In Two Minds (2024) — Adapted Ed.
A treatise: On the implications of evolution for morality; On the interplay between rational and sentimental moral-cognition; and On the implications for practical ethics thereof.
The forthcoming publication is an adaptation of a treatise offered as the dissertation for my Master of Arts degree in philosophy, originally conceived and produced under the supervision of Dr. Hallvard Lillehammer, then assistant dean and professor of philosophy at Birkbeck College, University of London. Central to the paper’s considerations is the nature of morality, subject to an evolutionary lens. Ever since Darwin first developed his theory of evolution by natural selection, numerous philosophical interpreters have been troubled by the apparent implication that our moral concerns are merely idiosyncratic adaptations to survival pressures, rather than having genuinely considerable worth in their own right. This paper aspires to address these concerns, and in doing so, develops a model of human instinctual sentiments and abstract moral-reasoning: faculties which I contend are often at odds, with numerous implications for practical ethics.
Please note that this adapted edition of the treatise is a continual work-in-progress and may be subject to additional future revisions. If you intend to cite the work, I therefore advise consulting me beforehand. Core reference metadata:
Damiaan Luc van der Werf(2024) In Two Minds (Adapted Ed.), Birkbeck College, University of London. London, England, United Kingdom. ABSTRACT
Ever since the formulation of Charles Darwin’s evolutionary account of the nature and origins of mankind and his faculties, numerous philosophical interpreters have troubled over the implication that evolution appears to render our moral considerations little more than adaptive-idiosyncrasies that were selected for under conditions of environmental happenstance, and which are therefore indifferent to moral-truths. These interpretations have since been substantially refined, yielding an entire philosophical sub-genre of evolutionary-critiques (evolutionary-debunking arguments/EDA) that similarly cast doubt on the epistemic grounds for our moral considerations. Utilising Sharon Street’s paradigmatic “Darwinian dilemma” as the model-EDA, I contest the soundness of these sceptical metaethical interpretations of human evolution, demonstrating that moral considerations are premised on rationally-discoverable implications of natural-facts, accessible to any organisms in possession of a sufficient capacity for abstraction, sentience and reason. I identify the aforesaid implications as entailing a rational obligation to impartiality, or the omnibenevolent consideration of pan-subjective interests. I acknowledge that the character of our instinctual and sentimental impulsions is indeed substantially determined by Darwinian selection-pressures, which have inconsistently operated so as to varyingly favour and disfavour instinctual sentiments that are quasi-moral in nature. I provide grounds for which to suppose that under conditions of relevant environmental-similarity (sufficient sentience and eusociality), natural-selection may converge upon sentiments that approximate familiar dimensions of morality such as impartiality, reciprocity and altruism, in a similar fashion to which it familiarly converges upon other anatomical traits. I nonetheless recognise that Darwinian forces have operated in such a way as to substantially endow us with instincts and behavioural impulsions which are non-moral in character, and are oftentimes selfish, tribalistic and otherwise suspect from a moral point of view. I therefore suggest that we are in two minds about our rational and moral considerations on the one hand, and our survival-oriented and parochial interests on the other, with numerous implications for practical ethics. I conclude by offering the following counsel: that 1) the evolutionary sciences should be seen as an aide to an ethical naturalism, rather than as undermining of our sense of moral-groundedness, and 2) that—given the moral obligation to omnibenevolence, and the psychobiological imperative to prioritise one’s genetic interests—a sound balance between egoism and altruism makes for healthier individuals and societies.
EXPOSITION
INTRODUCTION & STATEMENT OF AIMS
Since the advent of evolutionary accounts of human values, numerous philosophical observers have held that the implications of the fact of evolution are decidedly subversive, posing a challenge to our sense of moral-groundedness. This perception stems from the presumed contingency of our moral sentiments, subject to the selection-pressures arising from historical and environmental circumstances. The environmental-contingency of the character of morality was notably explored by Charles Darwin himself, whose 1871 publication, The Descent of Man, contains numerous and sometimes troubled references to the apparent conditionality of the esteemed moral faculty: were men “reared under precisely the same conditions as hive-bees”… he envisioned …“there can hardly be a doubt that our unmarried females would, like the worker-bees, think it a sacred duty to kill their brothers, and mothers would strive to kill their fertile daughters; and no one would think of interfering.” (p. 122) Thus, organisms subject to an alternate evolutionary history may be equally well disposed to form their own set of social customs and moral conventions and be no more immoral for doing so than humans are for enacting their evolved priorities. For many interpreters, this implication is understood to have decidedly subversive implications for morality: commenting on Darwin’s ideas, Frances Cobbe proclaimed that were they ever widely adopted, “in the hour of their triumph would be sounded the knell of the virtue of mankind”. (quoted in Descent, pp 122-123) Although Darwin did not endorse this sceptical interpretation of his theory, he feared the impact it might have on society’s sense of moral groundedness, opining that: “It is to be hoped that the belief in the permanence of virtue on this earth is not held by many persons on so weak a tenure.” (p. 123)
These concerns anticipated a slew of positions within contemporary metaethics—known as evolutionary-debunking arguments (hereafter EDA)—that similarly call into question the epistemic validity of our moral dispositions in light of our knowledge of their evolved status. Such critiques employ the presumed empirical contingency of morality in “[questioning] the epistemic credibility of our ethical beliefs, by pointing out that we would have had very different beliefs if certain things about us had been different, even supposing the relevant ethical facts to remain the same.” (p. 8, Lillehammer, 2010) Conspicuously amongst contemporary evolutionary-debunking critiques, Sharon Street has developed this reasoning extensively in her “Darwinian dilemma” (2006) for value-realism, wherein “value” comprises all forms of evaluative-judgements and normative injunctions, encompassing both morality and aesthetic preferences. Pursuant to the rationale of the aforementioned species of EDAs more generally, Street purports to demonstrate that the Darwinian “contingency challenge” (p. 8, Lillehammer, 2010) problematises our efforts to conduct moral-epistemology and ascertain knowledge of normative-truths.
After a brief exposition of Street’s position, the forthcoming paper will be delivered in tripartite form:
SECTION 1: Explores and outlines the operative notion of moral-realism to be defended. I engage in a substantive discussion of the metaethics of value and of moral-facts, fielding a synthetic conception of moral-truths as implications for rational conduct entailed by foundational natural-facts, in principle ascertainable to any sufficiently sentient or rational intelligence; thereby synthesising rationalism and naturalism. I elaborate upon the nature of normativity more broadly, arguing that the imperative dimension of morality ought be understood as conditional in nature (that is, the motivational component of morality is neutral even if its truth-component is objective). Whilst predicated merely upon natural-facts, morality may be classed alongside other abstract facts.
SECTION 2: Contests the assumption of a contingency-challenge inherent to the Darwinian dilemma, by arguing that 1) our faculty for rational deliberation is sufficiently autonomous of the sentiments so as to enable the unclouded ascertainment of moral knowledge, and that 2) in circumstances of environmental similarity (wherein familiar properties of morality are adaptive), natural selection may in fact converge upon familiar moral-sentiments, in a similar manner to which it converges upon other anatomical traits in similar environments (I suggest that communities of eusocial and sentient animals are themselves environments in which familiar moral properties are adaptive).
SECTION 3: Summarises my conclusions and pursues some of their notable implications for practical ethics. In particular, I suggest that evolutionary-sciences aide rather than undermine the project of moral-epistemology. I furthermore offer the normative counsel that—in light of the twofold and often conflicting nature of our rational, moral concerns and our more parochial Darwinian instincts—a nuanced middle-path between the extremes of unmitigated altruism and egoism is most conducive to human wellbeing and flourishing.
The aforesaid riposte to the presumed challenge visited upon our moral-sense by Darwinian contingency was notably anticipated by the British utilitarian philosopher and contemporary of Charles Darwin’s, Henry Sidgwick. Where Darwin had imagined that differential evolutionary histories would elicit divergent moral customs amongst different species, such as those of his aforementioned and fratricidal hive-bees (rendering human morality susceptible to critiques from contingency), Sidgwick appeared untroubled by the matter, counselling that “a superior bee, we may feel sure, would aspire to a milder solution of the population question.” (quoted in Descent, p. 122) That is, a bee in full possession of faculties of reason; a bee of sufficiently superior intellect and concomitant moral-sense, would doubtless learn of the moral-truth and establish behavioural norms in greater accord therewith, in spite of their particular evolutionary history. Sidwick’s riposte offers a clue as to how moral-knowledge is untroubled by Darwinian contingency; since it is grounded in stable truths ascertainable to agencies of superior intellect and capacity for abstract reason.
