Stephen Sanderson and the Twenty Natural Desires of Evolved Human Nature

If the good is the desirable, then human ethics is natural insofar as it satisfies natural human desires that naturally win social approval as useful or agreeable to oneself or to others.  The satisfaction of these natural desires constitutes a natural standard for judging social practice as either fulfilling or frustrating human nature, although prudence is required in judging what is best for particular people in particular social circumstances. 

By this standard, the modern bourgeois liberal regime can be recognized as the best regime so far in human history, because no other regime has satisfied those natural desires so well for so many people.  Or, to put it another way, the liberal regime has been more successful than any other regime so far in securing for human beings their equal liberty for the pursuit of happiness.

In Darwinian Natural Right and Darwinian Conservatism, I have argued that there are at least twenty natural desires: human beings generally desire (1) a complete life, (2) parental care, (3) sexual identify, (4) sexual mating, (5) familial bonding, (6) friendship, (7) social ranking, (8) justice as reciprocity, (9) political rule, (10) war, (11) health, (12) beauty, (13) property, (14) speech, (15) practical habituation, (16) practical reasoning, (17) practical arts, (18) aesthetic pleasure, (19) religious understanding, and (20) intellectual understanding.

I have argued that these twenty natural desires are universally found in all human societies, that they have evolved by natural selection over millions of years of human evolutionary history to become components of the species-specific nature of human beings, that they are rooted in the physiological mechanisms of the brain, that they direct and limit the social variability of human beings as adapted to diverse ecological circumstances, and that different individuals with different temperaments will rank these desires differently.

My selection of these twenty desires as natural and universal is supported by various kinds of evidence.  Social scientists who have surveyed the anthropological evidence have shown that there are hundreds of human universals, which are clustered around the twenty desires on my list.  Psychologists who study human motivation recognize these twenty desires as manifesting the basic motives for human action. Survey data from psychologists who ask people what is most important to them confirm the primacy of these twenty desires.  When Aristotle, in the Nicomachean Ethics and the Rhetoric, reviews the common opinions of human beings about what is desirable in life, he includes the twenty desires on my list.  When an Aristotelian scholar like Martha Nussbaum describes the "basic human functions" that support universal norms of moral judgment, she includes the desires on my list.

There is evidence that this pattern of twenty desires developed in the Pleistocene environment of our hunting-gathering ancestors, from about 1.6 million years ago up to the invention of agriculture about 11,000 years ago.  This was the evolutionary environment in which human nature was shaped by natural selection.  The historical record of human civilization since the development of agriculture shows human beings as moved by these twenty desires.

My survey of the evidence is not as good as that provided by Stephen Sanderson in two of his books--The Evolution of Human Sociality (Rowman and Littlefield, 2001) and Human Nature and the Evolution of Society (Westview Press, 2014).  Sanderson is one of the few sociologists who has promoted a Darwinian science of sociology.  Of all the social sciences, sociology has been most resistant to Darwinian science, because so many sociologists believe that human society is a purely cultural construction unconstrained by human nature.  Like me, Sanderson argues that while society certainly is "socially constructed," these social constructions are not arbitrary products of an autonomous culture.  Social constructions are constrained by the natural desires and natural conditions of human existence.  Human biological nature constrains but does not determine human cultural history and the choices of human individuals.  Consequently, a Darwinian social science must explain the universality of human natural desires and the variability that comes from variable socioecological conditions and variable temperaments of individuals.  Sanderson shows how that can be done.

Identifying me as a "Darwinian political philosopher," Sanderson accepts my list of twenty natural desires as delineating the most important features of evolved human nature.  But he does offer his own slightly altered version of my list: (1) a complete and long life, (2) health, (3) reproduction and parental care, (4) sexual mating, (5) familial bonding, (6) gender identity, (7) social ranking, (8) wealth, (9) political rule, (10) reciprocal exchange, (11) ethnic identity, (12) beauty, (13) aesthetic pleasure, and (14) religious understanding (2014, p. 382).

Comparing the lists, one can see that he has made some changes.  He has moved "health" from number 11 on my list to number 2. He has changed "justice as reciprocity" to "reciprocal exchange." He has added "ethnic identity" to the list. And he has omitted from his list seven of the desires on my list: (6) friendship, (10) war, (14) speech, (15) practical habituation, (16) practical reasoning, (17) practical arts, and (20) intellectual understanding.

I do not see the justification for omitting these seven, especially since all of these seven desires appear in one way or another in his writing.  He says that friendship could rightly be added to his list (2014, pp. 12, 383).  He writes about the evolution of war (2001, pp. 318-330; 2014, pp. 287-312) and of language (2014, pp. 27-32).  He suggests that intellectual understanding should be added to his list (2014, p. 383).

Sanderson agrees with me that the natural desires cannot all be satisfied at the same time, or even over a whole life.  And so people must rank these desires, and since individuals differ in their natural temperaments and abilities, they will differ in how they rank these desires.  So, for example, as Sanderson observes, Albert Einstein said that he had no need for money, power, or fame to be happy; and so he was not much moved by the natural desires for social ranking, wealth, or political rule.  Einstein said all he needed were his sailboat, his violin, and physics.  And since he spent most of his time on physics, he was clearly ranking his natural desire for intellectual understanding over the other desires (2014, p. 383).  For me, this shows the need for practical habituation and practical reasoning in organizing a life for the fullest and most coherent satisfaction of one's desires over a whole life.

Sanderson has moved me to make two changes in my list.  I have combined a complete life and health into one category.  And I have added ethnic identity to the list.  So now my twenty natural desires are (1) a healthy life, (2) sexual identity, (3) sexual mating, (4) parental care, (5) familial bonding, (6) friendship, (7) social status, (8) justice as reciprocity, (9) political rule, (10) war, (11) ethnic identity, (12) beauty, (13) property, (14) speech, (15) practical habituation, (16) practical reasoning, (17) practical arts, (18) aesthetic arts, (19) religious understanding, and (20) intellectual understanding.

This begins a series of posts on how Sanderson's survey of the evidence for a Darwinian science of human nature supports my list of twenty natural desires.

The Aristotelian and Darwinian Teleology of Ethics and Politics: A Reply to "Darwinian Reactionary"

My argument for Darwinian natural right originated as a response to what Leo Strauss had said in his Introduction to Natural Right and History.  Strauss observed: "natural right in its classic form is connected with a teleological view of the universe.  All natural beings have a natural end, a natural destiny, which determines what kind of operation is good for them."  This dependence of natural right on a teleological view of the universe was clearly seen by Aristotle, Strauss explained.  But the "problem of natural right" today is that "modern natural science seems to have refuted teleology."

I agreed with Roger Masters that Strauss was wrong to suggest that the question of teleology depended on physics or astronomy, because Aristotle's teleology was primarily biological, and so the question was whether teleology is necessary for explaining living nature, and whether modern Darwinian biology supports such a teleological explanation of organisms.

My answer to this question was that Darwinian biology really does support Aristotelian teleology.  My thinking here was decisively influenced by my reading of Allan Gotthelf's dissertation at Columbia University--"Aristotle's Conception of Final Causality" (1975)--and some of his other writing (see my Darwinian Natural Right, 238-43).  I was persuaded by Gotthelf that Aristotle's final causality is best interpreted as living nature's irreducible potential for form: the development, structure, and functioning of a living organism manifest the actualization of its potential for organic form, an actualization that depends on, but is not reducible to, the natural potentialities of its material elements.  Moreover, far from refuting Aristotle's teleology, modern Darwinian biology provides an evolutionary explanation for living nature's irreducible potential for form.

Understanding the Darwinian teleology of human nature supports a teleological standard for both ethics and politics.  Teleological ethics is based on Aristotle's idea that "the good is the desirable" (Rhetoric 1362a22), that there are at least twenty natural desires of evolved human nature, and that to achieve the harmonious ordering of our often conflicting desires over a whole life, which constitutes human happiness or flourishing, requires good habits of choice and prudence--the moral and intellectual virtues examined in Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics and Rhetoric, John Locke's Some Thoughts Concerning Education, and Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments.  We can then see that cultivating those virtues is the natural end of a good social order.  We can also see that a classical liberal--or liberal conservative--social order is best in cultivating those virtues.

