Darwin's Dangerous Idea (90 page)

to facts, rather than reductionism considered more circumspectly, as the O. Wilson, one of the world's great entomologists and the coiner of the term attempt to unify our world-view so that our ethical principles don't clash

"sociobiology" (1975). In his ethical treatise,
On Human Nature
(1978), irrationally with the way the world
is.

Wilson (pp. 196, 198) faces the problem of identifying the
sum-mum bonum
Most of the debates about the naturalistic fallacy are better interpreted as or "cardinal value," and comes up with two coequals: "In the beginning the disagreements analogous to the skyhooks-versus-cranes debates in evolu-new ethicists will want to ponder the cardinal value of the tionary theory. For instance, B. F. Skinner, in my estimation the world-survival of human genes in the form of a common pool over generations....

champion greedy reductionist of all time, wrote an ethical treatise of his I believe that a correct application of evolutionary theory also favors diver-own,
Beyond Freedom and Dignity
(1971). In it, he "committed the nat-sity in the gene pool as a cardinal value." Then (p. 199) he adds a third, uralistic fallacy" on every scale, from the minute to the megalomaniacal. "To universal human rights, but suggests that it must be demythologized. A make a value judgment by calling something good or bad is to classify it in

"rational ant" would find the ideal of human rights "biologically unsound and terms of its reinforcing effects" ( Skinner 1971, p. 105). Let's see: that would the very concept of individual freedom intrinsically evil."

mean that heroin is good, apparently, and taking care of elderly parents is bad? Is this objection just nitpicking a careless definition? The reinforcing we will accede to universal rights because power is too fluid in advanced technological societies to circumvent this mammalian imperative; the long-470 ON THE ORIGIN OF MORALITY

Some Varieties of Greedy Ethical Reductionism 471

term consequences of inequity will always be visibly dangerous to its the human gene pool will succumb. There is no reason to think, however, temporary beneficiaries. I suggest that this is the true reason for the uni-that evolutionary biology shows us that our genes are powerful enough, and versal rights movement and that an understanding of its raw biological insightful enough, to keep us from making policies quite antithetical to their causation will be more compelling in the end than any rationalization interests. On the contrary, evolutionary thinking shows us that our genes contrived by culture to reinforce and euphemize it. [E. Wilson 1978, p.

could hardly be smarter than the engineers who designed our imagined 199.]

survival machines (see chapter 14 ), and look how helpless they were in the fa
ce of
unanticipatable collaborations with other robots! We have seen Writing in collaboration with the philosopher of biology Michael Ruse, examples of parasites—such as viruses—that manipulate the behavior of Wilson declares that sociobiology has shown us that "Morality, or more their hosts to further
their
interests instead of the hosts' own interests. And strictly our belief in morality, is merely an adaptation put in place to further we have seen examples of commensals and mutualists that join to make our reproductive ends" (Ruse and Wilson 1985). Nonsense. Our reproductive common cause, creating a larger beneficiary out of parts. Persons, according ends may have been the ends that kept us in the running till we could to the meme model we have sketched, are just such larger, higher entities, develop culture, and they may still play a powerful—sometimes overpow-and the policies
they
come to adopt, as a result of interactions between their ering—role in our thinking, but that does not license any conclusion at all meme-infested brains, are not at all bound to answer to the interests of their about our current values. It does not follow from the fact that our reprogenes alone—or their memes alone. That is our transcendence, our capacity ductive ends were the ultimate historical
source
of our present values, that to "rebel against the tyranny of the selfish replicators," as Dawkins says, and they are the ultimate (and still principal)
beneficiary
of our ethical actions. If there is nothing anti-Darwinian or antiscientific about it.

