The Darwinian conservatism of the permanent things requires a biological teleology of human nature. Because one needs to claim that evolved human nature is directed to certain ends or goals that constitute the natural norms (the permanent things) of human existence, so that the fulfillment of those norms can be understood as the human good.
By contrast, the metaphysical conservatives argue that modern science--and particularly Darwinian biology--denies teleology in denying that human beings can have natural ends. The metaphysical conservatives claim that for modern science, all reality is understood to be nothing but the blind motion of particles in space governed by material and mechanistic laws of motion; and in such a world, there can be no final causation. At the Kirk Center conference, that claim was made by Robert Koons (University of Texas at Austin) on a panel on "Conservatism and Religion."
Koons said this as part of his general argument that modern science has been "mostly a very bad thing." On this point, he saw himself as agreeing with C. S. Lewis in The Abolition of Man that "modern science was born at an inauspicious hour and in an unhealthy neighborhood."
I saw two problems in Koons' presentation. First, he identified modern science with a reductionistic physics, and he was silent about the emergent complexity of biology. Second, in arguing that modern science rejects teleology, he ignored the distinction between cosmic teleology and immanent teleology.
EMERGENT COMPLEXITY IN DARWINIAN BIOLOGY
In my chapter on "Emergence" in Darwinian Conservatism, I argue for the "emergent evolution of the soul in the brain," and I defend the idea of emergence as an alternative to both reductionism and dualism. As I have argued in previous posts, the simplest expression of the idea of emergence is that the whole can be greater than the sum of its parts. Emergent phenomena are those complex wholes with properties that we could not explain or predict from our knowledge of the parts. For example, when hydrogen and oxygen combine chemically to form water, we see emergent properties in water that we could not have predicted from the properties of hydrogen and oxygen. This emergence of novelty is manifested throughout the evolution of the universe. As we pass through levels of complexity, we find new properties at higher levels that are not fully reducible to the lower levels. This idea of emergence denies strong reductionism, because it denies that the higher levels of organization can be completely reduced to the lower levels. But the idea of emergence also denies dualism, because it denies any radical separation of matter and mind.
In his Descent of Man, Charles Darwin recognized--if only implicitly--that human beings show an emergent difference in kind from other animals. Darwin noted that self-consciousness is uniquely human: "It may be freely admitted that no animal is self-conscious, if by this term it is implied, that he reflects on such points, as whence he comes or whither he will go, or what is life and death, and so forth" (105). Morality is also uniquely human: "A moral being is one who is capable of comparing his past and future actions or motives, and of approving or disapproving of them. We have no reason to suppose that any of the lower animals have this capacity. . . . man . . . alone can with certainty be ranked as a moral being" (135). And language is uniquely human: "The habitual use of articulate language is . . . peculiar to man" (107).
Darwin could implicitly affirm such emergent differences in kind without affirming any radical differences in kind. Emergent differences in kind can be explained by natural science as differences in kind that naturally evolve from differences in degree that pass over a critical threshold of complexity. So, for example, we can see the uniquely human capacities for self-consciousness, morality, and language as emerging from the evolutionary expansion of the primate brain, so that at some critical point in the evolution of our ancestors, the size and complexity of the brain (perhaps particularly in the frontal cortex) reached a point where distinctively human cognitive capacities emerged at higher levels of brain evolution that are not found in other primates. With such emergent differences in kind, there is an underlying unbroken continuity between human beings and their hominid ancestors, so there is no need to posit some supernatural intervention in nature that would create a radical difference in kind in which there is a gap with no underlying continuity.
Now we know from the work of neuroscientist Suzana Herculano-Houzel that human beings are unique as compared with other primates in that human beings have 16 billion neurons in the cerebral cortex, which includes 1.3 billion in the prefrontal cortex. The human mind or soul can arise from a natural process of emergent evolution in which differences in degree become differences in kind after passing over a critical threshold in the size and complexity of the primate brain. As a consequence of her research, we can now identify that critical threshold as the remarkably large number of neurons in the human cerebral cortex and particularly in the prefrontal cortex. That probably explains the three points of human uniqueness that Darwin saw--self-conscious awareness, morality, and language.
Koons is silent about this emergent complexity of human biology in asserting that all of modern science must reduce reality to the motion of particles in space.
IMMANENT TELEOLOGY IN DARWINIAN BIOLOGY
Koons is also silent about how Darwinian biologists recognize the immanent teleology of living beings even though they deny the cosmic teleology of the universe. In insisting that modern science denies teleology, Koons has to assume that cosmic teleology is the only kind of teleology. And thus he ignores the fact that for Aristotle natural teleology was more clearly biological than cosmological.
As I have argued previously, Darwin recognized the teleological character of his evolutionary science. In an article in Nature, Asa Gray wrote: "let us recognize Darwin's great service to Natural Science in bringing back to it Teleology; so that instead of Morphology versus Teleology, we shall have Morphology wedded to Teleology." In response to this, Darwin wrote to Gray (June 5, 1874): "What you say about Teleology pleases me especially and I do not think anyone else has ever noted that." So, we can infer, that when Darwin read Aristotle's explanation of biological teleology in the Parts of Animals and expressed his admiration for Aristotle's biological science, Darwin saw that he really was bringing back into science a teleological conception of living nature that was originally formulated by Aristotle.
We need to see that while Darwin denied cosmic teleology, he affirmed immanent teleology. The natural evolution of living beings does not conform to any cosmic design. But that natural evolution does produce species that show an internal teleology in being directed to ends or goals. For example, a mammalian species is naturally adapted for parental care, so that mothers caring for their offspring can be explained teleologically as goal-directed behavior. Such species-specific, immanent teleology is the only kind of teleology that Aristotle saw in the living world, and modern biology confirms such Aristotelian teleology.
Insofar as Darwinian biology allows for emergent complexity and immanent teleology, this is enough for a Darwinian conservatism.
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