An Introduction to Evolutionary Ethics (19 page)

Social Harmony: The Good, the Bad, and the Biologically Ugly
The poverty of the incapable, the distresses that come upon the imprudent, the starvation of the idle, and those shoulderings aside of the weak by the strong, which leave so many “in shallows and in miseries” are the decrees of a large, far-seeing benevolence.

(Herbert Spencer, The Principles of Ethics)
It is chauvinistic to treat humans as though they were the end point of evolution. They are only one of millions of end products – one tiny twig.

(Richard Dawkins, interview in the New Statesman) In this chapter we review the temptations and mistakes of early evolutionary ethics. The aim is to clear out of the way some common misperceptions about what contemporary philosophers are doing when they claim to be doing evolutionary ethics.

6.1 From the Great Chain of Being, to the Tree of Life, to Morality In the cartoon version of human evolution, single-celled organisms evolved into multi-celled organisms. Multi-celled organisms evolved into fish that eventually waddled out onto a beach somewhere. Walking fish became reptiles that became little mammals. Little mammals became bigger mammals. Bigger mammals moved into the trees. Then out of the trees. They stood on two legs, lost their hair, and, finally, their posture straightening, they walked grandly out of the forests and onto the broad boulevards of London, distinguished, refined, and never short on conversation.

Much of this of course is misleading. (For one thing, individuals don't evolve, populations do.) But the basics are sound. Not only did some of our ancestors swing from trees, but some swam in oceans. Indeed, there is an unbroken genetic chain that goes all the way back to the lowliest plankton and beyond.

The point I want to begin with here is that this cartoon version of evolution by natural selection encourages a distorted picture of the evolutionary process. That is, when we take the “long view” of things, it's difficult to resist the picture of a steady
progression
from the less complex to the more complex. From micro-organisms like protists to sponges, from sponges to sand dollars, from sand dollars to lamprey eels, from lamprey eels to tuna, from tuna to turtles, from turtles to weasels, from weasels to zebras, from zebras to apes, from apes to humans, the progression seems unmistakable. And it's not merely progression in size. Weasels are more cunning by a mile than redwoods. The social hierarchies governing ape interactions are more sophisticated than the hierarchies governing zebra interactions.

You've probably seen the medieval depiction of humanity's place in the universe: the Great Chain of Being (
Figure 6.1
). At the bottom are minerals and plants – not much fun to be around. But as you work your way up, organisms take on greater and greater sophistication. Of course, in the traditional hierarchy, God sits at the top, like an angel perched atop a Christmas tree. We're no angels, but we're not far behind. Darwin's ideas no doubt upset this picture in some ways. But in other ways it appeared to be a scientific
vindication
of this order: humans remain
above
the rest of the natural world. Consider how the Great Chain of Being became the Tree of Life (
Figure 6.2
). While the Tree of Life depicted the interconnections (or, as biologists would put it, the
phylogenetic
relations) among organisms in a way that the Great Chain did not, it preserved the
vertical
hierarchy of life. Indeed, humanity wholly replaces God in the 1879 depiction by the great German naturalist Ernest Haeckel. We have not gotten away from the idea, so grandly expressed in first book of the Old Testament, that humans still have “dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.”

Figure 6.1
The Great Chain of Being as proposed by Aristotle
From the
Rhetorica Christiana
by Didacus Valades, 1579

Figure 6.2
Haeckel's Tree of Life, from
The Evolution of Man

And, frankly, the intuition is seductive. Recall the last time you took a plane ride. Looking out across the landscape, what did you see? Which species had left its mark? Deer didn't come together to build those roads; woodpeckers didn't build those subdivisions. Those are not baboons in those medical research facilities or in those processing plants or in those universities. Think about it. How many dogs do you know that can put a human (OK, a dog) on the moon? Ever seen a cat compose a sonata? A mole, a sonnet? Elephants are no doubt forces to be reckoned with, but name one bridge, one tunnel, one stadium – hell, one
lean-to
– that they single-handedly designed and constructed. It's true we can't fly like birds. But who needs to fly like a bird when we can fly like VIPs – at much faster speeds and with complimentary nuts? We're pretty poor swimmers when you put us next to the mackerel, but I've never met a mackerel who had the idea of taking 160,000 gross tons of material and building a cruise-liner that can carry 5,000 friends.

The force of this idea – the idea that humans are evolutionarily special – gets added strength by considering not just what we do, but what we do
not
do. Infanticide is not a routine part of our family structure, as it is for countless other species, including pigs and mice, lions and monkeys. Humans of course commit infanticide, but we regard the rare instances as abominations. How about killing and
eating
our offspring? Even our most reviled sociopaths don't go
that
far. But cannibalistic infanticide is fairly common among chimpanzees, cats, elephants, dogs, baboons, bears, and lions. Also, humans are, generally speaking, pair-bonding: we stick with our mates “for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health.” In the rest of the animal world, with only a few exceptions it's pretty much love the one you're with.

