So I guess you'll be dumping a pitcher of water on his head?

Consider this that pitcher.

As a social scientist, I have had the same reaction to EO Wilson opining on human society and social behavior -- but did get a couple of letters in Letters to the Editor, as far back as c. 1972 -- to minimal effect.

He takes the view that morality is a human contrivance to imply that we can answer moral questions only by understanding the biology behind our moral sentiments. It is worth noticing the implications of this argument. If we could not conduct any inquiry whose object is a human contrivance without inquiring into its biological roots, we would be unable to balance our checkbooks or figure out winning moves in chess without first understanding the selection processes that led us to engage in these activities

Ridiculous. Is there any doubt that the truth of a mathematical statement is unaltered by human evolution, or that the optimum move in a chess game would be different for a different sentient race?

The basic problem: biologists can come up with processes and evolutionary mechanisms underlying much of what we do and why we are motivated to do it, but that doesn't tell us what is right or wrong - that comes from quid pro quoacknowledgments of both other persons' (and creatures') standing as deserving of consideration, and our living in communities which raise us and cooperate for the good of all. If biology gives us conflicting tendencies (adultery, greedy amassing of personal fortune apart from the common good) then to hell with those biological forces.

tyrannogenius

As important is why Andrew Sullivan wanted it printed. Check out driftglass on Andrew Sullivan and the right wing here...great read.
http://www.driftglass.blogspot.com/.

You must have been truly insulted to go to such lengths to point out the ignored stupidity of that article.

Without agreeing or disagreeing with the letter, I don't think it's very readable.

Thanks, bjobotts, for the link to driftglass. Wonderful piece somewhat spoiled, for me, by the wrong-headed earlier piece on Sullivan. But DG does, otherwise, get it. And knows how to write about it.

Prof. Bok:

As one of your former students, I'm not surprised to see what you wrote.

Aside from the allergy I have to academic speculation and turf grabbing, I think you can turn the tables on him and beat him in biology without getting into philosophical debate over who said what.

I commend Reinventing The Sacred by Stuart Kaufmann. EO Wilson is being a reductionist, and as any biologist can tell you, that's a premise of a bygone era.

If we could not conduct any inquiry whose object is a human contrivance without inquiring into its biological roots, we would be unable to balance our checkbooks or figure out winning moves in chess without first understanding the selection processes that led us to engage in these activities -- unless, of course, we were prepared to regard truths about our bank balances or what move will mate in two as "ethereal messages awaiting revelation". Wilson's argument depends on the idea that these are our only alternatives. But they are not.

Ridiculous argument. Ethics and morality are in a different class than chess and check-book balancing. People are tortured and die because of what we claim are ethical and moral precepts. You'd have me believe that I will be hung at high noon because I ruined a perfectly good Daquiri.

Ethics and morality routinely lay ridiculous claims to an unprovable authority. Wilson is suggesting we might remain agnostic about promoting these highly questionable belief systems until such time as they are demonstrated to be beneficently connected to our biology.

Math and science are both demonstrably connected to the world we inhabit. Ethics and morality not so much so. Courage is most definitely not objectively observable no matter how much you protest to the contrary. Courage is a word attached to constellation of observable behaviors through a process of interpretation. What one person might call courage another might well call lunacy.

I think Wilson stepped on your toes and left a bruise but perhaps you need to revisit the very words you seek to defend and recognize that they are properly seen as the Credit Default Swaps of religion for those who can't eat their fish raw.

Boronx -- Hilzoy isn't talking about whether math is "unaltered" by human evolution. She's talking about whether it's a "contrivance of the mind" (in Wilson's words). These are not not obviously the same thing, and automatically conflating them, uncritically and without argument, looks like just the sort of sloppy thinking Hilzoy is criticism Wilson for.

Quite frankly Sully's post of the day (so far) is the link to Josh's High Noon post: Reality Check

Don't get me wrong.
I just read a brilliant 4 page essay on Euler's proof of what has come to be known as the Basel problem. Namely, that the sum of

1 + 1/2² + 1/3³ + ...

Converges to (sixth digit accuracy) 1.644934.
That little problem gave the Bernoulli family fits!
Absolutely fascinating.

But you know what?
Right now I am scared shitless where McCain's robo-campaign is taking us.
It overrides everything.
To the nth power...

Not being much of a philosopher, I didn't find EO Wilson disturbing, I find an occasional dose of him stimulating. If we reject transcendental ethics, i.e. ethics created from a loving, and all intelligent god, and thus immutable, then we are left with reductionism, as an explanation for how ethics has evolved. Such a study would also involve history, and especially the history of certain charismatic individuals who found religions and philosophies.

You are correct, that we can go beyond a descriptive explanation, and start to run thought experiments about the probable consequences of the application of a different constellation of ethics. I think to a limited degree, that has always been the case, but the analysis has usually been haphazard. But even if we possessed some perfect machinery for predicting the sorts of societies that would evolve, there are still issues of values involved in selecting among the different alternatives. I can imagine lots of different values, which would lead to dramatically different societies, and ultimately to different evolution of the species. But selecting among them ultimately comes down to what result I would most value.

Okay, for the Wilson fans in the thread, I have a question. There's this idea that our knowledge of moral matters is in some ways very different than our our knowledge of mathematical and natural scientific matters. We could describe the difference in lots of ways, but it's got something to do with the fact that ethics is somehow more subjective than science and math. Okay.

