My conception of Darwinian natural right includes an account of law. A full account of social order requires a nested hierarchy of three kinds of order--natural order, customary order, and rational order--so that custom is constrained by nature, and reason is constrained both by custom and by nature. Law manifests these three levels of order. The proponents of natural law are correct in seeing that law presupposes the natural desires and capacities of human beings. The proponents of customary law are correct in seeing that law presupposes custom. And the proponents of positive law are correct in seeing that law in the strict sense is the stipulation of the lawmaker. In fact, law is the joint product of nature, custom, and stipulation.
Darwinian natural right assumes that natural law reflects the twenty natural desires that constitute human nature as shaped by genetic evolution: human beings generally desire a complete life, parental care, sexual identity, sexual mating, familial bonding, friendship, social status, justice as reciprocity, political rule, war, health, beauty, property, speech, practical habituation, practical reasoning, practical arts, aesthetic pleasure, religious understanding, and intellectual understanding. These natural desires constrain but do not rigidly determine the customary evolution of law. Within the constraints of natural desires and customary traditions, there is some freedom for the exercise of prudential judgment in stipulating legal decisions and rules.
Opponents of the natural law position argue that there is no evidence for a universal human nature shaping the history of law. Cultural relativists say that law is purely a product of customary traditions that vary radically across societies and across time. Legal positivists say that law is ultimately a product of some lawmaking power unconstrained either by nature or by custom.
The study of primitive law helps to clarify this debate, and I think it provides support for Darwinian natural right. Perhaps the best single study of primitive law is E. Adamson Hoebel's The Law of Primitive Man (published first in 1954 and reprinted in 2006 by Harvard University Press). Hoebel was an anthropologist specializing in legal anthropology. He was best known for his work on the law of the Cheyenne Indians.
In the first part of this book, Hoebel lays out his general theoretical approach to the study of primitive law. He identifies himself as a "functional realist" who studies the behavioral reality of legal practice, as opposed to the conceptual abstractions of natural law or positive law theories.
In the second part of the book, he has five chapters on law in five primitive societies (ranging from the simplest to the most complex): the Eskimos, the Ifugao (in the northern Philippines), the American plains Indians (Comanche, Kiowa, and Cheyenne), the Trobriand Islanders (of the northeast coast of New Guinea), and the Ashanti (on the Gold Coast of West Africa).
In the last part of the book, he offers some general conclusions about the relation of law to religion, the functions of law, and the evolution of law. Hoebel puts his study in the context of Darwinian evolution. "Man emerged from the subhuman, supersimian state a million and more years ago" (291). As compared with chimpanzees, who are intensely social animals, who even have some rudimentary capacity for cultural learning ("protoculture"), the earliest human ancestors used their uniquely human capacity for speech to develop cultural learning far beyond anything seen in other animals (7-8). Using comparative studies of primitive foraging societies in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, combined with archeological and fossil evidence of human evolution, allows Hoebel to infer what Paleolithic human societies were like (290-91).
Hoebel proposes a "postulation theory of law." Every group or society is organized around a set of fundamental postulates or values that represent "a limited selection from the total of human potentialities, individual and collective" (17). For each primitive society that he studies, Hoebel surveys the anthropological studies and formulates the set of postulated values that constitute the legal culture for that society.
I would say that what Hoebel calls "the total of human potentialities" corresponds to what I would call "human nature." What Hoebel calls the "limited selection" from within these potentialities corresponds to what I would describe as custom and stipulation selecting from within the potentialities of human nature those values that seem adapted to the particular needs and circumstances of a particular society.
So, for example, there is a natural desire for property expressed in every human society. But the specification of what counts as property and of the rights and duties of property varies across societies. Property in land is often not important for nomadic people. But it is very important for those like the Ifugao who get most of their food from growing rice.
I identify political rule as one of the twenty natural desires. But it might seem that primitive societies have no structure of political rule because they have no governments. "The Eskimo is what some would call an anarchist," Hoebel observes. "He has no government in the formal sense" (81). But this lack of "formal" government still leaves open the possibility of "informal" rule.
My claim is that human beings are by nature political animals, because they naturally live in social systems that require (at least occasionally) central coordination. In civilized human communities, such as bureaucratic states, this centralized coordination is formal and enduring. But in primitive human communities, such as hunter-gatherer bands, this centralized coordination of society is informal and episodic.
The Eskimos show this in their following the leadership of headmen. Hoebel explains: "The headman possesses no fixed authority; neither does he enter into formal office. He is not elected, nor is he chosen by any formal process. When other men accept his judgment and opinions, he is a headman. When they ignore him, he is not. Headmen are those who can hunt and 'who by their extended acquaintance with the traditions, customs, and rights connected with the festivals, as well as being possessed of an unusual degree of common sense, are deferred to and act as chief advisers of the community.' Such are the germs of political authority among the rude societies of mankind" (82).
This is what David Hume had in mind when he described in his essay "Of the Origin of Government" how the "love of dominion" as rooted in the "principles of human nature" would motivate leaders in savage societies who get prestige from acting as dominant individuals, although this dominance would depend on the voluntary consent, or at least acquiescence, of the other individuals in the society. In this way, the Lockean idea of "original contract" really does explain the primitive origins of law and government, although the later history of government has been decisively shaped by war and conquest.
I see in Hoebel's study confirmation of most if not all of the twenty natural desires rooted in evolved human nature, because one can see these natural desires expressed in some form in all of these primitive societies.
One can see, for instance, in all of these societies the desire for sexual mating and the need for social regulation to manage the conflicts created by sexual competition. The most common cause of homicide is men fighting over women. And this requires elaborate customary norms for marital bonding and resolving disputes over sexual partners.
Similarly, the prohibition of incest is universal in these primitive societies, although there is variation as to what counts as incest because kinship is sociologically defined. This variation is constrained by what the Darwinian would recognize as the "Westermarck effect." The incest taboo is strongest within the nuclear family, because of the tendency to feel a sexual aversion towards those with whom one has been reared from an early age. But this effect is not so strong outside the nuclear family--as with cousins. This pattern is clear in Hoebel's book, which also shows that even primitive people have some awareness of the deleterious effects of inbreeding, and thus some of their customary norms of incest avoidance could be deliberately formulated (109-10, 118-19, 131, 183-86, 191, 239, 254, 264, 291, 303).
My blog posts on the Westermarck theory of the incest taboo can be found here and here. Some of the comments on the first post offer some fascinating personal testimony.
There is some question, however, as to whether the natural desire for intellectual understanding can be found in these primitive societies. One Eskimo said this to an anthropologist: "Too much thought only leads to trouble . . . We Eskimos do not concern ourselves with solving all riddles. We repeat the old stories in the way they were told to us and with the words we ourselves remember . . . You always want these supernatural things to make sense, but we do not bother about that. We are content not to understand" (69).
Does this suggest that the desire to understand does not show itself in primitive societies? After all, as I have indicated in my post on George Anastaplo's study of non-Western cultures, there is a lot to be said for the claim that science or philosophy arose first in ancient Greece along with the discovery of the idea of nature.
At the end of Darwinian Natural Right, I argue that the desire to understand can be explained as a product of evolution, although this requires moving through the higher stages of cultural evolution. We can see in some other animals the tendency to curiosity or playful exploration that is the natural root of the human desire to understand. But the fullest development of the theoretical life as devoted to understanding for its own sake is manifested only after the cultural invention of writing. Only then was symbolic thought brought under the control of analytic reasoning through formal logic and systematic reflection. Preliterate primitive societies cannot show that search for understanding that arises in literate civilized societies, which eventually leads to philosophy and science.
Some posts on related topics can be found here, here, and here.
Friday, February 20, 2009
Saturday, February 14, 2009
Adam Gopnik on Darwin and Lincoln
It is a remarkable coincidence that Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln were born on the same day 200 years ago--February 12, 1809. In some previous posts, I have suggested that this should lead us to think about the points of contact between these two men.
Many books are now being published in connection either with the Lincoln bicentennial or the Darwin bicentennial. But one book combines the two--Adam Gopnik's Angels and Ages: A Short Book about Darwin, Lincoln, and Modern Life (Knopf, 2009). Gopnik is an award-winning writer for The New Yorker; and, as one might expect, this book is wonderfully written. A short excerpt from the book has been published in the February issue of Smithsonian magazine, which can be found online.
Gopnik's main theme is that Lincoln and Darwin were alike in helping to shape the "moral modernity" of "liberal civilization" as based on democratic politics and scientific reasoning--"science and democracy, an idea of objective knowledge arrived at by skepticism and of liberty available to all" (14, 18, 21). Gopnik uses the term "liberalism" in such a broad sense that it encompasses both the political "conservative" in American politics as well as the political "liberal" (18).
According to Gopnik, the crucial change associated with Lincoln and Darwin is the move from a "vertical" view of human life to a "horizontal" one. This is the move from "angels" to "ages." Previously, human beings saw themselves as looking up to the divine realm and down on the subhuman creation. With modernity, they began to see themselves as living in history--looking back to the past and ahead to the future--so that they were neither set above the natural world nor striving towards the supernatural world.
I have learned a lot from reading Gopnik's book. In particular, he has helped me see more clearly than I have previously the importance of the distinctive writing styles of Lincoln and Darwin. I also agree with much of what Gopnik says about the "liberalism" of Lincoln and Darwin.
I also think there is great insight in Gopnik's observations about how Darwinian science recognizes (and even explains) the gap between general knowledge and individual experience. "Individual experience is not reducible to general laws, not because of some mysterious essence that defies scientific explanation but because the explanation, as Darwin saw, begins with the existence of the irreducible individual case" (200). As Gopnik sees, there's an emotional reality to this--our knowledge of the common experience of life gives us no understanding or consolation before our personal tragedies.
Gopnik makes some mistakes. For example, he says that Darwin referred to his idea of evolution by natural selection as a "theory" to set it apart from any theological explanation of origins (185-86). But, in fact, Darwin concludes THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES by comparing his "theory of natural selection" and the "theory of creation." Darwin did not deny that creationism was a "theory." He did deny that this theory was as well supported by evidence and reasoning as his theory.
As far as the general themes of Gopnik's book, I disagree on three points. I don't agree with Gopnik that the liberalism of Lincoln and Darwin requires atheism. I don't agree with Gopnik's ignoring Darwin's evolutionary explanation of morality. And I don't agree with Gopnik's claim that Darwin's science has absolutely no political implications.
Although he suggests that Lincoln was an atheist, Gopnik is forced to recognize the biblical character of Lincoln's rhetoric and the fact that Lincoln frequently--especially in the Civil War--invoked God and conveyed a providential view of history. Gopnik speaks of Lincoln's faith as "the most vexed question in all the Lincoln literature" (126). Gopnik's attempt to answer this question turns out only to be a restatement of the question.
The young Lincoln was an atheist, Gopnik indicates, but the older Lincoln had experienced too much grief from death in war and death in the family to accept the idea of a universe governed only by natural necessity (130). "He came increasingly to believe in Providence, but it was a Providence that acted mercilessly through history, not one that regularly interceded with compassion" (131). This was most evident in Lincoln's later speeches--most memorably in the Second Inaugural. Gopnik compares this to Karl Marx's "new religion of history."
Although Gopnik rightly notes the Old Testament style of Lincoln's later speeches, he does not notice that Lincoln quotes from Jesus in the Second Inaugural, which suggests the influence of New Testament Christianity on Lincoln's providential view of history.
Gopnik shows us that both Lincoln and Darwin were moved by their personal experiences with death--Lincoln's boy Willie, Darwin's girl Annie--"to seek some form of transcendence, some meaning beyond the human cycle of breathing and eating and dying, even while resisting the supernatural meanings of faith." They found this transcendence in the "mystical sense of the power of time--time the explanatory force, the justifying force that gives meaning to life by asking us to think in the very long term" (186-87). This "faith in deep time" supports Lincoln's "private mysticism touched by public secularism" and Darwin's "shining inward faith in tension with scientific skepticism" (188).
Gopnik concludes his book by saying that the "Darwin and Lincoln, along with all the other poets of modern life" can affirm "mystical materialism" or "intimations of the numinous." The "space between what we know and what we feel" allows us to believe in "angels and ages, and both at once" (202-204).
Doesn't this contradict Gopnik's assertion that the modern liberalism of Lincoln and Darwin is necessarily atheistic? Isn't Gopnik forced to admit that they both show a religious longing for transcendence? And doesn't this suggest that the modern life of liberal democracy and scientific reasoning cannot obliterate the natural human desire for religious understanding?
I am reminded of that most famous of modern atheists--a contemporary of Lincoln and Darwin--Friedrich Nietzsche. Lou Salome--Nietzsche's friend and love interest--noted that Nietzsche never succeeded in becoming a scientific atheist, because he could never shake off his religious longings. Like his Zarathustra, he became "the most pious of those who don't believe in God."
When Gopnik speaks of how the "poets of modern life" will give us "intimations of the numinous," I am reminded of Nietzsche's prediction that modern artists would cater to the yearning of modern people to feel religious emotions without the burden of having to believe religious doctrines.
By comparison with Lincoln and Nietzsche, Darwin often seems serene in his scientific rationalism. And yet, even Darwin speaks of the limits of reason in striving for ultimate explanations for why nature is the way it is. As he wrote in his Autobiography, "the mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us."
My second point of disagreement with Gopnik concerns his silence about Darwin's evolutionary explanation of morality. When Gopnik comments on Darwin's early notebooks and The Descent of Man, he says nothing about how these writings show Darwin's preoccupation with explaining human morality. Darwin knew that there could be no complete science of human life that did not include a science of human morality.
But like many of the proponents of evolutionary psychology, Gopnik invokes the "fact-value" distinction in assuming a dualistic separation between moral values and scientific facts. Human morality cannot be explained scientifically through the study of natural facts, because morality arises from free human choices. "It might be true, for instance, that life is brutal and pointless, but we can choose to live as though it were otherwise. . . . we all choose to live as though what we are doing has meaning and purpose beyond the day and moment" (195).
Like the existentialist philosophers, Gopnik appeals to human freedom from nature as creating a realm of choice that cannot be accounted for by modern science. But then he never explains how this metaphysical dualism of human freedom and natural causality can be compatible with Darwin's science, and especially Darwin's science of morality as rooted in evolved human nature.
Darwin and Lincoln did not regard the immorality of slavery as merely a matter of free choice. After all, slaveholders could freely choose to believe that slavery was morally right. Darwin and Lincoln thought slavery was wrong because it was contrary to the natural moral sense.
My final point of disagreement with Gopnik concerns his denial that Darwinian science has any political consequences. He writes: "The truth is that Darwin implies no politics: one can be a passionate Darwinian and be of the far right, the right, the liberal center, the left, or even the far left; great Darwinians have been found all around the room" (192). In fact, Gopnik declares, Darwinism does not even imply a liberal politics, although it does imply a "liberal science" (197-98).
Is that really true? Gopnik says that "traditionally, it was leftists, and Marxists in particular, who, despite the allegiance of Marx to its master, were the most hostile to Darwinism" (190). In proposing a "Darwinian left," Peter Singer argues that Marxism was a utopian vision contrary to evolved human nature as studied by the Darwinian. He admits that a "Darwinian left" would have to be "a sharply deflated vision of the left, its utopian ideas replaced by a coolly realistic view of what can be achieved."
As I have argued in Darwinian Conservatism, much of this "deflated" leftism would be acceptable to conservatives, who have long assumed that conformity to human nature is a fundamental standard for good social policy. In his Darwinian Left, Singer recognizes this at the end of the book when he hopes for a "new kind of freedom" that might one day "take us beyond the conventional Darwinian constraints" in human morality and social life.
Doesn't this show that leftists like Singer can never fully escape the utopianism of the leftist tradition of thought? And doesn't it show that any such utopian vision must be contrary to our evolved human nature as confirmed by Darwinian science?
Many books are now being published in connection either with the Lincoln bicentennial or the Darwin bicentennial. But one book combines the two--Adam Gopnik's Angels and Ages: A Short Book about Darwin, Lincoln, and Modern Life (Knopf, 2009). Gopnik is an award-winning writer for The New Yorker; and, as one might expect, this book is wonderfully written. A short excerpt from the book has been published in the February issue of Smithsonian magazine, which can be found online.
Gopnik's main theme is that Lincoln and Darwin were alike in helping to shape the "moral modernity" of "liberal civilization" as based on democratic politics and scientific reasoning--"science and democracy, an idea of objective knowledge arrived at by skepticism and of liberty available to all" (14, 18, 21). Gopnik uses the term "liberalism" in such a broad sense that it encompasses both the political "conservative" in American politics as well as the political "liberal" (18).
According to Gopnik, the crucial change associated with Lincoln and Darwin is the move from a "vertical" view of human life to a "horizontal" one. This is the move from "angels" to "ages." Previously, human beings saw themselves as looking up to the divine realm and down on the subhuman creation. With modernity, they began to see themselves as living in history--looking back to the past and ahead to the future--so that they were neither set above the natural world nor striving towards the supernatural world.
I have learned a lot from reading Gopnik's book. In particular, he has helped me see more clearly than I have previously the importance of the distinctive writing styles of Lincoln and Darwin. I also agree with much of what Gopnik says about the "liberalism" of Lincoln and Darwin.