Any such counterargument must accommodate an understanding of the relationship between reason, emotion and the instincts with motivation and action. After consultation of the associated literature in contemporary moral-psychology, I contend that an empirically faithful understanding of the relationship between rational cognition and emotions in humans vindicates such a picture; that whilst there is a complex interplay between our emotions and instincts (which inconsistently approximate moral considerations) and our rational and moral cognition, our faculties of reason are sufficiently autonomous so as to facilitate our unclouded acquisition of impartial and objective moral-knowledge. Nonetheless, I acknowledge that Darwinian forces have endowed us with potent instincts for self-preservation, kin-preference and other behavioural traits which are often at odds with our moral considerations. In light of the tension between these endowments, I conclude that we are in two minds about our rational and moral-considerations on the one hand, and our parochial, genetic interests on the other. I conclude my paper with a discussion of some of the implications for practical ethics arising from the metaethical picture developed herein, ultimately counselling that a balance between egoism and altruism makes for healthier individuals and societies.
Before fielding my arguments, let us consider Street’s position in closer detail:
THE DARWINIAN-DILEMMA FOR VALUE-REALISM
Street’s “Darwinian dilemma” (2006) employs Darwinian moral-contingency as part of an elaborate and paradigmatic critique of formal and philosophical realism about value. Metaethical realism, as understood by Street, holds that there are “facts or truths of the form that X is a normative reason to Y”, and that these facts hold “independently of all our evaluative attitudes” (p. 110, 2006). According to Street, that evolution has “played a tremendous role in shaping the content of human evaluative attitudes” poses a problem for realist theories of value on account of their alleged inability “to explain the relation between these evolutionary influences on our evaluative attitudes, on the one hand, and the independent evaluative truths that realism posits, on the other”. (p. 109, 2006) This owing to what Street terms the “adaptive link account” (p. 127), according to which evaluative attitudes are adaptations that evolved so as to encourage organisms to value what is advantageous to survival, rather than what is true. If the foregoing description pertained, so EDA-proponents claim, there would therefore be a “tracking failure” (p. 9, Lillehammer, 2010); that morals would track what is advantageous to survival rather than what is morally true.
Sharon Street poses the following dilemma for realists who, in order to avoid the troublesome epistemological implications of the tracking failure, must opt for one of the following two rebuttals: (p. 109)
x) “On the one hand, the realist may claim that there is no relation between evolutionary influences on our evaluative attitudes and independent evaluative truths.” Thereby dissociating the implications of contingent evolutionary import from our capacity to perceive moral truth.
y) On the other, the realist may claim “that there is a relation between evolutionary influences and independent evaluative truths, namely that natural selection [favoured] ancestors who were able to grasp those truths.” Thereby refuting the tracking failure problem by demonstrating that, after all, evolution does track moral truth.
Street considers the former position x) to lead to the “implausible sceptical result that most of our evaluative judgements are off track due to the distorting pressure of Darwinian forces”, and the latter position y) to be “unacceptable on scientific grounds”, thereby exhausting the realist of viable options. (p. 109) I will now proceed to outline the operative notion of moral-realism, addressing the dilemma thereafter.
SECTION 1: THE NATURE OF VALUE
1.1 DISAMBIGUATION OF EVALUATIVE-REALISM
Since our discussion principally concerns moral-epistemology and the legitimacy of our knowledge of moral-truths, before examining the horns of the Darwinian dilemma in detail we ought to disambiguate some of the concepts underpinning realism. Moral-realism is commonly understood as entailing that there are facts about what we ought to value and how we ought to behave, especially with regard to one another. Street’s argument employs the similar but technically distinct notion of “evaluative-facts” to refer to facts about anything we ought to value. Moral-facts can therefore be understood as a subset of evaluative-facts, and if there are moral-facts, it follows that there are evaluative-facts. Accordingly, these terms will be employed interchangeably for the remainder of this paper. Street understands evaluative-facts as “facts or truths of the form that X is a normative reason to Y”, and characterises realism as holding that said facts “hold independently of all our evaluative attitudes” (p. 110, 2006); a metaphysically-loaded departure point deserving of considerable qualification. Essentially, I shall adhere to Street’s conception of realism, in the sense that I will attempt to offer an argument for which X can indeed be a normative reason to Y, subject to important qualifications regarding the nature of normativity. By “normative reason”, I understand Street to mean that “because X, therefore I ought Y”, and by the requirement that said facts “hold independently of all our evaluative attitudes”, that the aforesaid normative-facts are not predicated on any particular antecedent value: they are universal and mind-independent. Such a definition of evaluative-facts accords with typical understandings of moral-realism and I concur with Street that any genuinely realist position must establish a normative framework in which the aforesaid characteristics hold.
MORAL-FACTS AS A CLASS OF ABSTRACT FACTS
I counsel that we ought indeed understand moral-facts as unalterable and mind-independent abstract facts, akin to the sense in which the number line exists as an abstraction or distillation of necessary relations of natural properties. Morality belongs to the class of abstract properties because its domain concerns potentialities, or possible courses of action: to even entertain the notion of how one ought to act presupposes the possibility of deliberation between potentialities. As Immanuel Kant prophetically concluded some centuries ago, free-will is a condition of possibility for moral-deliberation (indeed for any deliberation between potentialities of action), since to entertain the possibility of deliberation, one must assume the capacity for choice. One needn’t trouble oneself with the ontological status of free-will (whether it can truly be said to exist or not), since rational deliberation between potentialities necessarily presupposes it as a governing epistemic-framework: that is, it is “deliberatively indispensable” (Enoch, 2011) to behavioural cognition. Like other abstract facts such as properties of number, I shall argue that moral-facts are distillations of necessary natural-properties; that is, that “2+2=4” is an abstract distillation of the properties that govern particular manifestations of quantity in nature, and morality is an abstract distillation of relational properties of value, as it is instantiated in nature. On this view, abstract facts are a sub-set of natural facts, and rationalism about morality is therefore consistent with naturalism about value.
Whilst I urge that we understand moral-facts as a class of facts, they are nonetheless conditionally motivational upon an adherence to reason, whence their authority derives; that is, the “ought” component of morality (what I will refer to hereafter as its “motivational-force” or “normative-force”, interchangeably)—the sense in which morality is obligatory—is predicated upon a rational will, whereas its truth-component is an unconditional fact. Moral-facts do therefore entail that “X is a normative reason to Y”, but need not necessarily motivate one to action. Analogously, one must necessarily conclude that “2+2=4”, but technically speaking, one is under no necessary obligation to treat two and two as equal to four; one can still behave irrationally. Similar views have found representation in Cornell realism; as Richard Boyd has described, whilst “[o]rdinary factual judgments often provide us with reasons for action” … “they do so only because of our antecedent interests or desires. If moral judgments are merely factual judgments, as moral realism requires, then the relation of moral judgments to motivation and rationality must be the same. It would be possible in principle for someone, or some thinking thing, to be entirely rational while finding moral judgments motivationally neutral and irrelevant to choices of action.” (Boyd, 1988) That is, one can be rational in one’s appraisal of the facts, but be motivationally unmoved by them.
THE RED-HERRING OF UNCONDITIONALLY-NORMATIVE FACTS
Indeed, I regard the attempt to understand evaluative-facts as unconditionally-normative—or as having inherent motivational-force, in Boyd’s lexicon—as itself a category-error; on account of the necessary metaphysical incorporeality of inherently-motivational obligations; that is, obligations whose normative-force is inherent to them and not predicated on any antecedent values nor even an adherence to reason. If such obligations existed, they would by necessity belong to some class of supernatural phenomena, since motivations have no conceivable natural corporeality outside of value-structures which are, as Street correctly points out, “conferred upon the world by valuing creatures” (p. 40, 2012). A similar argument with respect to the metaphysical status of normativity has already been advanced by Mackie, in his notorious “argument from queerness” (1977); according to which unconditionally-normative facts are necessarily illusory. Mackie therefore advances the “error-theoretic” conclusion that we are mistaken in attempting to identify unconditionally-normative facts; a position which I affirm and presuppose.