But here's the question. Is this idea a premise of yours (or Wilson's) arguments? Or is it supposed to be a conclusion?

If it's a premise, that's fine. Although that still leaves us with Hilzoy's basic question about why The Atlantic would devote so much real estate to what amounts to nothing more than foot-stomping assertion of an undefended, axiomatic commitment.

But if the idea's supposed to be a conclusion, then it can't be assumed as a premise--not even tacitly--because that's a circular argument. Now, it turns out it's very hard to make a non-circular argument for the conclusion that ethics is somehow subjective in a way that math and science isn't.

(No, I'm not saying ethics is exactly like math an science. In fact, it's very different from math and science. But I am saying it's actually very difficult to characterize exactly what the differences are in ways that aren't plainly question-begging. That's why the metaethicists get paid the big dollars.)

Off topic

Absolute pitch-perfect quote of the day...
Via Ben Smith...

Barack:

Gen. Powell has defended this nation bravely, and he has embodied our highest ideals through his long and distinguished public service. He and his wife Alma have inspired millions of young people to serve their communities and their country through their tireless commitment and trailblazing American story. And he knows, as we do, that this is a moment where we all need to come together as one nation — young and old, rich and poor, black and white, Republican and Democrat.

Love it.

From Hilz down, most the page here is full of Luddites.

There's a HUGE difference between Evolutionary Psychology, with capitals, and ev psych without. The lowercase ev psych is the perfectly reasonable study of the evolution of the human mind, given that the mind is the brain.

For more on the diff between Ev Psych and ev psych, Google David Buller.

And, stop being Luddites in word and speech until you do.

LJR: The point that hilzoy was trying to get at is that while, yes, ethical theory is not as attached to the real world as math or science, it is a discipline of study that is thousands of years old. We do have workable definitions for courage, generosity, etc.

I believe hilzoy was taking issue with some biologist who is obviously not conversant with the material writing an article in a nationally respected magazine that essentially states that all ethics is really just complicated biology.

Wilson's article is thought provoking, but other than the obvious philosophical errors, I'm not sure why it is so revolutionary. Maybe it is because I went to college after Ants was written, but the idea that being Good is in our genetic coding for the future of our species doesn't seem that revolutionary to me.

Hilz -- Serious errors abound in your post. I wouldn't go around shooting Wilson if I were you; you might not know which way the gun is pointed.

First, Walter Kaufmann shot the hell out of Rawls in philosophical grounds long before Wilson did on biological ones, whether or not Wilson is quoting Rawls out of context. Read "Beyond Guilt and Justice" by Kaufmann.

Second ere’s one of my blog posts, on the diff between Ev Psych and ev psych, as laid out by philosopher of science David Buller.

It's one of four posts I have on the diff between Ev Psych and ev psych.

i read hilzoy's letter and then read sullivan's post and i don't know about the rest of it
but this, to me (and i'm no genius and not a possessor of any advanced degree) seemed like a perfectly credible statement.

Religion will possess strength to the extent that it codifies and puts into enduring, poetic form the highest values of humanity consistent with empirical knowledge. That is the only way to provide compelling moral leadership. Blind faith, no matter how passionately expressed, will not suffice. Science, for its part, will test relentlessly every assumption about the human condition and in time uncover the bedrock of moral and religious sentiments.

i really appreciate a post having nothing to do with the economy or the presidential campaign. it was a very pleasant and educational relief!

Scott,

To try to answer your question. I've done a little googling on the topic and here is an explanation that offers the 'flavor' of what Wilson means by ethics having a biological origin. Ethics/morality in humans is a biological capacity similar to language. All human children (barring brain defects) are born with the capacity to learn language(s) due to their brain structure. World languages are quite varied but all share elements of construction for which a single brain structure suffices. Likewise humans inherit a capacity for ethical/moral behavior. What is deemed ethical in one society can be deemed unethical in another, the same as one speaks the language of the society in which one lives. But in general ethics/morality tend to be more similar than not in different cultures. Wilson is completely Darwinian in his belief that what we call morality (cooperation, selflessness, moderation, respect for life) developed as a function for survival of the species. Makes sense to me. I don't view ethics/morality as 'knowledge' any more than I do one's native language. The 'study' of ethics is a field of knowledge as is linguistics.

if we can hold both that morality is a human contrivance and that biology is not relevant to answering moral questions

I feel compeled to point out that biology is an inescapable part of moral reasoning. After all, how can we possibly speak of 'suffering' or 'pleasure' or otherwise describe the results of our choices except upon the substrate of bodies and minds that feel pain and hunger or triumph. We can certainly think of such things at a hiogher level of absraction but without biology, we would be nothing more than rocks.

In "Moral Sentiments and Material Interests" Gintis, Boyd, and others have tried to find and evolutionarily explain the innate moral tendencies of humankind. Jonathan Haidt has done something similar, claiming that there are five roots of morality: roughly speaking they are fairness / equality, benefit / harm, solidarity and loyalty, hierarchy / respect, and purity / decency.

They really are trying to find (innate) human nature with regard to morality, not answer moral questions. Innate morality is based on a period long past, and in many respects modern life requires repressing it. Specific cases are a.) feud, revenge killing, and vendetta, and2.) male jealousy and possessiveness with regard to wives, lovers, daughters, and even sisters and mothers. These may be innately desired but must be repressed by states which hope to survive.

