The Death of Evolutionary Ethics

[Alonzo Fyfe]

Another popular idea that I would like to squash and dispose of is the idea that moral truths are written onto the human soul/psyche by evolution. We have somehow evolved a moral sense, and right and wrong simply involves listening to that inner voice.

Even among atheists, listening to voices is not a very good sign.

The first thing to say against this is that moral questions are always questions of choice. There is no moral obligation to feel pain when burned. Nor is it a moral imperative to be repulsed by the smell of a rotting corpse, or to drool at the smell of a finely prepared meal. We do not choose these rules; they are written into our biological makeup by nature.

Because there is no choice, there is no moral component.

Let us look, instead, at the questions that are a matter of moral debate. In all relevant cases, we are faced with a choice. If opposition to slavery was somehow genetic, then are these people saying that the genetic opposition to slavery can arise over just a few short years? Similarly, the person who wants to assert that views on capital punishment are biologically based, then why are Europeans so opposed to capital punishment while their genetic relatives in America find it so appealing? Is opposition to abortion somehow inherited, and does one's views on homosexuality have a pedigree?

Of course not.

What evolution has given us is the power to make choices. Because we have this power, we have to ask questions about which options are best. To condemn or to promotie slavery, capital punishment, homosexuality, and abortion are clearly a matter of choice, and different people choose differently. These conclusions are not determined by biology.

This is not to say that evolution is not relevant. Evolution has moulded our desires -- and our disposition to acquire (learn) new desires -- over millions of years. But these are the background conditions which our answers to genuine moral questions must answer. Like the laws of gravity and termodynamics, the disposition to feel pain when burned, to be repulsed by the smell of a rotting carcass, or to desire a well prepared meal are facts of nature that no honest answer to the moral question can ignore.

But evolution does not give us the answer. We have choices to make. Evolution has given us the capacity to choose, but we must choose. If evolution had already chosen these answers for us, then we would not have anything to debate.

[Gurdur]

Originally posted by Alonzo Fyfe
.....
Even among atheists, listening to voices is not a very good sign.
Just wondering how you derive the sex act from pure reason, since that's where your argument would end up. Evopsych postulates inherent statistical tendencies that form the basis of much of our later-cognitively-built-up morality; the whole reproductive/rearing strategy that humans are born with plays a large role (e.g. protection of women and children).

The first thing to say against this is that moral questions are always questions of choice.
Which is merely to state that a cognitive component must be involved.
Oh, BTW, I assume you're definitely plummeting for free-will here.
We do not choose these rules; they are written into our biological makeup by nature.
Because there is no choice, there is no moral component.
Last time I looked, the sex act was fairly definitely written into genes, which doesn't make it non-modifiable or even non-deletable by cognition, nuture or accident.
What evolution has given us is the power to make choices.
To a certain degree, only to a degree.
We cannot choose to be Superman or guppies.
But evolution does not give us the answer. We have choices to make.

Your entire argument would seem to be a rebuttal of:
1) anyone claiming that all morality stems holus-bolus from biology,
2) and indeed that there is no such thing as free-will

I'm not aware of anyone on this board who claims (1), though I know of several who claim (2).
So against whom is your argument meant to be ?

[Alonzo Fyfe]

Originally posted by Gurdur
Just wondering how you derive the sex act from pure reason, , since that's where your argument would end up.

Um . . . perhaps you would like to enlighten me as to how my statements entail such an absurd conclusion.


Originally posted by Gurdur
Evopsych postulates inherent statistical tendencies that form the basis of much of our later-cognitively-built-up morality; the whole reproductive/rearing strategy that humans are born with plays a large role (e.g. protection of women and children).

The best that can be said of such an analysis is that it has inventented a whole new meaning of the word 'moral'.

These strategies are an important part of our desires, and as such they represent some morally relevant facts. But to say that they represent morality itself is, as I say, to invent a whole new meaning of the word 'morality'.