For this reason, the notion of morality as having factual status has eluded numerous theorists, since it is widely thought that morals must be inherently motivational in order to be classed as such: they must necessarily compel one to act a certain way. Even Mackie’s argument from queerness is addressed to moral facts per se, whereas my own argument differs from Mackie’s in the crucial respect that it is the much sought-after unconditionally-normative component of moral-facts which is illusory, rather than their truth-status (it remains unclear to me whether Mackie would accept such a view). The very best that could be argued for within the framework of metaphysical naturalism would be to locate the noumenal existence of such obligations in the neural-states that correspond to their phenomenal existence in consciousness. Some theorists do indeed attempt to classify normative-truths in terms of mental states, for instance in the constructive-sentimentalism of Jesse Prinz, according to which: “when a person says that a course of action is obligatory, that judgment expresses what might be called a prescriptive sentiment” (p. 4, 2007), that Φ-ing is wrong if I have disapprobation towards Φ-ing, or that “Φ-ing is wrong because I regard it negatively in itself” (p. 34, 2007). Whilst this is a perfectly coherent understanding of normativity, it is practically and counterintuitively at odds with the way that moral-facts are understood in the context of actual discourse about morality, both philosophical and non-philosophical. Moral-facts of this sort are hardly distinct from mere opinions or feelings, and are furthermore as worthless as they are abundant. This is discrepant with the generalisable authority and mind-independency that moral-facts are typically regarded as having, both in colloquial discourse and in prominent philosophical attempts to understand and characterise morality. (see pp. 57-64, Joyce, 2006) Under our conception, the authority of moral-truths—whilst having no necessary obligatory force—is attributable to their logical entailment by natural-facts. Thus, they are appreciable to the intellect and motivational to agents of a rational will.
One might conclude that the adoption of an error-theoretic stance with respect to unconditional-normativity precludes us from speaking of evaluative-facts or conducting evaluative-epistemology at all, and Street may feel her conclusion to have been conceded to; indeed, we do not require her debunking-argument in order to reject unconditionally-normative facts. However, the error-theoretic critique cannot legitimately be generalised to a critique of moral-truths of a non-motivational variety, as outlined by Boyd, and whose content I will proceed to expound. As we shall see, naturalists such as Street and Prinz take an important step in identifying valuing minds as the loci of evaluative-attitudes, but miss broader and more universal truths about the set of such subjective valuations, which constitute the root of ethical considerations generally.
1.2 FIELDING A NATURALIST-RATIONALIST SYNTHESIS
As hitherto indicated, to the extent there are moral-facts I urge that we understand them as motivationally-neutral for metaphysical reasons, and as abstractions of objective states of naturalistic affairs and of rational courses of action arising therefrom. The class of facts that can reasonably be considered as having something to do with “morality” pertains to the sphere of value, which—I concur with Street—is something “conferred upon the world by valuing creatures.” (p. 40, Street, 2012) Constructivist or subjectivist ontologies of value such as Street’s and Prinz’s are not strictly incorrect on my view—in their unifying claim that value is ascribed—but rather fail to take into account that judged from an impersonal and objective standpoint, like kinds and qualities of value are factually comparable; the more economically inclined might be tempted to think of value as fungible. That is, that one’s own perceptions of value—or experiences of pleasure and suffering, say—are no more valuable from an objective standpoint than another’s, save perhaps in their degree or quality. Such a fact is—it seems to me—essentially tautological, since it is predicated only on the supposition that value is in fact valuable to those who confer it; which even subjectivists agree upon.
One might be tempted to issue rebuttals to the effect of “but why ought I value what I value?”, in order to question the inherency of the value of ascribed value. However, if value-ascribing agents are in fact the font of value, this is not to say that one cannot revise the content of one’s values, but simply that the value-component of one’s values (rather than the content of what is valued) is inherent to its ascription. One can certainly question and revise one’s values, but the conference of value ultimately stems from its having been ascribed by a valuing agent. Whilst valuations are therefore subjectively determined, once one considers the plethora of valuations objectively—or impartially—one sees that there is parity between various ascriptions of value in natural terms. Hereafter I will refer to this fact as the “principle of evaluative-parity”.
THE PRINCIPLE OF EVALUATIVE-PARITY
Evaluative-parity is the foundational natural-fact upon which moral edicts are premised, and upon whose appreciation the motivational-force of moral injunctions is latterly and conditionally predicated. Evaluative-parity follows from an objective appraisal of the ontology of value. If value is conferred by a given agent, a valuing consciousness, it follows that value is instantiated in nature in every instance in which a conscious agent confers it. The particularness and sentimental importance of one’s own values is therefore illusory when judged from without oneself, that is objectively. This holds whether one is an idealist or materialist in one’s ontology of value: that is one, one must identify the locus of value as either mental substance, or some physical system (say, neurophysiological); and the objective instantiation of value in every iteration of the aforesaid phenomena pertains irrespectively.
For the remainder of the discussion, I shall approach the subject of the ontology of value from a naturalistic standpoint; that is, identifying value as instantiated in some neurophysiological system, or—at the risk of some digression—in some recursive informational system, whose arbitrations of the value are ultimately manifest conceptually, physiologically or emotionally: value is the result of some brain-state from which the subjective experience of value arises. Contemporary naturalists have traversed part of the journey toward a materialist conception of value—for instance, in Sam Harris’ reduction of value to brain-states (2010)—and it is in a similar manner that I envision a naturalist ontology of value as increasingly outlined. Evaluative-parity, then, is a natural-fact: it is a fact about objective states of naturalistic affairs that value is abundant in the universe, and that there is a comparableness or fungible-ness (what I have termed “parity”) to the various instantiations of value.
OBJECTIVITY ENTAILS IMPARTIALITY
The normative implications of morality are subsequently premised on this natural-truth. That is, it follows from the objective appraisal of evaluative-parity that there are logical reasons for which to treat valuations and states of pleasure and displeasure as comparable (because they are in fact comparable). One might formulate this principle otherwise: that there are no objective reasons for which to discriminate between the interests and values of subjective agents; or rather that there are objective reasons to adopt a stance of non-discrimination between said interests. As articulated by the 19th Century utilitarian, Henry Sidgwick: “the good of any one individual is of no more importance, from the point of view of the Universe, than the good of any other.” (ME 382, cited p. 119, Singer et al., 2014). It is therefore rational to adopt a stance of impartiality with respect to the interests of pan-subjective agencies: that is, “objectivity entails impartiality”.
It could therefore be said that to the extent we are acting impartially, we are acting morally. Moral behaviour is that behaviour which is conducted pursuant to an impartial appraisal of one’s interests as just those that “happen to be mine”. One might otherwise interpret this stance as one of universal-benevolence (hereafter, “omnibenevolence”), since impartiality entails common-regard for pan-subjective agencies, and therefore mindfulness of their individuated self-interests: since other valuing agencies have such interests, an impartial appraisal thereof would have us respect them. We are therefore tempted to proceed as though omnibenevolence is synonymous with impartiality, although a lively discussion remains to be had as to whether the two are interchangeable. Impartiality as the foundation of morality has notable precedent in great moral traditions the world over, and is familiar captured in the “Golden Rule”: “do unto others as you would have them do unto you”. Whilst there is room to question this precise formulation, in essence the maxim is premised on a presumed parity between one’s interests and those of others: the recognition that other agencies are in some fundamental sense like oneself. Whether one finds this fact motivational, obligatory or otherwise stimulating to action is extraneous to whether or not it is in fact true: to the extent one is rational—acting in accordance with things as they are—one is therefore obliged to adopt a stance of impartiality. More precisely, one is obligated to entertain an ethical sentiocentrism; the acknowledgement of the natural-fact that the locus of value is consciousness, and that if pan-subjective valuations are appreciated for their factual status, they ought be held in common regard.
Of course, a nuanced conversation still remains with regard to how best to understand the significance of impartiality for ethical conduct. One might, for instance, think of it as entailing an impartial edict such as the aforesaid Golden Rule, or an intent to maximise of the sum of subjective value in utilitarian terms. However one interprets the significance of impartiality is somewhat ancillary to the issue at hand, since evaluative-parity entails that impartiality follows from objectivity, even if it may be too practically complex to implement with genuine universality. Rather, as previously indicated, to the extent one is acting morally, one is endeavouring to act impartially, and with consideration for others’ interests.
Metaethical positions such as my own are not entirely unmentioned in Sharon Street’s discussion, and her paper anticipates a rebuttal from naturalist theories of ethics. Street distinguishes between two subtypes of value-naturalism, identified as realist and antirealist. Street describes genuinely realist value-naturalism as holding that “which natural facts evaluative facts are identical with is independent of our evaluative attitudes.” (p. 137, 2006) One might think that because I have acknowledged that moral-facts cannot be unconditionally-normative, it must be the case that which natural-facts evaluative-facts are identical with is dependent on our evaluative-attitudes. On the contrary, the content of the evaluative-facts (impartiality) is not dependent on our particular evaluative-attitudes, rather it is derivable and logical consequence of evaluative-parity, which is a non-circumstantial and universally true natural-fact. Juxtaposing circumstantial natural-facts about value, such as “humans need to eat in order to survive” and therefore that “eating is good”—which is conditional upon finding survival to be good—impartiality holds for all possible rational agents, since it is derivable from universally true natural-facts about values qua values. That is, “evaluative-parity is true” and therefore that “omnibenevolence is good”, because ascriptions of goodness are inherently good.