To my knowledge Haidt does not put his five roots in a historical context. In general, though, modernization and liberalization have greatly de-emphasized purity, loyalty, and hierarchy as independent principles, subordinating them to benefit/harm and fairness/equality. Haidt's theory may tell us why some people resist liberal principles as stubbornly as they do, but it does not tell us to what degree we should respect their resistance, or whether the law should be adapted to meet their objections.

Libertarians and liberals both favor fairness/equality and benefit/harm over the others, but liberals favor fairness of result (benefit/harm) whereas libertarians favor fair competition, with the winners fairly benefited and the losers fairly harmed.

Nobody in our 'MSM' is talking about THIS scandal:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/oct/17/executivesalaries-banking

Those same banks that we just bailed out with taxpayers $$$ are giving themselves HUGE bonuses - to the likes of $70 BILLION!!!

Socratic Gadfly: perhaps if you spelled out the errors in my post more clearly, I'd be in a better position to respond. aAFor what it's worth, I was not defending Rawls, Kant, et al generally, just pointing out that what Wilson said about them was false. If you think I'm wrong -- e.g., that the Categorical Imperative "does not accord ... with the evidence of how the brain works", etc. -- please tell me why.

Likewise, I am not opposed to moral philosophers learning from biologists. I just think it's important to be clear on what role one imagines biology playing in the argument. I don't think Wilson is. Again, if you disagree, I'd be interested to hear why.

But this was a post about Wilson, not about 'evolutionary psychology: good or bad?' or 'Rawls: right or wrong?'

Paul Dirks: "I feel compeled to point out that biology is an inescapable part of moral reasoning. After all, how can we possibly speak of 'suffering' or 'pleasure' or otherwise describe the results of our choices except upon the substrate of bodies and minds that feel pain and hunger or triumph. We can certainly think of such things at a hiogher level of absraction but without biology, we would be nothing more than rocks."

This is clearly right. But Wilson claims more than that: he thinks that you need to understand the biological bases of morality in order to figure out what's moral. To see what's odd about that, consider an analogy: math.

Mathematical reasoning is done by human beings. We couldn't do it without our brains. Since biologists study, among other things, brains, plainly there's no form of reasoning that can be done "apart from biology", if that means something like: without our brains.

But it doesn't follow from that that we have to know anything about biology to do math. Consider the proof of the Side-Angle-Side theorem: it has not a single premiss that's established by biology. Moreover, you can understand it if you have wildly false ideas about biology -- the Greeks, for instance, understood this proof perfectly well.

There are lots of differences between ethics and math. But none of them are relevant to Wilson's argument, which is: ethics is a human contrivance, so we need to know biology to understand it. If that argument works for ethics, it works for math, for chess, for everything.

How about them Dodgers!?!?

I offer several responses to Hilz et al:

First, I don't KNOW if this is the case with Hilz in person, and I've distinguished that sociobiology, while in some sense a godfather to ev psych, is not exactly the same....

BUT, BUT, BUT...

I get the feeling that for many here, Wilson is all about "what's wrong with 'reductionistic science.' "

First, read Dan Dennett and distinguish between reductionism and greedy reductionism.

Second, given that Wilson started writing about this 30 years or so ago, Hilz, I assumed you had an ax to grind. I looked at what I saw was the most logical ax.

Third, many non-skeptical liberals put Rawls on a pedestal. That's why I pointed out Rawls has been shot down from within the world of philosophy. Based on this post, I'm also inferring you're one of those non-skeptical liberals.

Kaufmann does an excellent job of showing that distributive justice, a horse ridden hard by Rawls, actually isn't just.

He then goes beyond that, in "Without Guilt and Justice," and notes that justice is NOT some Platonic ideal but very much a socially based convention. And, on that grounds, Rawls IS a transcendentalist, so you got that part of your critique wrong. (And, I've read Rawls as well as Kaufmann, and Kaufmann's right. From a somewhat different angle, Dennett also pokes holes in Rawls.)

Third, you opened the snideness door yourself, with the Sokol crack, Hilz, and I'm just firing back.

More seriously,though, try reading more of Rawls, more skeptically, as well as some critiques of him.

There, Hilz, how's that for a first response?

Next week on Political Animal:

E.O. Wilson says that the human soul is an activity of the neurons in the brain.

But consider the implications. If this were true, how could I walk and chew gum without knowing the least bit about how neurons work?

Second, he misquoted some guy.

Finally, his proposal does nothing to answer the important questions, like where does a soul come from, and how is it supposed to get to heaven.

But it doesn't follow from that that we have to know anything about biology to do math.

That's because no one is arguing that the base assumptions of mathematics are Biological in origin.

I'm having trouble understanding what we're arguing about. Does it boil down to whether human morality is nothing more than our resultant, collective behavior after millions of years of biological evolution, or something outside of ourselves, beyond ourselves, beyond the natural world that we can discover by scientific methodology?

Is that the crux of it? If not, what is it? If not, why not?

Also, is it possible that our minds are not capable of understanding why we behave the way we do, because there's just not enough self-reflective "software" there to do the job? Something like quantum mechanics - that putting enough brain power into our minds to understand them properly would alter our minds so dramatically that we wouldn't be studying ourselves, but something else.

Lemme see, Rawls was wrong, justice is not fairness. He was a transcendentalist for offering that claim without empirical evidence. (One need not be religious to be a transcendentalist.)