I also think there is great insight in Gopnik's observations about how Darwinian science recognizes (and even explains) the gap between general knowledge and individual experience. "Individual experience is not reducible to general laws, not because of some mysterious essence that defies scientific explanation but because the explanation, as Darwin saw, begins with the existence of the irreducible individual case" (200). As Gopnik sees, there's an emotional reality to this--our knowledge of the common experience of life gives us no understanding or consolation before our personal tragedies.
Gopnik makes some mistakes. For example, he says that Darwin referred to his idea of evolution by natural selection as a "theory" to set it apart from any theological explanation of origins (185-86). But, in fact, Darwin concludes THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES by comparing his "theory of natural selection" and the "theory of creation." Darwin did not deny that creationism was a "theory." He did deny that this theory was as well supported by evidence and reasoning as his theory.
As far as the general themes of Gopnik's book, I disagree on three points. I don't agree with Gopnik that the liberalism of Lincoln and Darwin requires atheism. I don't agree with Gopnik's ignoring Darwin's evolutionary explanation of morality. And I don't agree with Gopnik's claim that Darwin's science has absolutely no political implications.
Although he suggests that Lincoln was an atheist, Gopnik is forced to recognize the biblical character of Lincoln's rhetoric and the fact that Lincoln frequently--especially in the Civil War--invoked God and conveyed a providential view of history. Gopnik speaks of Lincoln's faith as "the most vexed question in all the Lincoln literature" (126). Gopnik's attempt to answer this question turns out only to be a restatement of the question.
The young Lincoln was an atheist, Gopnik indicates, but the older Lincoln had experienced too much grief from death in war and death in the family to accept the idea of a universe governed only by natural necessity (130). "He came increasingly to believe in Providence, but it was a Providence that acted mercilessly through history, not one that regularly interceded with compassion" (131). This was most evident in Lincoln's later speeches--most memorably in the Second Inaugural. Gopnik compares this to Karl Marx's "new religion of history."
Although Gopnik rightly notes the Old Testament style of Lincoln's later speeches, he does not notice that Lincoln quotes from Jesus in the Second Inaugural, which suggests the influence of New Testament Christianity on Lincoln's providential view of history.
Gopnik shows us that both Lincoln and Darwin were moved by their personal experiences with death--Lincoln's boy Willie, Darwin's girl Annie--"to seek some form of transcendence, some meaning beyond the human cycle of breathing and eating and dying, even while resisting the supernatural meanings of faith." They found this transcendence in the "mystical sense of the power of time--time the explanatory force, the justifying force that gives meaning to life by asking us to think in the very long term" (186-87). This "faith in deep time" supports Lincoln's "private mysticism touched by public secularism" and Darwin's "shining inward faith in tension with scientific skepticism" (188).
Gopnik concludes his book by saying that the "Darwin and Lincoln, along with all the other poets of modern life" can affirm "mystical materialism" or "intimations of the numinous." The "space between what we know and what we feel" allows us to believe in "angels and ages, and both at once" (202-204).
Doesn't this contradict Gopnik's assertion that the modern liberalism of Lincoln and Darwin is necessarily atheistic? Isn't Gopnik forced to admit that they both show a religious longing for transcendence? And doesn't this suggest that the modern life of liberal democracy and scientific reasoning cannot obliterate the natural human desire for religious understanding?
I am reminded of that most famous of modern atheists--a contemporary of Lincoln and Darwin--Friedrich Nietzsche. Lou Salome--Nietzsche's friend and love interest--noted that Nietzsche never succeeded in becoming a scientific atheist, because he could never shake off his religious longings. Like his Zarathustra, he became "the most pious of those who don't believe in God."
When Gopnik speaks of how the "poets of modern life" will give us "intimations of the numinous," I am reminded of Nietzsche's prediction that modern artists would cater to the yearning of modern people to feel religious emotions without the burden of having to believe religious doctrines.
By comparison with Lincoln and Nietzsche, Darwin often seems serene in his scientific rationalism. And yet, even Darwin speaks of the limits of reason in striving for ultimate explanations for why nature is the way it is. As he wrote in his Autobiography, "the mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us."
My second point of disagreement with Gopnik concerns his silence about Darwin's evolutionary explanation of morality. When Gopnik comments on Darwin's early notebooks and The Descent of Man, he says nothing about how these writings show Darwin's preoccupation with explaining human morality. Darwin knew that there could be no complete science of human life that did not include a science of human morality.
But like many of the proponents of evolutionary psychology, Gopnik invokes the "fact-value" distinction in assuming a dualistic separation between moral values and scientific facts. Human morality cannot be explained scientifically through the study of natural facts, because morality arises from free human choices. "It might be true, for instance, that life is brutal and pointless, but we can choose to live as though it were otherwise. . . . we all choose to live as though what we are doing has meaning and purpose beyond the day and moment" (195).
Like the existentialist philosophers, Gopnik appeals to human freedom from nature as creating a realm of choice that cannot be accounted for by modern science. But then he never explains how this metaphysical dualism of human freedom and natural causality can be compatible with Darwin's science, and especially Darwin's science of morality as rooted in evolved human nature.
Darwin and Lincoln did not regard the immorality of slavery as merely a matter of free choice. After all, slaveholders could freely choose to believe that slavery was morally right. Darwin and Lincoln thought slavery was wrong because it was contrary to the natural moral sense.
My final point of disagreement with Gopnik concerns his denial that Darwinian science has any political consequences. He writes: "The truth is that Darwin implies no politics: one can be a passionate Darwinian and be of the far right, the right, the liberal center, the left, or even the far left; great Darwinians have been found all around the room" (192). In fact, Gopnik declares, Darwinism does not even imply a liberal politics, although it does imply a "liberal science" (197-98).
Is that really true? Gopnik says that "traditionally, it was leftists, and Marxists in particular, who, despite the allegiance of Marx to its master, were the most hostile to Darwinism" (190). In proposing a "Darwinian left," Peter Singer argues that Marxism was a utopian vision contrary to evolved human nature as studied by the Darwinian. He admits that a "Darwinian left" would have to be "a sharply deflated vision of the left, its utopian ideas replaced by a coolly realistic view of what can be achieved."
As I have argued in Darwinian Conservatism, much of this "deflated" leftism would be acceptable to conservatives, who have long assumed that conformity to human nature is a fundamental standard for good social policy. In his Darwinian Left, Singer recognizes this at the end of the book when he hopes for a "new kind of freedom" that might one day "take us beyond the conventional Darwinian constraints" in human morality and social life.
Doesn't this show that leftists like Singer can never fully escape the utopianism of the leftist tradition of thought? And doesn't it show that any such utopian vision must be contrary to our evolved human nature as confirmed by Darwinian science?
Friday, February 06, 2009
Debating Darwin at Forbes.com
The bicentennial of Darwin's birth has brought lots of media attention to the continuing debate over the scientific, moral, political, and religious implications of Darwin's theory of evolution.
For example, the March issue of Discover magazine has a good section on evolutionary topics, including an article by Karen Wright where I make a cameo appearance.
An interesting collection of short essays is at Forbes.com, the online edition of Forbes magazine. Hana Alberts has edited a package of essays by twenty authors--ranging from proponents of Darwinism like Lionel Tiger and Denis Dutton to creationist/intelligent design opponents like Ken Ham and John West. Unfortunately, the brevity of each essay--averaging about 700 words--means than none of the authors can achieve much depth. But still the diverse range in the essays captures much of the current debate over Darwinism.
My essay for this collection is entitled "We Are The Moral Animals."
I will comment briefly on a few of the essays, beginning with the advocates for Darwin and then turning to the critics.
Denis Dutton makes an interesting point about how Darwin's idea of sexual selection--as opposed to natural selection--implies teleology, because in choosing mates, human beings have exercised purpose and intention in shaping evolution by sexual selection. He concludes that "prehistoric decisions honed the human virtues as we now know them: the admiration of altruism, skill, strength, intelligence, industriousness, courage, imagination, eloquence, diligence, kindness and so forth."
Of course, this still does not support any kind of cosmic teleology. And as Michael Flannery indicates, Alfred Russel Wallace broke with Darwin and sought to provide for such cosmic teleology by arguing that the human mind or spirit manifested the workings of some cosmic intelligence. I would say that Darwinian science does allow for an immanent teleology, as I have argued in an
earlier post.
Helen Fisher claims that recent scientific evidence confirms Darwin's belief that some nonhuman animals feel romantic love. She goes on to distinguish four personality types rooted in four distinctive brain systems. There is probably something to this, but it is grossly oversimplified. We simply don't know how to correlate personality to brain structure. She seems to rely on brain scanning research. But she fails to acknowledge the speculative character of this research.
Owen Jones is one of the leading law professors applying evolutionary reasoning to the study of law. His essay here, however, is too vague to convey much about his reasoning. At the end of the essay, he implies that he takes the idea of the "naturalistic fallacy" for granted: science cannot tell us "what we should want to accomplish," but it can help us to get to where we want. As I have said in some previous posts, I don't find this persuasive, because I don't see why the "ought" should be put in some transcendent realm beyond science.
Leo Tilman tries to summarize his account of "financial Darwinism," which he has laid out in a new book. Applying evolutionary reasoning to economic history is intriguing. It has a long history going back at least to Joseph Schumpeter. I have some posts on this--particularly on Niall Ferguson's recent book on "the ascent of money." But Tilman is so vague in his writing that I can't figure out what he is saying.
Joseph Carroll's essay is a good, brief statement of "literary Darwinism," which has also come up in a few of my posts.
But what about the critics? Kathryn Tabb says that "intelligent design has maintained a purely negative agenda seeking to disprove science's ability to answer questions instead of offering new approaches within the naturalist framework." This observation is confirmed by the fact that all of the critics here--Ken Ham, John West, Michael Egnor, and Jonathan Wells--employ a purely negative rhetoric in that they attack Darwinian science without offering any positive alternative of their own. As I have often noted, this is the preferred rhetorical strategy for creationists and intelligent-design proponents.
Ham and West accuse Darwinian science of promoting racism. But this is an odd charge considering how dedicated Darwin was in his opposition to slavery, as indicated by Adrian Desmond's essay. Moreover, neither Ham nor West acknowledge that much of the support for slavery was rooted in biblical religion, a topic that I have explored in various posts.
As I indicate in my essay, the real motivation for opposing Darwinian science is the fear that it subverts morality, although this ignores the ways in which a Darwinian account of the natural moral sense supports morality. West shows this fear of the moral consequences of Darwinism. I have written many responses to West, one of which can be found here.
Wells offers his standard arguments for his claim that Darwin's theory is not supported by evidence. Some of my responses to him can be found here, here, and here.
That Discover magazine article by Karen Wright ("We All Live in Darwin's World") is now available online.
For example, the March issue of Discover magazine has a good section on evolutionary topics, including an article by Karen Wright where I make a cameo appearance.
An interesting collection of short essays is at Forbes.com, the online edition of Forbes magazine. Hana Alberts has edited a package of essays by twenty authors--ranging from proponents of Darwinism like Lionel Tiger and Denis Dutton to creationist/intelligent design opponents like Ken Ham and John West. Unfortunately, the brevity of each essay--averaging about 700 words--means than none of the authors can achieve much depth. But still the diverse range in the essays captures much of the current debate over Darwinism.
My essay for this collection is entitled "We Are The Moral Animals."
I will comment briefly on a few of the essays, beginning with the advocates for Darwin and then turning to the critics.
Denis Dutton makes an interesting point about how Darwin's idea of sexual selection--as opposed to natural selection--implies teleology, because in choosing mates, human beings have exercised purpose and intention in shaping evolution by sexual selection. He concludes that "prehistoric decisions honed the human virtues as we now know them: the admiration of altruism, skill, strength, intelligence, industriousness, courage, imagination, eloquence, diligence, kindness and so forth."
Of course, this still does not support any kind of cosmic teleology. And as Michael Flannery indicates, Alfred Russel Wallace broke with Darwin and sought to provide for such cosmic teleology by arguing that the human mind or spirit manifested the workings of some cosmic intelligence. I would say that Darwinian science does allow for an immanent teleology, as I have argued in an
earlier post.
Helen Fisher claims that recent scientific evidence confirms Darwin's belief that some nonhuman animals feel romantic love. She goes on to distinguish four personality types rooted in four distinctive brain systems. There is probably something to this, but it is grossly oversimplified. We simply don't know how to correlate personality to brain structure. She seems to rely on brain scanning research. But she fails to acknowledge the speculative character of this research.
Owen Jones is one of the leading law professors applying evolutionary reasoning to the study of law. His essay here, however, is too vague to convey much about his reasoning. At the end of the essay, he implies that he takes the idea of the "naturalistic fallacy" for granted: science cannot tell us "what we should want to accomplish," but it can help us to get to where we want. As I have said in some previous posts, I don't find this persuasive, because I don't see why the "ought" should be put in some transcendent realm beyond science.
Leo Tilman tries to summarize his account of "financial Darwinism," which he has laid out in a new book. Applying evolutionary reasoning to economic history is intriguing. It has a long history going back at least to Joseph Schumpeter. I have some posts on this--particularly on Niall Ferguson's recent book on "the ascent of money." But Tilman is so vague in his writing that I can't figure out what he is saying.
Joseph Carroll's essay is a good, brief statement of "literary Darwinism," which has also come up in a few of my posts.
But what about the critics? Kathryn Tabb says that "intelligent design has maintained a purely negative agenda seeking to disprove science's ability to answer questions instead of offering new approaches within the naturalist framework." This observation is confirmed by the fact that all of the critics here--Ken Ham, John West, Michael Egnor, and Jonathan Wells--employ a purely negative rhetoric in that they attack Darwinian science without offering any positive alternative of their own. As I have often noted, this is the preferred rhetorical strategy for creationists and intelligent-design proponents.
Ham and West accuse Darwinian science of promoting racism. But this is an odd charge considering how dedicated Darwin was in his opposition to slavery, as indicated by Adrian Desmond's essay. Moreover, neither Ham nor West acknowledge that much of the support for slavery was rooted in biblical religion, a topic that I have explored in various posts.
As I indicate in my essay, the real motivation for opposing Darwinian science is the fear that it subverts morality, although this ignores the ways in which a Darwinian account of the natural moral sense supports morality. West shows this fear of the moral consequences of Darwinism. I have written many responses to West, one of which can be found here.
Wells offers his standard arguments for his claim that Darwin's theory is not supported by evidence. Some of my responses to him can be found here, here, and here.
That Discover magazine article by Karen Wright ("We All Live in Darwin's World") is now available online.
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Evolutionary Psychology's Slow Acceptance of Darwinian Morality
One sign of the radical character of Charles Darwin's ideas is that even some of his strongest supporters have rejected much of his thinking. This is clear in the case of Darwin's evolutionary account of morality.
When Darwin first published his naturalistic account of the moral sense in 1871 in The Descent of Man, his friend Thomas Huxley defended it against Darwin's Kantian critics--like Frances Cobbe and
S. George Mivart--who insisted that morality required a supernatural transcendence of nature. But later Huxley joined the critics, particularly in his famous 1893 lecture on "Evolution and Ethics." In this lecture, he adopted the Hobbesian-Kantian view of ethics, in which the moral improvement of humanity requires a self-abnegating denial of human nature, because human beings in their natural state are selfish and asocial. Huxley adopted the Kantian concept of culture as a uniquely human realm of activity that transcends biology. He interpreted Darwin's "struggle for existence" as a Hobbesian war of all against all. Because of the "moral indifference of nature," he declared, one could never derive moral values from natural facts. He concluded "that the ethical process of society depends, not on imitating the cosmic process, still less in running away from it, but in combating it," and thus building "an artificial world within the cosmos."
For over a century after Huxley, many of the strongest proponents of Darwinian science have followed Huxley's lead in rejecting Darwin's explanation of morality as rooted in evolved human nature, because they have assumed that human morality belongs to a transcendent realm of cultural artifice and free will that is beyond the natural realm of causal forces open to scientific study.
The publication in 1975 of Edward O. Wilson's book Sociobiology provoked a great controversy, because on the first page of the book, he claimed that ethics was rooted in human biology. He asserted that our deepest intuitions of right and wrong are guided by the emotional control centers of the brain, which evolved through natural selection to help the human animal exploit opportunities and avoid threats in the natural environment.
This attempt to revive Darwin's biological study of morality was rejected by some of the leading theorists of Darwinian science. For example, evolutionary biologist George Williams adopted Huxley's Kantian claim that ethics cannot be rooted in human nature because of the unbridgeable gulf between the selfishness of our natural inclinations and the selflessness of our moral duties. As the only rational and cultural animals, human beings can suppress their natural desires and enter a transcendental realm of pure moral duty.
Richard Dawkins took the same position. When his book The Selfish Gene was published in 1976, most commentators saw it as generally agreeing with Wilson's Sociobiology. But they did not notice that the last paragraph of Dawkin's book asserted a Kantian dualism that implicitly rejected Wilson's sociobiological ethics. Dawkins proclaimed that human beings were unique in their capacity for "deliberately cultivating and nurturing pure, disinterested altruism--something that has no place in nature, something that has never existed before in the whole history of the world." "We alone on earth," Dawkins concluded, "can rebel against the tyranny of the selfish replicators." In a 1997 interview, Dawkins explained: "What I am saying, along with many other people, among them T. H. Huxley, is that in our political and social life we are entitled to throw out Darwinism, to say we don't want to live in a Darwinian world. We may want to live in, say, a socialist world that is very un-Darwinian."