Teleological politics is rooted in the evolved political psychology of human nature as a tense balance between dominance, deference, and counter-dominance.  Dominance is the natural propensity of a few politically ambitious individuals to seek the power over others that comes from superior rank in a regime, with these ambitious few competing for the top position.  Deference is the natural propensity of most individuals to submit to those who are politically dominant.  Counter-dominance is the natural propensity of subordinate individuals to resist exploitative dominance.  We can judge political regimes as better or worse, depending on how well they satisfy these evolved political desires of human nature.  And we can see that a liberal constitutional republic that establishes limited government with a balance of powers under the rule of law is the best political order, because it satisfies the evolved desire of the ruling few to dominate while also satisfying the evolved desire of the subordinate many to be free from exploitative dominance, which secures a balance between governmental authority and individual liberty.  What I am calling the "liberal constitutional republic" corresponds to what Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson call "inclusive institutions" and what Douglas North and his colleagues call the "open access society."

But now the "Darwinian Reactionary" (DR) is criticizing my teleological ethics and politics.  The "Darwinian Reactionary" blog has been running now for almost 13 years.  Recently, DR posted an essay entitled "Darwinian Reactionary vs. Darwinian Conservatism vs. Darwinian Left."  He says that his blog was originally inspired by his reading of Peter Singer's Darwinian Left and my Darwinian Natural Right and Darwinian Conservatism.  He was looking for someone who understood the implications of Darwinian science for ethics and politics.  He saw that Singer was good in showing how a Darwinian understanding of human nature made a socialist utopia impossible, but Singer didn't offer any clear program for what the ethics and politics of a Darwinian Left would look like.  

DR agreed with my attempt to revive an Aristotelian teleological understanding of natural ethical and political norms grounded in Darwinian biology.  But he found that while he agreed with many of my premises, he disagreed with most of my conclusions.  He suggests "that Arnhart is neither sufficiently Aristotelian nor Darwinian."  The main reason for that failure, he asserts, is that "Arnhart is missing the bridge between these two titans," which is "the work of Ruth Millikan, and when you walk across that bridge, I would contend, you end up with my positions."  Here he is referring particularly to Millikan's 1984 book Language, Thought, and Other Biological Causes (MIT Press).

He argues for both an ethical theory, which he calls "bioformalism," and a political theory, which he calls "teleoformalism," that he regards as superior to my Darwinian natural right of ethics and politics.

TELEOLOGICAL ETHICS

DR's starting point is Millikan's evolutionary theory of teleological functions.  He explains:

Millikan's Darwinian account of teleology holds an item's proper function is the effect which was replicated because it provided a reproductive benefit.  In the case of living things, we can see that it is the distinctive form of life itself that has been selected for replication because this form of life has proven to be reproductively advantageous.  This is the account of the good that I have called bioformalism.  For humans this is to develop our skills and excellences as children, to attract the best mate possible, to bear and support children, and to work cooperatively with others in order to produce the most advantageous environment in which to live.  The reason Arnhart does not take this path, I would contend, is partially an ignorance of the literature on function, or not fully seeing how it can be applied to Aristotelian teleology, despite spending a lot of time discussing what he calls 'immanent teleology.'  He never cites Millikan despite her being more responsible than anyone for the revival of teleology through a Darwinian lens.

I never cite Millikan because when I read her book, I didn't see that she had added much to what Allan Gotthelf had written about Aristotelian/Darwinian teleology in 1975, 19 years before the publication of her book.  Millikan did not cite Gotthelf in her book, so I assume she was ignorant of his work.  

Most of what DR says about Millikan's theory corresponds to what I have said about "functional causes" and "natural ends" (DNR, 101-105, 238-248).  For example, DR says that part of the teleological good for human beings is "to bear and support children."  I agree.  Because this corresponds to what I say about the natural desire for parental care:

The function of parental care for animals is to protect and nurture offspring that could not survive or grow to maturity without such care.  Throughout the history of the human species, infants have survived and grown only with the help of adults who were willing to feed, protect, and educate them for many years.  If we accept Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection, which favors those functional adaptations that promoted survival and reproduction in evolutionary history, it would seem likely, therefore, that the desire to care for children is a natural adaptation for human beings (DNR, 103).

But while DR seems to agree with this account of natural desires, he argues that I can't properly explain the distinction between true or normal desires and false or abnormal desires.  To say that the good is the desirable, I have argued, is not to say that the good is whatever we happen to desire at any moment, because we can mistakenly desire what in fact is not truly desirable.  DR insists, however, that I need Millikan to explain this.

Millikan's Normal conditions are much better at doing the work that Arnhart wants his poorly defined notion of a true desire to do.  And so when Arnhart says "an animal can mistakenly desire what in fact is not truly desirable," we can translate this as "When desires work Normally, they will produce their selected effect; in abNormal conditions (say, when the individual is guided by false beliefs or mental illness), a desire might not benefit the organism the way it has been designed."  For example, perhaps an adolescent male is engaging in risky behavior.  We can postulate that the impulses of adolescent males to engage in risky behavior have been built into us in order, say, to develop one's strength for conflict, or perhaps display fitness to females, or to learn and push one's limits for competitive advantage.  If the individual is badly injured in this behavior, the desire has not produced the effect it was selected for, that is, conditions are abNormal and not gone "according to (nature's) plan.

Well, okay, I can agree with this "translation" of my thought.  But I don't see that this adds anything substantive to what I have said about the "four sources of moral disagreement"--fallible beliefs about circumstances, fallible beliefs about desires, variable circumstances, and variable desires (both normal and abnormal variation in human desires) (DNR, 44-45).

DR also argues that I don't have a good answer to the criticism that my list of twenty natural desires is naive in that it includes the "positive" desires but not the "negative" ones. For example, why not include cruelty and exploitation as natural human desires? The suggestion is that I haven't offered any justification for including only the "nice" desires on my list. Actually, there can be a dark side to most if not all of these natural desires. Obviously, cruelty and exploitation often arise from the natural desires for social ranking and war. And, in fact, many of my critics have criticized me for including war on my list of natural desires. 

But there is a criterion of selection favoring what is truly desirable over what is mistakenly desired that is implicit in the natural desire for friendship.  I understand "friendship" in its broad Aristotelian sense of "social affiliation," which coincides with what David Hume and Adam Smith called "sympathy," and which is the ground for all the moral sentiments and virtues.  In Books 8 and 9 of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle provides a comprehensive account of the social and political formation of the virtues through "friendship" (philia), which for Aristotle is a general term for all kinds of social bonding in which human beings show some care for one another.  And so, for example, Aristotle identifies "political friendship" as the social glue that binds a people into a political community of mutual care for one another.  

Similarly, Hume and Smith identified "sympathy" as any kind of "fellow feeling" among human beings.  Darwin adopted this idea and made "sympathy" one of the fundamental themes in his evolutionary account of moral and political order.  More recently, biologists and psychologists have used the word "empathy" in a way that largely corresponds to what Hume, Smith, and Darwin would call "sympathy," or what Aristotle would call "friendship."  All agree with Aristotle that the various forms of friendly feeling or social bonding that unite human beings as individuals, as fellow citizens, and as members of the same species are originally rooted in the natural affection of parental care for offspring (NE, 1155a1-33, 1159a27-37, 1160b23-62a29).  "In the household, are first found the origins and springs of friendship, of polity, and of justice" (Eudemian Ethics, 1242b1-2).

In explaining a man's desire to be worthy of praise and not blame, Smith observed, "Nature, accordingly, has endowed him, not only with a desire of being approved of, but with a desire of being what ought to be approved of; or of being what he himself approves of in other men" (TMS, 117).  When we praise others, we do so because we think they are truly virtuous, not because of their deceptive appearance of virtue that hides the reality of vice.  If we think they have deceived us into thinking they are more virtuous than they really are, then we blame them.  Therefore our rules of morality dictate that we praise what is truly praiseworthy and blame what is truly blameworthy.  We then feel guilty if we violate these rules ourselves, which is conscience.  A man who feels guilty, Smith explained, "anticipates the contempt and derision from which nothing saves him but the ignorance of those he lives with.  He still feels that he is the natural object of these sentiments, and still trembles at the thought of what he would suffer, if they were ever actually exerted against him" (TMS, 118).

