Abstract
Evolutionary ethics (EE) is a branch of philosophy that arouses both fascination and deep suspicion. It claims that Darwinian mechanisms and evolutionary data on animal sociality are relevant to ethical reflection. This field of study is often misunderstood and rarely fails to conjure up images of Social Darwinism as a vector for nasty ideologies and policies. However, it is worth resisting the temptation to reduce EE to Social Darwinism and developing an objective analysis of whether it is appropriate to adopt an evolutionary approach in ethics. The purpose of this article is to ‘de-demonise’ EE while exploring its limits.
I shall begin by presenting two ways of integrating a Darwinian way of thinking into the context of social and political sciences: Social Darwinism and what one could label ‘Pro-social Darwinism’. Next I will point out some of the fundamental errors on which Social Darwinism is grounded; this will help in understanding why contemporary evolutionary ethicists cannot possibly hold the views defended by this theory (unless they are inclined to intellectual dishonesty). EE seems more akin to a Pro-social Darwinian approach, although it is not tied to a political programme, and restricts its reflections to theoretical ethics.
The second part of the paper (Sects. 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7) provides a closer description of EE and an analysis of its relevance at the different levels of ethics (descriptive, normative and practical). Special focus will be given to questions relating to the genesis of morals and the delicate shift from facts to norms.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
For a detailed presentation of Spencer’s position, see Richards (1987).
- 3.
For more details, see Clark (1981).
- 4.
See Philippe Huneman’s chapter on selection (Chap. 4) in this volume.
- 5.
The population geneticist Sewall Wright has clearly demonstrated this: once a local optimum is obtained, it remains very fragile and sensitive to the least environmental change (Wright 1932).
- 6.
Darwin understood this perfectly when he wrote: “In each well-stocked country natural selection acts through the competition of the inhabitants, and consequently leads to success in the battle for life, only in accordance with the standard of that particular country. […] Natural selection will not necessarily lead to absolute perfection; nor, as far as we can judge by our limited faculties, can absolute perfection be everywhere predicated.” (Darwin 1871, Chap. VI, final section).
- 7.
More precisely, Zahavi (1975) has demonstrated that these handicaps have a precise function in the game of choosing sexual partners: they are a sign of the male’s health. It is a way for males to say to females: ‘Look! I am so strong that I can survive even with feathers that handicap me greatly!’.
- 8.
See Sarah Samadi and Anouk Barberousse’s chapter (Chap. 8) in this volume.
- 9.
See Véronique Barriel’s chapter (Chap. 7) in this volume.
- 10.
Variance is a statistical measure that allows one to characterise the dispersion of values in relation to a mean. Technically speaking, variance is the average sum of the squared deviations from the mean of the recorded differences (in the present case, we are considering the genetic differences recorded in the human species). A great number of studies show that the individual differences between members of the same human population explain 85 % of the global genetic variance in the human species; the fact of belonging to different populations explains 3–8 % of the variance; and the fact of belonging to different races or continents explains between 6 and 11 %.
- 11.
This article only looks at contemporary developments in EE. To discover what Darwin himself thought about morality, see Jérôme Ravat’s chapter (Chap. 35) in this volume.
- 12.
As Flanagan writes: ‘Make sure when constructing a moral theory or projecting a moral ideal that the character, decision processing, and behavior prescribed are possible, or are at least perceived to be possible, for creatures like us.’ (Flanagan 1991: 32).
- 13.
On the notion of human nature, see Edouard Machery’s chapter (Chap. 30) in this volume.
- 14.
- 15.
Some authors underline the continuity between our moral faculties and a form of proto-morality that one finds in some species of primate. According to Frans de Waal, for example, “there must at some level be continuity between the behaviour of humans and that of other primates. No domain, not even our celebrated morality, can be excluded from this assumption (de Waal 1996: 1).
- 16.
In connection with this, it is worth specifying that EE does not reduce down to sociobiology, which is a school of thought that attempts to understand the behaviour of social species, including the human species. Thus, sociobiology is a more general research project from which EE takes inspiration. It is fashionable nowadays to speak ill of sociobiology because some of its proponents (E.O. Wilson 1978) made terrible blunders that were widely publicised and because, in its infancy, it was too centred on genes (Dawkins 1976 – on this topic, see Bary 2007). Many detractors of sociobiology tend to forget, on the one hand, that it is not only interested in humans, but in all social species, and, on the other, that the genocentric perspective permitted the discipline to lay the foundations for the first serious explanations of animal sociality (notably, the work of Hamilton, Maynard-Smith, Trivers, and E.O. Wilson himself). If, to avoid polemics, the label is rarely used today, do not let this deceive you. The study of human and animal social behaviour is an extremely active, rich and fertile domain of research, where explanatory models are continuously refined. Today, the questions that were addressed by sociobiology are taught and developed under more general labels such as ‘behavioural ecology’ (for the animal domain), or ‘evolutionary psychology’ and ‘evolutionary anthropology’ (for the human domain).
- 17.
Utilitarianism and deontology are antagonistic moral theories that take positions on how we ground our moral judgements. The former is based on a utility calculation: morally justified actions are those that maximise the total sum of pleasure or happiness of the individuals concerned. Deontology, on the contrary, bases morality on the notions of individual duty and respect for a universal moral principle (for example, the Kantian categorical imperative): actions are thus not judged as a function of their consequences, but according to the intention from which they spring.
- 18.
Some authors mentioned in this article do not exactly proclaim themselves evolutionary ethicists. On the other hand, they adhere to each of the five points of the broad definition of EE proposed above.
- 19.
Contemporary evolutionary biology and evolutionary game theory are two sciences that mutually influence one another to such an extent that, in some contexts, it is hardly relevant to distinguish them.
- 20.
For more details on the different positions defended in evolutionary metaethics, see Clavien and FitzGerald (2008).
- 21.
Be careful not to confuse the biological notion of altruism with the ordinary conception that we have of altruism. Biological altruism refers to the negative effects of a behaviour on the survival and reproduction of individuals who practise it, whereas the altruism we think of ordinarily refers to a subject’s benevolent motives. The former is conceived in terms of effects, while the latter is conceived in terms of causes. For more details on ways of defining biological altruism, see West et al. (2007) or Clavien and Chapuisat 2012.
- 22.
- 23.
On the notion of free will and its moral implications, see Honderich (2002).
- 24.
See also Byrne and Whiten (1997).
- 25.
Darwin himself seems to defend this kind of position. Regarding this, see Jérôme Ravat’s chapter (Chap. 35) in this volume.
- 26.
See Clavien (2010).
- 27.
- 28.
For an exposition of other aborted attempts to pass from the factual to the normative through logical reasoning, see Clavien (2007).
- 29.
This is what Rudolf Carnap wrongly claimed (1967).
- 30.
For a more detailed presentation of the trolley dilemma literature, see Appiah (2008).
- 31.
In the same vein, it has also been shown empirically that factors that are a priori amoral have an influence on our moral choices: for example, the purely physical feeling of disgust (Wheatley and Haidt 2005), or the state of mind (positive or negative) in which the subjects find themselves (Valdesolo and DeStefano 2006).
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Acknowledgments
My thanks to Chloe FitzGerald for translation and useful comments, as well as to Michel Chapuisat and Philipe Huneman for their valuable comments on the first versions of this article. I also thank Marc Silberstein for his sympathy and astounding efficiency.
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Clavien, C. (2015). Evolution, Society, and Ethics: Social Darwinism Versus Evolutionary Ethics. In: Heams, T., Huneman, P., Lecointre, G., Silberstein, M. (eds) Handbook of Evolutionary Thinking in the Sciences. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9014-7_34
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