Like Thomas Huxley, Williams, Dawkins, and many other theorists of evolutionary psychology have rejected Wilson's sociobiological ethics because they think that ethics requires a transcendence of human biology through culture and reason. Unlike Wilson and Darwin, therefore, the proponents of evolutionary psychology have generally rejected the idea that biological science can account for the moral conduct of human beings.
In 1996, Wilson gave the keynote address at the annual meeting of the Human Behavior and Evolution Society (HBES) in Evanston, Illinois. This is one of the leading organizations in the world for academic researchers who apply Darwinian theories of human nature to the study of human behavior. It might seem, then, that they should accept Wilson's "sociobiology," which he had defined in the first chapter of Sociobiology as "the systematic study of the biological basis of all social behavior." And yet the members of this organization had decided to use the term "evolutionary psychology" as the label for their intellectual project, while avoiding the term "sociobiology." Wilson's speech in 1996 and their reaction to it made clear that the reason for their uneasiness with Wilson's "sociobiology" was their rejection of his biological account of ethics.
Wilson's speech was entitled "The Unity of Science." He argued that the ultimate aim of human understanding of the world was to achieve a unity of knowledge in which the natural sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities would be brought together into one science. As a crucial part of that unification, ethics would be fully explained in biological terms as rooted in human nature, in the moral emotions or sentiments of the human animal. In 1975, in the very first paragraph of Sociobiology, Wilson has declared that he wanted to explain ethics as ultimately rooted in "the emotional control centers in the hypothalamus and limbic system of the brain," which had been shaped by an evolutionary history of natural selection. In 1996, he was elaborating this idea for his book Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge, which would be published in 1998.
The audience at the HBES convention was shocked by Wilson's speech, because they were disturbed by his suggestion that a science of natural facts could explain the ethics of moral values. After all, isn't there a radical dichotomy between science and ethics, facts and values, is and ought? Isn't it a "naturalistic fallacy" to think that one can infer a moral ought from a natural is? John Beckstrom, the local organizer for the HBES convention, wrote a letter to Wilson after the convention condemning Wilson's speech. Beckstrom insisted on the is/ought dichotomy as enforcing a total separation between natural science and normative ethics. "You seemed to be advocating normative uses of sociobiology," he explained. "If you were, I would have to oppose vigorously your position, and I expect many in attendance with whom I later discussed your speech, would do likewise."
Until recently, most of the leading thinkers in evolutionary psychology have adopted Beckstrom's position, which falls into the tradition of Huxley in rejecting Darwin's biological science of morality. It is notable, therefore, that in recent years, the rapidly accumulating research on the biological bases of morality has become so impressive that some evolutionary psychologists are beginning to concede that Darwin was right, and Huxley was wrong.
One sign of this is how the textbooks in evolutionary psychology are being revised. In the first edition of David Buss's Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind, published in 1999, there was nothing said about morality. But beginning with the second edition, published in 2004, Buss added a short section on "The Evolution of Moral Emotions." In the first edition of John Cartwright's Evolution and Human Behavior, published in 2000, there was nothing on morality. But in the second edition, published in 2008, Cartwright added a whole chapter on ethics.
In the Preface to this new edition, Cartwright writes: "It was with some trepidation that I ventured to write a chapter on ethics, but if, as part of the paradigm of naturalism, evolutionary psychology offers to provide a scientific account of the mind in all its manifestations, then it should be able to illuminate the nature of moral reasoning and help to clarify the source of our strong moral passions. After all, it is not scientifically credible that the origin of our moral convictions should lie outside the plane of human nature."
I agree. And I am pleased that some of the leaders in evolutionary psychology are beginning to come around to what some of us recognized long ago--that Darwin was right to see that a complete evolutionary science of nature and human nature must include a naturalistic explanation of morality.
A couple of my recent posts on evolutionary morality can be found
here and here.
When Darwin first published his naturalistic account of the moral sense in 1871 in The Descent of Man, his friend Thomas Huxley defended it against Darwin's Kantian critics--like Frances Cobbe and
S. George Mivart--who insisted that morality required a supernatural transcendence of nature. But later Huxley joined the critics, particularly in his famous 1893 lecture on "Evolution and Ethics." In this lecture, he adopted the Hobbesian-Kantian view of ethics, in which the moral improvement of humanity requires a self-abnegating denial of human nature, because human beings in their natural state are selfish and asocial. Huxley adopted the Kantian concept of culture as a uniquely human realm of activity that transcends biology. He interpreted Darwin's "struggle for existence" as a Hobbesian war of all against all. Because of the "moral indifference of nature," he declared, one could never derive moral values from natural facts. He concluded "that the ethical process of society depends, not on imitating the cosmic process, still less in running away from it, but in combating it," and thus building "an artificial world within the cosmos."
For over a century after Huxley, many of the strongest proponents of Darwinian science have followed Huxley's lead in rejecting Darwin's explanation of morality as rooted in evolved human nature, because they have assumed that human morality belongs to a transcendent realm of cultural artifice and free will that is beyond the natural realm of causal forces open to scientific study.
The publication in 1975 of Edward O. Wilson's book Sociobiology provoked a great controversy, because on the first page of the book, he claimed that ethics was rooted in human biology. He asserted that our deepest intuitions of right and wrong are guided by the emotional control centers of the brain, which evolved through natural selection to help the human animal exploit opportunities and avoid threats in the natural environment.
This attempt to revive Darwin's biological study of morality was rejected by some of the leading theorists of Darwinian science. For example, evolutionary biologist George Williams adopted Huxley's Kantian claim that ethics cannot be rooted in human nature because of the unbridgeable gulf between the selfishness of our natural inclinations and the selflessness of our moral duties. As the only rational and cultural animals, human beings can suppress their natural desires and enter a transcendental realm of pure moral duty.
Richard Dawkins took the same position. When his book The Selfish Gene was published in 1976, most commentators saw it as generally agreeing with Wilson's Sociobiology. But they did not notice that the last paragraph of Dawkin's book asserted a Kantian dualism that implicitly rejected Wilson's sociobiological ethics. Dawkins proclaimed that human beings were unique in their capacity for "deliberately cultivating and nurturing pure, disinterested altruism--something that has no place in nature, something that has never existed before in the whole history of the world." "We alone on earth," Dawkins concluded, "can rebel against the tyranny of the selfish replicators." In a 1997 interview, Dawkins explained: "What I am saying, along with many other people, among them T. H. Huxley, is that in our political and social life we are entitled to throw out Darwinism, to say we don't want to live in a Darwinian world. We may want to live in, say, a socialist world that is very un-Darwinian."
Like Thomas Huxley, Williams, Dawkins, and many other theorists of evolutionary psychology have rejected Wilson's sociobiological ethics because they think that ethics requires a transcendence of human biology through culture and reason. Unlike Wilson and Darwin, therefore, the proponents of evolutionary psychology have generally rejected the idea that biological science can account for the moral conduct of human beings.
In 1996, Wilson gave the keynote address at the annual meeting of the Human Behavior and Evolution Society (HBES) in Evanston, Illinois. This is one of the leading organizations in the world for academic researchers who apply Darwinian theories of human nature to the study of human behavior. It might seem, then, that they should accept Wilson's "sociobiology," which he had defined in the first chapter of Sociobiology as "the systematic study of the biological basis of all social behavior." And yet the members of this organization had decided to use the term "evolutionary psychology" as the label for their intellectual project, while avoiding the term "sociobiology." Wilson's speech in 1996 and their reaction to it made clear that the reason for their uneasiness with Wilson's "sociobiology" was their rejection of his biological account of ethics.
Wilson's speech was entitled "The Unity of Science." He argued that the ultimate aim of human understanding of the world was to achieve a unity of knowledge in which the natural sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities would be brought together into one science. As a crucial part of that unification, ethics would be fully explained in biological terms as rooted in human nature, in the moral emotions or sentiments of the human animal. In 1975, in the very first paragraph of Sociobiology, Wilson has declared that he wanted to explain ethics as ultimately rooted in "the emotional control centers in the hypothalamus and limbic system of the brain," which had been shaped by an evolutionary history of natural selection. In 1996, he was elaborating this idea for his book Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge, which would be published in 1998.
The audience at the HBES convention was shocked by Wilson's speech, because they were disturbed by his suggestion that a science of natural facts could explain the ethics of moral values. After all, isn't there a radical dichotomy between science and ethics, facts and values, is and ought? Isn't it a "naturalistic fallacy" to think that one can infer a moral ought from a natural is? John Beckstrom, the local organizer for the HBES convention, wrote a letter to Wilson after the convention condemning Wilson's speech. Beckstrom insisted on the is/ought dichotomy as enforcing a total separation between natural science and normative ethics. "You seemed to be advocating normative uses of sociobiology," he explained. "If you were, I would have to oppose vigorously your position, and I expect many in attendance with whom I later discussed your speech, would do likewise."
Until recently, most of the leading thinkers in evolutionary psychology have adopted Beckstrom's position, which falls into the tradition of Huxley in rejecting Darwin's biological science of morality. It is notable, therefore, that in recent years, the rapidly accumulating research on the biological bases of morality has become so impressive that some evolutionary psychologists are beginning to concede that Darwin was right, and Huxley was wrong.
One sign of this is how the textbooks in evolutionary psychology are being revised. In the first edition of David Buss's Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind, published in 1999, there was nothing said about morality. But beginning with the second edition, published in 2004, Buss added a short section on "The Evolution of Moral Emotions." In the first edition of John Cartwright's Evolution and Human Behavior, published in 2000, there was nothing on morality. But in the second edition, published in 2008, Cartwright added a whole chapter on ethics.
In the Preface to this new edition, Cartwright writes: "It was with some trepidation that I ventured to write a chapter on ethics, but if, as part of the paradigm of naturalism, evolutionary psychology offers to provide a scientific account of the mind in all its manifestations, then it should be able to illuminate the nature of moral reasoning and help to clarify the source of our strong moral passions. After all, it is not scientifically credible that the origin of our moral convictions should lie outside the plane of human nature."
I agree. And I am pleased that some of the leaders in evolutionary psychology are beginning to come around to what some of us recognized long ago--that Darwin was right to see that a complete evolutionary science of nature and human nature must include a naturalistic explanation of morality.
A couple of my recent posts on evolutionary morality can be found
here and here.
Friday, January 23, 2009
Evolution and Thomistic Natural Law: A Reply to Stephen Pope
I have often argued that a Darwinian view of evolved human nature supports traditional natural law reasoning, particularly as developed by Thomas Aquinas. I have laid out my arguments in many posts, for example, here, here, here, here, here, here. and here.
My position has been challenged by Stephen Pope in his book Human Evolution and Christian Ethics (Cambridge University Press, 2007). Pope's general argument is that "our growing knowledge of human evolution is compatible with Christian faith and morality, provided that the former is not interpreted reductionistically and the latter is not interpreted in fundamentalist ways." He also argues that the tradition of Thomistic natural law can be brought into harmony with Darwinian science. I agree with all of this.
Considering our fundamental agreement, I am confused by Pope's criticisms of my position in Chapter 11 of his book, where I am considered along with Alasdair MacIntyre, Jean Porter, and Lisa Sowle Cahill, under the title "Natural Law in an Evolutionary Context."
He offers at least five criticisms. First, he seems to agree with John Hare that "if every satisfaction of a natural human desire is good, . . . then Arnhart is not entitled to render a moral condemnation of slavery because it is produced by what he calls our natural human desire for dominance" (274). But I never say that every satisfaction of a natural human desire is good. In fact, much of my writing in Darwinian Natural Right is about how conflicts in our desires lead us to see that what we happen to desire at any one time is not necessarily truly desirable for us over a whole lifetime. Moreover, I devoted a long chapter in Darwinian Natural Right on slavery as showing a tragic conflict of desires that can only be resolved by prudence and the recognition that slavery violates our natural moral sense. Pope does not explain what he thinks is wrong with this reasoning.
Pope's second criticism is that I ignore the importance of history and variation in the moral codes of different cultures (276-77). But, again, in Darwinian Natural Right, I offer elaborate studies of cultural diversity in the handling of moral issues surrounding slavery, infanticide, female circumcision, marriage, and other topics. And, again, I emphasize the importance of prudence in deciding what is best for particular individuals in particular cultural circumstances.
His third criticism is that "acting 'according to nature' in an evolutionary sense may be immoral from a human standpoint" (277). But this ignores my Darwinian account of how the emergence of the human capacity for moral deliberation allows us to reflect on our natural desires and decide how best to manage those desires to conform to some conception of a whole life well lived.
His fourth criticism is that I am a biological reductionist, because I say that "biological goods" are the only goods, and thus I depart from Aquinas, who sees the "rational goods" as superior. But Pope does not cite any passages where I dismiss the "rational goods" of life. In fact, I include "practical reasoning," "intellectual understanding," and "religious understanding" as natural human desires.
His final criticism is that "Arnhart's 'naturalization' of ethics ignores completely the Thomistic view of human life as a journey to God" (278). But this ignores the fact that in Darwinian Natural Right (265-66) and elsewhere, I have recognized that Aquinas sees the highest ends of human beings as directed to eternal happiness with God. My point here is that such supernatural happiness belongs to divine law rather than natural law, and thus it depends on revelation that goes beyond natural experience. Pope seems to agree: "Natural law is necessary but not sufficient for Christian ethics. The good calls for the transformation of our motivations, attitudes, and intentions, and in a way and to a degree that surpasses our natural human capacities" (296). If Pope agrees with me about this Thomistic separation of natural law directed to natural ends and divine law directed to supernatural ends, then I don't understand what he is criticizing.
My position has been challenged by Stephen Pope in his book Human Evolution and Christian Ethics (Cambridge University Press, 2007). Pope's general argument is that "our growing knowledge of human evolution is compatible with Christian faith and morality, provided that the former is not interpreted reductionistically and the latter is not interpreted in fundamentalist ways." He also argues that the tradition of Thomistic natural law can be brought into harmony with Darwinian science. I agree with all of this.
Considering our fundamental agreement, I am confused by Pope's criticisms of my position in Chapter 11 of his book, where I am considered along with Alasdair MacIntyre, Jean Porter, and Lisa Sowle Cahill, under the title "Natural Law in an Evolutionary Context."
He offers at least five criticisms. First, he seems to agree with John Hare that "if every satisfaction of a natural human desire is good, . . . then Arnhart is not entitled to render a moral condemnation of slavery because it is produced by what he calls our natural human desire for dominance" (274). But I never say that every satisfaction of a natural human desire is good. In fact, much of my writing in Darwinian Natural Right is about how conflicts in our desires lead us to see that what we happen to desire at any one time is not necessarily truly desirable for us over a whole lifetime. Moreover, I devoted a long chapter in Darwinian Natural Right on slavery as showing a tragic conflict of desires that can only be resolved by prudence and the recognition that slavery violates our natural moral sense. Pope does not explain what he thinks is wrong with this reasoning.
Pope's second criticism is that I ignore the importance of history and variation in the moral codes of different cultures (276-77). But, again, in Darwinian Natural Right, I offer elaborate studies of cultural diversity in the handling of moral issues surrounding slavery, infanticide, female circumcision, marriage, and other topics. And, again, I emphasize the importance of prudence in deciding what is best for particular individuals in particular cultural circumstances.
His third criticism is that "acting 'according to nature' in an evolutionary sense may be immoral from a human standpoint" (277). But this ignores my Darwinian account of how the emergence of the human capacity for moral deliberation allows us to reflect on our natural desires and decide how best to manage those desires to conform to some conception of a whole life well lived.
His fourth criticism is that I am a biological reductionist, because I say that "biological goods" are the only goods, and thus I depart from Aquinas, who sees the "rational goods" as superior. But Pope does not cite any passages where I dismiss the "rational goods" of life. In fact, I include "practical reasoning," "intellectual understanding," and "religious understanding" as natural human desires.
His final criticism is that "Arnhart's 'naturalization' of ethics ignores completely the Thomistic view of human life as a journey to God" (278). But this ignores the fact that in Darwinian Natural Right (265-66) and elsewhere, I have recognized that Aquinas sees the highest ends of human beings as directed to eternal happiness with God. My point here is that such supernatural happiness belongs to divine law rather than natural law, and thus it depends on revelation that goes beyond natural experience. Pope seems to agree: "Natural law is necessary but not sufficient for Christian ethics. The good calls for the transformation of our motivations, attitudes, and intentions, and in a way and to a degree that surpasses our natural human capacities" (296). If Pope agrees with me about this Thomistic separation of natural law directed to natural ends and divine law directed to supernatural ends, then I don't understand what he is criticizing.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Another Response from John Lemos
John Lemos has sent me the following response to my last blog post on his comments.