Smith observed that our natural desire for mutual sympathy of sentiments--which I call our natural desire for friendship--makes it painful for us to even imagine that others would not share our sentiments.  We judge ourselves by how we appear to an imaginary impartial spectator who is not deceived by mere appearances, so that we care not only for our real reputation, but even for our imaginary reputation.  Of course, it is easier for us to do what is praiseworthy when we are actually praised for our good conduct, and that's why only a few individuals are high-minded enough to always do what is truly praiseworthy, even when they are not actually praised, or even when they are unfairly condemned.

Although Darwin never used Smith's phrase impartial spectator, Darwin's account of morality as arising from social instincts of sympathy and reason conforms to Smith's impartial spectator procedure (Descent of Man, 136-148).  And as it was for Smith, Darwin saw this procedure as motivating our concern for both our real and our imagined reputations.  He observed: "Even when we are quite alone, how often do we think with pleasure or pain of what others think of us--of their imagined approbation or disapprobation; and this all follows from sympathy, a fundamental element of the social instincts.  A man who possessed no trace of such instincts would be an unnatural monster" (Descent, 136).  Darwin recognized that Smithian sympathy is variable across individuals, and some few individuals, perhaps pure psychopaths, might show little or no concern for a mutual sympathy of sentiments, which would make such a person "an unnatural monster."  Similarly, Smith suggested that those who could commit dreadful crimes without feeling any pangs of remorse would have to fall into "the vilest and most abject of all states, a complete insensibility to honor and infamy, to vice and virtue" (TMS, 118).

What Smith and Darwin described as the emergence of moral sentiments from the mutual sympathy of sentiments is what evolutionary theorists today would call "reciprocal altruism."  We cooperate with those who are not genetically related to us if there is some reciprocal exchange.  I will cooperate with you if you have been cooperative with me (direct reciprocity), or if I know you have a reputation for being cooperative with others (indirect reciprocity).  It's tit for tat.  People are rewarded for their good reputation as trustworthy cooperators and punished for their bad reputations as untrustworthy cheaters.  And the most reliably trustworthy people are those who live under the all-seeing eyes of the imaginary impartial spectator.

But DR thinks this is all wrong.

Human history is filled with limitless examples of evil that did receive the approbation of others; the evils done by Nazis did receive approval from other Nazis.  As an additional example, I recall reading an account of Native Americans who had captured a young girl from another tribe.  At first they seemed to welcome her into the tribe and treated her kindly, until one day they tied her to a tree, and the entire tribe took turns firing arrows into her until she was a bloody pulp.  That's human nature for you.  The tribesmen in my example were not a band of psychopaths, they were not mentally defective, they were not irrational, or subhuman and lacking in some innate moral sense possessed by other humans. . . . Harming one's enemies is ubiquitous occurrence in human nature and history. . . .

DR notes that in my blog posts on human rights, I have quoted Darwin about how human beings can extend their sympathy to embrace all of humanity:

Darwin saw a history of moral progress in which human sympathy has been gradually extended from the family to small tribes, then to large nations, and eventually to all of humanity. In the Descent of Man, he wrote: "As man advances in civilization, and small tribes are united into larger communities, the simplest reason would tell each individual that he ought to extend his social instincts and sympathies to all the members of the same nation, though personally unknown to him. This point being once reached, there is only an artificial barrier to prevent his sympathies extending to the men of all nations and races." 

DR objects:

I have to disagree with Darwin here, the barrier is not artificial.  Evolution would demand that sympathies extend to those who are actually cooperators, and distrust and animosity extend to those who are actually competitors and threats to our well-being.  It would not entail that we extend sympathy to competitors.

DR quotes me as saying that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights "shows how moral outrage against atrocities expresses a universal morality," and that "we judge that as a rule human beings have a right to life because the killing of innocent people would elicit moral emotions of disapproval from any normal human being."

But DR objects: "human history is absolutely swimming in cases where the killing of innocent people was celebrated on a mass scale.  If the good is just what other people approve of, then Nazis or the tribesmen in my example are good."

DR is mistaken when he says "the evils done by Nazis did receive approval from other Nazis."  As far as I know there is no evidence that the Nazis approved the evils of Nazism.  There is, however, plenty of evidence that the Nazis approved of Nazism because they believed (mistakenly) that it was good--perhaps even a transcendent good.  That's why some historians of Nazism have written books about "Hitler's Ethic" and "The Nazi Conscience."

Richard Weikart argues that Hitler illustrates how the greatest evils are often perpetrated under the appearance of doing good--especially, if the apparent good is a utopian vision that seems to justify any means to the utopian end. I agree with this, because I am persuaded of the Aristotelian principle that people tend to act for the good, or at least for what appears good to them. It is unlikely that any influential moral or political movement can prevail if it does not appeal to some moral sense that a great good is being achieved. The problem, however, is that human beings are often mistaken in their moral beliefs, particularly when they are seduced by some utopian conception of radical transformation that requires evil means to apparently good ends.

According to Weikart, the fundamental end for Hitler's ethic was the evolutionary improvement in the human species. Hitler interpreted the Darwinian conception of evolution as dominated by a struggle for existence as teaching that the only moral imperative was the survival and reproduction of the superior races over the inferior races. The Aryan or Nordic race prevalent in the German Volk arose in evolutionary history as the superior race. Promoting the progressive expansion of that race would therefore promote the biological improvement of the human species.

As I have indicated in previous posts, many of the Nazi philosophers were neo-Kantians who believed in "eternal values" and in Nazism as fulfilling that eternal moral order. Moreover, Claudia Koonz's book The Nazi Conscience (2003) shows how the Nazi regime was organized around a strict communitarian morality of sacrificing selfish interests for the good of the community. Also, Jonathan Glover's moral history of the 20th century shows how the greatest atrocities were committed by those moved by a fanatical utopian belief in the goodness of their cause.

That the Nazis had a moral sense was clear in the Nuremberg Trials as portrayed in the recent movie Nuremberg. On the morning of November 20, 1945, the tribunal convened to begin its public trial.  "Goering entered first," El-Hai writes.  "He wore his pearl-gray, brass-buttoned Luftwaffe uniform, stripped of all insignia and symbols of rank, and he appeared energized to retake the world stage" (128).  Goering had had months to plan his defense, and he expected to speak eloquently of the glories of the Nazi German Reich.

But then, on the afternoon of November 29, Goering's plans for his defense were undercut when the prosecution showed filmed footage of the concentration camps shot by British and American troops less than a year earlier.  Everyone was transfixed by the images of emaciated camp inmates, stacks of corpses, and bulldozers pushing mounds of bodies into mass graves.  At least ten minutes of the movie were given over to these films.  And even though most of us in the theatre had seen some of these images previously, to see them again was as disturbing as it was for the courtroom audience in the movie.  Even Goering coughed nervously and leaned on the railing of the dock and covered his face with his right arm.

Later, Goering said to Douglas Kelley: "It was such a good afternoon, too, until they showed that film. They were reading my telephone conversations on the Austrian affair, and everybody was laughing with me.  And then they showed that awful film, and it just spoiled everything" (El-Hai, 136).  It "spoiled everything" because there was no way for the Nazis to evade the moral disgust that it elicited. 

Now, while it is true, as DR says, that "harming one's enemies is a ubiquitous occurrence in human nature and history," if "one's enemies" must be people "who are actually competitors and threats to our well-being," there was no plausible argument that the Jews in the concentration camps were "threats to the well-being" of the Nazis.  Those Jews were clearly innocent people, and the Nazis could not say that killing innocent people was good.

And as to DR's story about the Native Americans torturing and killing the young girl from another tribe, I would need to know more about the circumstances and motives in this case.  Would those Native Americans have said oh we just enjoy killing innocent young women for fun?  Or would they have said we discovered that she was a threat to us, and so we killed her in self-defense?

That we condemn the perpetrators of great evil--like the Nazis--and want to punish them testifies to the natural moral sense as part of our evolved human nature.  One sign that that moral sense is an evolved instinct of the human mind is that it appears early in human development: even babies have a sense of justice.

The one-year-old decided to take justice into his own hands.  He had just watched a puppet show with three characters.  The puppet in the middle rolled a ball to the puppet on the right, who passed it right back to him. It then rolled the ball to the puppet on the left, who ran away with it.  At the end of the show, the 'nice' puppet and the 'naughty' puppet were brought down from the stage and set before the boy.  A treat was placed in front of each of them, and the boy was invited to take one of the treats away.  As predicted, and like most toddlers in this experiment, he took it from the 'naughty' one--the one who had run away with the ball.  But this wasn't enough.  The boy then leaned over and smacked this puppet on the head.