If these characteristics are a part of our makeup, then saying that one 'has a moral obligation to care for women and children' is as nonsensical as saying that water has a moral obligation to flow down hill.

Or, as I said earlier, it is as nonsensical as saying that we have a duty to feel pain when burned, and are under some sort of moral imperative to be repulsed by the smell of a rotting carcass.


Originally posted by Gurdur
Oh, BTW, I assume you're definitely plummeting for free-will here.

If you mean the conta-causal supernatural ability to throw off the laws of physics and cause atoms to swerve in ways different from what would have happened if the four known physical forces alone were to act on them . . . .

No. I don't believe in magic.

If you mean neural incorporates into the thought process programming code that says to weigh various possible outcomes and pick the option having the greatest value -- the way a chess-playing computer weighs different moves and picks one . . .

Yes.

Morality has to do with the conclusions reached by such a decision process, not with the fixed laws or rules that are written into the code as input.


Originally posted by Gurdur
Last time I looked, the sex act was fairly definitely written into genes, which doesn't make it non-modifiable or even non-deletable by cognition, nuture or accident.

What does this have to do with anything?


Originally posted by Gurdur
So against whom is your argument meant to be.?

Let's start with Michael Ruse and his sociobiologist ilk who are spending their lives looking for a biological root to our moral sentiments. And a bunch of game theorists who hold that morality evolved as a strategy for winning reiterated prisoners' dilemma.

At best, such people can find a biological root for our desires (like our aversion to pain and our dislike for the smell of a rotting carcass). The can demonstrate that evolution caused us to like high-fat foods and that the higher-pitched sound of a child's voice tends to elicit a care response.

But to the degree that these things are fixed by nature, then to that degree what the researchers find have nothing to do with morality.

However, what we desire (which is all that this research is telling us), and what we ought to desire (which is what questions of morality address) are not the same question. It is a mistake to seek answers to the first question, while thinking and professing that what one is investigating is 'morality', which happens to be concerned with the second question.

Go back to any of my previous example. What can evolution tell us about the wrongness of slavery?

[Gurdur]

Originally posted by Alonzo Fyfe

Um . . . perhaps you would like to enlighten me as to how my statements entail such an absurd conclusion.
I'll wait till you actually answer the point. Restated below.


Let's start with Michael Ruse and his sociobiologist ilk who are spending their lives looking for a biological root to our moral sentiments. And a bunch of game theorists who hold that morality evolved as a strategy for winning reiterated prisoners' dilemma.

And this is the point.
Evopsych, sociobiology and game analysis look for statistical trends.
They do not predict absolute behaviour, simply seek to explain and predict statistical behaviour.
And most sociobioologists, evopsychs and game analysts make very allowance for free-will and individual behavioural deviation.

And that disproves your implied mischaracterization of them as saying that biology must determine all moral behaviour, eh ?

However, what we desire (which is all that this research is telling us), and what we ought to desire (which is what questions of morality address) are not the same question. It is a mistake to seek answers to the first question, while thinking and professing that what one is investigating is 'morality', which happens to be concerned with the second question. No, the mistake lies in your mischaracterization of evopsych as prescriptionist, when it seeks to be descriptionist.

Any such invalid inference as you aim at would be drawn by others, not the original evopyschs themselves.

[Alonzo Fyfe]

Originally posted by Gurdur
Any such invalid inference as you aim at would be drawn by others, not the original evopyschs themselves.

I am concerned only with those who claim that they are investigating morality. If they don't make the claim, I have nothing to say against them.

[Gurdur]

Originally posted by Alonzo Fyfe

I am concerned only with those who claim that they are investigating morality.
They are investigating the foundations of commonly observed morality.
It's simply a field of behavioiral psychology.
Doesn't make them prescriuptivist, but.
If they don't make the claim, I have nothing to say against them.
I'ld respectfully suggest you train your gunsights on Social Darwinists, not sociobiologists.