"When I say that I have no special interest in defining goodness or the good, and then I go on to say that when things do their characteristic activity well they are good, this is not problematic. If I say 'when things do their characteristic activity well they are good,' I am not thereby defining goodness, rather I am predicating goodness of such things. I want to say that this is a common way in which many things are good. This is how watches, hearts, cars, and lungs are good. And I want to suggest that human beings are good in a similar way. this is not a definition of good.
"I am open to there being other things which are good and that these other things may be good for different reasons, reasons other than the successful performance of their defining activity. Perhaps, pleasure and beauty are good but for different reasons.
"Additionally, I am open to the possibility that goodness is a nonnatural property. You ask for an explanation of what a nonnatural property is. In response, and waxing Moorean on this, I would say a nonnatural property is a simple property that is incapable of definition in terms of any natural properties. Moore, himself, held this view about goodness and some other properties, such as redness and greenness, as well as other colors. Further, the presence of such nonnatural goodness may supervene on the occurrence of certain natural properties, such as the well functioning of a thing, while not being identical with such. Redness seems to work this way too. It's occurrence supervenes on the occurrence of certain wavelengths of light, but redness is not identical with those wavelengths of light.
"These are some of my initial thoughts about your latest post. I have not responded in full here. Let me think about the rest.
"BTW, I recently studied a piece you wrote some while ago, 'Conservatives, Darwin, and Design: An Exchange,' which appeared in First Things. Comments from Behe and Dembski are provided along with your replies. In enjoyed this piece quite a lot, and I am in much agreement with things you say there. I think your take on the relationship between the truth of the Darwinian theory of evolution and religion is probably quite similar to mine, and this is probably reflected in the later chapters of my book, especially the first half of Ch. 5 of my book, where I discuss evolution and the rationality of religious belief."
"When I say that I have no special interest in defining goodness or the good, and then I go on to say that when things do their characteristic activity well they are good, this is not problematic. If I say 'when things do their characteristic activity well they are good,' I am not thereby defining goodness, rather I am predicating goodness of such things. I want to say that this is a common way in which many things are good. This is how watches, hearts, cars, and lungs are good. And I want to suggest that human beings are good in a similar way. this is not a definition of good.
"I am open to there being other things which are good and that these other things may be good for different reasons, reasons other than the successful performance of their defining activity. Perhaps, pleasure and beauty are good but for different reasons.
"Additionally, I am open to the possibility that goodness is a nonnatural property. You ask for an explanation of what a nonnatural property is. In response, and waxing Moorean on this, I would say a nonnatural property is a simple property that is incapable of definition in terms of any natural properties. Moore, himself, held this view about goodness and some other properties, such as redness and greenness, as well as other colors. Further, the presence of such nonnatural goodness may supervene on the occurrence of certain natural properties, such as the well functioning of a thing, while not being identical with such. Redness seems to work this way too. It's occurrence supervenes on the occurrence of certain wavelengths of light, but redness is not identical with those wavelengths of light.
"These are some of my initial thoughts about your latest post. I have not responded in full here. Let me think about the rest.
"BTW, I recently studied a piece you wrote some while ago, 'Conservatives, Darwin, and Design: An Exchange,' which appeared in First Things. Comments from Behe and Dembski are provided along with your replies. In enjoyed this piece quite a lot, and I am in much agreement with things you say there. I think your take on the relationship between the truth of the Darwinian theory of evolution and religion is probably quite similar to mine, and this is probably reflected in the later chapters of my book, especially the first half of Ch. 5 of my book, where I discuss evolution and the rationality of religious belief."
Barack Obama Is No Abraham Lincoln
For a couple of months now, we have been told that Barack Obama's First Inaugural Address was going to be comparable to Abraham Lincoln's inaugural addresses. After all, Obama himself has built his political career on comparing himself with Lincoln. Obama has obviously thought a lot about this. And I have written posts about the Obama-Lincoln connection.
But today--with Obama's inaugural address--we see that Obama is no Lincoln. Obama's speech was utterly flat. He said nothing that will be remembered by anyone.
He did, however, set a somber tone by suggesting that the current economic crisis will not be overcome in a short time. Is he lowering expectations, because he knows how bad the situation is?
I remind you that last September and October, when so many people were saying we needed federal bailouts to pull us out of the financial crisis, I said that if we followed the path set by Bush, McCain, and Obama in going for federal bailouts, that we would prolong the economic crisis. I predicted that rather than an economic adjustment of one or two years, the rush to federal bailouts and other federal interventions in the economy would prolong the recession into a depression of five to ten years.
Well, I must say, sadly, that I see nothing to contradict my prediction. Isn't it clear that with the federal bailouts, we have now entered a long period of economic depression to rival the Great Depression of the 1930s?
I predicted that the Congress's unconstitutional delegation of unlimited power to the executive branch (the Treasury Department) to spend the bailout money as they wished would lead to corruption. Anyone understanding the imperfections in human nature--in knowledge and virtue--would predict that Paulson and others in the Treasury Department would use their power to reward their friends on Wall Street. Now the Congress is complaining about how no one really knows where the bailout money has gone. But wasn't this easily predictable?
I suspect that Obama is preparing us for this new depression. He knows that expanding the federal deficit to bailout one economic interest after another is not going to resolve the economic crisis. On the contrary, it will make it worse. But he has to appear to be doing something. His job, then, is to prepare us for five to ten years of depression--comparable to FDR's depression--by claiming that it's not his fault.
Get ready for a very rough ride.
But today--with Obama's inaugural address--we see that Obama is no Lincoln. Obama's speech was utterly flat. He said nothing that will be remembered by anyone.
He did, however, set a somber tone by suggesting that the current economic crisis will not be overcome in a short time. Is he lowering expectations, because he knows how bad the situation is?
I remind you that last September and October, when so many people were saying we needed federal bailouts to pull us out of the financial crisis, I said that if we followed the path set by Bush, McCain, and Obama in going for federal bailouts, that we would prolong the economic crisis. I predicted that rather than an economic adjustment of one or two years, the rush to federal bailouts and other federal interventions in the economy would prolong the recession into a depression of five to ten years.
Well, I must say, sadly, that I see nothing to contradict my prediction. Isn't it clear that with the federal bailouts, we have now entered a long period of economic depression to rival the Great Depression of the 1930s?
I predicted that the Congress's unconstitutional delegation of unlimited power to the executive branch (the Treasury Department) to spend the bailout money as they wished would lead to corruption. Anyone understanding the imperfections in human nature--in knowledge and virtue--would predict that Paulson and others in the Treasury Department would use their power to reward their friends on Wall Street. Now the Congress is complaining about how no one really knows where the bailout money has gone. But wasn't this easily predictable?
I suspect that Obama is preparing us for this new depression. He knows that expanding the federal deficit to bailout one economic interest after another is not going to resolve the economic crisis. On the contrary, it will make it worse. But he has to appear to be doing something. His job, then, is to prepare us for five to ten years of depression--comparable to FDR's depression--by claiming that it's not his fault.
Get ready for a very rough ride.
Monday, January 19, 2009
Another Reply to Lemos
I have posted John Lemos' response to my earlier comments on his book Commonsense Darwinism. In reading his response, a few thoughts come to mind.
Lemos writes: "I have no special interest in defining good or the good, but I do think that things are good when they do their characteristic activity well." That's a confusing sentence. He begins by saying he has no interest in defining good, and then he defines good as a thing's performing its characteristic activity well!
He suggests that he might agree with G. E. Moore that goodness is a "nonnatural property." It would help me a lot if he could explain what this "nonnatural property" is.
He says that he departs from my position in that he defines the human good as doing well at practical reasoning. I am not sure why he thinks I disagree with this. My list of twenty natural desires includes "practical reasoning," and I give a lot of attention to the need for prudence.
Perhaps he would say that he disagrees because for him "practical reasoning" is not a desire or dependent on desire. But then I would ask, what makes practical reasoning practical, if not desire? He appeals to Aristotle. But doesn't Aristotle insist that "thought by itself moves nothing," because practical thought is always tied to desire? Doesn't Aristotle say that deliberate choice is either "desiring thought" or "thoughtful desire," because practical reasoning requires the union of reason and desire?
Lemos writes: "I have no special interest in defining good or the good, but I do think that things are good when they do their characteristic activity well." That's a confusing sentence. He begins by saying he has no interest in defining good, and then he defines good as a thing's performing its characteristic activity well!
He suggests that he might agree with G. E. Moore that goodness is a "nonnatural property." It would help me a lot if he could explain what this "nonnatural property" is.
He says that he departs from my position in that he defines the human good as doing well at practical reasoning. I am not sure why he thinks I disagree with this. My list of twenty natural desires includes "practical reasoning," and I give a lot of attention to the need for prudence.
Perhaps he would say that he disagrees because for him "practical reasoning" is not a desire or dependent on desire. But then I would ask, what makes practical reasoning practical, if not desire? He appeals to Aristotle. But doesn't Aristotle insist that "thought by itself moves nothing," because practical thought is always tied to desire? Doesn't Aristotle say that deliberate choice is either "desiring thought" or "thoughtful desire," because practical reasoning requires the union of reason and desire?
Sunday, January 18, 2009
John Lemos on the Good Human Life
Recently, I wrote a blog post responding to John Lemos' new book Commonsense Darwinism. He has written a reply, and he has given me permission to post it here as follows--
"I enjoyed reading your blog post regarding my recently published book. I can understand your puzzlement concerning my critique of your view, because our views are similar. However, I do believe there are some differences in our positions that may be significant, and, naturally, I think that my view is better because of these differences. In what follows, I will try to clarify some of these differences. My comments will be brief, perhaps, overly brief, but they may still be of some use to me and you.
"I see the difference between your view and mine as follows: you view the good as what is truly desirable and what is truly desirable is that which promotes the fullest satisfaction of desire over a complete life. In contrast, I have so special interest in defining 'the good.' (See p. 67 of my book.) But I do have a conception of what a good human being is. A good human being, like other good things, does well in the performance of its defining activity. Thus, since practical rationality is distinctive of human beings, good human beings do well at practical reasoning; and to do well at this requires the possession of the virtues.
"Now, while practical reason aims at the attainment of happiness, the human good (doing well at practical reasoning) is not identical with whatever promotes the fullest satisfaction of desires over a complete life. Consider that one can make irrational decisions that promote the fullest satisfaction of desire over a complete life, but this would not be doing well at practical reasoning, and so it would not be consistent with human goodness. As an example of a decision that might promote the fullest satisfaction of desire over a complete life but is irrational, consider a situation where I agree to marry a woman that I do not know in the least, and I end up being quite happy with her for the rest of my life. The decision is irrational (and, hence, not consistent with human goodness), but it ends up promoting the fullest satisfaction of my desires over a complete life. Many other cases of such irrational decisions leading to the fullest satisfaction of desires could be given.
"Additionally, on my view one can attain the human good (do well at practical reasoning) and still be very unsatisfied due to various misfortunes. Living virtuously in the prudent pursuit of happiness is to live a good life, but it is not necessarily to be satisfied. Many of our rational decisions have to do with making decisions that are most likely to promote our welfare, but sometimes what what most likely to occur does not, and we are harmed by the less likely consequence of our decision.
"Also, having the fullest satisfaction of desire over a complete life is not equivalent to having lived a good human life. Aristotle, himself, is quite skeptical of this. (See Book 10 of the Nicomachean Ethics, where he criticizes Eudoxus' hedonistic conception of the good life.) One can desire bad things and have the power to acquire them and have little conscience and in this way achieve the fullest satisfaction of desire over a complete life. Or, as Aristotle notes, you might be a fully contented idiot and yet not be living a good human life.
"My view of human goodness must acknowledge a connection between human goodness and the satisfaction of desire since good practical reasoning aims at happiness. But, on my view, they are distinct. Goodness is the prudent pursuit of a happy life involving the virtues--since virtuous choice and action are the best means to such a happy life. But they (virtuous choice and action) are no guarantee of a happy life. So, goodness again is not simply what promotes the fullest satisfaction of desire over a complete life.
"Finally, my approach links human goodness to the defining activity of human beings in a way that allows for the kinds of rationally warranted conclusions about goodness that we make regarding other natural objects and artifacts. We say clocks are good when they tell time well, and hearts are good when they pump blood well. So, too, humans are good when they do well at their characteristic activity, rational activity. My conception of the good human being allows a way to bridge the gap between facts and values in a way that is consistent with common intuitions about the goodness of many other things, like clocks, cars, hearts, lungs, etc.
"In contrast to my approach, I feel that you try to bridge the is/ought gap with a naturalistic definition of the good as what promotes the fullest satisfaction of desire over a complete life, and I worry that this falls prey to Moore's critique of naturalism. In contrast, as I said earlier, I have no special interest in defining good or the good, but I do think that things are good when they do their characteristic activity well. This is a way for things to be good. My own approach is open to the possibility that goodness may be a nonnatural property, as Moore maintains, that supervenes on certain natural properties, one of which is the successful performance of the characteristic activity of a thing."
"I enjoyed reading your blog post regarding my recently published book. I can understand your puzzlement concerning my critique of your view, because our views are similar. However, I do believe there are some differences in our positions that may be significant, and, naturally, I think that my view is better because of these differences. In what follows, I will try to clarify some of these differences. My comments will be brief, perhaps, overly brief, but they may still be of some use to me and you.
"I see the difference between your view and mine as follows: you view the good as what is truly desirable and what is truly desirable is that which promotes the fullest satisfaction of desire over a complete life. In contrast, I have so special interest in defining 'the good.' (See p. 67 of my book.) But I do have a conception of what a good human being is. A good human being, like other good things, does well in the performance of its defining activity. Thus, since practical rationality is distinctive of human beings, good human beings do well at practical reasoning; and to do well at this requires the possession of the virtues.
"Now, while practical reason aims at the attainment of happiness, the human good (doing well at practical reasoning) is not identical with whatever promotes the fullest satisfaction of desires over a complete life. Consider that one can make irrational decisions that promote the fullest satisfaction of desire over a complete life, but this would not be doing well at practical reasoning, and so it would not be consistent with human goodness. As an example of a decision that might promote the fullest satisfaction of desire over a complete life but is irrational, consider a situation where I agree to marry a woman that I do not know in the least, and I end up being quite happy with her for the rest of my life. The decision is irrational (and, hence, not consistent with human goodness), but it ends up promoting the fullest satisfaction of my desires over a complete life. Many other cases of such irrational decisions leading to the fullest satisfaction of desires could be given.
"Additionally, on my view one can attain the human good (do well at practical reasoning) and still be very unsatisfied due to various misfortunes. Living virtuously in the prudent pursuit of happiness is to live a good life, but it is not necessarily to be satisfied. Many of our rational decisions have to do with making decisions that are most likely to promote our welfare, but sometimes what what most likely to occur does not, and we are harmed by the less likely consequence of our decision.
"Also, having the fullest satisfaction of desire over a complete life is not equivalent to having lived a good human life. Aristotle, himself, is quite skeptical of this. (See Book 10 of the Nicomachean Ethics, where he criticizes Eudoxus' hedonistic conception of the good life.) One can desire bad things and have the power to acquire them and have little conscience and in this way achieve the fullest satisfaction of desire over a complete life. Or, as Aristotle notes, you might be a fully contented idiot and yet not be living a good human life.
"My view of human goodness must acknowledge a connection between human goodness and the satisfaction of desire since good practical reasoning aims at happiness. But, on my view, they are distinct. Goodness is the prudent pursuit of a happy life involving the virtues--since virtuous choice and action are the best means to such a happy life. But they (virtuous choice and action) are no guarantee of a happy life. So, goodness again is not simply what promotes the fullest satisfaction of desire over a complete life.
"Finally, my approach links human goodness to the defining activity of human beings in a way that allows for the kinds of rationally warranted conclusions about goodness that we make regarding other natural objects and artifacts. We say clocks are good when they tell time well, and hearts are good when they pump blood well. So, too, humans are good when they do well at their characteristic activity, rational activity. My conception of the good human being allows a way to bridge the gap between facts and values in a way that is consistent with common intuitions about the goodness of many other things, like clocks, cars, hearts, lungs, etc.
"In contrast to my approach, I feel that you try to bridge the is/ought gap with a naturalistic definition of the good as what promotes the fullest satisfaction of desire over a complete life, and I worry that this falls prey to Moore's critique of naturalism. In contrast, as I said earlier, I have no special interest in defining good or the good, but I do think that things are good when they do their characteristic activity well. This is a way for things to be good. My own approach is open to the possibility that goodness may be a nonnatural property, as Moore maintains, that supervenes on certain natural properties, one of which is the successful performance of the characteristic activity of a thing."
Saturday, January 17, 2009
Is Human Nature a Superstition? A Response to David Buller
Over the past twenty years, evolutionary psychology has become remarkably influential, particularly among psychologists and anthropologists. It has also won lots of journalistic coverage. Simply stated, evolutionary psychology strives to develop a Darwinian science of human nature founded on a study of the human mind as shaped by evolutionary history. The leading proponents of evolutionary psychology include Leda Cosmides, John Tooby, David Buss, Margo Wilson, Martin Daly, and Steven Pinker.
Although I have not embraced all of the ideas associated with evolutionary psychology, my appeal to a Darwinian science of human nature, including the twenty natural desires that characterize the evolved psychology of human beings, has a lot of common ground with the intellectual program of evolutionary psychology.