In his book Just Babies: The Origins of Good and Evil, Paul Bloom reports this as one of the experiments conducted at the Infant Cognition Center at Yale University (p. 7).  He presents these experiments as showing that Charles Darwin was right in claiming that evolved human nature shows a natural moral sense--a sense of right and wrong--that is manifest in babies in the first few years of life, appearing at such an early age that it must be a natural instinct that requires little or no social learning.  (Bloom summarized some of his reasoning in an article in the New York Times Magazine here.)

Bloom also argues that these experiments confirm Adam Smith's moral philosophy in The Theory of Moral Sentiments, because they show that Smith was right in observing that we are naturally social animals, with evolved propensities to care about our fellow human beings, a care that is expressed as sympathy or empathy, through which we judge others and judge ourselves as we appear in the eyes of others, judgments that are expressed as moral sentiments of approbation or disapprobation.  When we see people suffering unfair injuries, we sympathize with their suffering and share their resentment against those who have injured them, because we have imaginatively projected ourselves into their situations--perhaps even projecting ourselves into a puppet show.  That resentment against injustice is the natural ground of rights, because we judge rights from wrongs: human beings have the right not to be injured in ways that would elicit our moral resentment.  This is what I have called Smith's reflective liberal sentimentalism (here, here, and here).

Consider how Bloom's experiments with babies illustrate these points.  The toddler who recognized the naughty puppet and decided that he deserved punishment showed a combination of reason and emotion.  He had the cognitive capacity to understand that the puppet in the middle had been harmed by the puppet on the left who ran away with the ball.  He also had to sympathize with the imagined resentment of the puppet victim, which motivated his punishment of the bad puppet by taking away the treat and slapping him.  Notice that this third-party punishment is a disinterested or impartial judgment, in the sense that it concerns actions that don't directly affect the baby himself.

The cognitive understanding of the puppet show by itself would not have motivated the moral judgment without the moral emotion of sympathetic resentment.  Psychopaths illustrate this.  Bloom relates the story of a thirteen-year-old mugger who viciously attacked elderly women.  When a reporter asked him about the pain he had caused a woman, the boy was surprised by the question and responded: "What do I care? I'm not her."  He had a rational understanding of what he had done, but his moral judgment was impaired by his lack of moral emotions such as sympathy and guilt.

If these babies show a naturally evolved propensity to third-party punishment, then we need to explain the evolutionary process that produced it.  There are at least three theories for this.  We might explain this through group selection, in that groups with third-party punishment tended to outcompete groups without such punishment.  Or we might explain this through individual selection, in that individuals inclined to third-party punishment earned good reputations that enhanced their survival and reproduction.  Or we might explain this though an evolutionary combination of revenge and empathy, in that individuals imagine themselves in the shoes of a victim and then respond as if they themselves had been harmed.

But presumably DR would say that history shows that there is no natural sense of justice because "human history is filled with limitless examples of evil that did receive the approbation of others."

My next post will be on DR's "political theory of teleoformalism."

Aristotelian Liberalism (2): The Virtue of Prudence

In making their case for Aristotelian liberalism, Douglas Rasmussen and Douglas Den Uyl revive Aristotle's claim that prudence or practical wisdom (phronesis) is the supreme virtue. Prudence is the intellectual faculty for judging conduct, for judging the best course of action for particular individuals in particular circumstances. From what we know about human nature, we can see that human beings generally pursue certain generic goods--for example, health, wealth, beauty, friendship, honor, and knowledge. But this general knowledge of the generic goods of human life cannot tell us how best to organize and integrate the pursuit of these goods in a manner that is appropriate for particular individuals. To do that, individuals must exercise prudence in deciding for themselves what form of life is best for them as most conducive to their happiness or flourishing (eudaimonia). The primary purpose of a liberal regime as favored by Rasumussen and Den Uyl is to protect the liberty of individuals to exercise the intellectual virtue of prudence in their pursuit of moral virtue understood as their flourishing or self-perfection.

Rasmussen and Den Uyl take their account of prudence from Den Uyl's book The Virtue of Prudence (1991). This book has not received the attention it deserves. I don't know of any other book that covers so well the logic of prudence and the history of how prudence fell from being the preeminent virtue (for Aristotle) to being hardly a virtue at all (for Kant and many contemporary moral philosophers).

In the first part of his book, Den Uyl summarizes the logic of prudence. In the second part, he surveys the history of prudence in moral philosophy, concentrating on Aristotle, Aquinas, Hobbes, Adam Smith, and Kant. In the final part, he argues for reviving an Aristotelian conception of prudence.

Although I generally agree with him, I disagree on a couple of points. But with some slight modifications, Den Uyl's framing of the argument for prudence would be compatible with my argument for Darwinian natural right.

Den Uyl summarizes the main points in his reasoning in five "negative" theses on the positions that deny the importance of prudence and five "positive" theses on the positions that favor prudence (pp. 50-51).

Here are the five "negative" theses:

"Thesis I: The Polarity Thesis: When ethics is considered to be fundamentally concerned with the conflict between duty and self-interest, prudence will be unlikely to surface as a significant virtue.

"Thesis II: The Hedonic Thesis: Any moral theory which takes desire alone to be either motivationally or axiologically foundational will thereby fail to accord prudence the status of a virtue.

"Thesis III: The Impersonalist Thesis: A moral theory which understands duty in essentially impersonalist or agent-neutral terms will be inimical to the development of prudence as a virtue.

"Thesis IV: The Non-teleological Thesis: Prudence does not thrive in non-teleological contexts.

"Thesis V: The Communitarian Thesis: If our relations with others are given foundational importance in ethics, the virtue of prudence will, to the extent that the individual self is given secondary or derivative status, diminish in importance as a virtue."

Here are Den Uyl's five "positive" theses:

"Thesis I: The Self-Perfective Thesis: When the first concern of ethics is conceived to be the individual agent's own well-being or perfection, then prudence will flourish as a virtue.

"Thesis II: The Non-Hedonic Thesis: Any moral theory open to the possibility that desires alone are not motivationally or axiologically foundational will, ceteris paribus, also be open to the possibility of prudence being a virtue.

"Thesis III: The Personalist Thesis: A moral theory which takes agent-centeredness to be essential and foundational to moral obligation and moral propriety will, to the extent of its focus upon individual flourishing and well- being, encourage the virtue of prudence.

"Thesis IV: The Teleological Thesis: Prudence thrives in teleological contexts.

"Thesis V: The Individualist Thesis: Prudence maintains significance as a virtue when relations with others are grounded in principles that are either directly derived from, or shown to be compatible with, those principles or conditions that contribute to the agent's own well-being or self-perfection."

While I agree with these theses, I think some of them are stated in misleading ways that lead to some mistakes in Den Uyl's line of argument.

First, the "Hedonic" and "Non-Hedonic" theses are misleading in suggesting a false dichotomy as to whether "desires alone" motivate moral conduct. While "desire alone" is not sufficient, we need to see how conduct combines desire and reason, and so "reason alone" is not sufficient either.

Second, the "Communitarian" and "Individualist" theses are misleading in suggesting a false dichotomy between community and individuality. As Den Uyl indicates, human individuals are naturally social animals, and therefore one's individual good includes the social good.

Third, I agree with Den Uyl's "Impersonalist" and "Personalist" theses, but I don't agree with how he applies them to the case of Adam Smith. I don't agree with his criticism of Smith's appeal to the "impartial spectator" as "impersonalism."

REASON AND DESIRE
Den Uyl (like Rasmussen) has been influenced by the exaggerated rationalism of Ayn Rand, and consequently he is inclined to play down the importance of desire or emotion in moral life. Den Uyl comes close to making Kant's mistake of insisting on an absolute separation of reason and desire (147-57, 246).

No serious thinker (not even Hume) believes that "desire alone" is "motivationally or axiologically foundational" for moral conduct. Surely, "reason alone" is not a sensible position either, despite Kant's insistence that morality is a matter of pure reason. Rather, what we need is a combination of reason and desire.