Formally, that:
Where “values”, refers to all appraisals of worth, positive regard, pleasure, wellbeing and their antitheses:
P1. One’s sentience is the font of one’s values. (Or, the subjective ascription of value, hitherto described)
P2. One’s sentience has parity with other sentiences. (Or, the natural-fact of evaluative-parity)
C. One should value other sentiences. (Or, the stance of impartiality, or sentiocentric omnibenevolence)
Perhaps the most obvious objection to this viewpoint is that the values conferred by a given agent are valuable only to that agent, and that one cannot legitimately equate other values with one’s own, since it is their having been conferred by a given agent that makes them valuable to that agent alone. This rebuttal rings true, although only for a solipsist. The reason one feels one’s values to have special importance to oneself is that they take place within one’s consciousness. Viewed objectively however (from outside oneself), one sees that one’s values have no special status. Certainly, one indeed feels one’s values to have some special importance, but only due precisely to the distorting Darwinian influences produced by the adaptive-link account; if one didn’t value one’s values over and above others, one’s survival chances would be diminished. Thus, the solipsistic and egoistical position is subject to the evolutionary-critique, whereas the universal position is a mind-independent truth. Thus, viewed impersonally (that is impartially, or objectively):
P1. The locus of value (X) is valuing consciousness (A).
C1. The set of all consciousness (pan-subjectivity) {A} is the locus of all that is valuable {X}.
C2. {A} should be regarded as valuable (morally-considerable).
Returning to the original conception of moral-realism that we began with, that “X is a normative reason to Y”, with the aforesaid argument in view, we can conclude: “that I value X is a reason to value Y”. Formally:
(X = (that I recognise my values as valuable)) is a normative reason to (Y = (regard pan-subjective values as valuable)), subject to the appreciation of their ontological parity.
SOLIPSISM AND PSYCHOPATHY: MIND-PERCEPTION AND MORALITY
The capacity for abstraction (to view oneself objectively, from without) is therefore a condition for the possibility of morality, as is mind-perception, or the recognition of the existence of other sentiences. This fact is illustrated by the phenomenon of psychopathy. There is extensive evidence demonstrating that psychopaths exhibit different or impoverished theory-of-mind skills compared to the population norm. That is, psychopaths display abnormalities in the degree to which they are intuitively able to process the mental states or emotions of others, or may do so only instrumentally in pursuit of some end. Some researchers have identified these abnormalities as deficits in “affective-empathy” (van Dongen, 2020) or “automatic theory-of-mind” (Drayton, L. A. et al., 2018), highlighting that whilst psychopaths may utilise deliberative theory-of-mind skills in pursuit of some end-goal, they are affectively and automatically unmotivated by perceptions of emotion or suffering in others. The model of morality I have outlined hitherto provides a priori theoretical support for these models of psychopathy, and is itself vindicated by the evidence from studies in psychopathy. Broadly speaking, to the degree to which one is genuinely solipsistic and unable to perceive other minds, appreciate or be motivated by their emotional states, one might expect a relative level of disregard for moral concerns, which are premised on the appreciation of likeness between external subjectivity and one’s own. Elsewhere, researchers have independently postulated that mind-perception is the essence of morality (Gray, et al., 2012), and therefore that impoverished mind-perception (incapacity for abstraction) predicts comparative amorality.
HUME’S LAW: DERIVING NORMATIVE IMPLICATIONS FROM EVALUATIVE-PARITY
One might conclude that my suggestion that the principle of evaluative-parity implies normative facts (“shoulds” or “oughts”) such as omnibenevolence is a violation of Hume’s Law, to the effect that one cannot derive an “ought from an is”; thus the Humean might accept C1 whilst questioning C2. Here, I urge my reader to recall the prior discussion of unconditionally versus conditionally-normative facts (see §1.1); I understand the form of value-naturalism I have fielded to be unaffected by the Humean challenge, on the grounds that part and parcel of my understanding is a recognition that unconditional-oughts are illusory. However, the motivational-component of evaluative-parity is merely conditional upon a rational will, since to act as though pan-subjective agencies are the loci of all that is valuable is to appreciate them for what they in fact are.
To further illustrate how impartiality is a logical and rational implication of evaluative-parity: Suppose that one is faced with a choice of multiple identical products at the market; there are no objective reasons for which to discriminate between the different products. Still, one might invoke some arbitrary reason for which to value one or another product more. Supposing them truly to be identical—with not even so much as a difference in their packaging or the degree to which they have already been handled—one might still insist that, for example “today, I prefer ‘left’, and therefore I shall choose the product on the left”. Whilst this is surely a reason, it is hardly a rational one. Rationally speaking, there is no objective criteria by which to make any discrimination whatsoever. Thus, whether one treats the products equitably or not is contingent merely upon the degree to which they are behaving rationally. Thus, whilst the normative implication of impartiality stemming from the principle of evaluative-parity is conditional—and thus escapes the Humean challenge—it is conditional only upon one’s adherence to reason.
A contrarian might rebut that in our analogy, non-discrimination is only rational if one presumes a definite reason for one’s desiring the product in the first place—a reason which is ultimately as arbitrary as a preference for “left”. The “left-ness” of the product is arbitrary with respect to the goal one has in mind when buying the product, but that goal is itself arbitrary, or reduces to foundational goals that are arbitrary. Thus, so might say the contrarian, I have not demonstrated whatsoever with my analogy that impartiality is logically entailed by parity, rather than arbitrary. This is an imperfection of the analogy, rather than fatally undermining to my argument. Surely, whether “left-ness” is arbitrary with respect to one’s attribution of parity to the various products is indeed contingent upon a presumed set of reasons for valuing the product in the first place. However, in the case of values themselves, impartiality is contingent only upon a recognition that one values one’s own values, which is tautological and self-evident. Assuming one’s ascriptions of value to be valuable to oneself, by virtue of one’s having ascribed them, it follows immediately upon an objective appraisal of the fact that there are other valuing agencies just like oneself, that there is parity to pan-subjective valuations. Thus, while in my analogy, non-discrimination is a rational response to some very particular antecedent valuation, omnibenevolence is a rational implication of valuation per se.
Essentially then, rather than deriving an ought from an is, we are in fact deriving an ought from an ought. It is precisely because one acknowledges that one’s values are valuable to oneself that one is by necessity compelled to the recognition that valuing agencies ought be held in common regard, because there is an objective relation of parity between said valuing agencies. That our conclusion is premised on an ought is not to say that the deduction is subjective, since it holds for all possible valuing agents. In this sense our conclusion is an abstraction, a necessary feature of relations of value ascertainable to reason: it follows not from one’s particular values, but from values qua values.
If Street’s discussion is reducible to a critique to the effect that we only value reason for evolutionary-reasons, and therefore that our appraisal of the authority of reason is suspect, her position devolves to absurdity. Indeed, if reason is suspect, we needn’t take her argument seriously, nor any other argument. Furthermore, if moral-truths are rational abstractions of natural properties, we are entitled question to what extent they could possibly be debunked by an evolutionary-critique, since they are therefore irreducible and necessary property of existence. I do not think evolutionary-debunkers sincerely intend to question the value of reason, rather EDA are formulated as critiques of the justification for what we regard as true, on the grounds that our judgement-forming capacities are clouded by evolutionary forces, rather than as a wholesale rejection of the value of truth and reason. Therefore, if one accepts that my conception of morality is a viable one, my remaining task is merely to show that the Darwinian dilemma does not present a problem for the epistemic-validity of the appraisal thereof. I will therefore proceed to tackle the component of Street's paper that poses a distinctive evolutionary-challenge for moral-knowledge.