Ruse and Wilson think otherwise, they are committing the "genetic" fallacy The typical inability of Wilson and other sociobiologists to see their critics Nietzsche (and Darwin) warned us about. As Nietzsche said, "the cause of as anything but religious fanatics or scientifically illiterate mysterians is yet the origin of a thing and its eventual utility, its actual employment and place one more sad overswing of the pendulum. Skinner saw his critics as a bunch in a system of purposes, lie worlds apart." Do Ruse and Wilson commit this of Cartesian dualists and miracle-worshipers, and in his peroration he fallacy? Consider what else they say on the subject (p. 51): declared:

In an important sense, ethics as we understand it is an illusion fobbed off on us by our genes to get us to cooperate ___ Furthermore, the way our To man
qua
man we readily say good riddance. Only by dispossessing him biology enforces its ends is by making us think that there is an objective can we turn to the real causes of human behavior. Only then can we turn higher code, to which we are all subject.

from the inferred to the observed, from the miraculous to the natural, from the inaccessible to the manipulable. [Skinner 1971, p. 201.]

It must be true that there is an evolutionary explanation of how our memes and genes interacted to create the policies of human cooperation that we Wilson and many other sociobiologists have the same bad habit of seeing enjoy in civilization—we haven't figured out all the details yet, but it must anybody who disagrees with them as a benighted, science-fearing sky-be true unless there are skyhooks in the offing—but this would not show that hooker. In fact, only
most
of the people who disagree with them fit this the result was
for the benefit of the genes
(as principal beneficiaries). Once description! There is a minority comprising responsible critics of the ex-memes are on the scene, they, and the
persons
they help create, are also cesses of greed to which the enthusiastic exponents of any new scientific potential beneficiaries. Hence, the truth of an evolutionary explanation school are apt to succumb.

would not show that our allegiance to ethical principles or a "higher code"

Another eminent biologist, Richard Alexander, whose own treatment of was an "illusion." In a famous image, Wilson puts his vision this way: ethics is much more careful, expresses the appropriate skepticism about The genes hold culture on a leash. The leash is very long, but inevitably Wilson's candidates for cardinal values: "Whether or not these goals would values will be constrained in accordance with their effects on the human all be judged admirable by humanity, Wilson does not connect his selection gene pool. [E. Wilson 1978, p. 167]

of them to biological principles" (Alexander 1987, p. 167). But Alexander also underestimates the power of culture—memes—to snap Wilson's leash.

But
all this means (unless it is just false) is that, in the long run,
if we
adopt Like
Wilson, he acknowledges the huge difference in speed between cultural cultural practices that have disastrous effects on the human gene pool, then and genetic evolution, and argues forcefully (pp. 10-11) that cultural versatility makes a shambles of any attempts—like Chomsky's and Fodor's—to
1

472 ON THE ORIGIN OF MORALITY

Some Varieties of Greedy Ethical Reductionism
473

find some "Thou Shalt Go No Farther" boundary to human cognition. He limitions into the massively misleading idea that the
summum bonum
at thinks, however, that evolutionary biology has shown that "the individual's the
source of every chain of practical reasoning is the imperative of our self-interests can only be realized through reproduction, by creating descen-genes. A counterexample shows why not: Larry, heartsick at being spurned dants and assisting other relatives," and that a consequence of this is that no by
Lola, the love of his life, joins the Salvation Army in order to try to forget one ever acts out of genuine beneficence or altruism. As he puts it: her
to put an end to his torment. It works. Years later, St. Larry the Sublimated wins the Nobel Peace Prize for all his good deeds, and Richard

... this "greatest intellectual revolution of the century" tells us that, de-Alexander, at the ceremony in Oslo, throws a wet blanket on the proceed-spite our intuitions, there is not a shred of evidence to support this view ings by reminding us that this all grew out of Larry's basic reproductive of beneficence, and a great deal of convincing theory suggests that any urges. So it did. So what? We make a big mistake if we think the way to such view will eventually be judged false [Alexander 1987, p. 3].

understand the bulk of Larry's life is to try to interpret his every move as designed, one indirect way or another, to ensure that he has grandchildren.