This is Aristotle's position. Oddly, Den Uyl is almost completely silent about this. But in two passages, he does very briefly acknowledge this. So, for Aristotle, the good life was "equally affective and rational" (155). Moreover, "Kant always found it 'risky' to allow emotions to creep into motivations, whereas Aristotle did not" (298).

As I argued in Darwinian Natural Right (chap. 2), Aristotle thought that in the striving for a good human life, reason and desire were mutually dependent. "Thought by itself moves nothing," Aristotle insisted, because any human action that is deliberately chosen requires a union of reason and desire. A deliberate choice manifests either "desiring reason" or "reasoning desire" (NE, 1139a36-b6).

I use the word "desire" to translate the Greek word orexis. Aristotle coined the Greek noun orexis from the Greek verb orego, which means "to reach out." Orexis is the soul's "reaching out" for something in the world. For Aristotle, it is a general term for all kinds of longing or striving, including physical appetites, social emotions, and intellectual yearnings (DA, 433a9-b31). I use the word "desire" in the same way as a general term for all kinds of psychic impulse or inclination. With that sense in mind, I defend an ethics of desire: the good is the desirable, and reason judges how best to satisfy the desires in a manner that is coherent and harmonious over a whole life, which is the work of prudence.

Den Uyl obscures this point by sometimes suggesting that prudential reason somehow works without desire, but then at other times he says that reason "expresses itself through desire" or "directs" desire (64-65).

Den Uyl rightly argues that the primary purpose of prudential reasoning is to integrate the generic goods of human life in a way that is appropriate to an individual life. Den Uyl takes his list of generic goods from Aristotle's Rhetoric. This list corresponds closely to my list of twenty natural desires, which supports my idea that the good is the desirable. But Den Uyl is reluctant to identify these goods as desires. He says that while prudence manages the mixture of the goods, the goods themselves are "essentially givens" (81). "Aristotle says that practical wisdom deliberates about means and not about ends, for the ends are given" (284). Given by what? I would say they are "given" by desire.

Den Uyl speaks of the generic human goods as "basic attractions" or "natural inclinations," as objects of human "aspiration" or "longing" that exert "teleological pull" (168-70, 188). As far as I can tell, such language is circumlocution for desires.

In Norms of Liberty, Den Uyl and Rasmussen are more open in acknowledging the generic goods as desires. They write: "Human flourishing is an object of desire. Yet, in terms similar to Socrates' question to Euthyphro, flourishing is an object of desire because it is desirable and choice-worthy, not simply because it is desired or chosen. In other words, it is desired because of what it is" (127). The desirable is an objective fact of human existence because it is rooted in human nature. But the right mix of these generic goods for an individual human being requires prudential judgment. "The desirable and choice-worthy elements of flourishing need to be achieved, maintained, and enjoyed in a coherent manner, and this involves a consideration of generic, individuative, and circumstantial factors" (147).

This moves towards my position. The good is the desirable. The generic goods of human life correspond to the natural desires of human biological nature. But prudence is required to judge how best to manage those desires in the life of any individual human being (Darwinian Natural Right, 17-49).

COMMUNITY AND INDIVIDUALITY
Because of the influence of Ayn Rand, Den Uyl (as well as Rasmussen) tends to play up "the virtue of selfishness"--that is, understanding ethics as self-perfection. So the good is always good for someone. Although we can by abstraction see the generic goods of human nature, we should see that the actualization of the human good is always the individualized good of particular human beings.

As a consequence, Den Uyl is suspicious of modern moral philosophers who define ethics as other-regarding conduct, and who therefore dismiss self-regarding conduct as non-moral. I agree with Den Uyl about this. But I don't agree with him that Adam Smith is guilty of this mistake.

Den Uyl rightly sees that if we understand the human good as self-perfection or self-regarding conduct, we can then recognize that insofar as we are naturally social animals, we extend ourselves into others. We love our families, our friends, and our fellow citizens. We can even see a friend as "another self."

I think this is Smith's position. Den Uyl criticizes Smith for appealing too much to social sentiments as a foundation for morality, because he thinks Smith thus denigrates the self-regarding character of morality. I disagree, because it seems clear to me that Smith's moral sentiments are simply expressions of the social nature of human beings by which their self-regarding concerns extend to a concern for others who are attached to them. As individuals who are social animals, we can extend our sympathy outward from ourselves to embrace an ever wider circle of people. But our attachments will tend to be stronger to those near the center of the circle than those farther out.

Den Uyl seems to acknowledge this when he writes that "the moral virtues are largely social in character," and therefore "a type of theory of moral sentiments, which Adam Smith analyzed perhaps better than anyone else, comes into play. For the particular manner in which one's liberality or magnificence is demonstrated will largely be a function of the social sentiments present in one's society" (205-206).

It would be good if Den Uyl noted that much of what Smith and Hume said about the moral sentiments or emotions comes out of the rhetorical tradition begun by Aristotle, particularly in Book 2 of the Rhetoric.

Moreover, as I have often argued on this blog, the importance of the moral emotions for moral experience has been confirmed by research in biological moral psychology, particularly in neuroscience.

THE PARTIALITY OF THE IMPARTIAL SPECTATOR
Den Uyl criticizes Smith for his idea of the "impartial spectator"--the idea that we adjust our moral sentiments to conform to what we imagine would be felt by an impartial observer. This can look like the sort of "impersonalism" evident in the moral philosophy of Kant and others in this tradition, in which the universal rules of morality require a "view from nowhere."

But in fact, as I have already suggested, Smith's "impartial spectator" is not absolutely impartial, if that means a total denial of any individual self-regarding perspective. What Smith has in mind, I think, is close to what Den Uyl suggests when he speaks of the "detached perspective" as a "necessary tool of prudence" by which we see ourselves as others see us, or as some fully informed spectator might see us (222-23). This does not deny the primacy of the individual. Rather, it's a way by which an individual satisfies his social desires for interpersonal life.

The discovery of "mirror neurons"--a subject of some posts on this blog--indicates how the evolution of the brains of social mammals has shaped cognitive abilities for entering into the thoughts and feelings of others in order to better satisfy natural desires for social engagement.

Ultimately, then, I see Den Uyl's account of prudence as fully compatible with my account of how a naturalistic view of morality can be rooted in human biological nature.

A couple of my posts on Ayn Rand can be found here and here.

A Response to Rob Schebel on Is/Ought

Rob Schebel has written a long comment on my post "Moving from 'Is' to 'Ought'." Before responding to him in this new post, I will begin by quoting his entire comment.

"The only justification you give for the good being the desirable is that Aquinas said so. It would seem that you are trying to skirt the 'is/ought' distinction by simply appealing to the most overarching 'ought' possible: that we ought to follow what is desirable. But this does not overcome the 'is/ought' problem because you simply pick one notion of the overarching good, that the good is desirable, without further justification. If you were to examine this notion further, you would continue to run into the 'is/ought' problem.

"Also, it is difficult to agree with your definition of the good as the desirable, especially considering that 1) people disagree as to what is desirable, 2) the universal desires Brown lists are only universal on a general cultural scale, not for individuals, 3) you pick and choose certain universal desires, and ignore 'negative' desires such as the desire to do violence to others, cheat on our partners, kill our own children, make war, and wield power unjustly, 4) you give insufficient weight to environmental and cultural traditions that contribute to each individual's personality and sense of happiness, and 5) the constellation of human desires can itself be altered through biotechnology.

"So my questions would be:

"1) How can you use the desirable as a standard when there is no universal agreement on what is truly desirable? Also, at what level are we considering the concept of 'desirable'? The individual? The group? The species? All living things? The answer to this question could lead you to highly divergent ethical domains, from ethical egoism to preference utilitarianism.

"2) How do you account for the lack of universality of Brown's universals on an individual scale, especially if your theory is supposed to help individuals make moral choices?

"3) By what standard have you picked the twenty desires over any of the others? It seems you would have to use a standard outside of the 'desirable,' considering you are making a kind of meta-level choice about the desirability of desires themselves.

"4) Even if we agree that the general constellation of desires is partly a product of evolutionary inheritance, environmental factors still play a great role in the moral make-up of any individual. You give weight to tradition and culture in Darwinian Conservatism, but how do we weigh competing political claims within a culture, especially when opposing factions use differing definitions of human happiness? If two factions disagree about happiness because they give weight to differing universal desires, how do we resolve their conflicts?