SECTION 2: THE DARWINIAN-DILEMMA
2.1. IN TWO MINDS: THE NON-EXCLUSIVITY OF THE HORNS OF THE DILEMMA
Having sufficiently qualified the sentiocentric character of valuation and of morality, the remaining task before me is to demonstrate that our moral-knowledge is not problematised by the evolutionary-critique levied in Street’s “Darwinian dilemma”. I will now attempt to demonstrate how both of the realist’s rebuttals to the dilemma—that evolution both tracks and does not track moral-truth—can both be successfully upheld in distinct senses, and therefore that the epistemic basis for morality survives the challenge. On the face of it, this may seem contradictory; after all how could evolution and moral-truth be relational and non-relational simultaneously? I contend that this is a failing of Street’s formulation of the dichotomy, and not of the facts themselves. By “relation”, Street is considering whether or not evolution has selected for moral-knowledge, and whether it has so-selected is perhaps not as dichotomous—as either/or—as Street would have us believe. After all, it is entirely plausible that evolution has tracked moral-truth in a limited fashion—by endowing us with a rational faculty by which we can discern moral-knowledge—while at the same time imbuing us with instincts and attitudes that do not track such knowledge; both aspects of human nature are present and are often in conflict. This should hardly come as a surprise, after all it is precisely that our moral capacity would have us do things that contradict our primordial instincts wherein the quasi-miraculousness of morality lies.
“One of the greatest truths in psychology is that the mind is divided into parts that sometimes conflict. To be humans is to feel pulled in different directions, and to marvel—sometimes in horror—at your inability to control your own actions” (p. 32, Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind, 2012)
The notion of a duality to our inner nature, consisting of both instincts that are not truth-tracking, and a rational capacity whereby we can conduct moral epistemology is—it seems to me—prima facie true, and is substantially evidenced by case studies that examine the relationship between rational moral deliberation and more immediate, gut-response-type emotional reactions. For instance, one might consider psychological studies, such as those conducted by Paul Slovic (2007) wherein groups of participants display greater concern and levels of charity for a single victimised individual than they do for greater numbers of victims; however, when this is pointed out to them, they acknowledge the absurdity of their disproportionate levels of concern and amend for it; thus illustrating our capacity to amend the moral imperfection of our instincts when prompted to think critically about them. Numerous similar experiments have been conducted, substantially supporting this characterisation of our inner nature; some “dual-process” theories have even gone so far as to characterise the mind as compartmentalised into two quite distinct moral-belief forming capacities. Whether such a clean separation is possible is extraneous to the essential point, but much of the evidence for dual-process theory similarly supports the claim that there is a dualism to our emotions and instincts on the one hand, and our capacity for rationally deliberative calculations on the other. These distinct faculties likely have separate evolutionary-origins; for instance, the more instinctual, intuitive and impulsion-driven form of judgement-forming is likely considerably more ancient. That a more sophisticated cognitive faculty for rational thought and abstraction developed later is hardly surprising, given its relative complexity and the circumstances under which it likely developed. Indeed, the interplay between reason and the emotions, and their often contradictory aims is a staple of much contemporary moral-psychology with prominent moral-psychologists independently addressing this subject.
For clarity, I am not suggesting that emotions cannot motivate quasi-moral attitudes, rather I am claiming that the possession of a distinct and more abstractly rational capacity by which moral-truths can be deduced, and by which abstraction, reason and other deliberative and higher-order thought can be conducted is largely autonomous, and yet still evolved. Thus, evolution has operated in a way that is both non-relational to moral-truth and relational to it; likely at different periods within our ancestral history. Thus, whether or not evolution tracks moral-truth is perhaps not so dichotomous as Street suggests. A decisive, either-or choice between the two horns of Street’s dilemma therefore seems illusory, and arguments for each of the two realist rebuttals are possible without being mutually exclusive. I will therefore proceed to a defence of both rejoinders to the Darwinian dilemma, beginning with the former.
2.2. THE HORNS OF THE DILEMMA: X) THE SUFFICIENT AUTONOMY OF REASON
I regard the former position x), “that there is no relation between evolutionary influences on our evaluative attitudes and independent evaluative truths”, as already rather well established, since it is a trivial matter to dissociate the evolutionary influence on our evaluative attitudes from our capacity to deduce rational conclusions. Even if evolution is substantially, if not entirely responsible for our instincts, sentiments and other attitudes, we still possess a sufficiently autonomous rational capacity that asks: “I may feel one way, but what is right?”, and in asking what is “right”, we appeal to abstractions and impartial principles that inform us as to alternative courses of action which are not merely dependent on our instinctual impulsions, or at the very least restrain them.
As FitzPatrick has cogently argued:
“Suppose natural selection did have substantial influence on crude moral belief-forming dispositions when it operated on Pleistocene humans. This is entirely compatible with thinking that thousands of years of cultural evolution, including the development of sophisticated traditions of moral inquiry and reflection, have also allowed us to engage in largely autonomous moral thinking—that is, thinking that transcends the micromanaging influences of natural selection in the distant past, proceeding independently of such evolutionary shaping of the content of our thinking, following standards internal to developed methods of inquiry. We clearly engage in that kind of intelligent and independent thought when we do higher mathematics, or science, or metaphysics, or philosophy generally” (p. 242, 2014)
This is perhaps no clearer than in examples wherein reason guides people to act in ways which have no conceivable evolutionary advantage; for instance, in the case of anti-natalists, or even in individual cases wherein people subdue urges for reasons that are of no benefit to them, their kin or any group that might reasonably be considered to have been favoured by the influence of selection-pressures on our attitudes. This is noted by Lazari-Radek and Singer in their discussion of Street’s argument, who write that moral axioms “[contradict] the very evaluative attitudes that Street offers as examples of judgements that are likely to lead to reproductive success, such as ‘We have greater obligations to help our own children than we do to help complete strangers.’” (p. 185, 2014) Thus, adherence to said moral axioms cannot entirely be explained by Street’s adaptive link account. Rather, our commitment to moral axioms may have been favoured to the extent we have been endowed superior faculties of rational intelligence and moral sense, and can be understood more as the outcome of rational deliberation than mere sentiment or “evaluative-attitudes”. Furthermore, Street’s rejection of x) on the grounds that it would lead to the “implausible sceptical result that most of our evaluative judgements are off-track due to the distorting pressure of Darwinian forces”, can be resisted by simply biting the bullet. One can quite easily respond that: “our instincts are off-track and are often immoral”, eliciting interventions from our faculty of reason, which amends our behaviours and brings them into line with moral standards. I think hardly anyone who has lived could doubt that indeed, reason often plays precisely such a role!
One might fairly question how such a capacity for autonomous reason could have evolved if indeed it often contradicts immediate survival demands. However, I do not regard this apparent discrepancy as sufficiently inexplicable as to genuinely cast doubt on the autonomy of reason. Asking how animals that forgo their immediate and personal interests in the service of rational and moral ends could have evolved strikes me as somewhat like asking how animals that commit suicide could have evolved. Suicide is clearly disadvantageous to an organism’s survival, but is a byproduct of other features which are themselves on-balance advantageous; for instance, the capacity for suffering, pain and displeasure. Those same features are clearly advantageous, since they compel organisms to pursue healthy and beneficial courses of action, increasing their chances of reproduction, yet when the experiences of pain and suffering are too great, an individual may despair of a solution and take their own life. Something similar may be true of rationality, which—whilst sometimes demanding of us courses of action that contradict our immediate and egoistical needs—is on-balance advantageous, for quite obvious reasons having to do with the practical advantages associated with the capacity to appraise other kinds of objective and abstract truths, such as those of mathematics and physics. Lazari-Radek and Singer have characterised this as the “unity of practical reason”, suggesting that:
“Reason comes as a package that could not be economically divided by evolutionary pressures. Either we have a capacity to reason that includes the capacity to do advanced physics and mathematics and to grasp objective moral truths, or we have a much more limited capacity to reason that lacks not only these abilities, but others that confer an overriding evolutionary advantage. If reason is a unity of this kind, having the package would have been more conducive to survival and reproduction than not having it”. (p. 183, 2014).
Therefore to some degree, to the extent it has endowed us with non-rational and non-moral instincts, evolution has operated indifferently to moral-truths, and yet—on the grounds of the sufficient autonomy of reason—this fact need not preclude us from epistemic confidence in our rational deductions about morality. With this having been established, I will now proceed to argue in favour of the latter rejoinder to Street’s dilemma, by suggesting that—in contrast to the empirical picture presumed by Street—in a limited sense, to the extent that evolution confers higher-intelligence, sociability and other attributes associated with more advanced life, it may very well select for sentiments that approximate familiar dimensions of morality, such as impartiality, reciprocity and altruism. Crucially, since we have acknowledged some adaptive downsides associated with the rational ascription of value, the survival advantages associated with morality ought best be regarded as on-balance beneficial, rather than exclusively beneficial. In any case, I will proceed to argue that evolution can reasonably be thought of as having favoured moral-truth in at least two particular senses.