But, like Wilson and the Social Darwinists, he commits a subtle, attenu-The possibility that a meme or complex of memes can redirect our ated version of the genetic fallacy, and emphasizes the very passage (p. 23) underlying genetic proclivities is strikingly illustrated by a four-century-in which he does it.

long human experiment in sociobiology that has recently been vividly drawn to the attention of evolutionary theorists by David Sloan Wilson and Even if culture changes massively and continually across multiple gener-Elliot Sober:

ations, even if our problems and promises arise out of the cultural process of change, even if there are no genetic variations among humans that The Hutterites are a fundamentalist religious sect mat originated in Europe significantly affect their behavior,
it is always true that the cumulative
in die sixteenth century and migrated to North America in the nineteenth
history of natural selection continues to influence our actions by the set
century to escape conscription. The Hutterites regard themselves as the
of genes it has provided humanity.

human equivalent of a bee colony. They practice community of goods ( no private ownership ) and also cultivate a psychological attitude of extreme This is indeed true, but it does not establish the point he thinks it does. As he selflessness__Nepotism and reciprocity, the two principles that most insists, no matter how potent cultural forces are, they always have to act on evolutionists use to explain prosocial behavior in humans, are scorned by the materials genetic forces have shaped for them, and will go on shaping, the Hutterites as immoral. Giving must be without regard to relatedness and without any expectation of return. [Wilson and Sober 1994, p. 602]

but they can just as readily
redirect
or
exploit
or
subvert
those genetically endorsed designs as
attenuate
or
combat
them. Sociobiologists, overreacting to the cultural absolutists (those crazy skyhookers) in much the way Darwin Unlike most sects, the Hutterites have been quite successful at propagating overreacted to the Catastrophists, like to emphasize that culture must have their groups over the centuries, enlarging their range and increasing their
grown out of
our biological inheritance. Indeed it must have, and it is also global population, according to Wilson and Sober: "In present-day Canada, true that we grew from fish, but our reasons aren't the reasons of fish just Hutterites thrive in marginal farming habitat without the benefit of modern because fish are our ancestors.

technology and almost certainly would displace the non-Hutterite popula-The sociobiologists are also right to stress that our unique capacity to tion in the absence of laws that restrict their expansion" (p. 605).

adopt and act on a different set of reasons does not prevent us from being The Hutterites may be over four centuries old, but that is no time at all on the genetic calendar, so it is not likely that
any
of the striking differences inconvenienced or even tortured or betrayed by our "animal" urges. Long between their groups and the groups the rest of us belong to are genetically before Salome did her dance of the seven veils, it was already obvious to transmitted. (Exchanging Hutterite infants for others would presumably not members of our species that innate procreative urges can be made to assert interfere noticeably with the "group fitness" of Hutterite colonies. Hutter-themselves at the most inopportune times, just as sneezes and coughs can, ites simply exploit, thanks to a heritage of
cultural
transmission, disposi-seriously threatening the welfare of the body in which those urges are tions that are part of the common human stock.) So the Hutterites are an asserted. As in other species, many is the woman who has perished to save example of how cultural evolution can create new group effects, and what is her children, and many is the man who has gone to an early death eagerly particularly delicious, from an evolutionist's point of view, is their method of pursuing one perilous course or another, driven on by the faint hope of fission:

procreation. But we must not turn this important fact about our biological 474 ON THE ORIGIN OF MORALITY

Some Varieties of Greedy Ethical Reductionism
475

Like a honey bee colony, Hutterite brotherhoods split when they attain a gation and firmly admonished; "if he persists in his stubbornness and refuses large size, with one half remaining at the original site and the other half to listen even to the Church, then there is only one answer to this situation, moving to a new site that has been preselected and prepared. In prepa-and
that is to cut him off and exclude him." A totalitarian regime (even a ration for the split, the colony is divided into two groups that are equal group totalitarianism) is extremely vulnerable to dissuasion, in almost ex-with respect to number, age, sex, skills and personal compatibility. The actly the same way an altruistic group is vulnerable to free-riders. That is not entire colony packs its belongings and one of the lists is drawn by lottery to say that reason is always on the side of defection. It isn't. It's always on the on the day of the split. The similarity to the genetic rules of meiosis could side of keeping options open, of design
revision.
This is usually a good thing hardly be more complete. [Wilson and Sober 1994, p. 604.]