"5) Lastly, in light of the revolution in bioethics, by what standard do you choose desires when human nature itself is up for grabs? How does Darwinian natural right assist us in deciding whether or not to alter what is naturally desirable? By an appeal to what is currently desirable? Why is the currently desirable superior to the potentially desirable?"

I have raised and answered these questions in Darwinian Natural Right (DNR) and Darwinian Conservatism (DC). So here I will only briefly indicate the answers that are elaborated in those two books.

1) Yes, Schebel is right, "people disagree as to what is desirable." As I have indicated, there are four sources of moral disagreement: fallible beliefs about circumstances, fallible beliefs about desires, variable circumstances, and variable desires (DNR, 44-49). Because of these four sources of moral uncertainty and imprecision, morality depends on the exercise of prudence, which is the practical wisdom for judging how to satisfy the variable desires of human beings in the variable circumstances of action. We need prudence to judge the appropriate expression of each desire as varying according to the social and physical conditions of particular individuals in particular societies. We also need prudence to judge how best to resolve conflicts among the natural desires. In my Aristotelian emphasis on prudence, I reject the common assumption of many contemporary philosophers that the purpose of moral philosophy is to find universal normative principles--Kantian, utilitarian, or whatever--to resolve all moral conflicts in some abstract way. I believe that moral judgment lacks the precision and certainty of mathematics or formal logic because of the contingency of moral circumstances. In many cases, moral problems produce tragic conflicts that cannot be perfectly resolved by appeal to universal, formal rules. Much of my writing studies such tragic conflicts--for example, differences between men and women (DNR 123-60) and the debate over slavery (DNR 161-210).

What's Schebel's alternative? Does he have a set of universal normative principles from which he can logically deduce the resolution of moral conflicts? If so, what are those principles? And how would such principles logically resolve our conflicts?

2) Schebel questions me about the individual variability of the universal desires. This is something that comes up a lot in my writing (DNR, 29-44). In the case of each desire, I speak of what human beings "generally" desire, because I am speaking of general tendencies or proclivities that are true for all societies but not for all individuals in all circumstances. There can be individual exceptions for every natural desire. A few individuals might have little or no sex drive, for example. There is great fluctuation in sexual interest across the human life span. And in extreme cases of physical deprivation and suffering, all people might find their sexual appetite suppressed by other appetites. But this does not deny the fact that the desire for sexual pleasure is a natural desire for most sexually mature people under the normal conditions of life, which is why every human society must have rules for the proper expression of this desire.

What's Schebel's alternative? Is he suggesting that given such individual variability, the general tendencies of human nature are morally irrelevant? Is he suggesting some kind of moral solipsism?

3) I don't understand what Schebel means when he says that I ignore the "negative" desires--"such as the desire to do violence to others, cheat on our partners, kill our own children, make war, and wield power unjustly." Much of my writing is devoted to elaborate studies of such desires. I identify war as a natural desire (DNR 34). I consider the circumstances for infanticide (DNR, 38, 40, 119-21). I comment on the problems of sexual promiscuity and infidelity (DNR, 123-37, 149-60). I have a chapter on psychopathic desires (DNR, 211-30). And I comment extensively on how the desire for dominance can lead to tyranny and slavery (DNR, 137-43, 161-210; DC, 68-84). If Schebel can explain specifically where I have gone wrong on these various topics, then I can respond.

What's Schebel's alternative? How would he deal with "negative" desires? Does he have some way to manage these desires through a universal logic of moral principles? If so, how would that work?

4) Schebel asks, "how do we weigh competing political claims within a culture"? Well, again, that's what I have tried to do in surveying various moral and political conflicts--such as debates over slavery, property, and familial arrangements (DNR, 89-210; DC, 46-67). If he can specify where he thinks I have gone wrong on any of these topics, then I can respond.

What's Schebel's alternative? How would he resolve such competing claims?

5) Schebel objects that I have not considered the possibility that biotechnology could change our natural desires. But I have a chapter on biotechnology (DC, 130-42). If we keep in mind the adaptive complexity of human nature, I argue, we can foresee that biotechnology will be limited both in its technical means and in its moral ends. It will be limited in its technical means, because complex behavioral traits are rooted in the intricate interplay of many genes interacting with developmental contingencies and unique life histories to form brains that respond flexibly to changing circumstances. Consequently, precise technological manipulation of human nature to enhance desirable traits while avoiding undesirable side effects will be very difficult if not impossible. Biotechnology will also be limited in its moral ends, because the motivation for biotechnological manipulations will come from the same natural desires that have always characterized human nature (for example, the desire of parents to have healthy and happy children). Does Schebel disagree with this? If so, how?

What is Schebel's moral alternative for handling biotechnology? Does he think we can appeal to some abstract logic of morality that is not rooted in human nature? If so, how exactly would that moral logic constrain biotechnology?

[Pertinent to this points is my later post on moral reasoning through hypothetical imperatives.]

Is Human Nature an Eternally Unchanging Essence?

In my previous post, I linked to Peter Lawler's post on Darwinian conservatism. There is now a comment on Lawler's post from Brendan Foht, which raises some good questions.

Foht suggests that I am promoting a Darwinian historicism that denies the eternity of human nature as an unchanging essence. He writes:

What bugs me about Arnhart's "Darwinian" philosophy is that it doesn't seem to come to grips with what is really unique in the Darwinian mode of explanation. He talks about this grab-bag list of twenty "natural" desires, and how we ought to use an empirically based understanding of nature as the standard for politics. That's all well and good, but why do you need Darwin to find these twenty natural desires? Ordinary social science (or for that matter, common sense) could tell you that human beings like to have families or practical arts or what-have-you. What makes Darwinian explanation special compared to old-fashioned empirical naturalism is that it stands nature on its head. According to an old-fashioned understanding of nature, nature is the force that makes us who we are, i.e. our essence. For Darwin, however, nature is itself made by an historical process of competition and selection. Our nature is no longer an essence; it is just another historical accident. So I'm not sure how much Darwinism really helps us argue against techno-liberationist policies like transhumanism. If we happen to dislike some aspect of our nature, and we happen to have the technical means to change it, why should it be evolutionary biology that gives us pause?

The real problem for a post-Darwinian political philosophy (conservative or otherwise) is not how to replace "metaphysical" values with "natural" values, but how to reconcile the project of "natural" morality with the historicism of Darwin's nature.

On the first point, I agree that recognizing the twenty natural desires is a matter of common-sense experience that does not require Darwinian science. The value of Darwinian science here is in providing scientific confirmation for this common-sense knowledge by showing the ultimate natural causes for these natural desires in the evolutionary history of the human species.

But that appeal to the evolutionary history of the human species leads to Foht's second point--his worry about Darwinian historicism.

Foht invokes "an old-fashioned understanding of nature" in which "nature is the force that makes us who we are, i.e. our essence," and he contrasts this to "the historicism of Darwin's nature." I assume that Foht is referring here to some kind of Platonic metaphysics of the Theory of Ideas in which human nature is an eternally unchanging Idea or Essence. Alternatively, Foht could be a Christian Platonist who sees God as the Creator of human nature as an everlasting essence.

As I have indicated in many previous posts, I regard Platonic metaphysics as implausible. In fact, it is so implausible that it is not even clear that Plato or Plato's Socrates ever clearly endorses it. (Here I am using some language from some previous posts.)

If Darwin's evolutionary science is correct, then all the species of life come into being and pass away. Species are not eternal or everlasting, but they are real for as long as they last. When Louis Agassiz wrote a critical assessment of Darwin's theory, Darwin wrote to Asa Gray, in a letter of August 11, 1860, that he was "surprised that Agassiz did not succeed in writing something better. How absurd that logical quibble: 'if species do not exist, how can they vary?' As if anyone doubted their temporary existence."

To affirm the "temporary existence" of species denies the Platonic/Socratic teaching that Being--what is really real and fully intelligible--must be eternal and unchanging, as distinguished from the temporal and ever-changing flux of the sensible world.

But as long as we adhere to this Parmenidean assumption that Being is eternally unchanging, we cannot bridge the gap between the unchanging ideas and changing sense experience. This absolute separation of unchanging intelligibles and changing sensibles cannot explain human knowledge, because human cognition is in motion. The intelligibility of being seems to require that it somehow be both in motion and at rest. But, still, we can understand the world by sorting things into classes according to the ways they are like or unlike one another.