From this, it is arguable that there is no such thing as a just society. Some societies may be more just, others less just. But, to claim justice as perfection is another transcendentalist claim from where I sit.

Next, just because I reject Rawls as a political philosopher on ethics doesn’t mean I have to accept Nozick, and I don’t.

But, on Wilson at this point…

If there are no transcendent principles which we can label “justice,� then we had better find some empirical underpinnings lest we enter a Hobbsian world.

From here, sociobiology says, evolutionary biology is the logical place to start looking for empirical underpinnings, along with empirical causes, etc.

Lemme see, Rawls was wrong, justice is not fairness. He was a transcendentalist for offering that claim without empirical evidence. (One need not be religious to be a transcendentalist.)

From this, it is arguable that there is no such thing as a just society. Some societies may be more just, others less just. But, to claim justice as perfection is another transcendentalist claim from where I sit.

Next, just because I reject Rawls as a political philosopher on ethics doesn’t mean I have to accept Nozick, and I don’t.

But, on Wilson at this point…

If there are no transcendent principles which we can label “justice,� then we had better find some empirical underpinnings lest we enter a Hobbsian world.

From here, sociobiology says, evolutionary biology is the logical place to start looking for empirical underpinnings, along with empirical causes, etc.

That said, Wilson has himself pulled back from stronger statements of later Ev Psychers and even some ev psycher. He is definitely NOT a “nature = destiny� person.

Next, let’s look at the “other side of the street.�

It’s not as if Gould and Lewontin were free from bias in their critiques of Wilson. (And a s left-liberal Green voter, don’t try to claim I’m politically biased from the right.

Next, if you’ll Wiki, the word “sociobiology� was around 30 years before Wilson’s book of that name.

And, as Wiki also notes on the article of that name, Wilson himself has been a noted liberal, and visible one, on many issues.

Richard Dawkins' work, The Selfish Gene, introduced the concept of memes, culturally inherited beliefs and practices. He elaborates on the idea in his recent work, The God Delusion,
in trying to explain the ubiquity of religious thought and practice in all known societies.

As an atheist Dawkins would take a dim view of anything transcendental.

As an agnostic, "One who holds the view that ultimate reality, as God, is unknown and probably unknowable"(Merriam Webster), I too am skeptical of such as Kant would have had me believe.

I'm curious though why Hilzoy is so worked up about this. It's a debate without a winner, God knows.

SocraticGadfly: if I had an axe to grind, it was disliking bad scholarship.

I have read Dennett, as it happens. I've also read a fiar amount of academic philosophy. People have a lot of arguments about Rawls, but I don't think it's at all accurate to say he has been "shot down". He is the most influential political philosopher of the last half century. Again, if you'd like to present Kaufmann's argument as you understand it, it might well be that it obliterates Rawls. But that's not how it struck me when I read him, and I think it's probably fair to say that that's not how it struck most academic philosophers.

Note: I don't think that 'most academic philosophers think P, therefore P is true' is a good argument. That's why I suggested you present Kaufmann's argument itself, so that we could discuss it. (Much more interesting.) In its absence, though, I'm left with only the claim that Rawls has been shot down within academic philosophy to discuss. And it would be putting it mildly to say that that's not the majority view.

I'd be interested to hear why you think Wilson is right to call Rawls a 'transcendentalist'. (In W's sense.) As I read Rawls, he takes justice to be a completely human construction, and (esp. in Political Liberalism) argues explicitly against the view that it isn't. (See postscript to the post.)

OK, more on what Wilson actually says.

First, “contrivance of the mind� does not necessarily mean “conscious contrivance.� In the case of ev psych, or its sociobiology godparent, it explicitly does NOT mean that.

Second, as for the “naturalistic mind,� what’s wrong with that? Although I disagree with Steve Pinker on a lot, to the degree the human mind is not only from the brain, but has been influenced by the evolution of the brain, he’s right — deal with it. Live with it.

Finally, an aside, before I get flamed.

Read ALL my posts. Each time, I have distinguished between ev psych and Ev Psych. Do NOT lump me with with Steve, or Susan Pinker, or Cosmides/Tooby. Don’t even lump me with Dan Dennett, even though I reverenced him more than once. I believe that many ideas even of lower-case ev psych, such as the environment of evolutionary adaptedness in all its glory, are oversold or worse.

And, like learning to love to bomb, learn to love that “brain = mind� and enjoy the one life here on earth. As an atheist, I find sociobiology, or ev psych properly construed, a fascinating part of investigating the human mind.

And, I didn’t start reopening one side of a 30 Years War, Hilz, which is what your post seems like from here; if my inferences on any of your reasons for this post are wrong, maybe you should articulate them. Maybe you should have done so in the first place.

As for the “dumping water� incident, it was stupid, childish and reinforcing of the “liberal academia�stereotypes of many conservatives, many of whom themselves didn’t like Wilson’s ideas.

And, that war was politicized from the start. John Maynard Smith, a dean of evolutionary biology at the time Wilson’s book came out, expected them:
“It was also absolutely obvious to me--I cannot believe Wilson didn't know--that this was going to provoke great hostility from American Marxists, and Marxists everywhere.�

Finally, I’m going to suggest some further reading, namely, this essay by Wilson titled “Science and Ideology.�

Wilson, Dawkins and Dennett among others all struggle against the question, "Why in spite of all my efforts, do people insist on continuing to be religious?" They then go on top argue (convincingly in my view) that religious feeling is actually a selected adaptation that has among its effects, the potential to motivate people into fatal acts in defense of their tribe (and hence their fellow gene-carriers) What they fail to consider is that the resolute absence of religious feeling is an effect of precisely the same force.

