Abstract
Many have expected that understanding the evolution of norms should, in some way, bear on our first-order normative outlook: How norms evolve should shape which norms we accept. But recent philosophy has not done much to shore up this expectation. Most existing discussions of evolution and norms either jump headlong into the is/ought gap or else target meta-ethical issues, such as the objectivity of norms. My aim in this paper is to sketch a different way in which evolutionary considerations can feed into normative thinking—focusing on stability. I will discuss two (related) forms of argument that utilize information about social stability drawn from evolutionary models, and employs it to assess claims in political philosophy. One such argument treats stability as feature of social states that may be taken into account alongside other features. The other uses stability as a constraint on the realization of social ideals, via a version of the ought-implies-can maxim. These forms of argument are not new; indeed they have a history going back at least to early modern philosophy. But their marriage with evolutionary information is relatively recent, has a significantly novel character, and has received little attention in recent moral and political philosophy.
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Notes
In some cases, cultural and biological evolutionary models are formally equivalent. But that depends on particular assumptions (Weibull 1995, Ch. 4). In general, the processes are similar but distinct.
It is sometimes helpful to distinguish a stable state from an equilibrium. In an equilibrium the various forces in the system are, in some specifiable sense, balanced out. There are many notions of equilibrium, including well-known ones from game theory, such as the Nash equilibrium. But an equilibrium may be fragile, i.e. there are unstable equilibria. My focus here is on stability, and though stability usually implies equilibrium, I will not be concerned with this implication.
A caveat and a flip side. The caveat is that sometimes there are multiple stable states, in which case one needs further information to decide among them. The flipside: stability analysis provides less information about trajectories; it tells one what the end-point of a process is, but not how the process unfolded.
In mathematics, specifically in so-called dynamical systems theory, there is a family of well-defined notions of stability (see Holmes and Shea-Brown 2006). Some evolutionary models explicitly rely on such concepts. While these inform my discussion here, the formal definitions are not needed for our purposes.
E.g. Estlund 2011; Gilabert 2017; Gilabert and Lawford-Smith 2012; Lawford-Smith 2013; Southwood 2016. These authors discuss the notion of feasibility in terms of what is possible for agents (humans or institutions), or in terms of what they ‘can do’. This may explain why they pay little attention to the accessibility/stability distinction, which most readily applies to states rather than actions.
I thank Christine Clavien for bringing this point to my attention.
On some interpretations—and in some formal models that aim to capture a Hobbes’ key argument—a state of nature is seen as terrible but stable. In that case stability plays only one role in Hobbes, albeit in multiple parts of his theory. As the goal is to illustrate how arguments from stability work, I think such a reading of Hobbes is less useful, though I admit that it may be more interpretively apt.
There are a few exceptions, to be sure. A notable recent one is Kitcher (2011). Kitcher’s basic view is that morality emerges—and progresses—as evolutionarily better and more stable arrangements are found, in the face of changing social challenges (especially what he calls “failures of altruism”). Kitcher argues that such selected social arrangements are good in that they supply efficient solutions that preserve and enhance social productivity and stability. This is a very interesting set of ideas. But it differs from the sorts of arguments I have in mind here, as Kitcher aims to draw moral conclusions from selectionist/teleological premises. I will note that I do not find this suggestion plausible, since I think one cannot derive the appropriate sort of “ought” from teleological normativity. A fuller discussion of Kitcher’s views isn’t possible here.
‘Idealization’ is naturally reminiscent of the term ‘ideal’, in the normative sense (as in “the ideal of equality”). But the terms pick out different notions: ‘idealization’ refers to the scientific practice of introducing known distortions into a model (Levy 2018). An ‘ideal’ is a principle that should regulate conduct. That said, there are interesting connections between idealization and theorizing about ideals, e.g. inasmuch as normative theorizing about ideals engages in idealization (Enoch 2005), or in debates surrounding so-called ‘ideal theory’ in political philosophy (Valentini 2012). Engaging with these issues will take me beyond the scope of the present paper.
“The easiest way to generate productivity in a modern society is by nourishing the motives… of greed and fear [which] are repugnant motives.” (Cohen 2009, 75–76).
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For comments on previous versions of this article I would like to thank Christine Clavien, Tim Lewens, Ittay Nissan-Rozen, David Wiens and an audience at the 9th European Congress of Analytic Philosophy, in Munich.
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Levy, A. Evolutionary models and the normative significance of stability. Biol Philos 33, 33 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-018-9643-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-018-9643-1