We need to go beyond the Parmenidean and Platonic search for invariants and see that reality is a mixture of fixity and flux. We need to see that the history of the cosmos shows an evolutionary emergence of variance and novelty. We can sort things out according to their enduring patterns of similarity and difference. But these enduring patterns are not eternal or everlasting.

This is certainly true for our study of human nature. The human species is not absolutely invariant or eternal. Human beings did not exist before the evolutionary emergence of Homo sapiens, and we can expect that some day the human species will go extinct. But for as long as our species exists, there will be natural propensities and traits that characterize us--including the twenty natural desires.

And yet the present reality of the human species is not invariant, because each human being is unique in being a product of a unique natural history. Biological history depends upon the variation that comes from genetic mutation and from sexual mating, in which the random assortment of genes results in the production of unique individuals. So while we can identify the human species as a range of traits or propensities, we know that within that range, there is immense variation expressed in individual diversity. Human nature as we know it is neither absolutely fixed nor absolutely chaotic.

Without realizing it, Catherine Zuckert--in her Straussian interpretation of Plato--implicitly endorses this Darwinian understanding of the human species in her criticisms of Timaeus's cosmological explanation of the human species. As she indicates, Timaeus cannot account for the unpredictable variation in human beings that comes from human mating and reproduction, because he has to assume that the divine craftsman created human nature as absolutely unchanging. Consequently, Timaeus has to assume that all human beings are born absolutely the same in their natural abilities and traits, which denies the reality of natural individual differences. Thus, as Zuckert indicates, Timaeus's cosmology--in its search for eternal invariance--must deny the obvious facts of sexual reproduction and individual identity.

Some Straussian scholars try to avoid these problems associated with the Platonic Theory of the Ideas. They do that by claiming that this teaching is only a "noble lie" for Plato to satisfy the popular need for a cosmologically supported morality. But the Straussians also want to say that the Platonic teaching about the supremacy of the philosophic life is simply true, and they never explain how this can be sustained without a Platonic cosmology in which Mind rules over all, and philosophy somehow participates in the cosmological intelligibility of the eternal Mind.

My conclusion from all this is that Platonic conceptions of cosmic teleology and the eternity of species are implausible, because they contradict what we know by experience. More plausible, I suggest, is the Darwinian conceptions of immanent teleology and the evolution of species.

But what, then, should we say about Foht's third point--his worry about a transhumanist use of biotechnology to change human nature? First of all, I don't understand why this is a worry for him if he really believes that human nature is eternal and unchanging. If he really believes this, then he should believe that a tranhumanist transformation in human nature is impossible.

As I have indicated in some previous posts, my Darwinian response to transhumanist biotechnology is to argue that the technology for enhancing human powers will be limited both in its technical means and in its moral ends. It will be limited in its technical means, because complex behavioral traits arise from the intricate interplay of many genes interacting with developmental contingencies and unique life histories to form brains that constantly change as they respond flexibly to changing circumstances. Consequently, precise technological manipulation of human nature to enhance desirable traits while avoiding undesirable side effects will be difficult if not impossible.

The technology of human enhancement will also be limited in its moral ends. Human beings act to satisfy their natural desires. The use of technology to enhance human life will be driven by these natural desires. Transhumanists implicitly assume the enduring power of these desires--for example, the natural desire of parents to promote the happiness of their children. But if that is the case, then it is hard to see how human nature is going to be abolished if the natural desires endure.

Related posts can be found here, here, here, and here.

Peter Lawler has written an interesting response to this post.

The Freiburg Workshop (3): Does Evolved Human Nature Provide a Standard for Social Thought?

At the Freiburg workshop on "Liberalism and the Evolutionary Agenda," one of the best papers was Thomas Reydon's "The Evolution of Human Nature and Its Implications for Politics: A Critique."  Reydon is a professor at the Institute of Philosophy, the Center for Philosophy and Ethics of Science, and the Centre for Ethics and Law in the Life Sciences at the Leibnitz Universitat Hannover, in Hannover, Germany.

Reydon argues that the concept of human nature does not provide a good standard for social thought.  In my opening statement at the workshop, I explained my general disagreement with Reydon's arguments.  But then, later, when I reread his paper, just before his presentation at the workshop, I decided that we were mostly in agreement.  Here I will offer a brief summary of his reasoning.  Then I will give my opening statement of disagreement, followed by my subsequent statement of agreement.

Reydon asks whether the concept of human nature can function as a strong bridge from the domain of biology to the domains of social, economic, and political thought.  He gives two reasons for answering no.

First, at best, the bridge provided by the concept of human nature is very weak.  It can serve an "evaluative role" in providing a "compatibility check."  But if one considers those social orders that are compatible with human nature, then one must see that human nature cannot support one as better than the others.

Second, at worst, the bridge doesn't exist at all because we have no reliable knowledge of human nature.

What we see here, he suggests, are the two steps required for applying biological human nature to social thought.  First, we need an argument to human nature, in which we move from our biological knowledge to generalized claims about the typical behavioral and cognitive properties of human beings.  Then, we need an argument from human nature, in which we employ our claims about human nature to make claims about what constitutes the most desirable social order and against undesirable social orders.  He thinks both kinds of arguments are dubious.

Reydon observes that it is hard to define human nature based on humanly unique features that are innate and universal, or at least widespread.  He notes that philosophers of biology like David Hull have challenged the "essentialist" conception of human nature as a set of traits that are necessary and sufficient for defining membership in the human species.  He also argues that while we can have a good knowledge of many biological traits of human beings, we do not have a good grasp of "human behavioral and cognitive traits," because they are so highly variable across individuals and across societies.

Adopting arguments from Stephen Jay Gould, John Dupre, and Jesse Prinz, Reydon claims that while biological science can give us some knowledge of traits that many human beings have, it cannot give us "a generalized knowledge about behavioral and cognitive traits that are shared by most if not all humans and can be thought of as specifying human nature."  There are three reasons for this.  First, human beings are such "cognitively and behaviorally flexible creatures" that we cannot specify a set of innate behaviors that constitute human nature.  Second, human evolution is a continuing process, and so we can assume that contemporary human beings have evolved different behavioral and cognitive traits from those of their Paleolithic ancestors.  Third, we cannot clearly distinguish what is naturally innate from what is socially learned, because "all cognitive and behavioral traits to some extent have an innate aspect and a learned aspect."

Reydon also worries that the search for the human universals of human nature that constitute the "normal" state for humanity will create a dangerous bias against "deviant" individuals who vary from that universal nature.

To  identify the weaknesses in arguments from human nature to politics, Reydon considers the arguments made by four authors--Peter Kropotkin, Peter Singer, Richard Alexander, and me.

Kropotkin's argued (in Mutual Aid) that since human beings and other animals have evolved to be cooperative with members of their own species, this provides evolutionary support for the sort of socialist anarchy advocated by Kropotkin.  Reydon questions whether Kropotkin provided enough empirical evidence and rigorous reasoning to sustain his generalizations.  He also questions whether Kropotkin falls into the is/ought fallacy by inferring moral conclusions from natural facts.

Reydon thinks that Singer avoids the is/ought fallacy (in The Darwinian Left) in arguing that leftist thinking can be compatible with evolved human nature--because human beings have evolved to be cooperative--but without arguing that a leftist view can be derived from evolutionary science.  Reydon agrees with Singer that a science of evolved human nature can provide a "compatibility check" on social thought, but without providing any specifications as to exactly how society is to be organized.

While Kropotkin and Singer emphasize the cooperative nature of human beings, Richard Alexander (in Darwinism and Human Affairs) emphasizes their selfish nature as evolved for survival and the reproduction of their genes.  Reydon observes: "This by itself should clearly show the difficulty of achieving reliable knowledge about what human nature really is like:  are we primarily cooperators, or competitive individualists, or both to more or less equal degrees, or what?"

Alexander believes that an evolutionary view of human nature "can tell us much about our history and the existing systems of laws and norms, and also about how to achieve any goals deemed desirable," but "it has essentially nothing to say about what goals are desirable" (220).  Thus, like Singer, Alexander avoids the is/ought fallacy.  But while he says that evolutionary science can help us to achieve our goals, he does not say much about how exactly this would work.  So it is not clear whether biological knowledge of human nature can facilitate our pursuit of desirable goals.

