I have been reading Steven
Forde’s conference paper “Darwin and
Political Theory”. It includes a
very strong survey of social and political thought. I expect I will comment more fully when I
have digested the whole piece. For now,
I consider a question that seems to linger always in the background but is
crucial to the argument.
There are reasons for remaining skeptical of Darwinian
approaches, as I will explain momentarily. In the case of political theory,
there is reason to dread its impact, inasmuch as Darwinism makes evolved,
inherited emotional responses the ground of human morality, and such a
foundation seems to make morality amoral. If we’re altruistic because we’ve
been programmed to be altruistic, is it a matter anymore for moral judgment, for
praise?
This raises the question: what is
the difference between moral and amoral morality? What makes an action or sentiment authentically
moral and what makes the same inauthentically moral?
I suggest that there is a
common sense distinction that is implicated here: between acts and sentiments
that are genuinely moral and those that are fraudulently moral. Consider the following two scenarios:
1. I help an elderly
woman down some icy steps because her distress arouses genuine compassion in me
and, perhaps secondarily, because I really believe that one should come to the
aid of another in such a situation.
2. I help an elderly
woman down some icy steps because I know her to be wealthy and I hope that my
apparently moral act will encourage her to donate to some cause that I am
invested in.
I think that almost anyone
would agree that the first case presents a genuinely moral action and the
second a fraudulently moral action. In
the first case I do what I do because I judge that it is the right thing to
do. This judgment might arise solely out
of my emotions and it might arise my conscious commitment to abstract moral principles. Probably it is the first or both rather than
just the second. Either way, the action
is moral because it is motivated by moral concerns.
In the second case the
motivation is amoral. I act as I do
solely out of interest and if I pretend to be acting morally, I am attempting
to deceive the beneficiary of my action.
It is the proximate motive for the action that makes it moral or
not.
What does not make the action
authentically or inauthentically moral is the evolutionary origin of my moral
passions. Human beings are endowed by
our creator with a pallet of such emotions.
We are capable of compassion and contempt; guilt, shame, and pride, a
sense of obligation and righteous indignation.
If evolutionary theory is correct, then all of these emotive capacities
are available to us because they have been selected for. That means that our ancestors were successful
at reproduction because they had this pallet of emotions. However, the selection pressure that works on
a trait does not define the trait.
A camouflaged insect does not
blend into its environment because it
is selected for; it is selected for because it blends into its
environment. Compassion, obligation, and
indignation are not moral because they were selected for. That gets it ass backward. They
were selected for because they are genuinely moral. Human beings who were both capable and
inclined to do the right thing for the right reason, who were genuinely
motivated by moral concerns and capable of articulating moral norms based on
those concerns, have been generally more successful at forming cooperative
communities and for that reason leaving behind more offspring than those who
are not.
Natural selection can explain
why we have moral emotions. The fact
that these emotions were selected for is not what makes them moral.