2.3. THE HORNS OF THE DILEMMA: Y) THE CASE FOR CONVERGENCE
The second horn of Street’s dilemma y), according to which there is a relationship between evolution and moral-truths can be substantially defended on empirical and a priori grounds. As previously suggested (see §2.1), evolution has acted in ways that are both relational and non-relational to ethical-truth (perhaps at chronologically-distinct intervals), and therefore my defence of y) will not consist in establishing that there is a wholesale relationship between evolution and moral-truths, but rather that in some crucial and limited respects, evolution and morality converge. I offer two distinct reasons for which this might be the case; on the one hand, that the capacity to appraise moral-truths is intimately embroiled with the emergence of self-awareness, sentience and abstraction—which are themselves advantageous—and on the other, that the behavioural implications that arise from the appraisal of moral-truths are beneficial to group-cohesion and survival, and therefore that quasi-moral instincts (altruism, care-compassion, etc.) may have additionally been selected for.
THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SENTIENCE AND MORALITY
Even during Darwin’s time, some respondents to the moral implications of evolutionary theory speculated that sufficiently developed or advanced organisms may very well tend toward familiar moral conventions. Whereas Darwin had proposed that “were men reared under precisely the same conditions as hive-bees”, they would likely adopt the fratricidal moral customs suited thereto, his contemporary, Henry Sidgwick, countered that “a superior bee, we may feel sure, would aspire to a milder solution of the population question.” (quoted in Descent, p. 122) Sidgwick’s riposte is illuminative and opens a possible avenue within which one might pursue a response to the empirical challenge, that “if we had evolved differently, we would have had different ethical beliefs.” (p. 9, Lillehammer, 2010) We need not accept Sidgwick’s exact formulation in order to appreciate an important essential nature to his point; that something about an organism’s progressive development may dispose it to evermore recognisable forms of morality. A reformulation of Sidgwick’s claim may look something like this in contemporary parlance: That to the extent a species develops higher faculties (e.g., intelligence, sentience and moral sense), those faculties will in turn dispose it to more recognisably moral behaviours (“milder”, in Sidgwick’s vocabulary).
The Sidgwickian view can be convincingly defended in evolutionary terms; that in proportion to the extent that evolution confers said superior faculties, it can legitimately be understood as tracking moral-truth. That in this way evolution might tend toward familiar moral conventions can be understood similarly to the more widely observed phenomenon of convergent evolution (Conway Morris, 2006), which concerns the evolution in distinct species of similar traits in response to similar survival challenges. Examples of purely anatomical convergence include the evolution of wings in both birds and bats—developed independently—or the similar overall body shapes of ichthyosaurs and modern dolphins; since some forms are simply better-suited to confer survival advantages in particular environments, those forms will be selected for again in circumstances of environmental similarity. Something similar may reasonably be said of morality, which is itself advantageous in particular environments—or is at the very least a byproduct of faculties which are themselves adaptations to survival challenges, for instance more general capacities for abstraction, self-awareness and reason. In this way, evolution can be expected to favour the capacity to grasp and value moral-truths, and indeed it has acted in such a way in our own case. To get a general sense of how this might play out, let us consider the relationship between sentience, abstraction, self-awareness and morality.
By self-awareness, I refer to the capacity of an organism or intelligence to appraise itself from without; that is, to understand itself as an agent inhabiting a world of other agents, to appreciate the scope and confines of its physical form, that it can come to experience pleasure and displeasure as a result of external factors, and crucially that it can bring about pleasure and displeasure in other agents as a result of its own actions. Such a capacity quite obviously has considerable benefits associated with the ability to navigate and survive the world, and this general capacity for self-awareness and abstraction is intimately embroiled with—if not the principal component of—what we typically regard as sentience.
To illustrate the relationship between sentience and ethics, recall our earlier discussion of the essentially sentiocentric character of the natural-facts that form the foundational-principles of ethics. (see §1.2) Since such facts pertain to one’s place in the universe—as one amongst many subjective agents—virtually by definition their appraisal requires a substantial capacity for abstraction and self-awareness; it is only when an organism can see beyond the solipsism of its internal experience, and appraise its own consciousness impartially rather than partially, that it can possibly come to an understanding of the parity of its own experiences and values with others. Thus, whilst methods of rational and deductive inquiry are essential to the appraisal and refinement of the conditionally-normative implications that follow from the foundational-principles of ethics, the capacity to appreciate the foundational-principles themselves is dependent on sentience, abstraction or self-awareness. Accordingly, to the extent that evolution favours sentience and self-awareness, it entails the capacity for the appraisal of fundamental ethical-facts, and indeed has done so in our own case. Thus, the superior bee—as Sidgwick suggests—or rather, the sentient bee, possesses an irreducible capacity for the appreciation of the natural-fact of evaluative-parity.
Evolution can therefore be understood as tracking moral-truth in proportion to the extent that it converges upon forms of sentient intelligence. Some evolutionary-biologists have suggested that intelligence is an optimum trait in evolutionary-terms, because its entails the capacity to devise solutions to a host of problems in a generalisable fashion (Morris, 2008) and thus the forces of evolutionary-convergence may very well gravitate toward the appraisal of moral-truth in recurrent fashion, predicting an observable correlation in nature between the measurable sentience or higher-intelligence and sociability of diverse animal species and their capacity or proclivity to begin to take on behaviours characteristically associated with morality and a respect for other subjective interests. Indeed, it seems to me that if one considers the more intelligent animals of Earth—for instance dogs, dolphins, elephants, parrots, orang-utans and so forth—one does in fact find such a relationship. However I do not regard the matter as settled, and this question may prove an interesting domain of inquiry for zoologists. To the extent that one’s capacity for abstraction is a function of one’s general-cognitive ability, one might also expect to find a relationship between one’s impartiality and moral-universalism, and one’s general-cognitive ability.
THE EUSOCIALITY OF MORALITY
Furthermore, whilst sentience, self-awareness and abstraction have considerable survival benefits in their own right and are conditions for the possibility of morality, there is another important reason for which natural-selection may have favoured the capacity to appreciate moral-truths; namely that they are beneficial to group cohesion, and to mediating disputes that may have otherwise resulted in conflict. Morality is therefore intrinsically pro-social, or “eusocial” in E. O. Wilson’s vocabulary. That moral sentiments were selected for their eusociality is substantially supported by the empirical evolutionary literature, even occupying the status of a consensus or “received view”. (pp. 117-125, Buchanan & Powell, 2018) My own account affirms and expands upon this preexisting consensus, according to which morality “developed and spread among small, scattered hunter-gatherer groups in the middle to late Pleistocene, where it was selected for coordinating social [behaviour] and managing patterns of interaction that resulted in costly intragroup conflicts.” (p. 120)
The reason for which the appraisal of moral-truth facilitates the coordination of social behaviour and the mediation of intersubjective disputes is because it premised on the impartial appraisal of competing interests, thereby providing a framework by which conflicting dispositions may be satisfied, addressed or resolved, without them devolving into conflict; to the extent organisms possess a sufficient capacity for abstraction and mind-recognition so too are they better-disposed to be able to appreciate the concerns of other agencies, allowing them to be ameliorated in negotiated fashion. Thus, the capacity to appreciate evaluative-parity and its normative-implications for the equitable treatment of various subjective interests provides the groundwork for an impartial means by which to arbitrate and mediate disputes. Of course, more primitive organisms with a capacity for abstraction did not begin by appreciating evaluative-parity, on a cosmic or universal scale. The capacity to think in such abstract terms is considerably more advanced and has been refined by our methods of rational and empirical inquiry. Rather, organisms with a more rudimentary capacity for abstraction took incremental steps towards a broader understanding of evaluative-parity by, for instance, recognising other members of their species as agents like themselves. Thus, whilst I am not suggesting that natural-selection initially favoured organisms that could grasp the full-blown state of affairs about value and consciousness, it may have incrementally favoured sentiments that better approximated this more general knowledge, endowing us with quasi-moral instincts such as the emotional capacity for empathy and altruism.