One of the best critics of evolutionary psychology is David Buller, a philosophy professor who is a colleague of mine at Northern Illinois University. His criticisms are laid out in his book Adapting Minds: Evolutionary Psychology and the Persistent Quest for Human Nature (MIT Press, 2005). A very brief summary of his criticisms appeared recently in SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN. The best short summary of his book is his chapter on evolutionary psychology in the third edition of Conceptual Issues in Evolutionary Biology (MIT Press, 2006), edited by Elliott Sober. Some of the reviews of Buller's book and his replies to critics can found at his home page.
Some of the proponents of evolutionary psychology have written responses to Buller. Some of these can be found at the website for the Center for Evolutionary Psychology at the University of California-Santa Barbara. One of the best responses to Buller is the essay-review by Edouard Machery and H. Clark Barrett in the journal PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE.
I think that in general these proponents of evolutionary psychology have persuasively answered Buller's criticisms. But I also agree with some of Buller's criticisms. I agree with him that the evolutionary psychologists sometimes stress the uniformity of human nature in such a way as to ignore the individual diversity that manifests the psychological polymorphism that has emerged from human evolutionary history. I also agree with him that in claiming that we all today have a "Stone Age mind" adapted to the environment of Pleistocene hunter-gatherers, the evolutionary psychologists mistakenly assume that there has been no human evolution over the past 10,000 years.
But on the most crucial point--the very idea of human nature--I am on the side of the evolutionary psychologists. In the last chapter of his book, Buller argues that there is no human nature, and that, as Michael Ghiselin has said, "human nature is a superstition" (419-20, 480).
If one defines human nature in a silly way (as Buller does), then human nature does not exist. But if one defines human nature in a sensible way, then human nature surely does exist.
Buller's silly definition of human nature is that it would have to consist only of traits that satisfy three conditions--first, they must be unique to human beings and thus not shared with any other animals; second, they must be invariably and exactly the same for all human individuals everywhere; and, third, they must be eternal essences that are not historically contingent.
It is easy for Buller to argue that human evolution has not produced a human species with such traits. What we take to be typically human traits are shared with other animals. These traits are highly variable across individuals because no two individuals are ever exactly the same. And as a legacy of the unending process of evolution, these traits are historically contingent in that human traits always differ across evolutionary time.
But a sensible definition of human nature does not require these conditions. We could define human nature as constituted by regularities in that suite of generally recurrent anatomical, physiological, and psychological traits that characterize the human species.
Many if not most of these traits are shared with other animals, which is exactly what one would expect from the evolution of species from ancestral species. But the fact that human beings share many traits with other mammals, for example, does not deny the importance of mammalian traits as part of the human suite of traits.
Although this suite of traits is generally recurrent across the human species, every human individual is unique, just as every animal individual is unique, and so there will be great variation across individuals. But, for example, the fact that some individuals will be born without legs does not deny the importance of a bipedal gait as part of the human suite of traits.
This species-typical suite of traits does not have to be eternal to be real for as long as it exists. The human species with its present suite of traits evolved from ancestors that did not have this suite of traits. And we can imagine that in the evolutionary future, the human species could go extinct or could evolve in some radically new direction. But the fact of evolutionary change does not deny the reality of the evolved human nature as we know it today and in recent evolutionary history. As Aristotle said in criticizing Plato's doctrine of the Ideas, "a white thing that lasts for a long time is not whiter than a white thing that lasts for a day."
Implicitly, Buller concedes the sensible definition of human nature, because he speaks of human anatomy, human physiology, and human psychology as realities that can be scientifically studied. But human anatomy, human physiology, and human psychology are all facets of human nature; and thus Buller implicitly affirms the reality of such a human nature as sensibly defined.
As Buller indicates, Cosmides and Tooby have compared their evolutionary science of psychology to the science of human anatomy. Just as one can look at Gray's Anatomy and see the anatomical adaptations that generally characterize the human species, so one should eventually be able to study human evolutionary psychology and see the psychological adaptations that generally characterize the human species. Buller speaks of this as an "analogy" between human anatomy and human nature. But, actually, it's more than an analogy, because human anatomy and human psychology are both facets of human nature, although Cosmides and Tooby choose to concentrate on the psychological facets of human nature.
Buller complains that Gray's Anatomy shows similarities among human beings "at a relatively coarse scale." But "at finer scales," human beings differ in their anatomy. No two human beings are anatomically identical. And he argues this is also true for human psychology. To speak of human psychological universals, we must "appeal to very coarse-scale common characteristics" (426).
Well, yes, but what's wrong with that? Buller says that "psychology may one day provide us with descriptions of some very widespread regularities among the minds of our conspecifics" (456). I would say that this is exactly what we mean by the psychology of human nature. Human anatomy is real, and the science of human anatomy is a real science, even though human anatomy is individually variable and a contingent product of human evolution. Likewise, human psychology is real, and the science of human psychology is a real science, even though human psychology is individually variable and a contingent product of human evolution.
So if we define human nature as constituted by "very widespread regularities" among human beings in their minds and bodies, then human nature exists. Among those "very widespread regularities," I would include the twenty natural desires that constitute the motivational basis for moral psychology. Because of the variability in those desires and in the circumstances of action across individuals and across societies, we need prudence or practical judgment in deciding what is best for particular individuals in particular circumstances. But the regularity in the human nature of those desires sets some general standards--even if "at a relatively coarse scale"--for moral thought and action.
Although I have not embraced all of the ideas associated with evolutionary psychology, my appeal to a Darwinian science of human nature, including the twenty natural desires that characterize the evolved psychology of human beings, has a lot of common ground with the intellectual program of evolutionary psychology.
One of the best critics of evolutionary psychology is David Buller, a philosophy professor who is a colleague of mine at Northern Illinois University. His criticisms are laid out in his book Adapting Minds: Evolutionary Psychology and the Persistent Quest for Human Nature (MIT Press, 2005). A very brief summary of his criticisms appeared recently in SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN. The best short summary of his book is his chapter on evolutionary psychology in the third edition of Conceptual Issues in Evolutionary Biology (MIT Press, 2006), edited by Elliott Sober. Some of the reviews of Buller's book and his replies to critics can found at his home page.
Some of the proponents of evolutionary psychology have written responses to Buller. Some of these can be found at the website for the Center for Evolutionary Psychology at the University of California-Santa Barbara. One of the best responses to Buller is the essay-review by Edouard Machery and H. Clark Barrett in the journal PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE.
I think that in general these proponents of evolutionary psychology have persuasively answered Buller's criticisms. But I also agree with some of Buller's criticisms. I agree with him that the evolutionary psychologists sometimes stress the uniformity of human nature in such a way as to ignore the individual diversity that manifests the psychological polymorphism that has emerged from human evolutionary history. I also agree with him that in claiming that we all today have a "Stone Age mind" adapted to the environment of Pleistocene hunter-gatherers, the evolutionary psychologists mistakenly assume that there has been no human evolution over the past 10,000 years.
But on the most crucial point--the very idea of human nature--I am on the side of the evolutionary psychologists. In the last chapter of his book, Buller argues that there is no human nature, and that, as Michael Ghiselin has said, "human nature is a superstition" (419-20, 480).
If one defines human nature in a silly way (as Buller does), then human nature does not exist. But if one defines human nature in a sensible way, then human nature surely does exist.
Buller's silly definition of human nature is that it would have to consist only of traits that satisfy three conditions--first, they must be unique to human beings and thus not shared with any other animals; second, they must be invariably and exactly the same for all human individuals everywhere; and, third, they must be eternal essences that are not historically contingent.
It is easy for Buller to argue that human evolution has not produced a human species with such traits. What we take to be typically human traits are shared with other animals. These traits are highly variable across individuals because no two individuals are ever exactly the same. And as a legacy of the unending process of evolution, these traits are historically contingent in that human traits always differ across evolutionary time.
But a sensible definition of human nature does not require these conditions. We could define human nature as constituted by regularities in that suite of generally recurrent anatomical, physiological, and psychological traits that characterize the human species.
Many if not most of these traits are shared with other animals, which is exactly what one would expect from the evolution of species from ancestral species. But the fact that human beings share many traits with other mammals, for example, does not deny the importance of mammalian traits as part of the human suite of traits.
Although this suite of traits is generally recurrent across the human species, every human individual is unique, just as every animal individual is unique, and so there will be great variation across individuals. But, for example, the fact that some individuals will be born without legs does not deny the importance of a bipedal gait as part of the human suite of traits.
This species-typical suite of traits does not have to be eternal to be real for as long as it exists. The human species with its present suite of traits evolved from ancestors that did not have this suite of traits. And we can imagine that in the evolutionary future, the human species could go extinct or could evolve in some radically new direction. But the fact of evolutionary change does not deny the reality of the evolved human nature as we know it today and in recent evolutionary history. As Aristotle said in criticizing Plato's doctrine of the Ideas, "a white thing that lasts for a long time is not whiter than a white thing that lasts for a day."
Implicitly, Buller concedes the sensible definition of human nature, because he speaks of human anatomy, human physiology, and human psychology as realities that can be scientifically studied. But human anatomy, human physiology, and human psychology are all facets of human nature; and thus Buller implicitly affirms the reality of such a human nature as sensibly defined.
As Buller indicates, Cosmides and Tooby have compared their evolutionary science of psychology to the science of human anatomy. Just as one can look at Gray's Anatomy and see the anatomical adaptations that generally characterize the human species, so one should eventually be able to study human evolutionary psychology and see the psychological adaptations that generally characterize the human species. Buller speaks of this as an "analogy" between human anatomy and human nature. But, actually, it's more than an analogy, because human anatomy and human psychology are both facets of human nature, although Cosmides and Tooby choose to concentrate on the psychological facets of human nature.
Buller complains that Gray's Anatomy shows similarities among human beings "at a relatively coarse scale." But "at finer scales," human beings differ in their anatomy. No two human beings are anatomically identical. And he argues this is also true for human psychology. To speak of human psychological universals, we must "appeal to very coarse-scale common characteristics" (426).
Well, yes, but what's wrong with that? Buller says that "psychology may one day provide us with descriptions of some very widespread regularities among the minds of our conspecifics" (456). I would say that this is exactly what we mean by the psychology of human nature. Human anatomy is real, and the science of human anatomy is a real science, even though human anatomy is individually variable and a contingent product of human evolution. Likewise, human psychology is real, and the science of human psychology is a real science, even though human psychology is individually variable and a contingent product of human evolution.
So if we define human nature as constituted by "very widespread regularities" among human beings in their minds and bodies, then human nature exists. Among those "very widespread regularities," I would include the twenty natural desires that constitute the motivational basis for moral psychology. Because of the variability in those desires and in the circumstances of action across individuals and across societies, we need prudence or practical judgment in deciding what is best for particular individuals in particular circumstances. But the regularity in the human nature of those desires sets some general standards--even if "at a relatively coarse scale"--for moral thought and action.
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Darwinian Support for Aristotelian Ethics: A Reply to John Lemos
I have argued that Darwinian evolutionary biology provides an account of human nature and the natural moral sense that supports Aristotelian ethics. In recent years, a growing number of moral philosophers have been coming around to this position. One can see this, for example, in Alasdair MacIntyre's book Dependent Rational Animals (Open Court, 1999) and William Casebeer's book Natural Ethical Facts (MIT Press, 2003). Now, we have a new book by John Lemos--Commonsense Darwinism: Evolution, Morality, and the Human Condition (Open Court, 2008)--that belongs to this intellectual movement.
Lemos is a professor of philosophy at Coe College. In defense of what he calls "commonsense Darwinism," Lemos argues that Darwinian science supports traditional conceptions of morality and moral freedom that are compatible with an Aristotelian understanding of morality as rooted in human nature. Unless I am missing something, I fundamentally agree with what he says. For that reason, it is hard for me to understand his attempts at criticizing my position.
Apparently, Lemos thinks I have not properly answered G. E. Moore's charge that any evolutionary ethics commits the "naturalistic fallacy." I have often stated my handling of the issues associated with the "naturalistic fallacy" and the "is/ought" gap. Some of my posts on this can be found here, here, and here. Although Lemos seems unsatisfied by my approach to these issues, I cannot understand exactly what he has in mind.
In his explanation of my reasoning, Lemos writes: "Arnhart believes that there is no gap between facts and values because the good is the desirable and what is desirable is a matter of fact. Here he would have us understand that 'the desirable' is not simply whatever can be desired. Rather it is what is truly to be desired in the sense of promoting human flourishing, which Arnhart regards as promoting the fullest satisfaction of desires over a complete life" (44).
He goes on to insist that this kind of reasoning does not answer Moore's argument. "For Moore might still say that something is good only if it is acceptable to desire or pursue it, and the mere fact that something promotes the fullest satisfaction of desires in a complete life does not mean that it is acceptable to desire it or pursue it and thus does not mean that it is a good. Arnhart overlooks the fact that some things which promote the fullest satisfaction of desire in a complete life are things that are bad and ought not to be pursued. . . . I love my job, my wife, and my children very much. They are some of the most cherished things in my life. It is quite conceivable that circumstances could arise in which to preserve these things for myself I might need, and therefore desire, to do any number of unjust deeds. Desiring such things might well promote the fullest satisfaction of my desires over a complete life, but would such things be good? Moore's criticism still holds against Arnhart's revised definition of the good" (45-46).
But under what conditions would doing the most unjust deeds truly "promote the fullest satisfaction of my desires over a complete life"? Lemos provides no specific examples to clarify what he's saying here.
Later in his book, Lemos says that in contrast to my conception of the good as the desirable, he adopts Aristotle's conception of the good as what fulfills the distinctively human function and thereby promotes human flourishing or happiness. And he claims that this Aristotelian conception escapes Moore's argument in a way that my conception does not (67-68).
But this is confusing, because Lemos indicates that Aristotle's conception of flourishing or happiness conforms to what is "best suited to the satisfaction of one's own long term self-interest." It's hard to see how this differs from my conception of happiness as the fullest satisfaction of desires over a complete life. Moreover, while Lemos had earlier indicated that my conception of ethics could not handle those cases where acting justly is undesirable, he says here that an Aristotelian would insist that acting justly is ultimately desirable: "It might be wondered how living as a virtuous person best serves one's self-interest. Don't unjust deeds often profit the person who commits them? The best Aristotelian reply to this question would admit that unjust deeds deeds can sometimes profit a man, but a life lived in accordance with injustice rarely does so. Rather, in contemplating lives lived in accordance with justice and injustice, we see that the life of the just person is more likely to lead to happiness, since a life of injustice is more likely to lead to loss of friends, social ostracism, and retribution, whereas a just life is more likely to lead to the preservation of friendships, social acceptance, and other benefits." So it makes sense in Aristotelian ethics that "the focus is on what traits of character possessed over a lifetime would best serve one's interest" (65).
I might be missing something here. When Lemos says that the life of the just person is "more likely" to promote long term self-interest or happiness, is he suggesting that in rare cases, the just person would have to sacrifice his happiness? If so, then Lemos is implicitly pointing to what I identify in Darwinian Natural Right as tragic conflicts of interest. As I suggested in my chapter on slavery, the debate over slavery in the United States might be an example of how tragic conflicts create moral dilemmas with no clear resolution. Abraham Lincoln recognized that slavery was wrong. But he also recognized that slavery could not be immediately abolished without disastrous consequences. Is something like this what Lemos has in mind when he says that on "rare occasions" acting to promote one's flourishing might require unjust deeds?
Lemos is a professor of philosophy at Coe College. In defense of what he calls "commonsense Darwinism," Lemos argues that Darwinian science supports traditional conceptions of morality and moral freedom that are compatible with an Aristotelian understanding of morality as rooted in human nature. Unless I am missing something, I fundamentally agree with what he says. For that reason, it is hard for me to understand his attempts at criticizing my position.
Apparently, Lemos thinks I have not properly answered G. E. Moore's charge that any evolutionary ethics commits the "naturalistic fallacy." I have often stated my handling of the issues associated with the "naturalistic fallacy" and the "is/ought" gap. Some of my posts on this can be found here, here, and here. Although Lemos seems unsatisfied by my approach to these issues, I cannot understand exactly what he has in mind.
In his explanation of my reasoning, Lemos writes: "Arnhart believes that there is no gap between facts and values because the good is the desirable and what is desirable is a matter of fact. Here he would have us understand that 'the desirable' is not simply whatever can be desired. Rather it is what is truly to be desired in the sense of promoting human flourishing, which Arnhart regards as promoting the fullest satisfaction of desires over a complete life" (44).
He goes on to insist that this kind of reasoning does not answer Moore's argument. "For Moore might still say that something is good only if it is acceptable to desire or pursue it, and the mere fact that something promotes the fullest satisfaction of desires in a complete life does not mean that it is acceptable to desire it or pursue it and thus does not mean that it is a good. Arnhart overlooks the fact that some things which promote the fullest satisfaction of desire in a complete life are things that are bad and ought not to be pursued. . . . I love my job, my wife, and my children very much. They are some of the most cherished things in my life. It is quite conceivable that circumstances could arise in which to preserve these things for myself I might need, and therefore desire, to do any number of unjust deeds. Desiring such things might well promote the fullest satisfaction of my desires over a complete life, but would such things be good? Moore's criticism still holds against Arnhart's revised definition of the good" (45-46).