Certainly a congregation of athiesst is capable of creating the same sense of belonging and community that churchgoers enjoy and at its fringes is capable of fomenting actual hatred against those who insist on viewing the Universe differently.

Hilzoy, most influential doesn't mean most accurate.

Karl Marx was the most influential political philosopher for a quarter of the world for a century.

And, I've got the Kaufmann book, "Without Guilt and Justice"; trust me, Rawls not only got shot down, he got blown up as well. (I'll see where I've got the book.)

Shorter Kaufmann is as I've said -- distributive justice can NEVER be just to anybody, therefore it's not just.

As for Rawls as transcendentalist, I reference his Wiki bio:
The political conception of justice that Rawls introduces in Political Liberalism is the view of justice that people with conflicting, but reasonable, metaphysical and/or religious views would agree to regulate the basic structure of society. What distinguishes Rawls' account from previous conceptions of liberalism is that it seeks to arrive at a consensus without appealing to any one metaphysical source of his own.

I.e., a metaphysician but not of any particular train of thought.

Besides, he's a metaphysician by definition: He simply puts a stake in the air and calls it "justice." That's why Wilson undercut him on empirical grounds.

My understanding of Dawkins' memes is that they disengage "culture" (which would include ethics) from biological determinism. Memetic evolution is not entirely independent of genetic evolution, but distinguishable from it. Over the long term they're actually interrelated in a complex pattern, with genetic changes making memetic (cultural) changes possible, but also with memetic (cultural) changes making genetic changes possible. This is how the evolution of altruistic individual behavior is explained -- in certain cultures/societies, altruistic genes are preserved even though they're selected against outside those societies. The learned culture (memes) gives the society as a whole enough advantage that even the self-sacrificing altruists within the society pass their genes along.

Paul Dirks, good post. Just one observation. I think even Dennett pulls his punches on the issue of free will.

If there's no "Cartesian meaner," there cannot be free will, certainly not at the level of consciousness. Now, some of our subconscious subroutines may have a subconscious level of free will within themselves, but that's different.

Beyond that, "free will vs. determinism" is as much a false dilemma as is the "nature vs. nurture" that may lie behind this original blog post.

I think I see where the problem lies:

This sentence is true:

Because the success of an ethical code depends on how wisely it interprets moral sentiments, those who frame one should know how the brain works, and how the mind develops.

Only insofar as advertisers and politicians should likewise "know how the brain works and how the mind develops" The process by which good ideas take hold and 'fit' our neural circuitry is quite amenable to trial and error. One needn't delve into biological explanations in order sucsessfully exploit human emotional circuitry. One need only be a participating human.

Each time, I have distinguished between ev psych and Ev Psych.

OK, and I distinguish between "RAWLS" and "Rawls". And between good metaphysics and bad metaphysics. So what.

There are 30 million or so species on our planet. The various naturalistic/empirical theories of evolution have done a marvelous job where applied to this diversity so far; yet we're supposed to make a special exception for the case of Homo sapiens?

I really don't get it.

OK, found Kaufmann's "Beyond Guilt and Justice."

First, early in the book, without any special reference to Rawls, Kaufmann says equality is "decrepit." As a matter of philosophy, but not necessarily as an ideal approximation, I'll agree.

Pg. 40ff -- Says Rawls is wrong to ignore retributive justice (talking about "A Theory of Justice")

60 -- Says the "justice" Rawls seeks is a "chimera." First, Rawls' "bad character" is neither necessary nor sufficient condition for being punished.

69 Rawls offers a theory of fairness, not justice, which is fitting because "Justice and fairness are NOT the same. Fair procedures do not guarantee a just outcome."

74ff, in criticizing distributive justice in general, and specifically to the distributor of distributive justice, Kaufmann notes that What one desires is usually overlooked and without warrant.

79ff... Following up on 74 -- What is needed and for what kinds of occasions? Subsistence? Confort? Optimal development? Some particular project?

83ff Equality of oppportunity is unobtainable, because environment remains decisive in many ways. "Equality of opportunity is either a hollow cliche or a pernicious goal."

91ff, on Rawls, "A Theory of Justice." -- "In 'Ends,' he does not consider alternative goals and possible conflicts (in distributive justice)." Elsewhere, "Rawls ignores concrete problems."

Then, "Reason is considered authoritative, but the cards are stacked to make sure that reason will deliver the desired verdict."

In short, Kaufmann encourages us to accept a skeptical, empirical, existential reality of ethics rather than trying to justify an "ought" that Rawls doesn't.

John Emerson, "ev psych" is the proper use of evolutionary biology and related disciplines to guide the study of human psychology.

"Ev Psych" is the elevation of certain tenets of "ev psych" to metaphysical status. Click the link to my blog post on David Buller in my first post or Google Buller yourself for more.

Alex... damn skippy. We're just another animal.

Or, per Gilbert Ryle --

"There is no ghost in the machine."

Well done, Hilzoy.

E.O. Wilson knows as much about moral philosophy as Richard Dawkins knows about theology.