To understand the importance of impartiality in mediating intersubjective disputes, we might consider its role in practical negotiated scenarios. Critically, even if one presumes the motivating impetus for opinions and desires to be fundamentally a matter of subjective sentiment, clashes of such opinion would be irresolvable other than through displays of force in the absence of an impartial means by which to adjudicate on such opinions. The matter has been substantially illustrated by David Enoch, who has urged us to consider a scenario in which two rational agents face a dilemma about possible courses of action in light of their antithetical preferences (2011): Either each individual stands their ground, in which case resolution is impossible, one side concedes to the other (perhaps by force), or both parties can attempt to abstract from their subjective viewpoint and appraise the disagreement from an impartial or third-person point of view, coming to a conclusion about what should be done, not merely in their own case, but in all such cases involving people in such a situation as them. As Enoch has described it, in such disputes one must be prepared to think of one’s opinions as belonging merely to “someone who happens to be me” (p. 22, 24) and furthermore to draw normative conclusions as to what should be done in such a scenario in a generalisable fashion. Enoch purses the claim that normative-oughts of this impartial nature are in fact “deliberatively indispensable”, that is that without them deliberation between intersubjective viewpoints would be literally impossible. This rather strong claim certainly merits thought and is worth a discussion in its own right, however a similar but weaker claim, that such moral precepts have practical utility in addressing the problems associated with intersubjectivity, is sufficient for my own case. Their practical utility in mediating disputes and fostering intracommunal cooperation provides the basis for their subsequent selection and reinforcement. Thus, organisms that go at least part of the way to appreciating evaluative-parity can be expected to be favoured by evolution under specific circumstances, particularly those in which survival is dependent on group membership and stability. This capacity for the impartial and abstract appreciation of one’s values as belonging to “someone who happens to me” is the essential intellectual exercise required in order to appreciate the more general principle of evaluative-parity, and thus the very same thought-processes that facilitate intersubjective arbitration are essential to an appreciation of evaluative-truths.
Due to the twofold aforementioned reasons—that the appraisal of moral truth accompanies sufficient sentience and self-awareness, and that it is advantageous on account of its practical utility in arbitrating intersubjective disputes and fostering intracommunal cooperation—it therefore seems that rejoinder y), that evolution does bear some relation to moral truth, favouring it under specific conditions, is entirely defensible and consistent with a sound and epistemically grounded understanding of the evolution of morality. The relation of evolution to morality is therefore non-arbitrary, and the open-ended contingency presumed by evolutionary-debunking critiques appears suspect. With the core components of my argument having been aired, I will commence the final undertaking of this endeavour, summarising my conclusions and providing some normative recommendations for practical ethics stemming from their implications.
SECTION 3: IMPLICATIONS & CONCLUSION
As I have demonstrated thus far, the evolutionary contingency-challenge—and its particular manifestation in Street’s “Darwinian dilemma”—can be significantly resisted if not overturned on several grounds. Firstly, I have shown that morality belongs to a class of necessary and abstractly-true properties discernible by means of the ability to exercise impartial reasoning in the consideration of sentiocentric interests, whose parity is a natural-fact. Secondly, as for the epistemology of such considerations, I have argued that the sufficient autonomy of reason from our instinctual endowments allows us to obtain credible knowledge of these abstract facts, in a manner similar to which we are able to comprehend other abstract properties. And thirdly that Darwinian evolution may have partially favoured morality; on the twofold grounds that to the extent evolution has conferred significant capacities for abstraction and rationality, so too has it favoured organisms capable of grasping moral-truths, and additionally that since morality and quasi-moral instincts are eusocial, they may have proven beneficial in survival terms at the group-level. Thus, we are not precluded by the fact of evolution from an objective appraisal of moral-facts, whose foundational-principles I have identified along sentiocentric and impartial lines. On the contrary, the metaethical framework hitherto outlined entails that a proper evolutionary understanding of value should rather be seen as an aide to a nascent ethical-naturalism, rather than as a source of scepticism about moral-realism. However, the divided nature of our psyche—comprising both moral and Darwinian concerns—complicates the project of a naturalistic approach to ethics and social policy and is deserving of substantive consideration. Prior to the conclusion of this undertaking, I will therefore offer some normative recommendations stemming from the implications of the metaethical picture developed hitherto.
HOMO-CIVILIS: MORALITY AND THE OVERCOMING OF NATURE
Contrary to the nihilistic implications feared by Darwin’s contemporaries such as Frances Cobbe, the empirical and metaethical picture heretofore outlined substantially vindicates the view to which Darwin himself personally subscribed, that morality is discernible to the human faculty of reason; a capacity which elevates us above lesser animals. Indeed, he held that “of all the faculties that distinguish mankind from the lesser animals, the moral-sense or conscience is by far the most important”. I suggest that in essence, this is because morality represents a fundamental overcoming of the animal nature. As we have seen, morality is intimately embroiled with our capacity for abstraction: to metaphorically step outside of our condition and appraise it impartially and objectively; to have thoughts about our thoughts; to cast value-judgements about our values; to ask “I may feel one way, or want one thing, but what ought I feel? What ought I want?” Therefore, morality is the genesis of what, in the contemporary period, is called “transhumanism”, or the project to revise the nature of humanity itself: we have being doing this since we first asked “how should we behave?” To ask “how ought one be?” is to presume that one’s nature could be different, and thus our reason-governed deliberation provides an impetus for the revision of our nature. Since the emergence of the moral-sense we have sought not only to tame nature so as to accord with our desires, but also to tame ourselves, so as to be compliant with our rational and eusocial interests. Just as morality elevates us above the lesser animals, moral-man, or civilised-man, therefore stands in contrast to savage-man, or pre-moral, uncivilised-man. Morality is therefore of fundamental importance to birth of civilisation itself; indeed, to “civilise” means to “make-civil”. Morality therefore represents the triumph of reason over nature itself.
3.1. TOWARDS AN APPLIED ETHICAL-NATURALISM
As we have shown, moral considerations pertain to the impartial consideration of subjective interests. A major implication—and upside, I suggest—to understanding morality in these terms is that in principle moral decisions can be informed by scientific facts about said interests. That is, our efforts to act in the interests of pan-subjective agencies can be informed by the biological and psychological sciences. In considering the “interests” of subjective agencies, we are necessarily thinking in terms of what they themselves value, which to a significant degree concerns their wellbeing. Such a project needn’t be predicated on a simplistic conception of wellbeing; although it is ultimately hedonic, we needn’t be tempted to a crude advocacy of endless pleasures. Pleasures are undoubtedly an important aspect of one’s wellbeing, and we might be inclined to judge a life deprived of pleasures negatively against one of comparative abundance thereof, but there are quite obviously other dimensions of life that conscious creatures find valuable. Amongst them, one might think of the kinds of fulfilment that arise from the successful application of one’s faculties and the expenditure of effort in attaining some meaningful goal (whether it is the publication of a scientific paper, or hunting one’s dinner), being appreciated and thought of well by society, and much else. Indeed, the range of things that play a role in human wellbeing are extensive and it would be futile to attempt to outline them all here; suffice it to say that an appraisal of states of wellbeing needn’t be understood as a kind of crass and indulgent hedonism. Sidgwick offered a commendable and sophisticated definition that may serve as a guide for a more general notion of wellbeing as defined by conscious agents themselves: Sidgwick conceives of pleasure as that “feeling which stimulates the will to actions tending to sustain or produce it”. (ME 42, in p. 240, Lazari-Radek & Singer, 2014) Thus, any desired subjective state is included; encompassing sensual pleasures and other types of fulfilment and satisfaction in one. Although a conclusive definition might be illusory, Sidgwick’s understanding may serve as a guide. In discussing wellbeing, I have in mind something similarly broad to his definition. Furthermore, the notions of value, pleasure and wellbeing may be open to revision over time, as Sam Harris has described:
“[T]he concept of well-being is like the concept of physical health: it resists precise definition, and yet it is indispensable. In fact, the meanings of both terms seem likely to remain perpetually open to revision as we make progress in science. Today, a person can consider himself physically healthy if he is free of detectable disease, able to exercise, and destined to live into his eighties without suffering obvious decrepitude. But this standard may change.” … “There may come a time when not being able to run a marathon at age five hundred will be considered a profound disability. Such a radical transformation of our view of human health would not suggest that current notions of health and sickness are arbitrary, merely subjective, or culturally constructed. Indeed, the difference between a healthy person and a dead one is about as clear and consequential a distinction as we ever make in science. The difference between the heights of human fulfilment and the depths of human misery are no less clear, even if new frontiers await us in both directions.” ( pp. 24-24, 2010)
Furthermore, it is entirely compatible with this view that we do not always know what is in our best interests. The workings of our mind—our unconscious mind—are complex and often mysterious to us, and we may believe certain courses of action to be beneficial to us until such a time as our biology steps in to tell us that we are in fact not meeting some need; whether by causing us physical pain, or more ephemerally, emotional and psychological pain. Thus, we might legitimately be educated about our own wellbeing—and therefore how we ought to live life—by the biological and psychological sciences. As it pertains to ethics, the sociobiological sciences might therefore take on the role of investigating the nature of human happiness and wellbeing, and evaluating the ramifications of society and biology therefor. Such a project will doubtlessly be informed by evolutionary biology and psychology, since evolution has played a substantial role in shaping our bodies and minds into the kinds of things they are today, valuing the kinds of things that they do. A measure of prescriptive evolutionary-ethics therefore seems to be of merit.