But under what conditions would doing the most unjust deeds truly "promote the fullest satisfaction of my desires over a complete life"? Lemos provides no specific examples to clarify what he's saying here.
Later in his book, Lemos says that in contrast to my conception of the good as the desirable, he adopts Aristotle's conception of the good as what fulfills the distinctively human function and thereby promotes human flourishing or happiness. And he claims that this Aristotelian conception escapes Moore's argument in a way that my conception does not (67-68).
But this is confusing, because Lemos indicates that Aristotle's conception of flourishing or happiness conforms to what is "best suited to the satisfaction of one's own long term self-interest." It's hard to see how this differs from my conception of happiness as the fullest satisfaction of desires over a complete life. Moreover, while Lemos had earlier indicated that my conception of ethics could not handle those cases where acting justly is undesirable, he says here that an Aristotelian would insist that acting justly is ultimately desirable: "It might be wondered how living as a virtuous person best serves one's self-interest. Don't unjust deeds often profit the person who commits them? The best Aristotelian reply to this question would admit that unjust deeds deeds can sometimes profit a man, but a life lived in accordance with injustice rarely does so. Rather, in contemplating lives lived in accordance with justice and injustice, we see that the life of the just person is more likely to lead to happiness, since a life of injustice is more likely to lead to loss of friends, social ostracism, and retribution, whereas a just life is more likely to lead to the preservation of friendships, social acceptance, and other benefits." So it makes sense in Aristotelian ethics that "the focus is on what traits of character possessed over a lifetime would best serve one's interest" (65).
I might be missing something here. When Lemos says that the life of the just person is "more likely" to promote long term self-interest or happiness, is he suggesting that in rare cases, the just person would have to sacrifice his happiness? If so, then Lemos is implicitly pointing to what I identify in Darwinian Natural Right as tragic conflicts of interest. As I suggested in my chapter on slavery, the debate over slavery in the United States might be an example of how tragic conflicts create moral dilemmas with no clear resolution. Abraham Lincoln recognized that slavery was wrong. But he also recognized that slavery could not be immediately abolished without disastrous consequences. Is something like this what Lemos has in mind when he says that on "rare occasions" acting to promote one's flourishing might require unjust deeds?
Thursday, January 08, 2009
Darwinian Human Nature in Victorian Novels
Previously, I have written about the possibility of a Darwinian literary theory. Recently, the online journal Evolutionary Psychology has published an article that illustrates how this might be done.
The authors adopt Chris Boehm's theory of how human nature evolved in egalitarian hunter-gatherer groups in which the natural desire of the few for dominance was checked by the natural desire of the many to resist exploitative dominance. If this has become part of our universal human nature, then, we might expect this would influence how literature depicts the conflicting motivations of protagonists and antagonists in literature and how readers will react to these literary depictions. We could predict that readers will like the cooperative behavior of protagonists and dislike the dominance behavior of antagonists. The authors of this article confirm this prediction through an empirical study of how 519 respondents assessed the behavior of characters in over 200 British Victorian novels. The authors conclude: "If dispositions for suppressing dominance fulfill an adaptive social function, and if agonistic structure in the novels and reinforces dispositions for suppressing dominance, the current research would lend support to the hypothesis that literature fulfills an adaptive function."
I welcome this kind of research as contributing to what I have called "Darwinian liberal education." Against the fragmentation of knowledge that dominates higher education today, liberal education should strive for a unification of knowledge that brings together the natural sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities into a common intellectual quest to understand human life in the natural order of the whole. This is what Edward O. Wilson calls "consilience." And as Wilson indicates, evolutionary biology is crucial in providing the common ground for uniting all the disciplines through a biological understanding of human nature.
Most scholars in literature and the arts resist this unification of knowledge through Darwinian science, because they assume this means a crude reductionism that cannot account for the complex mental experience of symbolic meaning that comes through the artistic imagination. In fact, people like Wilson do sometimes endorse a strong reductionism that assumes that everything should ultimately be reducible to physics and chemistry. But a more plausible view of consilience recognizes the emergent complexity of human experience so that higher levels of complexity are constrained by, but not reducible to, the laws of physics and chemistry. Some of my posts on consilience as emergent complexity can be found here, here, and here.
This article escapes the pitfalls of strong reductionism and implicitly endorses emergent complexity, because the authors employ a theory of gene-culture coevolution in which human nature emerges not from genes alone or culture alone but from the complex interaction of genes and culture over human evolutionary history. Victorian novels are products of a unique cultural history, but they also manifest an enduring human nature shaped in human evolutionary history.
Although I generally agree with the claims of this article. There are some points where I would like some clarification. Like most proponents of evolutionary psychology--particularly, those under the influence of Leda Cosmides and John Tooby--the authors of this article assume that human nature was shaped during the hunting-gathering history of the human species during the Paleolithic era. But as many critics have noted--for example, David Buller--this assumption that the genetic evolution of the human species was fixed in the hunting-gathering past and has never changed much since then is highly dubious. Studies of recent human evolution over the past 10,000 years throw into question the claim that human psychology shows a "stone age mind" that has not evolved since the invention of agriculture and the settlement of cities and state societies.
I also question the authors' assumption that human beings by nature always feel aversion towards the desire for social dominance. I have argued that the desire for dominance or status is one of the twenty natural desires in the profile of human nature. Human beings generally desire social status through comparative social ranking. Their esteem for themselves requires that they be esteemed by others whose judgments they respect. Human beings attain high social status through prestige, fame, or honor within the groups to which they belong. Although some societies are much less hierarchical than others, all societies rank individuals as higher or lower based on age, sex, kinship, wealth, power, and other forms of ascribed and achieved statuses. Individuals become dominant through any trait or activity that produces deference in others. A few charismatic individuals become heroic leaders because of their extraordinary power to win the respect of the people around them. Men generally have a stronger desire for dominance in social hierarchies than do women. Men compete for mating opportunities, and dominant men are generally more attractive to potential mates.
I agree with Boehm that the natural desire for dominance is checked by the natural desire of subordinates to be free from exploitative dominance. But this does not mean that dominance behavior is always bad. After all, the whole point of seeking the honor or glory of high status is that this means being admired by others.
In fact, the authors of this article report as an "anomalous finding" that male protagonists who do not seek dominance are scored by readers as low on "interest." "They are not intent on acquiring wealth and power, and they are thoroughly domesticated within the forms of conventional propriety. They serve admirably to exemplify normative values of cooperative behavior, but in serving this function they seem to be diminished in some vital component of fascination, some element of charisma. They lack specifically male qualities of aggressive assertion; they lack power, and in lacking power, they seem also to lack some quality that excites intensity of interest in emotional response." Doesn't this suggest that there is something in human nature that can make male dominance behavior powerfully attractive?
One of the authors of this article--Jonathan Gottschall--has elsewhere applied Darwinian reasoning to the study of Homer's heroes. A comparative study of the Greek culture of male honor and dominance and the Victorian culture of bourgeois values might illuminate our natural ambivalence about male dominance behavior in that we admire it and fear it at the same time.
The authors adopt Chris Boehm's theory of how human nature evolved in egalitarian hunter-gatherer groups in which the natural desire of the few for dominance was checked by the natural desire of the many to resist exploitative dominance. If this has become part of our universal human nature, then, we might expect this would influence how literature depicts the conflicting motivations of protagonists and antagonists in literature and how readers will react to these literary depictions. We could predict that readers will like the cooperative behavior of protagonists and dislike the dominance behavior of antagonists. The authors of this article confirm this prediction through an empirical study of how 519 respondents assessed the behavior of characters in over 200 British Victorian novels. The authors conclude: "If dispositions for suppressing dominance fulfill an adaptive social function, and if agonistic structure in the novels and reinforces dispositions for suppressing dominance, the current research would lend support to the hypothesis that literature fulfills an adaptive function."
I welcome this kind of research as contributing to what I have called "Darwinian liberal education." Against the fragmentation of knowledge that dominates higher education today, liberal education should strive for a unification of knowledge that brings together the natural sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities into a common intellectual quest to understand human life in the natural order of the whole. This is what Edward O. Wilson calls "consilience." And as Wilson indicates, evolutionary biology is crucial in providing the common ground for uniting all the disciplines through a biological understanding of human nature.
Most scholars in literature and the arts resist this unification of knowledge through Darwinian science, because they assume this means a crude reductionism that cannot account for the complex mental experience of symbolic meaning that comes through the artistic imagination. In fact, people like Wilson do sometimes endorse a strong reductionism that assumes that everything should ultimately be reducible to physics and chemistry. But a more plausible view of consilience recognizes the emergent complexity of human experience so that higher levels of complexity are constrained by, but not reducible to, the laws of physics and chemistry. Some of my posts on consilience as emergent complexity can be found here, here, and here.
This article escapes the pitfalls of strong reductionism and implicitly endorses emergent complexity, because the authors employ a theory of gene-culture coevolution in which human nature emerges not from genes alone or culture alone but from the complex interaction of genes and culture over human evolutionary history. Victorian novels are products of a unique cultural history, but they also manifest an enduring human nature shaped in human evolutionary history.
Although I generally agree with the claims of this article. There are some points where I would like some clarification. Like most proponents of evolutionary psychology--particularly, those under the influence of Leda Cosmides and John Tooby--the authors of this article assume that human nature was shaped during the hunting-gathering history of the human species during the Paleolithic era. But as many critics have noted--for example, David Buller--this assumption that the genetic evolution of the human species was fixed in the hunting-gathering past and has never changed much since then is highly dubious. Studies of recent human evolution over the past 10,000 years throw into question the claim that human psychology shows a "stone age mind" that has not evolved since the invention of agriculture and the settlement of cities and state societies.
I also question the authors' assumption that human beings by nature always feel aversion towards the desire for social dominance. I have argued that the desire for dominance or status is one of the twenty natural desires in the profile of human nature. Human beings generally desire social status through comparative social ranking. Their esteem for themselves requires that they be esteemed by others whose judgments they respect. Human beings attain high social status through prestige, fame, or honor within the groups to which they belong. Although some societies are much less hierarchical than others, all societies rank individuals as higher or lower based on age, sex, kinship, wealth, power, and other forms of ascribed and achieved statuses. Individuals become dominant through any trait or activity that produces deference in others. A few charismatic individuals become heroic leaders because of their extraordinary power to win the respect of the people around them. Men generally have a stronger desire for dominance in social hierarchies than do women. Men compete for mating opportunities, and dominant men are generally more attractive to potential mates.
I agree with Boehm that the natural desire for dominance is checked by the natural desire of subordinates to be free from exploitative dominance. But this does not mean that dominance behavior is always bad. After all, the whole point of seeking the honor or glory of high status is that this means being admired by others.
In fact, the authors of this article report as an "anomalous finding" that male protagonists who do not seek dominance are scored by readers as low on "interest." "They are not intent on acquiring wealth and power, and they are thoroughly domesticated within the forms of conventional propriety. They serve admirably to exemplify normative values of cooperative behavior, but in serving this function they seem to be diminished in some vital component of fascination, some element of charisma. They lack specifically male qualities of aggressive assertion; they lack power, and in lacking power, they seem also to lack some quality that excites intensity of interest in emotional response." Doesn't this suggest that there is something in human nature that can make male dominance behavior powerfully attractive?
One of the authors of this article--Jonathan Gottschall--has elsewhere applied Darwinian reasoning to the study of Homer's heroes. A comparative study of the Greek culture of male honor and dominance and the Victorian culture of bourgeois values might illuminate our natural ambivalence about male dominance behavior in that we admire it and fear it at the same time.
Friday, January 02, 2009
David Hume and the Secular Right
A couple of years ago, Heather MacDonald of The City Journal provoked a controversy among conservatives when she identified herself as a "skeptical conservative" who was frustrated with the assumption of religious conservatives that conservatism was impossible without religious belief. In my post on this controversy, I expressed my agreement with her claim that a conservative view of morality and social order does not require religious belief, although religion can reinforce natural morality.
Now, MacDonald and some others have started a new blog called "Secular Right." They identify themselves as belonging to the conservative tradition of David Hume. They have posted a good statement from Jerry Muller that separates the evolutionary conservatism of people like Hume from the metaphysical orthodoxy of people like Russell Kirk. This corresponds to my distinction between Darwinian conservatism and metaphysical conservatism.
Hume's conservatism is certainly "secular" in the sense that it bases moral and social order on human nature and common life rather than some supernatural standard of metaphysical order. But the common assumption that Hume was an atheist is, I think, mistaken. While criticizing "false religion," Hume defended the "true religion" of "philosophical theism." Although he criticized many of the extravagant claims made for the argument from design--the same argument that is today made for "intelligent design theory"--Hume did accept a qualified version of the design argument.
Near the end of his Treatise of Human Nature, Hume wrote: "The order of the universe proves an omnipotent mind; that is, a mind whose will is constantly attended with the obedience of every creature and being. Nothing more is requisite to give a foundation to all the articles of religion, nor is it necessary we should form a distinct idea of the force and energy of the supreme Being."
At the end of his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, Hume sketches his philosophical theism in the language of his character Philo: "If the whole of Natural Theology, as some people seem to maintain, resolves itself into one simple, though somewhat ambiguous, at least undefined proposition, That the cause or causes of order in the universe probably bear some remote analogy to human intelligence: If this proposition be not capable of extension, variation, or more particular explication: If it affords no inference that affects human life, or can be the source of any action or forbearance: And if the analogy, imperfect as it is, can be carried no farther than to the human intelligence; and cannot be transferred, with any appearance of probability, to the qualities of the mind: If this really be the case, what can the most inquisitive, contemplative, and religious man do more than give a plain, philosophical assent to the proposition, as often as it occurs; and believe that the arguments, on which it is established, exceed the objections, which lie against it?"
Hume's philosophical theist believes in God as the supreme Mind or ultimate principle of intelligibility behind the lawful order of the universe as studied by science or philosophy. Darwinian science can affirm such theism as supporting the intelligible order of the universe as the fundamental presupposition of modern science.
Some of my other posts on Humean themes can be found here, here, and here.
Now, MacDonald and some others have started a new blog called "Secular Right." They identify themselves as belonging to the conservative tradition of David Hume. They have posted a good statement from Jerry Muller that separates the evolutionary conservatism of people like Hume from the metaphysical orthodoxy of people like Russell Kirk. This corresponds to my distinction between Darwinian conservatism and metaphysical conservatism.
Hume's conservatism is certainly "secular" in the sense that it bases moral and social order on human nature and common life rather than some supernatural standard of metaphysical order. But the common assumption that Hume was an atheist is, I think, mistaken. While criticizing "false religion," Hume defended the "true religion" of "philosophical theism." Although he criticized many of the extravagant claims made for the argument from design--the same argument that is today made for "intelligent design theory"--Hume did accept a qualified version of the design argument.
Near the end of his Treatise of Human Nature, Hume wrote: "The order of the universe proves an omnipotent mind; that is, a mind whose will is constantly attended with the obedience of every creature and being. Nothing more is requisite to give a foundation to all the articles of religion, nor is it necessary we should form a distinct idea of the force and energy of the supreme Being."
At the end of his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, Hume sketches his philosophical theism in the language of his character Philo: "If the whole of Natural Theology, as some people seem to maintain, resolves itself into one simple, though somewhat ambiguous, at least undefined proposition, That the cause or causes of order in the universe probably bear some remote analogy to human intelligence: If this proposition be not capable of extension, variation, or more particular explication: If it affords no inference that affects human life, or can be the source of any action or forbearance: And if the analogy, imperfect as it is, can be carried no farther than to the human intelligence; and cannot be transferred, with any appearance of probability, to the qualities of the mind: If this really be the case, what can the most inquisitive, contemplative, and religious man do more than give a plain, philosophical assent to the proposition, as often as it occurs; and believe that the arguments, on which it is established, exceed the objections, which lie against it?"
Hume's philosophical theist believes in God as the supreme Mind or ultimate principle of intelligibility behind the lawful order of the universe as studied by science or philosophy. Darwinian science can affirm such theism as supporting the intelligible order of the universe as the fundamental presupposition of modern science.
Some of my other posts on Humean themes can be found here, here, and here.
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Levering's "Biblical Natural Law"
I argue that a Darwinian view of human nature supports the natural law reasoning of Thomas Aquinas. I use the term "natural law" to refer to the following cluster of ideas: (1) animals have innate propensities, (2) the normal development of each kind of animal requires the fulfillment of these propensities, (3) animals with conscious awareness desire the satisfaction of these propensities, and (4) human beings use their unique capacity for rational deliberation to formulate ethical standards as plans of life for the harmonious satisfaction of their natural desires over a complete life. Darwinian biology supports this natural law understanding of ethics by showing how such inborn desires and cognitive capacities arise in human biological nature.
This argument for Darwinian natural law comes up in Darwinian Natural Right, in Darwinian Conservatism, and in the Aquinas chapter of Political Questions: Political Philosophy from Plato to Rawls. But the fullest statement of this argument is in my paper on "Thomistic Natural Law as Darwinian Natural Right," which was published as an article in Social Philosophy & Policy (vol. 18, no. 1, winter 2001) and as a book chapter in Natural Law and Modern Moral Philosophy, edited by E. F. Paul, F. D. Miller, and J. Paul (Cambridge University Press, 2001).