Where sociobiology and evopsych are to be much criticised is on their scientific outcomes, not their morality --- they are often prone to ad hoc explanations.

Still, it's the Social Darwinists who are most likely to pervert the field, not the original sociobiologists. At least not yet.

Though, of course, there's always the film Gattaca to ilustrate the dangers.

[Alonzo Fyfe]

Originally posted by Gurdur
They are investigating the foundations of commonly observed morality.

Then it is a category mistake. What they are studying are desires -- perhaps combined with the common mistake of taking desires to be a sign of some sort of intrinsically prescriptive property in things. This is a property that does not exist.

It has nothing to do with reaching or defending conclusions of what we ought and ought not to do.

Questions about what people do are one thing (e.g., what motivates the rapist). Questions about what people ought to do is an entirely different category of questions. To take an investigation into one category of questions as being an investigation into the other is, as I said, a category mistake.

Let me take an example. Lion males, when they take over a new pride, kill all of the cubs. The evolutionary ethicist would say that, if lions were to become intelligent, that they the 'ought' to kill all of the cubs because evolution gave them a disposition to do so.

It would be like arguing that rape is permissible activity for human males, so long as an evolved disposition to rape can be substantiated.

It derives 'ought' frome evolved dispositions. The inference is entirely invalid.


Originally posted by Gurdur
I'ld respectfully suggest you train your gunsights on Social Darwinists, not sociobiologists.

Oh, I don't like them either. But, I don't see very many of them, and I don't see them causing as many problems as the evolutionary ethicists do.

[Gurdur]

Originally posted by Alonzo Fyfe

Then it is a category mistake. ...
....
It derives 'ought' frome evolved dispositions. The inference is entirely invalid.
I see your criticism as valid but over-extended.
That is, I see you still as attacking the wrong targets.

You may well be interested in the history-of-science book,
Defenders of the Truth: The Sociobiology Debate (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0192862154/qid=1062464455/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/103-2538260-6126230?v=glance&s=books), by Ullica Segerstråle, which covers the controversy you address.

Oh, I don't like them either. But, I don't see very many of them, and I don't see them causing as many problems as the evolutionary ethicists do.
As someone who regularly slums it in the Political Discussions forum here, I will respectfully disagree with you.
Just my own individual experience.

To me, the main danger comes (for example) not from geneticists, but those who would form a business climate based on Social Darwinist perversions of genetic views.

[Alonzo Fyfe]

Originally posted by Gurdur
As someone who regularly slums it in the Political Discussions forum here, I will respectfully disagree with you.
Just my own individual experience.

To me, the main danger comes (for example) not from geneticists, but those who would form a business climate based on Social Darwinist perversions of genetic views. [/B]

I am afraid that I seldom visit the Political Discussions forum. From what I know of the habits of such creatures, it does make sense to find them in the Political Discussions forum, but not here. In the areas I am accustomed to visiting, Social Darwinism is known on the surface to be in error.

Perhaps, some day, if you should find a few of them in a group somewhere, you may point them out to me.

[Gurdur]

Originally posted by Alonzo Fyfe

I am afraid that I seldom visit the Political Discussions forum. From what I know of the habits of such creatures, it does make sense to find them in the Political Discussions forum, but not here. In the areas I am accustomed to visiting, Social Darwinism is known on the surface to be in error.
No need to be so nasty about my lowlife slumming habits.

Perhaps, some day, if you should find a few of them in a group somewhere, you may point them out to me.
Naming names may well get me in trouble.
Try:

here (http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?threadid=59393)

here (http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?threadid=61526)

here (http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?threadid=60995)

here (http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?threadid=58931)

and here (http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?threadid=60652)

for interestingly subtle examples.

Overt agitprop is a little rarer now that Trebaxian Vir has left; yet there's a hell of a lot of Social Darwinist thinking below the surface of much politico-economic grandstanding in the PD.