Olsen's Eight Criticisms

Jon Antein Olsen's dissertation is a good intellectual history of the argumentation for "neo-Darwinian conservatism" in the United States.  Although much of what he does is simply a descriptive history of the arguments, he also offers some critical assessments of the arguments. 

He identifies me first as a proponent of "neo-Darwinian conservative pessimism," in which I make a Darwinian argument for what Thomas Sowell called the "constrained vision" of social life as opposed to the "unconstrained vision."  He also identifies me as a proponent of "neo-Darwinian natural right," in which I make a Darwinian argument for what Leo Strauss called "natural right."

Olsen suggests at least eight possible criticisms of my reasoning.  In this post, I will list those criticisms.  In subsequent posts, I will reply to each one.

1.  Straw men.  Olsen charges that in my criticisms of the Left, I loosely associate modern liberalism with socialism, communism, and utopian thinking, which is a straw-man argument, because modern liberals today are not socialists, communists, or utopians.

2.  Moral progress.  He also charges that in my conservative pessimism and in my insistence on how imperfect human nature constrains what we can do, I ignore the moral progress in history that has been brought about by the Left.

3.  The naturalistic fallacy.  Olsen says that my project is "fundamentally and essentially guilty of committing the naturalistic fallacy" (191), in trying to infer normative values from descriptive facts.

4.  Emotivism.  He criticizes me for trying to ground all morality on mere feeling or emotion, and thus ignoring the necessity for moral reason to rule over the "vulgar passions."

5.  The interpersonal dimension.  He also criticizes me for saying nothing about the "interpersonal dimension" of human life and thus failing to see that morality is always about the interests or perspectives of more than one individual.

6.  Contemporary issues and human rights.  He claims that I never apply Darwinian natural right reasoning to "issues that are at least remotely controversial in liberal democracies today" (195), and I never consider the possibility that Darwinian natural right might apply to contemporary thought about human rights.

7.  Religion and Darwin.  He emphasizes that the most common criticism of Darwinian conservatism by conservatives is that Darwinian science subverts religious belief and thus subverts the morality that depends on religious belief, and he implies that I have given no good answer to that objection.

8.  Human Biodiversity.  Olsen has a good chapter on the history of American conservatives who argue that the evolutionary science of human biodiversity supports scientific racism; and although he does not state it as a criticism, some readers might wonder whether I have any good response to this argument for the evolutionary psychology of race differences.