Evolution & morality

Posted on February 16, 2009 by David Hume

The American Scene points me to two Will Wilkinson posts where he attempts to move beyond vulgar evolutionary psychology in adducing proper morality. I learn toward the sentiment. The naturalistic fallacy is less fallacious when one conceptualizes human moral intuitions and reflections as a rubics cube with a finite number of elements. In other news, most Americans do not look to religion to guide their opinions about right & wrong.

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2 Responses to Evolution & morality

  1. ColtsFan says:
    February 16, 2009 at 3:39 pm

    The naturalistic fallacy is “less fallacious” when one conceptualizes human moral intuitions and reflections as a rubics cube with a finite number of elements.”

    What? Unbelievable.

    A logical fallacy is a fallacy. A fallacy applies across all modal worlds, in all situations.

    I realize “Secular Right” admires the Atheist Hero David Hume, who applied his atheist presuppositions in full force and, as a result, attempted to eliminate the law of cause-and-effect, the laws of logic, laws of morality, and the Enduring Self…….but he was mistaken.

    Besides, you can’t have evolution and morality threads if Hume is right, unless you desire to be inconsistent and call a fallacy “not a fallacy.”

  2. Dave says:
    February 17, 2009 at 7:36 am

    Not quite sure what you’re getting at here, but in comment on Wilkinson’s posts, I think the logical conclusion is ultimately a variation on utilitarianism.

    After all, most animals don’t use anything like morality, because from a Darwinian perspective, they don’t NEED morality– it provides them with no benefits, either individually or as a “society”.

    But the more advanced and more social animals get, the more something approaching morality appears. Dogs, apes, etc. all have rudimentary social orders that utilize social mores.

    Assuming there is no higher power, human morality is useful and enduring insofar as it is a FUNCTIONAL morality that creates some obvious benefit, either for the individual, or for the ordered society. We tend to believe that murder is wrong not because murder is bad, but because murder is *unhelpful* in most situations. Ditto lying, theft, adultery, etc.

    A lot of folks get freaked out by that, I don’t know why. We all want a TRUTH, but there is only a relative truth (not relativism– our societites construst evolving functional moralities all the time, that does not mean that going against such functional moralities is necessarily the wisest choice at any one moment in time).

    The Wilkinson “fill in the blanks vs. blank slate” dichotomy is a nice distinction. From a biological standpoint, there may be moralities that are simply “easier” and more effective for human beings regardless of where they exist, all because our genes lend themselves to those moralities. Intelligent bees would have a far different feeling about what constitutes love, marriage and infidelity than pair-bonding hairless apes, after all.

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