Herein one should be cautious of an over-prescriptive and over-general invocation of our evolutionary origins; I am not suggesting that because we are evolved a certain way, we should robotically and reflexively behave in accordance with our primal nature, rather that better understanding our nature can play a role in informing us as to how to live better and be happier. For instance: suppose that we are in large part specialised to hunt fauna and forage for vegetation; such a fact need not have us return to hunting and foraging at present, but such a fact might inform us. Suppose that evolutionary psychology were to conclude that due to our fauna-hunting past, we have evolved psychological preferences for aggression, expenditure of effort—including physical effort and the intellectual kind associated with tracking prey and devising tools to hunt—such a fact might legitimately help us understand that we need some avenues in life within which to pursue these instincts, lest we become psychologically dissatisfied. Famously, Freud characterised the means by which more primal drives are integrated into modern and acceptable life as “sublimation” (1930), offering a clue as to how evolutionary-knowledge may be informative and modestly prescriptive without serving as a rigid rulebook to be inflexibly applied in cookie-cutter fashion to human lives.
Understanding human values and wellbeing can also better-enable the formulation of healthy social policy, conducive to fulfilled and happy lives. The efficacy of social policies in producing wellbeing can be observed and empirically studied, and inferences can be drawn about which social policies are in fact beneficial to human wellbeing and those which are not.
RECONCILING REALISM AND PLURALISM
Supposing this naturalistic approach to morality and social policy to in fact be possible, it would not discount the possibility of plurality of competing answers to the same problems. Indeed, as a simple result of human diversity, one should expect different solutions to problems associated with wellbeing and social organisation. For this reason, I suggest that the difference between self-described naturalist “pluralists”, or “relativists” (e.g., David Wong, 2006) and “realists” (e.g., Sam Harris) should not be seen as intractable. Whilst moral customs must take into account the interests of subjective agents—partly due to the rational obligation of universal benevolence, and partly due to the necessity of stabilising communities in order to sustain society—and are thereby contoured by limitations imposed by these universal requirements, “[t]he universal constraints do not narrow the range of adequate moralities to just one kind. The plurality of adequate moralities constitute different ways of satisfying the function of morality.” (p. 72, Wong, 2006) In this vein, Harris has aptly likened the diversity of possible solutions to moral questions to a “moral landscape”, wherein “different cultural practices, ethical codes, modes of government” … “will translate into movements across this landscape”, whose peaks and valleys correspond to successful and unsuccessful attempts to produce a flourishing society. “However, the existence of multiple peaks on the moral landscape does not make them any less real or worthy of discovery. Nor would it make the difference between being on a peak and being stuck deep in a valley any less clear or consequential.” (pp. 18-19, Harris, 2010) Thus, there is a legitimate and observable dimension to the various ways to organise society so as to bring about greater wellbeing—some attempts legitimately fail whilst others are more successful. We are therefore at liberty to speak about morality, culture, ethics and politics in objective terms—as successful or unsuccessful, right or wrong ways to go about organising things—but as permissive of a host of viable options.
3.2. CONCLUSION: IN TWO MINDS: TREADING A MIDDLE-PATH
A core implication of the metaethical and psychological picture developed hitherto is a recognition of the tension between the rational and moral faculty, and the emotional, instinctual dimension of our interests. That we are creatures in-two-minds about these sometimes dichotomous interests has manifold implications for practical ethics and social policy. If for instance, we are compelled to the recognition that our universalistic moral concerns are substantially delimited by biopsychological imperatives, our practical and moral attitudes must accordingly adapt thereto. We all recognise, for instance, that we harbour powerful instincts that compel us to promote our self-interest, and care primarily about our family and those closest to us, over and above others. Recalling the studies by Paul Slovic mentioned earlier, we are naturally disposed to exhibit greater care-compassion for smaller numbers of proximal individuals than for larger numbers of distant ones. But this runs far deeper than a mere preference or sentiment. Were we persuaded, for instance, to sacrifice our self-interest or family in the pursuit of moral-ends, many of us would become gravely emotionally aggrieved, and many of us would ultimately, understandably and stubbornly invoke entirely emotional defences of our favouritism for our families before conceding an inch in the pursuit of some moral-end. Were we to utterly abdicate our genetic-interests and parochial instincts for the sake of morality, we would likely become gravely unwell.
That is, there are delimitations on what can reasonably be expected of us by the demands of moral-reason due purely to the motivational-force and biopsychological importance of the pursuit of base, intrinsic instincts. If the biopsychological health of individuals is contingent upon their acting with moral imperfection, we must paradoxically acknowledge: that the pursuit of moral ends must admit of non-moral behaviours. One might therefore be tempted to invoke Nietzsche’s precept to the effect that “there is something to be said in favour of exceptions, provided that they never become the rule.” (paraphrase GS, Book 2, Aphorism 76). One might otherwise analogise this counsel as follows, that “one must fasten one’s own life-jacket before attempting to save others who are drowning”. From a normative point of view, else we were to counsel a creed of universal unhealth, we must admit of a degree of personal selfishness: humans cannot reasonably be expected to relinquish the sentimental importance of their own interests, and those of their families, communities and nations, even in the pursuit of moral ends, although they are of course to be commended for doing so, perhaps to the degree that they do so in a balanced way.
The aforesaid philosophy of balance is substantially anticipated in the great philosophical traditions of Asia. For instance, the Buddha counselled a “middle-way” between the extremes of self-renunciation and asceticism (morality) and indulgence and hedonism (selfishness):
"There are these two extremes that are not to be indulged in by one who has gone forth. Which two? That which is devoted to sensual pleasure with reference to sensual objects: base, vulgar, common, ignoble, unprofitable; and that which is devoted to self-affliction: painful, ignoble, unprofitable. Avoiding both these extremes, the Tathāgata has awakened to the Middle Way, which gives vision, gives knowledge, and leads to peace, to direct knowledge, to awakening, to Nibbāna.” (Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta, SN 56.11)
One also finds injunctions to attend to one’s health, and not to neglect one’s interests in pursuit of moral-ends, for instance: "Let one not neglect one’s own welfare for the sake of another, however great. Clearly understanding one’s own welfare, let one be intent upon the goal.” (Sutta Nipata 1.3, Khaggavisana Sutta) Similar counsel is also to be found in ancient Chinese philosophy, for instance in the notion of Yin-Yang: which is symbolically representative of dualistic-monism, or a combined whole consisting of a dualistic polarity; one might fairly think of the polarity and balance between altruism and egoism in this light.
TO LIVE IN HARMONY WITH NATURE, NOT TO OVERRULE IT
A community once settled by a mighty river, seeking to harness its power for their benefit. They built dams to control the water, believing they could bend it to their will. But the river, powerful and persistent, overflowed its barriers, causing great destruction.
Realising the futility of opposing the river, the townsfolk instead studied its patterns and embraced its flow. They moved their homes to higher ground and constructed channels and irrigation systems that worked with the river's natural course. In time, they flourished, not by conquering the river but by aligning themselves with its way.
Just as individuals cannot reasonably be expected to relinquish their personal interests, so too human societies cannot reasonably be expected to violate their core nature. One prominently encounters the theme of natural-balance in Daoism, amongst whose central metaphors is the river, taken to represent natural forces. In organising our society, we must be mindful of human nature, and not seek to over-impose an idealistic moral vision, lest we risk disrupting the delicate balance between man’s natural impulsions and our reason-governed interests.
TOWARD THE FUTURE: CAESARS WITH THE SOUL OF CHRIST
Whilst regarded as a prominent critic of morality and of moral-universalism, in his later years, as he began to seek a new “Philosophy of the Future”, Nietzsche began to more explicitly advocate such a balance between morality and self-interest himself, employing the phrase “Caesars with the soul of Christ”, to describe the kinds of new-men he believed must seize the reigns of the future.
Thus, there is a substantial precedent for the ethic advanced heretofore. An evolutionary understanding of morality ought not lay waste to the foundations nor the rational grounds for moral considerations, however it does suggest that even if for the sake of our own health, the bounds of morality must be reasonably delimited by a respectful consideration of our deepest nature and biological endowments. Our understanding of evolution should therefore be seen as complimentary to the task of balancing these twofold interests, thereby facilitating a better understanding of our moral obligations, both toward the advancement of universal wellbeing, and toward ourselves.
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