Jenn Larson
Genes and Behavior
Outline for Evolutionary Ethics
April 7, 2004
“Legend’s Legacy”
 A view of science, that the author coins as Legend characterized science a few decades
ago. Discovery of truth was regarded as paramount, and science has been useful in
pursuing this goal. The ‘legacy of Legend’ is the task of “scrutinizing the apparent
progressiveness of science, the seeming individual rationality of individual scientists, and
the collective rationality of the scientific community.”
 Darwin’s Origin was introduced to a pool of heterogeneous biological conceptions
including natural theology, Owen’s theory of recognizing the beneficence and wisdom of
the creator to recognize the economy of archetypes and harmonies of adaptations of
species. None of these theories were particularly unified, each had research problems.
 The fundamental claims of Origin include: (1) at any stage in the history of a species,
there will be variation among the members of the species, (2) at any stage in that history
more organisms are born that can survive to reproduce. (3) Some of the variation among
members of the species is variation with respect to properties that affect the ability to
survive and reproduce, and (4) Heritability is the norm. These led to the conclusion that
variation will eventually better dispose a population to survive.
 The truth of these fundamental claims was not disputed as much as their significance
was.
 The Origin proposes an explanatory device to answer some broad families of questions
central to biology.
 Darwinian theory modified even the language of biology: “a conceptualization of species
that had been commonplace among his predecessors was discarded: the language of late
nineteenth century biology no longer allows one to pin down the reference of species by
declaring that ‘a species comprehends all the individuals which descend from each other,
or from a common parentage, and those which resemble them as much as they do each
other.”
 The Origin also shapes which ideas are relevant to biology, the ways in which
information can be acquired, and those who can be trusted to supply such information.
 The Origin’s argument is divided into three parts: an attempt to show it is possible to
modify organisms through a natural process, an attempt to show that his hypothesis
would allow us to answer many questions about the examined organisms, and finally an
attempt to respond to difficulties that threaten hypotheses about common descent. In this
way, Darwin presents naturalists with good reasons for accepting minimal Darwinism.
 Critics of Darwin claim he has no evidence of large-scale modifications by natural or
artificial selection, so there is no way to test his theory or believe it. Although, Darwin
was only talking about the possibility of such modification.
 Criticisms of Darwinism only helped to clarify the theory and present it more widely,
increasing the acceptance of Darwinism overall.
 Mathematical population genetics has further deepened our understanding of the complex
processes embedded in Darwinian thinking.
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Neo-Darwinism and further mathematical population genetics help to keep Darwin’s
ideas alive and accepted.
The history of Darwinian thought resembles an evolutionary pattern: “The history of
Darwinism from 1859 to the present reveals a sequence fo sets of contemporaneous
practices. At each state of the history there is marked individual variation. But at each
stage we can pick out a consensus practice, something that all (or almost all) biologists
share and that is integrated into the training of the subsequent generations of biologists.
The consensus practice common to all biologists is relatively spare and is elaborated in
different ways with different differences.”
“Evolutionary Ethics: Its Origins and Contemporary Face”
 Evolutionary ethics has been plagued with the dispute between Darwinians, who hold
that species are mutable, and Creationists, who hold that species boundary is
impermeable, and reject macroevolution.
 Herbert Spencer was influential on ethics and evolution in the late nineteenth century.
He holds that greatest happiness is equated with justice and is a product of evolution, not
a calculation used to determine the rightness of an action.
 Spencer is often misrepresented as the cruel advocate of ‘survival of the fittest’
 G. E. Moore offers a counterargument that for any natural property used to define good,
the question whether it is good to have that property is left open.
 David Hume’s argument about naturalistic fallacies seems applicable to evolutionary
ethics, as he proposes that ought statements cannot be derived from is statements.
 Another objection to evolutionary ethics is that the theory is based on group selection,
whereas evolution can only take place through the cumulative selection of the individuals
of the group.
 Inclusive fitness can be extrapolate an explanation of altruism, as all social arrangements
founded on working together and helping others have a distinct advantage in the face of
an enemy, or for the mere success of that arrangement. Altruism, then, is biological in its
origins.
 Some critics turn to Moore’s ‘open question,’ but just because a series of ‘why questions’
seems infinite without complete resolution does not mean there is no contextually
meaningful answer.
 Some critics are not at home with the concept of biological determinism, but this does not
entail the impossibility of choice. It merely holds that the process in humans in “no more
mystical than computers. In both cases nothing more is required than the physical
template (a neural structure or semiconductor circuit) and a mechanism for programming
(hard or soft).
 Evolutionary ethics has yet to deal with a theory of cognition and consciousness.
 The author concludes “the final determination of the viability of evolutionary ethics does
not rest with resolving the naturalistic fallacy or issues of determinism but with the
results of theorizing in neurobiology and cognitive science.”