in Colorado, and the matter appeared to resolve itself. Then, on May 6, 2009, Stephen returned to Connecticut where Johanna was a student. Events unfolded this way: Mr. Morgan walked into a campus bookstore about 1 p.m. Wednesday, then toward the Red and Black Cafe, where Ms. Justin-Jinich worked. He was a bearded, menacing figure on the overhead surveillance camera, a dark gun in his right hand swinging at his side, and something else hidden behind him in his left hand. It was a long-stranded wig and he put it on, the baldish man undergoing a bizarre transformation as he confronted her, raised the gun and opened fire, a point-blank, seven-shot execution, officials said. Ms. Justin-Jinich fell, mortally wounded. (
New York Times,
A1, May 8, 2009) There are a number of questions we might ask about this series of events. For example, we might seek to answer
psychological
questions, questions about Stephen's mental health, and the causal factors that led to his actions. We might seek to answer
legal
questions, questions about the legality of his actions prior to the shooting. We might want to know whether his mental health might figure in his legal defense (was he criminally insane at the time of the killing?). We might seek to answer
sociological
questions, questions about the social environment that contributed to Stephen's avowed anti-Semitism (Johanna was Jewish). All of these questions would be worth pursuing. And we have some idea about how to go about pursuing them.

Take, for example, questions about Stephen's mental health. We might look to psychologists who have developed clinical measures for psychopathy, thus allowing us to say (with greater or lesser accuracy) that Stephen
was
a psychopath based on, for example, his responses to a battery of personality tests. Perhaps images of his brain might reveal the neurophysiological signature of psychopathy. At any rate, we have some idea (perhaps mistaken) about
what would make it true
that Stephen was a psychopath. Or, we have some idea (perhaps mistaken) about
what would make it true
that Stephen violated Section 1109b of the United States Federal criminal code. In all these instances, we can offer in more or less basic terms the
truth-conditions
for judgments about his mental state or the illegality of his actions or whatever.

But these are not the questions we're interested in. Suppose I say (and I don't think I'm going out on a limb with this one) that what Stephen did was wrong. His actions were
seriously immoral
. It might thus be asked: What makes it true that Stephen's actions were immoral? Now this question is not posed as a skeptical question, as if maybe we're not sure if shooting someone seven times, at point-blank range, is wrong. The question is posed, instead, as a theoretical question, a question we might ask in hopes of learning about the nature of morality itself. What is it about the world that makes the judgment that his actions were wrong
true
? What in (or out of) the world do we point to? What are the basic terms that make up the
truth-conditions
for that moral judgment?

With regard to judgments about Stephen's mental health, it's at least pretty clear. We might point to past behavior or Stephen's personality test results. Maybe we point to fMRI scans of Stephen's brain. With regard to judgments about the illegality of Stephen's actions, we might point to publicly accessible criminal codes and evidence of how Stephen behaved. But with regard to judgments about the
morality
of Stephen's behavior, what do we point to? What, if anything, justifies the claim that what Stephen did was seriously immoral? And how does that justification fit together with everything else we know about the world? In particular, the
natural
world? What, if anything, does wrongness have to do with, say, neurons or gravity or electrons? Are there objective standards to which we can appeal to in trying to determine which moral judgments (if any) are correct? If Stephen were to claim that his actions were
not
wrong, could we show that Stephen is making a
factual
mistake, a mistake not unlike the claim that the earth is flat or that 23 + 6 = 30?

These sorts of questions are at the heart of the field known as
metaethics
. Metaethics, broadly understood, is the study of moral concepts, what these concepts mean, and how they hang together with other concepts (such as electrons); furthermore, metaethicists investigate the ultimate justification or foundation (if any) for moral judgments. This is not the study of what you ought to do (e.g., “You should not kill others”). This is the study of what, if anything,
justifies
claims about what you ought to do. It is a metaphysical discipline. For it seeks to uncover the ultimate reality or nature of moral properties such as wrongness, rightness, and goodness. Now how does this study make contact with evolution?

Let's go back to the beginning. Recall that the shot across the bow was Wilson's claim that ethics ought to be “removed temporarily from the hands of the philosophers and ‘
biologicized
.’” This challenge, however, allowed for several different interpretations. In part I of this book we explored the possibility that Darwinian selection played a central role in explaining why we happen to have this tendency to make moral judgments. “Biologicizing” ethics was a task for moral psychologists. In that part of the book, we purposely avoided passing judgment on the whether these moral judgments were
justified
.

In recent chapters we have looked at efforts to justify some moral claims by appeal to Darwinian selection. Social Darwinism, in Spencer's hands at least, was an attempt to “biologicize” ethics by showing that social harmony is good because it's what natural selection tends toward. But as we saw, these attempts face serious obstacles. Indeed, given the apparent decisiveness of Hume's and Moore's objections, “traditional evolutionary ethics ground to a complete stop,” as the philosopher Michael Ruse describes it. If we accept Hume's and Moore's objections, then the obvious conclusion to draw is that
morality really is autonomous
. That is, disciplines outside of moral philosophy can offer no insight into the nature of morality. Moral theory must solve its problems (if it can) only on its own terms.

So we might reasonably wonder why we are plunging once again into the question of morality's justification in the context of evolution. Didn't we show that this was a waste of time? Even if the speculative story sketched in part I of this book is correct, the question of how we ought, morally speaking, to live our lives remains wide open. Nothing about morality's justification has been settled. The philosopher James Rachels amplifies this point with an analogy.