If we didn't know any better, we would not hesitate to draw the conclusion that humans have evolved into “higher” beings. Who could deny that we are stunningly complex, adaptive, and capable of profound self-sacrifice? We are “enlightened” – at least in this sense: we harnessed the power of reason to do such things as extend our lifespan (by some forty or fifty
years
according to some accounts), improve our health, explore the far corners of the planet and beyond, develop the arts, and establish laws and covenants, systems of trade and commerce. We are compassionate. We
feel
a deep connection to others. We want to work together, even in our limited ways. The roads and hospitals, banks and performance halls, parliaments and parks, were all made possible by
cooperation
, by the spirit of joint action. But these, noted Spencer, are the products of the “last stage of evolution.” Humans are distinct in that they have achieved a kind of social harmony that facilitates the production of such great wonders.

These observations alone invited early evolutionary theorists to think that natural selection tends toward “higher forms.” This is not to say that there couldn't be forms higher than humans. The future may in fact hold a more advanced, more evolved race of creatures, the members of which possess an even greater share of reason, compassion, and (perhaps) artistic sensibility. But, here, now, humans carry the mantle. If (as Spencer believed) evolution “favors” traits that increase the length and comfort of an individual's life, then humans are evolution's poster-children. According to Spencer, key to humanity's preeminence is
conduct –
how we treat our neighbor. What we see when we turn from the animals to humans is a moral sensibility that places a check on selfish conduct. This in turn promotes “permanently peaceful” communities. Having secured for ourselves such communities, we can then turn our attention to other ways of increasing the length and quality of our lives.

It's at this point that Spencer made the decisive move. He reasoned that if a type of conduct is crucial for the maintenance of social harmony, why should we not identify that conduct as
good
– as
right
? Spencer could see no reason why: The conduct to which we apply the name good, is the relatively
more evolved
conduct; and bad is the name we apply to conduct which is relatively
less evolved
… Moreover, just as we saw that evolution becomes the highest possible when the conduct simultaneously achieves the greatest totality of life in self, in offspring, and in fellow-men; so here we see that the conduct called good rises to the conduct conceived as best, when it fulfills all three classes at the same time. (2004/1879: 25) So there it is. From the Great Chain of Being, through the Tree of Life, to morality itself. Darwin's ideas, argued Spencer, revealed not only how we came to be the creatures that we are, but how we
ought to be
. Morality runs parallel to the Tree of Life. Just as organisms reach ever skyward in complexity, sophistication, and compassion, humans (having achieved the highest level of evolution)
ought
to reach ever skyward, where life is longer and more pleasant. If evolution naturally directs organisms to extend and enhance their lives, surely it makes sense to call the conduct that does just this
good
or
right
. And surely it makes sense to call conduct that does the reverse
bad
or
wrong
.

6.2 Uprooting the Tree of Life Where has this line of thinking gone wrong? It may be harder to tell than you think. After all, plenty of thinkers were (and some still are) seduced by these ideas.

As it happens, this line of thinking commits two fundamental mistakes. The first consists of a basic misunderstanding of the evolutionary process itself. Any practicing biologist should recognize it. The second mistake is a distinctly philosophical mistake. By this I mean that our
concepts
are confused. A closer inspection of the structure of our concepts reveals that we cannot move from one set of ideas to another in the way that Spencer thought. In the remaining part of this chapter I'll take up the biological mistake. In chapter 7 we'll turn to the philosophical mistake.

In chapter 1, I described Darwin's contribution to biology – evolution by natural selection – as a “very simple, very elegant idea.” Perhaps I overstated the case. Elegant, to be sure. But given the tendency to misconstrue both the idea and its implications, I might wish to take back the “simple” part. What gets in the way here are the terms
adapt
,
select
,
function
,
purpose
. They imply agency; they imply a sort of guiding force, as if nature is being shaped according to some cosmic plan. Even Dawkins' (1986) efforts to clarify – he suggested “blind watchmaker” – mislead. Darwin himself was aware of how easily his ideas could be mishandled. After the publication of
Origin
he lamented to his friend Charles Lyell: “I must be a very bad explainer … I suppose ‘natural selection’ was a bad term” (Desmond and Moore 1991: 492). To help smooth the way for his revolutionary ideas, Darwin began
Origin
by discussing how humans have domesticated and selected varieties of plants and animals for their own ends, a choice that now seems to have only added to the misunderstanding.

To fully understand the implications of Darwin's idea one has to embrace a kind of
mindlessness
. This is not some Buddhist imperative. It is what makes Darwin's idea truly breathtaking. For, according to the theory of Darwinian natural selection, the organisms that crowd the planet today (setting aside the domesticated ones) are here as a result of a mindless process, a process that requires absolutely no foresight. An early critic of Darwin hit the nail on the head: “Absolute Ignorance is the Artificer.” (Of course this anonymous critic failed to understand the theory and so took this fact as evidence that Darwin was mistaken – if not utterly mad.) Natural selection is not selection at all insofar as this implies a selector. Natural selection is best thought of as a
sorting
process. But of course without a
sorter.