SocraticGadfly: It's fine if you don't want to get into this. But a lot of what you cite from Kaufmann is not so much argument as assertion. Rawls does leave retributive justice aside. This is because it's not his topic -- likewise, he leaves physics aside, but in either case, we'd need to know why that's a problem, given what he is trying to do. (The 'first' point from p. 60 is odd, in view of this: you seem to cite K. first complaining that R. leaves retributive justice aside, and then objecting to his theory of punishment.)

Rawls does not leave aside the question what people want, or what their ends are. He says that they do not know their goals behind the Veil of Ignorance, but that's different: that means that it is not relevant to questions of justice, and Rawls has arguments for that claim. He uses primary goods as a sort of substitute; again, he has arguments for this. One can agree or disagree with those arguments, but it's not as though he just inexplicably leaves this aside. (This also applies to the quote from p. 79.)

Equality of opportunity: Rawls acknowledges that the environment makes complete equality of opportunity unattainable. He says we should aim for it nonetheless. This isn't silly: people often try to get things completely right, even if they know that in practice they won't. The crucial argument would be the one that supports K's claim that equality of opportunity is not an ideal we should strive for even if we can never achieve it, like complete virtue, but "pernicious."

A simple sorities, or more extended syllogism, refutes the claims to logical rigor of distributive justice.

Assume the government stops taxing Bill Gates.
Assume that Gates puts all his money into world AIDS research.
Assume this is done more effectively, and fairly, than any government.

QED -- Distributive justice is unjust.

I have no problems with striving for a real-world approximation of a more just but still "imperfect" world.

But, Rawls' Platonic metaphysical idealism? A good antimetaphysician, meeting him on the road, should have killed him as dead as the Buddha for him a similar prescription was offered.

Socratic, you're all over the map. This is supposed to be about Wilson.

Hilzoy -- You've answered my original question about why you posted this in the first place. It is about political issues, whether or not they have scientific grounding.

And, no apology, but Rawls was the one with argument (which is what, philosophically, unsupported assertion is).

On the "what people want," it's exactly your attempt to exonerate Rawls that confirms Kaufmann. The "Veil of Ignorance" struck me, when I read it, as an obfuscation. Still does.

Per the equality of opportunity, let's look at two current energy issues.

I could tell researchers to continue to pound money down the rathole of a hydrogen car, or I could be realistic.

I prefer realism. And, IMO, and the opinions of others, Rawls doesn't base his theory on empirical realism.

See my post immediately above this about Rawls' metaphysical idealism as being pernicious.

Emerson, you're in over your head.

If you knew the history of this, you'd know that far more than "Wilson" is ultimately involved.

I'm about to wrap this up, Hilzoy —

But, was the late 70s criticism of Wilson more scientifically grounded, or more political vendetta?

If you knew the history of this, you'd know that far more than "Wilson" is ultimately involved.

And what is the "far more"? The Bildenbergers? The Bavarian Illuminati? The Anglo-Dutch Consortium?

Hilzoy made some specific criticisms of Wilson, and you seem to have unloaded an unrelated piece you already had written on her.

I am sort of a dim light, but as arguments get beyond one level of abstraction they lose me. It seems to me that morality is just a method of asserting "our" superiority over other peoples and animals so we can do with them what we want and feel good about it. If math and check balancing are not the result of biology, why do we do math and balance check books and chimps don't? If math is not related to biology, why do we use base ten (the number digits on our hands), instead of base twelve. I know math is really just yes or no. Why did the Catholic Church for ethical reasons not allow us to use zeros until the 16th century (bad math, worse ethics)? Frankly, long arguments that cannot be tested objectively are just a waste of time regardless of how good they make you feel.

Why did the Catholic Church for ethical reasons not allow us to use zeros until the 16th century (bad math, worse ethics)?

Who the fuck linked to this thread? The idiots are swarming.

SocraticGadfly, I can't follow your argument because all kinds of dingbats are appearing sprinkled throughout your words, which has never happened before with your posts.

You man interpret dingbats in multiple senses of the word because multiple senses of that word apply.

SocraticGadfly, I can't follow your argument because all kinds of dingbats are appearing sprinkled throughout your words, which has never happened before with your posts.

You may interpret dingbats in multiple senses of the word because multiple senses of that word apply.

E.O. Wilson knows as much about moral philosophy as Richard Dawkins knows about theology.

How much does anyone need to know about theology?

Hilzoy

Would you accept that an understanding of the function of moral rules in society might allow one to determine that certain combinations of moral rules are impractical or unrealizable?

Could it be that the function of moral rules is strongly influenced by human nature?

Human nature -> structure / function analysis of moralities -> excluded set of impossible moralities.

Of course there are a lot of reasons this is damn near impossible. But I don't see you giving any good ones.

And you don't seem to be winning your argument with socratic gadfly :)

I think that Hilzoy and most of the responders are missing the point entirely. What Dr. Wilson is trying to point out is that there is in fact a biological basis for the way we behave. Obviously he is not at all claiming that some inherited characteristic is the only thing that is molding our behavior, but what he is saying is that if we try to force people into behavioral patterns that are not just inconsistent, but opposed to their biological propensities, the effort will end in failure. Witness the famous "War on Drugs" and compare it with what happened during prohibition and how that turned out.