Religious conservatives have objected to my argument by insisting that Thomistic natural law must be founded in the biblical religious belief in God as the Creator of nature who orders nature to his cosmic ends. After all, how can there be a "natural law" without a divine lawmaker? If so, then Darwinian natural science cannot support the Thomistic natural law tradition unless there is some biblical religious belief behind it.
This thinking is well developed in Matthew Levering's new book Biblical Natural Law: A Theocratic and Teleological Approach (Oxford University Press, 2008). But although Levering--a theology professor at Ave Maria University, Naples, Florida--would probably reject my idea of Darwinian natural law, there are some fundamental points of agreement between us.
Levering states his main idea in one sentence: "While all human beings know the natural law at least to some degree, explanations of the character and content of the natural law are greatly assisted by faith, and thus also by biblical revelation" (4). The ambiguity in his position is suggested by the phrases "at least to some degree" and "greatly assisted." He indicates that he is employing a distinction between natural law and explanations of natural law stated by Ralph McInerny: "It would be odd for anyone to say that everyone's grasp of fundamental guides for moral action involves explicit recognition of the existence of God. But it is not odd to say that any adequate account or theory of such fundamental guides must make appeal to God's existence."
I argue that while religious belief can reinforce our natural moral sense, natural morality can stand on its own natural ground in the natural desires of human beings even without any religious belief. A Darwinian science of morality can recognize the importance of religious traditions in sustaining morality. But in so far as morality is rooted in evolved human nature, the natural moral sense can be based on natural human experience without any appeal to supernatural revelation.
As a Christian, Thomas Aquinas believes that the natural moral law is ultimately explained as part of the eternal law of God as the Creator of nature. But still, Aquinas distinguishes the natural law as apprehended in natural human experience and the divine law as revealed to the faithful in the Bible. I interpret this to mean that even those people who do not believe in the Bible as divine revelation of God's moral law can understand and obey natural law. Although Levering generally seems to agree with this, some of what he says in his book suggests that natural law cannot stand on its own without the divine law of the Bible.
At one point, Levering makes a vague reference to my Darwinian Natural Right. He says that my book "equates Darwinian teleology (survival of the fittest) with the teleology of natural inclinations" (12). Although he does not explain his position here, he implies by the context that my "Darwinian teleology" cannot properly explain natural law as based on a divinely ordained cosmic teleology.
This is unclear, however, because elsewhere in his book, Levering seems to endorse the arguments of Alasdair MacIntyre and Jean Porter for a teleology rooted in natural science (170-71). In fact, MacIntyre--in his Dependent Rational Animals--has agreed with my claim that an Aristotelian and Thomistic ethical naturalism can be supported with a Darwinian account of human nature and natural teleology.
In explaining natural law, Aquinas quotes from Ulpian, an ancient Roman jurist: "Natural right is that which nature has taught all animals." To illustrate the natural inclinations that human beings share with other animals, Ulpian referred to the sexual union of male and female and the parental care of offspring as animal propensities that sustain human marriage and family life in conformity to natural law. Like Ulpian, Aquinas speaks of the human disposition to marriage as a "natural instinct of the human species." This biological basis for natural law is also evident in Aquinas's many references to Aristotle's biology and to the zoology of Albert the Great, Aquinas's teacher at the University of Paris.
It is odd that Levering says almost nothing about Aquinas's biological explanations for natural law. He makes some passing references to Aquinas's citation of Ulpian, but without any elaboration. And when he lays out Aquinas's famous description of the levels of natural human inclinations supporting natural law, Levering omits Aquinas's reference to Ulpian (141, 145, 160, 185).
Levering agrees with me about the primacy of Aquinas's claim that "the good is the desirable" (58, 172). He also agrees with me that this Thomistic appeal to natural desires is ignored by John Finnis and his followers who take a Kantian direction in trying to root natural law in "the order of reason" as opposed to the "order of nature" (143-45).
So how important is biblical religion for natural law? At times, Levering seems to be suggesting that we need biblical revelation to resolve moral disputes where natural law by itself is insufficient. But he does not give any clear examples of this.
As I have written previously on this blog, biblical moral teaching often suffers from disputes over its authority, its clarity, and its reliability. Those who are not biblical believers will not accept the authority of the Bible as revelation. Even those in the biblical tradition will disagree about this, because Jews will not always agree with Christians, and Muslims will not always agree with Jews and Christians. Levering assumes the position of a Christian, which suggests that the New Testament has superseded the Hebrew Bible and that the Koran has no authority as revelation.
Moreover, the Bible is often not clear or reliable in its moral teaching. For example, in the debate over the morality of slavery, the Bible could be quoted on both sides. Actually, in every passage of the Bible where slavery is specifically mentioned, it is endorsed. That's why the proslavery people in the American South thought they were the true Christians. The failure of the Bible to properly resolve the debate over slavery is why the American Civil War became a theological crisis for biblical believers.
The teaching of universal love in Jesus' Sermon on the Mount demands pacifism. But a crucial part of natural law is the tradition of just war, which allows for justified killing. Levering embraces the universal love teaching, but he never explains how this can be compatible with just war. And even as he endorses universal love, Levering quotes from the Book of Revelations without considering the implications of the bloody warfare at the end of history prophesied in this last book of the New Testament (222).
Moreover, Levering is silent about the brutal violence of the Old Testament that has led the Catholic Church to indicate that the Old Testament cannot be a reliable text for moral teaching.
Levering's primary argument for the necessity of biblical revelation in supporting natural law is that only through such revelation can we see the ultimate explanation for natural law as rooted in God's creation of nature. But when we seek for ultimate explanations, aren't we forced back to one of two explanations? All explanation depends on some ultimate reality that is unexplained. The naturalist will say that all explanation presupposes the observable order of the natural world as the final ground of explanation that cannot itself be explained: that's just the way it is! And yet the biblical believer will say that behind nature is nature's God. We must ultimately appeal either to an uncaused nature or an uncaused God. But either of these ultimate grounds of order will support natural law.
Some of these themes have been taken up in some previous posts, which can be found here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here., here, and here.
[In some later posts (in August of 2011), I have argued that Thomas Aquinas's teaching on natural law is rooted in Aristotle's biology, that this is particularly clear in Aquinas's biological account of the natural law of sex, marriage, and parental care, and that much of this biological reasoning for natural law can be confirmed by modern Darwinian biology. Levering is silent about Aquinas's reliance on Aristotle's biology.]
This argument for Darwinian natural law comes up in Darwinian Natural Right, in Darwinian Conservatism, and in the Aquinas chapter of Political Questions: Political Philosophy from Plato to Rawls. But the fullest statement of this argument is in my paper on "Thomistic Natural Law as Darwinian Natural Right," which was published as an article in Social Philosophy & Policy (vol. 18, no. 1, winter 2001) and as a book chapter in Natural Law and Modern Moral Philosophy, edited by E. F. Paul, F. D. Miller, and J. Paul (Cambridge University Press, 2001).
Religious conservatives have objected to my argument by insisting that Thomistic natural law must be founded in the biblical religious belief in God as the Creator of nature who orders nature to his cosmic ends. After all, how can there be a "natural law" without a divine lawmaker? If so, then Darwinian natural science cannot support the Thomistic natural law tradition unless there is some biblical religious belief behind it.
This thinking is well developed in Matthew Levering's new book Biblical Natural Law: A Theocratic and Teleological Approach (Oxford University Press, 2008). But although Levering--a theology professor at Ave Maria University, Naples, Florida--would probably reject my idea of Darwinian natural law, there are some fundamental points of agreement between us.
Levering states his main idea in one sentence: "While all human beings know the natural law at least to some degree, explanations of the character and content of the natural law are greatly assisted by faith, and thus also by biblical revelation" (4). The ambiguity in his position is suggested by the phrases "at least to some degree" and "greatly assisted." He indicates that he is employing a distinction between natural law and explanations of natural law stated by Ralph McInerny: "It would be odd for anyone to say that everyone's grasp of fundamental guides for moral action involves explicit recognition of the existence of God. But it is not odd to say that any adequate account or theory of such fundamental guides must make appeal to God's existence."
I argue that while religious belief can reinforce our natural moral sense, natural morality can stand on its own natural ground in the natural desires of human beings even without any religious belief. A Darwinian science of morality can recognize the importance of religious traditions in sustaining morality. But in so far as morality is rooted in evolved human nature, the natural moral sense can be based on natural human experience without any appeal to supernatural revelation.
As a Christian, Thomas Aquinas believes that the natural moral law is ultimately explained as part of the eternal law of God as the Creator of nature. But still, Aquinas distinguishes the natural law as apprehended in natural human experience and the divine law as revealed to the faithful in the Bible. I interpret this to mean that even those people who do not believe in the Bible as divine revelation of God's moral law can understand and obey natural law. Although Levering generally seems to agree with this, some of what he says in his book suggests that natural law cannot stand on its own without the divine law of the Bible.
At one point, Levering makes a vague reference to my Darwinian Natural Right. He says that my book "equates Darwinian teleology (survival of the fittest) with the teleology of natural inclinations" (12). Although he does not explain his position here, he implies by the context that my "Darwinian teleology" cannot properly explain natural law as based on a divinely ordained cosmic teleology.
This is unclear, however, because elsewhere in his book, Levering seems to endorse the arguments of Alasdair MacIntyre and Jean Porter for a teleology rooted in natural science (170-71). In fact, MacIntyre--in his Dependent Rational Animals--has agreed with my claim that an Aristotelian and Thomistic ethical naturalism can be supported with a Darwinian account of human nature and natural teleology.
In explaining natural law, Aquinas quotes from Ulpian, an ancient Roman jurist: "Natural right is that which nature has taught all animals." To illustrate the natural inclinations that human beings share with other animals, Ulpian referred to the sexual union of male and female and the parental care of offspring as animal propensities that sustain human marriage and family life in conformity to natural law. Like Ulpian, Aquinas speaks of the human disposition to marriage as a "natural instinct of the human species." This biological basis for natural law is also evident in Aquinas's many references to Aristotle's biology and to the zoology of Albert the Great, Aquinas's teacher at the University of Paris.
It is odd that Levering says almost nothing about Aquinas's biological explanations for natural law. He makes some passing references to Aquinas's citation of Ulpian, but without any elaboration. And when he lays out Aquinas's famous description of the levels of natural human inclinations supporting natural law, Levering omits Aquinas's reference to Ulpian (141, 145, 160, 185).
Levering agrees with me about the primacy of Aquinas's claim that "the good is the desirable" (58, 172). He also agrees with me that this Thomistic appeal to natural desires is ignored by John Finnis and his followers who take a Kantian direction in trying to root natural law in "the order of reason" as opposed to the "order of nature" (143-45).
So how important is biblical religion for natural law? At times, Levering seems to be suggesting that we need biblical revelation to resolve moral disputes where natural law by itself is insufficient. But he does not give any clear examples of this.
As I have written previously on this blog, biblical moral teaching often suffers from disputes over its authority, its clarity, and its reliability. Those who are not biblical believers will not accept the authority of the Bible as revelation. Even those in the biblical tradition will disagree about this, because Jews will not always agree with Christians, and Muslims will not always agree with Jews and Christians. Levering assumes the position of a Christian, which suggests that the New Testament has superseded the Hebrew Bible and that the Koran has no authority as revelation.
Moreover, the Bible is often not clear or reliable in its moral teaching. For example, in the debate over the morality of slavery, the Bible could be quoted on both sides. Actually, in every passage of the Bible where slavery is specifically mentioned, it is endorsed. That's why the proslavery people in the American South thought they were the true Christians. The failure of the Bible to properly resolve the debate over slavery is why the American Civil War became a theological crisis for biblical believers.
The teaching of universal love in Jesus' Sermon on the Mount demands pacifism. But a crucial part of natural law is the tradition of just war, which allows for justified killing. Levering embraces the universal love teaching, but he never explains how this can be compatible with just war. And even as he endorses universal love, Levering quotes from the Book of Revelations without considering the implications of the bloody warfare at the end of history prophesied in this last book of the New Testament (222).
Moreover, Levering is silent about the brutal violence of the Old Testament that has led the Catholic Church to indicate that the Old Testament cannot be a reliable text for moral teaching.
Levering's primary argument for the necessity of biblical revelation in supporting natural law is that only through such revelation can we see the ultimate explanation for natural law as rooted in God's creation of nature. But when we seek for ultimate explanations, aren't we forced back to one of two explanations? All explanation depends on some ultimate reality that is unexplained. The naturalist will say that all explanation presupposes the observable order of the natural world as the final ground of explanation that cannot itself be explained: that's just the way it is! And yet the biblical believer will say that behind nature is nature's God. We must ultimately appeal either to an uncaused nature or an uncaused God. But either of these ultimate grounds of order will support natural law.
Some of these themes have been taken up in some previous posts, which can be found here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here., here, and here.
[In some later posts (in August of 2011), I have argued that Thomas Aquinas's teaching on natural law is rooted in Aristotle's biology, that this is particularly clear in Aquinas's biological account of the natural law of sex, marriage, and parental care, and that much of this biological reasoning for natural law can be confirmed by modern Darwinian biology. Levering is silent about Aquinas's reliance on Aristotle's biology.]
Friday, December 19, 2008
The Fascist Corporatism of Bush and Obama
It is a disturbing sign of the times that even though the bailout of the Detroit automakers failed to win congressional approval, President Bush has just announced that he will carry out the bailout on his own authority. At the same time, Henry Paulsen has announced that he has already spent $350 billion of the financial bailout money and is now prepared to spend the second $350 billion. All of this and more has been supported by Barack Obama who promises to continue in the path of Bush towards using taxpayer money to protect corporations from collapse while introducing federal management of large sectors of the American economy. During the presidential campaign, John McCain agreed with both Bush and Obama on the need for such governmental control of the economy.
So what do we call this? This is not free-market capitalism, because government is intervening to protect failing corporations from the consequences of their economic decisions. This is not pure socialism, because private property and markets have not been completely abolished by the government intervention. In a previous post, I called this "market socialism." But a better label might be "fascist corporatism."
Corporatism emerged in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as an attempt at finding middle ground between pure capitalism and pure socialism. The idea is that while property would be mostly privately held and largely subject to market mechanisms, government would intervene to manage the economy to protect the social good.
Corporatism was a crucial element of Benito Mussolini's fascism. In "The Doctrine of Fascism" (1932), Mussolini criticized the individualism and greedy materialism of classical liberalism. Against this, he argued for the "corporative system" in which "divergent interests are coordinated and harmonized in the unity of the State." This would support Fascism as "an organized, centralized, authoritarian democracy." "If liberalism spells individualism, Fascism spells government."
After quoting some classical liberals about the need for free markets and limited government, Mussolini pointed to the global economic crisis that began in 1929 and asked: "What would they say now to the unceasing, inevitable, and urgently requested interventions of government in business?" Franklin Roosevelt adopted many of Mussolini's arguments and policies as the basis for the New Deal.
Doesn't this sound familiar? Isn't this the rhetoric of Bush and Obama? And just as Mussolini insisted on the need for charismatic leadership in a time of crisis, don't we see Obama presenting himself as the great leader who will save us?
From the viewpoint of Darwinian conservatism, Fascist corporatism is foolish and dangerous because it ignores the imperfection of human nature in both knowledge and virtue.
Because of the imperfection of human knowledge, governmental planners never know enough to plan a large, complex economy. They act without knowing what they are doing. Far from pulling the country out of the Great Depression, FDR's policies actually made the economy worse--as indicated by the new economic slump in his second term. But no matter how often his policies failed, FDR never lost confidence as he tried one thing after another. Obama has said this is what he most admires in FDR--the confidence in trying anything without any coherent understanding of what he was doing. Don't we see this now in the chaotic moves from one bailout plan to another without any persuasive rationale for why any plan will really improve things rather than make things worse?
Because of the imperfection of human virtue, the concentration of power in the hands of a few people makes corruption inevitable. When a few people in the executive branch of government are free to hand out trillions of taxpayer dollars to businesses and individuals, we know that this will be distorted by ambition and avarice.
By contrast, Darwinian conservatism looks to the principles of dispersed knowledge and countervailing power. No single mind or group of minds know enough to manage a large, complex economy. Free markets allow for the allocation of resources through an emergent order of exchanges that draws from the knowledge of ever-changing economic factors dispersed over millions of individuals facing local conditions. This free-market system is not planned out, and so it works through unpredictable cycles of boom and bust that are painful to those who have made bad business decisions. But any attempt to smooth this out through centrally planned governmental planning will only prolong the economic slumps.
Darwinian conservatism subscribes to Lord Acton's famous maxim: "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." There is no perfect protection against the corruption of power. But we can at least try to create institutional structures in which "ambition counteracts ambition." But what we see now in the United States is a concentration of power in the President and the executive branch with very little countervailing power. Bush's bailout of Detroit a few days after Congress failed to authorize this is only one of many examples of how American government has been transformed into a presidential government based on the sort of executive leadership favored by the Fascists.