Finally, Reydon turns to my Darwinian Natural Right and Darwinian Conservatism, and to my claim that our evolved human nature includes at least twenty natural desires, which constitute "a universal standard for judging social practices as either fulfilling or frustrating human nature" (DNR, 13).  He is skeptical about this:

"On Arnhart's argument, it seems that views of society can be judged with respect to the extent to which they allow human nature to flourish.  The problem, though, is that it is not clear what this means and how we can assess to what extent a particular way of organizing society allows human nature to flourish.  Presumably, human nature has a number of different aspects to it, such that a society allowing one aspect to flourish may well frustrate another aspect.  Moreover, it remains far from clear which are the constituent aspects of human nature.  Arnhart lists a number of species-specific desires and capacities, but plenty of different characterizations of human nature can be found in the literature.  So, how are we to judge which kind of society is the best when it comes to human flourishing?"

Reydon concludes that while biological knowledge of human nature can provide "compatibility checks" that tell us whether a particular view of social order is totally contrary to human nature, such knowledge cannot provide any support for one view of social order as better than others if they are all broadly compatible with human nature.

In my response to Reydon, I would stress that while we commonly separate nature and nurture or nature and art, animal nature—including human moral and political nature—must be nurtured if it is to reach its natural completion, and this nurturing of our nature includes both cultural learning and individual judgment.  That’s why I say that Darwinian anthropology moves through three interacting levels.  Human nature constrains but does not determine human culture.  And human nature and human culture jointly constrain but do not determine human judgment.

Reydon misses this complex interaction of three levels when he embraces Stephen Jay Gould’s false dichotomy—biological potentiality versus biological determinism—which ignores the reality of biological propensity.  It is certainly true, as Reydon and Gould say, that we human beings are “cognitively and behaviorally flexible creatures,” and that this flexibility frees us from any biological determinism.  But I don’t know of any Darwinian theorist who believes in biological determinism, or who denies the cognitive and behavioral flexibility of human beings.

Gould and Reydon ignore the idea of biological predisposition or propensity as something more than a mere potentiality and yet something less than a rigid determinism. 

For example, in our natural desire for sexual mating, we human beings have a biological potentiality for a wide range of behaviors—including celibacy, promiscuity, monogamy, polygyny, and polyandry.  But while we have a potential for choosing complete celibacy, most human beings find this too difficult because it denies our strong propensity for sexual mating.  Promiscuity is easier for us because it caters to our sexual propensities.  Polyandrous marriage (one wife with several husbands) seems to be a very weak potentiality for human beings, because the intense sexual jealousy of males inclines them against sharing a wife.  In contrast to polyandry, monogamous mating has been universal to all human societies and polygynous mating (one husband with several wives) has been common, because they satisfy biological desires.  This pattern of social behavior reflects the biological nature of human mating.  An understanding of evolved biological propensities or desires can explain why celibacy is difficult, promiscuity is easy, polyandry is rare, monogamy is universal, and polygyny is common, although none of these behaviors is rigidly determined by specific genes.  Our nature predisposes us to favor some kinds of behavior over others, although the specific expression of our behavior will reflect the variable conditions of physical environment, social circumstances, and individual temperament. 

Our social norms for sexual mating—including marriage and family law—must respect these evolved natural propensities.  And so, for example, utopian socialist communities (like the kibbutzim in Israel) that tried to abolish familial bonding for the sake of communitarian unity failed, because they frustrated natural human desires.

Reydon criticizes me for making this kind of argument, because, he says, it is impossible “to assess whether a particular organization of society promotes the flourishing of human nature more than another way of organizing society." 

Well, then, let’s look at the history of utopian socialist communities that have tried to abolish family life.  I do this in my book Darwinian Natural Right, and I conclude that these communities exact such a high emotional price on their members that they eventually fail as people assert their natural desires.  I also survey the history of slavery as another form of social organization that is so contrary to human nature that it inevitably provokes resistance from slaves who are not naturally adapted to their enslavement. 

More generally, as I have indicated, I argue that a largely open society better promotes the flourishing of human nature than a largely closed society.  Whether this is true is ultimately, I think, an empirical question to be settled by the historical evidence.

Reydon might respond by pointing out that that he concedes that a biological science of human nature can provide "compatibility checks," so that he can concede that utopian socialism or chattel slavery can be condemned as incompatible with human nature.  But, still, he might say, there are many kinds of social order that are broadly compatible with human nature, and our scientific knowledge of human nature cannot support one as better than the others.  Even if I am right about the twenty natural desires of evolved human nature, he might argue, different social orders can rank those desires in different ways, and our knowledge of those twenty natural desires cannot determine that one social ranking is better than another, as long as they are broadly compatible with human nature.

Pondering this possible response from Reydon suggests to me that we are actually more in agreement with one another than I realized from my first reading of his paper.  Consider our answers to three questions.

Is there a human nature?  David Hull and David Buller say no, because the essentialist conception of human nature is a superstition.  Reydon says yes, because one can recognize general tendencies in human nature without being essentialist.  I agree.

Does this human nature provide some broad constraints on social order?  Reydon says yes, because he thinks that some extreme forms of social order are incompatible with human nature.  I agree.

Does the biological science of human nature prescribe precisely how society should be organized?  Reydon says no, because there is plenty of natural flexibility or variation in how our natural desires can be ranked, and thus there can be many different ways of organizing society that are all compatible with human nature.  I agree.

Reydon does not see, however, as I do, that this reasoning supports Darwinian liberalism.  Liberal pluralism prescribes a largely open society that allows for experiments in living, so that people are free to choose how to organize their social lives within the broad constraints of negative justice or the harm principle--that is, not using force or fraud against others.  By contrast, illiberal regimes refuse to allow the diverse variability in human nature to express itself in social experimentation.

In a liberal regime, one is even free to join socialist communities as long as they are voluntary and do not violate the standards of negative justice.  In Darwinian Natural Right, I provide a history of some of the many socialist communes that have been established in the United States and Israel.  Such utopian projects test the limits of evolved human nature, but in a largely open society, individuals are free to experiment in this way.  Such experiments show that some small groups of people in some circumstances can successfully live in such communities for some period of time.  But such communities tend to be short-lived, because their weighting of natural desires puts a painful strain on the central tendencies of human nature.  So, for example, the Israeli kibbutzim that have survived into the present have given up the original attempts to totally abolish parent-child bonding and private property.

Since classical liberalism rests on the fundamental idea that social order arises best as a largely spontaneous order emerging from individuals pursuing their individual ends, and thus social order is not coercively enforced by central planning, liberalism does not dictate any detailed specific organization of society, which allows for the fullest expression of evolved human nature in all of its variety and flexibility.  Consequently, we can judge that a liberal regime is the best social order as conforming best to human nature.

I have argued that we have at least twenty natural desires rooted in our evolved human nature, and that a free and open society as promoted by classical liberalism gives individuals the fullest freedom to pursue the satisfaction of those natural desires.  If the good is the desirable, then we can judge the classically liberal society to be better than those societies that do not allow individuals the same freedom to satisfy their natural desires.

At the Freiburg workshop, Jan Schnellenbach (Walter Eucken Institute, Freiburg) said in his paper that I am wrong about this, because we must make trade-offs between these natural desires, and the trade-offs made by liberal policies are no more closer to human nature than the trade-offs made by illiberal policies.  “In general,” he said, “our many natural dispositions need not be mutually consistent, and the weights between them are likely to differ between individuals.”  He claims that “evolution likely endows individuals with a variety of heterogeneous traits and dispositions, which in turn implies a variety in policy preferences.” 

But here he misses my point that it’s precisely this heterogeneity in how individuals rank their natural desires that makes liberal policies superior to illiberal policies, because while illiberal policies impose coercively a single ranking of desires, liberal policies do not impose a single ranking of desires on all, because in a liberal, open society, individuals are free to choose how to rank their natural desires.  Thus, liberal policies respect the natural heterogeneity of individuals, while illiberal policies do not.

As indicated by Viktor Vanberg in his paper for the workshop, Hayek makes this same point when he distinguishes between two kinds of “social planning.”  Illiberal planning organizes society by “a system of specific orders and prohibitions,” while liberal planning establishes “a rational system of law, under the rule of which people are free to follow their preferences.”

Some of these points are developed in posts that can be found here, here, here, here, and here.