Ethnologists have shown beyond a shadow of a doubt that at times animals share many of the behavioral patterns that humans associate with moral behavior. They punish cheaters; they risk their own lives for their fellows; they share; they form friendships; they care for their own family members and friends and show signs of grief when they die; etc. These attributes have been impressed into our neurological development because their presence allows societies to function better than their absence. In other words, societies made of individuals with these traits outcompete societies of individuals without these traits. For animals that live solitary lives, these traits may be less well defined and selected for or against.

That there are some traits that are likely biologically based, i.e., inherited from some ancestor to humans, is the most reasonable explanation for commonality among almost all societies of these traits. Those traits that are learned rather than inherent are those that do not show up in many societies, but rather are specific to only a few. These traits seem to require a lot more supervision by the societal authorities than the inherent traits do in order to enforce uniformity in the society.

P.S. Yes, I know that just because something is beyond the capacity of our senses to identify it does not prove that it does not exist, but we have plenty of other things to worry about without taking on problem we cannot solve.

Texas Aggie:

Indeed, to be honest I just skimmed Wilson's article at first because the idea that our morality is tied into evolutionary biology (not sure if that should be capitalized or not, given previous comments), anyway, this idea doesn't seem that revolutionary to me. Although perhaps this is because I came of age after Ants was written.

What I thought was interesting is that Wilson doesn't want to say that these moral laws exist outside of the mind. This seems like a perfectly reasonable claim, and one that would bolster his argument.

Before I get shot down, let me admit that I don't have time to define terms, but here's the gist of what I mean:

Mathematical theorems exist outside of human minds, and are universal up to isomorphism. So to take hilzoy's example of the SAS theorem, any aliens studying geometry will have the same theorem at any point in time, as long as they are doing geometry over short enough distances that the curvature of space is not an issue.

So that is what I mean by existing outside our mind, these things are true by the nature of what we're talking about.

By the same token, it does not seem ridiculous to say that if aliens were to appear today, we could know certain things about their genetic imperatives by virtue of the fact that they have not destroyed each other and discovered space travel. In fact, the real barrier to understanding them is that they would be more advanced than us, so might have more highly developed morals. However I think we could say that they had some code for getting along with one another. Certain codes of life are not conducive to species survival (think familial infanticide)this is true by nature of what is being done, and will always be true. Hence a law that exists outside of our minds.

It's silly. Ethics can totally tells us we should be in two places at once. That's because ethics are rules we apply to restrict biological, social impulses which would otherwise damage some sort of social (or business) interaction. Murdering makes it tough to talk to people. Cannibalism has a danger of disease. Thieving breaks down some economic models. Coveting thy neighbor's wife leads to strife.

Ethics is a set of rules we impose upon ourselves - and the source need not be even stated - some people want biology, others want an outside force or authority (god) - but the result of it is the same, as it's a social contract.

Of course, if there's no outside authority, then the contract can be changed, or there can be more than one type of society. And that really unsettles conservatives who value authority.

PS, Hilzoy, I think the letter could've been better written, the fifth paragraph especially.

Ridiculous. Is there any doubt that the truth of a mathematical statement is unaltered by human evolution, or that the optimum move in a chess game would be different for a different sentient race?

Everybody who nominally claims to believe that random variation and natural selection ought to be taught in school nevertheless believes that some human attributes are completely unrelated to random variation and natural selection. This particular pair of examples is like the "intelligent design" arguments: since we can't imagine how something could have derived by random variation and natural selection, it can't have.

Anyone who truly believes that humans have evolved by a process of random variation and natural selection has to accept that human ideals (and behaviors) of morality are the results of random variation and natural selection. That it is a gruesome or repugnant acceptance is perhaps demoralizing.

Great discussion.

I'm definitely out of my league here, but it strikes me that someone proposing (especially here in the U.S.) a biological basis for morality or ethics (as per God-fearing religious precepts) is attempting an end-run around science similar to what the intelligent design advocates are doing, trying to inject something into science classes that neither can be empirically proven nor disproven...in essence trying to insert "school prayer" into American schools by whatever sneaky, devious means possible.

Paul Dirks makes some excellent points.

"Only insofar as advertisers and politicians should likewise "know how the brain works and how the mind develops" The process by which good ideas take hold and 'fit' our neural circuitry is quite amenable to trial and error. One needn't delve into biological explanations in order (to) sucsessfully exploit human emotional circuitry. One need only be a participating human."

(The selling of the Iraq War comes to mind, with a large number of my fellow citizens believing the pre-war propaganda pushed by the fear-mongering Bush/Cheney administration).

"Wilson, Dawkins and Dennett among others all struggle against the question, "Why in spite of all my efforts, do people insist on continuing to be religious?" They then go on top argue (convincingly in my view) that religious feeling is actually a selected adaptation that has among its effects, the potential to motivate people into fatal acts in defense of their tribe (and hence their fellow gene-carriers) What they fail to consider is that the resolute absence of religious feeling is an effect of precisely the same force.

Certainly a congregation of atheists is capable of creating the same sense of belonging and community that churchgoers enjoy and at its fringes is capable of fomenting actual hatred against those who insist on viewing the Universe differently."