Imagine that someone proposed eliminating the study of mathematics, and replacing it with systematic study of the biological basis of mathematical thinking. They might argue that, after all, our mathematical beliefs are the products of our brains working in certain ways, and an evolutionary account might explain why we developed the mathematical capacities we have. Thus “mathobiology” could replace mathematics. (1990: 78) But this sounds funny. True, it seems plausible that our ability to perform mathematical calculations had certain biological advantages. (For example, Ogg observes three saber-tooth tigers going into a cave; he then observes two coming out. When Ogg thinks it's safe to go into the cave, Ogg does the human species a favor: he removes himself from the gene pool. Score one for mathematical thinking.) But accepting this story as plausible doesn't seem to drive us to the conclusion that mathematics is dispensable. That seems strange. Why? “The proposal is strange,” says Rachels, “because mathematics is an autonomous subject with its own internal standards of proof and discovery.” Imagine a mathematician trying to solve Fermat's Theorem by studying the activity of the hypothalamus. She's not going to get very far.

Similar results are supposed to follow for morality. If we want to know whether abortion is wrong or whether torture is ever morally justified, or if we want to know what it is that made Stephen Morgan's act of killing seriously immoral, it would be nonsensical to speculate about human evolution, or observe how the amygdala and occipital lobes communicate. This line of objection looks impeccable. In fact, as Ruse notes, this is how “matters have rested for three-quarters of a century.”

But things are once again stirring. Beginning in the 1970s, philosophers and biologists glimpsed a new way of understanding the relationship between evolution and morality. This new way does not require taking on Moore or Hume directly. As far as these philosophers are concerned, Hume and Moore were correct. Any attempt to vindicate moral claims on the basis of evolution is bound to fail. But why, these philosophers ask, must we seek to
vindicate
moral claims?

According to this new approach, evolution in fact
does
yield important moral conclusions, but not the kinds of conclusions that would have comforted Spencer or Rachels. Instead of seeking to
vindicate
or
justify
certain moral principles (e.g., that social harmony is to be promoted, or that non-human animals deserve the same moral treatment as humans), this new approach to evolutionary ethics seeks to
undermine
morality. What evolution shows is
not
that this or that way of acting is morally preferred. Instead, evolution (in combination with certain philosophical principles) shows that
there is no morally preferable way of acting at all
. On this version of evolutionary ethics, Darwinian evolution does not support; it destroys.

To be clear, the conclusions it seeks to establish are
metaethical
. This means that we are drawing conclusions about moral
concepts
themselves and what they refer (or, in this case,
don't refer
) to. If this recent sort of view – what I'll call
evolutionary anti-realism
– is correct, then whatever else we say about Stephen Morgan's actions on May 6, 2009, we cannot say that they were
objectively
wrong. The reason is:
nothing
is objectively wrong. And the reason nothing is objectively wrong follows from an argument that appeals specifically to our evolutionary past. Certain premises of that argument have appeared before in the history of moral philosophy. But others were unavailable until more recently, when the picture of human evolution began to come into focus. In this chapter we'll begin by looking at early efforts to undermine morality, an effort mounted by E.O. Wilson and Michael Ruse. In chapter 11 we'll see how this early effort has been extended, by looking at recent arguments by the philosophers Richard Joyce and Sharon Street. In chapter 12 we'll consider how the skeptic might respond to these arguments. At least three different kinds of proposals have been recently floated.

10.1 This Is Your Brain on God In the mid-1990s Michael Persinger, a Canadian neuropsychologist, found God – just not where most people expected (Hitt 1999). Michael Persinger applied mild electromagnetic bursts (called Thomas Pulses) to the right temporal lobe of subjects' brains. Subjects reported having powerful “religious experiences,” involving more often than not a “sensed presence.” For some, the sensed presence was God, for others it was Mohammed. Avowed agnostics suspected UFOs. Various theories have emerged as to why the brain interprets these electromagnetic bursts in the way it does. But whatever the final theory looks like, it appears that Michael Persinger has found God
in the brain
.

Now some marveled at this neat little neuropsychological splash, but nevertheless ignored the ripples. Others, however, sensed a philosophical lesson here. (And it is this lesson that will interest us in the coming chapters, so indulge me.) Why might this neuropsychological discovery – if, indeed, it stands up to review – trouble believers? Why should some neuropsychologist tickling temporal lobes in Canada threaten my belief (let's say) in God? The following is one way of spelling out the threat.

Suppose that
ultimately
the case for God's existence comes down to the religious experiences of individual believers. Suppose, that is, that the evidence for God's existence does not ultimately rest on anything other than these “transcendental” experiences. (I can't imagine that this assumption will go unchallenged. For now, though, we're just trying to spell out a threat.) Let's also suppose that each of these experiences is merely the result of increased activity in subjects' temporal lobes. This activity can be artificially induced (as Persinger has done) or naturally induced by varying electromagnetic fields in the environment. In either case – and this is the point – we can fully explain these religious experiences
without
having to appeal to a (mind-independent) supernatural being. We don't need God's existence to explain anything in need of explaining. Therefore,
if
the evidence for God's existence ultimately comes down to these experiences, and
if
these experiences can be explained without remainder as mere “side-effects” of run-of-the-mill activities of the brain, then what reason do you have for believing in God's existence? What justification do you have for such a belief? If this threat is for real, the answer is,
None
.