A few months ago, I predicted that if Bush and Obama continued on the path of massive governmental interventions in the economy, the consequence would be a deepening crisis over many years comparable to the Great Depression. Events over the past few months suggest that is exactly where we headed.
Further analysis of the history of Fascist corporatism in America can be found in a recent article by David Boaz and an earlier article by Anthony Gregory. The link between Fascism and corporatism is clear in Mussolini's "Doctrine of Fascism."
So what do we call this? This is not free-market capitalism, because government is intervening to protect failing corporations from the consequences of their economic decisions. This is not pure socialism, because private property and markets have not been completely abolished by the government intervention. In a previous post, I called this "market socialism." But a better label might be "fascist corporatism."
Corporatism emerged in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as an attempt at finding middle ground between pure capitalism and pure socialism. The idea is that while property would be mostly privately held and largely subject to market mechanisms, government would intervene to manage the economy to protect the social good.
Corporatism was a crucial element of Benito Mussolini's fascism. In "The Doctrine of Fascism" (1932), Mussolini criticized the individualism and greedy materialism of classical liberalism. Against this, he argued for the "corporative system" in which "divergent interests are coordinated and harmonized in the unity of the State." This would support Fascism as "an organized, centralized, authoritarian democracy." "If liberalism spells individualism, Fascism spells government."
After quoting some classical liberals about the need for free markets and limited government, Mussolini pointed to the global economic crisis that began in 1929 and asked: "What would they say now to the unceasing, inevitable, and urgently requested interventions of government in business?" Franklin Roosevelt adopted many of Mussolini's arguments and policies as the basis for the New Deal.
Doesn't this sound familiar? Isn't this the rhetoric of Bush and Obama? And just as Mussolini insisted on the need for charismatic leadership in a time of crisis, don't we see Obama presenting himself as the great leader who will save us?
From the viewpoint of Darwinian conservatism, Fascist corporatism is foolish and dangerous because it ignores the imperfection of human nature in both knowledge and virtue.
Because of the imperfection of human knowledge, governmental planners never know enough to plan a large, complex economy. They act without knowing what they are doing. Far from pulling the country out of the Great Depression, FDR's policies actually made the economy worse--as indicated by the new economic slump in his second term. But no matter how often his policies failed, FDR never lost confidence as he tried one thing after another. Obama has said this is what he most admires in FDR--the confidence in trying anything without any coherent understanding of what he was doing. Don't we see this now in the chaotic moves from one bailout plan to another without any persuasive rationale for why any plan will really improve things rather than make things worse?
Because of the imperfection of human virtue, the concentration of power in the hands of a few people makes corruption inevitable. When a few people in the executive branch of government are free to hand out trillions of taxpayer dollars to businesses and individuals, we know that this will be distorted by ambition and avarice.
By contrast, Darwinian conservatism looks to the principles of dispersed knowledge and countervailing power. No single mind or group of minds know enough to manage a large, complex economy. Free markets allow for the allocation of resources through an emergent order of exchanges that draws from the knowledge of ever-changing economic factors dispersed over millions of individuals facing local conditions. This free-market system is not planned out, and so it works through unpredictable cycles of boom and bust that are painful to those who have made bad business decisions. But any attempt to smooth this out through centrally planned governmental planning will only prolong the economic slumps.
Darwinian conservatism subscribes to Lord Acton's famous maxim: "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." There is no perfect protection against the corruption of power. But we can at least try to create institutional structures in which "ambition counteracts ambition." But what we see now in the United States is a concentration of power in the President and the executive branch with very little countervailing power. Bush's bailout of Detroit a few days after Congress failed to authorize this is only one of many examples of how American government has been transformed into a presidential government based on the sort of executive leadership favored by the Fascists.
A few months ago, I predicted that if Bush and Obama continued on the path of massive governmental interventions in the economy, the consequence would be a deepening crisis over many years comparable to the Great Depression. Events over the past few months suggest that is exactly where we headed.
Further analysis of the history of Fascist corporatism in America can be found in a recent article by David Boaz and an earlier article by Anthony Gregory. The link between Fascism and corporatism is clear in Mussolini's "Doctrine of Fascism."
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Do Women Really Want to Become Men? Linda Hirshman's Feminism
In the United States, about half of the mothers of infant children choose to stay at home with their children instead working outside the home. Many of us--including many feminists--would say there is nothing wrong with this as long as it is a free choice. But feminist Linda Hirshman says this choice is immoral because these women are depriving themselves of the fully human good life that can only come from pursuing the wealth, power, and status found in the public spheres outside the home. A few years ago, Hirshman argued her case in an article for American Prospect, which provoked an intense debate in the media. Recently, Lauren Hall has posted an article criticizing Hirshman for ignoring the biological nature of women that inclines many of them to prefer caring for children unencumbered with working outside the home.
I'm on Hall's side in this debate. But I should admit a personal bias. Hall--a political scientist teaching at Rochester Institute of Technology--was a doctoral student of mine at Northern Illinois University, where she studied political theory and biopolitics.
Hirshman argues that feminism has failed in adopting "choice feminism"--based on the idea that women are free as long as they have equal opportunity to choose how they want to live. The failure is that while feminism has opened up the public world to women, the private world of family life is still patriarchal in that most of the child care and housework is done by women. On the one hand, women now have unprecedented opportunities for education and professional training and for careers in the work world. On the other hand, many of these well-educated and professionally trained women choose to withdraw from their careers so that they can spend more time with their children at home. Hirshman elaborates her reasoning in her book Get to Work: A Manifesto for Women of the World (2006). In the book, she declares: "Bounding home is not good for women and it's not good for the society. The women aren't using their capacities fully; their so-called free choice makes them unfree dependents on their husbands." Moreover, "child care and housekeeping have satisfying moments but are not occupations likely to produce a flourishing life" (2).
Against the "relativism" of "choice feminism," Hirshman defends a "values feminism" based on moral standards for a good or flourishing life. Appealing to a philosophical moral tradition that begins with Plato and Aristotle, Hirshman declares that "a good life for humans includes the classical standard of using one's capacities for speech and reason in a prudent way, the liberal requirement of having enough autonomy to direct one's own life, and the utilitarian test of doing more good than harm in the world." Looking to such standards, she insists, we can see that when women choose to stay home with their children, they are making bad choices--bad for them and bad for society. To truly flourish, women need professional careers that give them "power, honor, money, exercise of capacities."
In response, Hall observes that many women often have less interest than men do in striving for dominance in arenas of competition outside the family. So what Hirshman is really saying is that women cannot live good lives unless they become just like men. Moreover, Hall sees Hirshman as ignoring the evolved human nature of men and women. "The biological clock that most women hear ticking isn't the clock of patriarchal oppression. It's hormones, it's biology, and, unfortunately for the feminists, for most women, it's destiny. We want to have and hold children because that's how our bodies are set up."
Like Hall, I think the differences in the choices typical on average for men and women are not just cultural constructions of "gender ideology," as Hirshman suggests, but manifestations of natural differences shaped by human evolutionary history. In her book, Hirshman dismisses this objection in only four pages as "the monkey explanation" (74-77). She claims there is no way to scientifically test evolutionary psychology. And she suggests the "natural hausfrau scenario" is implausible, because about half of American mothers work outside the home. "If women are programmed, as conservatives contend, to stay home with their children and keep house, there's an awful lot of unnatural activity going on."
In denying that there is any evidence for evolved, natural differences in male and female psychology, Hirshman ignores the extensive neurophysiological studies of how the "female brain" differs from the "male brain." My recent posts on Louann Brizendine's The Female Brain point to some of this evidence.
To refer to the "natural hausfrau scenario" ignores the complexity of women's natural desires. As is clear in Brizendine's book as well as the writing of Sarah Blaffer Hrdy--particularly, Mother Nature--the Darwinian science of women's nature presents women as complex and ambivalent in making difficult decisions about the trade offs that must be made in trying to satisfy a wide range of sometimes conflicting natural desires.
As I have said in my writing about the twenty natural desires of human nature, women and men differ on average in their propensities. And yet all human beings--women as well as men--must balance one desire against others. Women in general (on average) tend to be more nurturing as manifested in a greater propensity to care for children, and men in general (on average) tend to be more dominant as manifested in a greater propensity to seek high-status positions. And yet women in general also seek wealth, power, and status, and they must make sometimes difficult decisions about how to combine their desires for maternal care and familial bonding with desires for ambitious advancement in the realms of social, economic, and political competition.
In her book, Hirshman writes: "Without regard to class, in 2004, only 38 percent of married mothers with husbands and children under one in the house worked full time--13 percent work part time, another 3 percent are looking for work. Married women with children under five and a husband around worked at a rate of only 62 percent" (10).
"Only"? "Only 62 percent"? Doesn't this show that when women have equal opportunities with men, many women--over half--will want to work outside the home even when they have young children? But doesn't this also show that for many women the struggle to balance child care against career ambition will force difficult trade offs? And about half of the women will decide to stay at home with the children, at least during the early years of infancy.
Hirshman talks about the need for prudence in deciding how best to live a flourishing life. But she seems blind to the need for women's prudence in deciding what is best in one's individual circumstances, where there is no abstract rule to settle the decision for all individuals in all circumstances. Hirshman is confident that she has the one rule applicable to all cases--every woman must always work outside the home to live a flourishing life, and therefore any woman who decides it's best for her and those she loves to stay at home with her infant children should be condemned for making an immoral choice.
A Darwinian science of sexual identity can clarify the differing natural propensities of men and women. But it cannot decide what is best for every individual woman and man in every set of circumstances. That's why I emphasize the need for prudence or practical wisdom as men and women deliberate about how best to satisfy their sometimes conflicting natural desires.
So what's Hirshman's practical advice? She offers four rules. First, women shouldn't spend too much time in a liberal arts education, because they should be going for professional training that will prepare them to win high-paying jobs. Women should give up their idealistic interests in the arts and the humanities. Second, they should take their careers seriously, and that means never quitting a job just because it's not personally satisfying to them. Third, they should negotiate the best deal they can with any prospective husband. A woman's biggest mistake is marrying a man slightly older and richer than she is, because this man will be in a superior bargaining position. It's better to marry a man who is much younger or much older, because it will be easier for her to pressure him into doing lots of household work. Finally, "use reproductive blackmail." If a woman wants to have a baby, she should. But she should never have more than one! Because it's the second baby that begins to take up too much time for the working mother.
Isn't this pretty wimpy advice? If Hirshman's women really are putting their careers first, why not remain unmarried and childless? After all, there are plenty of good role models here--Condolezza Rice and others.
Of course, there are many women who never marry and never have any children who live flourishing lives. But most women would not regard this as a fully good life. Doesn't Hirshman implicitly concede that in her rules? Is this because she knows that for most women the natural desires for marriage and children are so deep that frustrating them creates a sense of an unfulfilled life?
Hirshman has written a blog post criticizing Brizendine's book. I agree with her that Brizendine is often sloppy in her citations of research. But even so, most of Brizendine's general points about the neurophysiology of the female brain are well supported. My posts on Brizendine can be found here, here, and here.
I'm on Hall's side in this debate. But I should admit a personal bias. Hall--a political scientist teaching at Rochester Institute of Technology--was a doctoral student of mine at Northern Illinois University, where she studied political theory and biopolitics.
Hirshman argues that feminism has failed in adopting "choice feminism"--based on the idea that women are free as long as they have equal opportunity to choose how they want to live. The failure is that while feminism has opened up the public world to women, the private world of family life is still patriarchal in that most of the child care and housework is done by women. On the one hand, women now have unprecedented opportunities for education and professional training and for careers in the work world. On the other hand, many of these well-educated and professionally trained women choose to withdraw from their careers so that they can spend more time with their children at home. Hirshman elaborates her reasoning in her book Get to Work: A Manifesto for Women of the World (2006). In the book, she declares: "Bounding home is not good for women and it's not good for the society. The women aren't using their capacities fully; their so-called free choice makes them unfree dependents on their husbands." Moreover, "child care and housekeeping have satisfying moments but are not occupations likely to produce a flourishing life" (2).
Against the "relativism" of "choice feminism," Hirshman defends a "values feminism" based on moral standards for a good or flourishing life. Appealing to a philosophical moral tradition that begins with Plato and Aristotle, Hirshman declares that "a good life for humans includes the classical standard of using one's capacities for speech and reason in a prudent way, the liberal requirement of having enough autonomy to direct one's own life, and the utilitarian test of doing more good than harm in the world." Looking to such standards, she insists, we can see that when women choose to stay home with their children, they are making bad choices--bad for them and bad for society. To truly flourish, women need professional careers that give them "power, honor, money, exercise of capacities."
In response, Hall observes that many women often have less interest than men do in striving for dominance in arenas of competition outside the family. So what Hirshman is really saying is that women cannot live good lives unless they become just like men. Moreover, Hall sees Hirshman as ignoring the evolved human nature of men and women. "The biological clock that most women hear ticking isn't the clock of patriarchal oppression. It's hormones, it's biology, and, unfortunately for the feminists, for most women, it's destiny. We want to have and hold children because that's how our bodies are set up."
Like Hall, I think the differences in the choices typical on average for men and women are not just cultural constructions of "gender ideology," as Hirshman suggests, but manifestations of natural differences shaped by human evolutionary history. In her book, Hirshman dismisses this objection in only four pages as "the monkey explanation" (74-77). She claims there is no way to scientifically test evolutionary psychology. And she suggests the "natural hausfrau scenario" is implausible, because about half of American mothers work outside the home. "If women are programmed, as conservatives contend, to stay home with their children and keep house, there's an awful lot of unnatural activity going on."
In denying that there is any evidence for evolved, natural differences in male and female psychology, Hirshman ignores the extensive neurophysiological studies of how the "female brain" differs from the "male brain." My recent posts on Louann Brizendine's The Female Brain point to some of this evidence.
To refer to the "natural hausfrau scenario" ignores the complexity of women's natural desires. As is clear in Brizendine's book as well as the writing of Sarah Blaffer Hrdy--particularly, Mother Nature--the Darwinian science of women's nature presents women as complex and ambivalent in making difficult decisions about the trade offs that must be made in trying to satisfy a wide range of sometimes conflicting natural desires.
As I have said in my writing about the twenty natural desires of human nature, women and men differ on average in their propensities. And yet all human beings--women as well as men--must balance one desire against others. Women in general (on average) tend to be more nurturing as manifested in a greater propensity to care for children, and men in general (on average) tend to be more dominant as manifested in a greater propensity to seek high-status positions. And yet women in general also seek wealth, power, and status, and they must make sometimes difficult decisions about how to combine their desires for maternal care and familial bonding with desires for ambitious advancement in the realms of social, economic, and political competition.
In her book, Hirshman writes: "Without regard to class, in 2004, only 38 percent of married mothers with husbands and children under one in the house worked full time--13 percent work part time, another 3 percent are looking for work. Married women with children under five and a husband around worked at a rate of only 62 percent" (10).
"Only"? "Only 62 percent"? Doesn't this show that when women have equal opportunities with men, many women--over half--will want to work outside the home even when they have young children? But doesn't this also show that for many women the struggle to balance child care against career ambition will force difficult trade offs? And about half of the women will decide to stay at home with the children, at least during the early years of infancy.
Hirshman talks about the need for prudence in deciding how best to live a flourishing life. But she seems blind to the need for women's prudence in deciding what is best in one's individual circumstances, where there is no abstract rule to settle the decision for all individuals in all circumstances. Hirshman is confident that she has the one rule applicable to all cases--every woman must always work outside the home to live a flourishing life, and therefore any woman who decides it's best for her and those she loves to stay at home with her infant children should be condemned for making an immoral choice.
A Darwinian science of sexual identity can clarify the differing natural propensities of men and women. But it cannot decide what is best for every individual woman and man in every set of circumstances. That's why I emphasize the need for prudence or practical wisdom as men and women deliberate about how best to satisfy their sometimes conflicting natural desires.
So what's Hirshman's practical advice? She offers four rules. First, women shouldn't spend too much time in a liberal arts education, because they should be going for professional training that will prepare them to win high-paying jobs. Women should give up their idealistic interests in the arts and the humanities. Second, they should take their careers seriously, and that means never quitting a job just because it's not personally satisfying to them. Third, they should negotiate the best deal they can with any prospective husband. A woman's biggest mistake is marrying a man slightly older and richer than she is, because this man will be in a superior bargaining position. It's better to marry a man who is much younger or much older, because it will be easier for her to pressure him into doing lots of household work. Finally, "use reproductive blackmail." If a woman wants to have a baby, she should. But she should never have more than one! Because it's the second baby that begins to take up too much time for the working mother.
Isn't this pretty wimpy advice? If Hirshman's women really are putting their careers first, why not remain unmarried and childless? After all, there are plenty of good role models here--Condolezza Rice and others.
Of course, there are many women who never marry and never have any children who live flourishing lives. But most women would not regard this as a fully good life. Doesn't Hirshman implicitly concede that in her rules? Is this because she knows that for most women the natural desires for marriage and children are so deep that frustrating them creates a sense of an unfulfilled life?
Hirshman has written a blog post criticizing Brizendine's book. I agree with her that Brizendine is often sloppy in her citations of research. But even so, most of Brizendine's general points about the neurophysiology of the female brain are well supported. My posts on Brizendine can be found here, here, and here.
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