(In my view, the "God-less" Communists are no different than any religion, especially where a controlling hierarchy is concerned. For instance, in the Soviet Union, the premier represented the Catholic Pope, the Kremlin the Vatican, the Politburo the School of Cardinals, and Communist Party officials scattered throughout the former Soviet Union represented the priesthood. The "God-less" Communists also displayed a startlingly conservative religious fundamentalist mindset over issues like prostitution, pornography, nudity-in-general, illicit drugs, etc. etc., giving rise to a massive black market for these items, similar to what occurs in God or Allah worshipping, totalitarian religious countries. All this makes me wonder why "God-less" Communists are called "leftists" since they so obviously attempt to promote and practice hardcore, right-wing religious fundamentalist viewpoints and policies...with the one difference probably being that the "God-less" Communists would never teach intelligence design in any of their classrooms. Oh, BTW, I'm not an atheist. And in a similar vein, I'm a liberal, so I could never be a Communist. I no more want a totalitarian religious fanatic taking over our public schools (or government) than I would want a totalitarian, anti-religious, atheistic Communist taking over our educational system. I firmly believe in the separation of church and state primarily because totalitarian is as totalitarian does and I see no difference between religious totalitarians and Communist totalitarians, because as Paul Dirks so aptly put, "(totalitarians, of whatever ilk, are) capable of fomenting actual hatred against those who insist on viewing the Universe differently." Thus, there's nothing liberal (as related to what Jesus Christ taught) about any of the totalitarian conservatives I've ever either read about or had the misfortune of meeting. Crush the opposition and destroy the "different" is the mantra of all conservative totalitarians, which is why they hate liberal democracies so much. And it doesn't matter whether the totalitarian conservative monopolist is atheistic or religious...they all have the same goal, place everyone within their totalitarian regime under their control...with morality and ethical issues just being a means to that end).

As a physicist with admittedly a severe allergy to philosophy, I couldn't make much sense of your critique. It seems to me that it doesn't take much knowledge of biology to realize that people don't make moral judgements on the basis of Kant's "categorical imperative." Universal principles in morality are pretty flimsy things. "Do onto others..." seems like one of Kant's principles, but it suffers when applied in detail. If an axe murderer is attacking a family member, most people who don't like to be shot would still think the moral thing to do was to shoot the murderer.

Wilson's point of view, it seems to me, is descriptive rather than prescriptive. He wants to know how people do make moral decisions rather than how they should.

Whether or not he gets the details of some philosopher's argument right or not doesn't concern me much, since I consider it moderately improbable that a philosopher is likely to say anything interesting on such a subject.

Of course I might be wrong.

Conservatives believe misinformation even when it has been shown to be wrong!

So, it does no good to argue with these slimeballs. Just punch them in the nose and be done with them.

Good luck to everyone trying to prove anything about ethics.

I read Wilson's "Consilience" and Wendell Berry's reponse shortly after their publications. While siding with Wilson over Berry, it was difficult accepting Wilson's application of the scientific method to the social sciences. Ethics and morality involve too much subjectivity. Perhaps in time someone may demonstrate Wilson's proposed application. But "Consilience" remains a worthwhile read.

It's really not so difficult, and doesn't need a tenth as many words to express it.

Higher animals (birds, mammals and some reptiles) that care for their young have obviously evolved feelings of empathy and altruism which govern their offspring-rearing activities. Without such motivation they would not function in that direction.

This is so basic and instinctive we hardly recognize it as 'morality', but the bedrock of morality is precisely what it is. Morality is the system of guidelines by which we describe and determine our actions. Actions which create the causes of happiness for oneself and others are sound, while actions that cause suffering are detrimental. Because of the discomfort of suffering and the pleasure of happiness, all sentient beings naturally tend in the direction of searching the causes of happiness and avoiding the causes of suffering. That, along with all the other selective pressures in evolution, has brought into existence and innate sense of moral imperative.

So, first, there is no doubt that moral conduct has been favored by evolution. Elaborating on that by intellectual analysis is our privilege as human beings. Whether this supplementary philosophical and sociological conjecturing has helped or hindered is by no means certain. Nevertheless, conduct based on our instinctive sense of empathy and altruism can only be beneficial.

I confess I stopped reading these comments fairly early on, so I apologize if this has already been said.

Nater: The obvious difference between moral or ethical truths and mathematical ones, is that the later do not vary depending on the situation. To take an oversimplified example, "thou shall not kill (except in self defense, or maybe when one prefers one's own survival over another's [here, if we include suicide as killing, altruism might be examined in a similar way]...) the point is that trying to concoct some ethical or moral 'axioms' would necessitate a compendium of all possible situations in which some actions might or might not be ethical or moral, and even then one could argue the point.

Reading philosophical 'arguments' and 'deductions' makes my head hurt for exactly the absence of precision that I describe above, so I did not actually read Mr. Wilson's article, and I cannot address Hilzoy's critique of it or the statements of the various philosophers cited. Nonetheless, it seems obvious to me that the thing we describe as morality or ethics, or put under a number of other rubrics, is the space between what we can logically deduce and the fact that one must make decisions with imperfect knowledge of both initial conditions and the changes that any given action will precipitate. We therefore most of the time make our judgments based on some 'feeling' or 'hunch' that certain courses of action are the right ones. This is evolution's solution to the problem for animals which think of themselves as rational, but need to survive in the real world, and it is therefore much more likely that we will understand these processes by examining their evolutionary origins than by examining what baby Jesus would have thought about it, or whether there exist some intrinsic right in the ether that our ethical antennae receive.

"Do as thou will shall be the whole of the law."
-- Aleister Crowley

Understanding the processes that produce a judgment is not the same as showing that judgment to be rational. Evolutionary accounts may show why we tend to form moral judgments in the ways that we do, but that's not a justification of those judgments.