“If we try to paint normative life as a part of nature, crucial parts keep looking off shape.” (Gibbard 1990, p. 23).
Abstract
Foot (2001), Hursthouse (1999), and Thompson (2008), along with other philosophers, have argued for a metaethical position, the natural goodness approach, that claims moral judgments are, or are on a par with, teleological claims made in the biological sciences. Specifically, an organism’s flourishing is characterized by how well they function as specified by the species to which they belong. In this essay, I first sketch the Neo-Aristotelian natural goodness approach. Second, I argue that critics who claim that this sort of approach is inconsistent with evolutionary biology due to its species essentialism are incorrect. Third, I contend that combining the natural goodness account of natural-historical judgments with our best account of natural normativity, the selected effects theory of function, leads to implausible moral judgments. This is so if selected effects function are understood in terms of evolution by natural selection, but also if they are characterized in terms of cultural evolution. Thus, I conclude that proponents of the natural goodness approach must either embrace non-naturalistic vitalism or troubling moral revisionism.
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Notes
It is worth stressing different sources of normativity can be combined. It is only arguments like Mackie’s that encourage us to avoid certain views.
For the purposes of this paper, I am ignoring deflationary approaches to truth (Armour-Garb and Beall 2005). Deflationary approaches seem to trivialize the differences between cognitivist and non-cognitivist theories (Dreier 1996, 2004). Suppose ‘\(p\)’ is true if, and only if, \(p.\) Thus, ‘Murder is wrong’ is true if, and only if, murder is wrong. But this seems to imply that moral claims are trivially true.
On Mackie’s error theory, a positive moral claim like “Murder is morally wrong” is false because the term ‘morally wrong’ is non-referring since there is no property moral wrongness.
One way of seeing this is that virtue ethics is not a maximizing theory whereas character consequentialism is. However, one could evaluate character traits with regard to their expected consequences without thinking these traits could be maximized or even are commensurable with regard to one another. Thanks to Richard Boyd on this point.
Andreou (2006) objects to the natural goodness approach because she thinks it is committed to a monomorphic notion of human flourishing. She rightfully notes that species often exhibit polymorphic adaptations. However, the natural goodness approach does not require monomorphic adaptations. Andreou’s deeper point though is that human polymorphic traits can include undesirable variants. For example, maternal behavior can be nurturing, but it can also disregard young that make for poor parental investment (2006, p. 71– 2).
Some use the term ‘human’ to be synonymous with the concept PERSON contrary to biologists’ usage. One might claim that the property rationality is essential to personhood. But, it does not follow that it is essential to being a member of our biological species Homo sapiens. Proponents of natural goodness move between talk of kinds, species, and life-forms. This is problematic. For example, Thompson assumes that every organism belongs to some life-form or species (he thinks of these categories as roughly the same) (2008, p. 28). However, if as Ernst Mayr thought, species are all and only interbreeding populations, then many, many, many organisms are species-less.
Thompson’s views are more complicated than other proponents of the natural goodness approach regarding whether life-forms and species are the same. He notes that the former term is a philosophical one deriving from Aristotle and the latter is from empirical science, but suggests that they are used “more or less equivalently” (2008, p. 28). However, he does suggest that life-forms can change and ultimately go extinct and this is explained by Darwinian processes (2008, pp. 65–6).
Here I follow the discussion found in (Sober 1980).
To be clear, a science may investigate natural kinds and concrete particulars. For example, astronomy investigates the kind black hole but also specific black holes like V4641 Sgr located near the Sagittarius arm of the Milky Way. Some sciences however may not investigate natural kinds at all. Some have alleged that evolutionary biology is such a science.
Some philosophers such as Richard Boyd deny that kinds and tokens are metaphysically distinct. Some philosophers of biology such as David Hull have argued that species are individuals (i.e. concrete particulars) and not natural kinds. However, Boyd denies that the category individual and natural kind are ontologically distinct. Hence, if right, he can trivially accept the species as individuals thesis. If Boyd is correct, kind and token essentialism are “notational variants” of one another.
In conversation, Thomas Hurka raised the following objection to this response. If necessarily a species has the phylogenetic position it does, then it follows that necessarily scientific creationism is false. However, most of us regard scientific creationism as merely contingently false not necessarily so. However, in our post-Kripke times, we have become accustomed to the idea that certain truths known a posteriori could be unexpectedly necessary.
Kitcher (1984) has argued that species are best construed as sets and not concrete particulars or natural kinds. He claims that anything that can be said about species as individuals (i.e. concrete particulars), can be reconstructed as species as historically connected sets, an \(n-\)tuple with a first member as founder and \(n \)immediate descendants.
A more effective defense of species as historical, spatiotemporal entities is this.
Since the inception of evolutionary theory, species taxa have been considered evolutionary units, that is, groups of organisms capable of evolving. The evolution of such groups requires that the organisms of a species taxon be connected by heredity relations. Heredity relations, whether they be genetic or not, require that the generations of a taxon be historically connected, otherwise information will not be transmitted. The upshot is that if species taxa, or any taxa, are to evolve, they must form historically connected entities. (Ereshefsky 1992, p. 688)
Heredity requires material overlap and spatiotemporal continuity (Griesemer 2000). Hence, if this is correct and there are no hereditary relations between flying reptiles at \(t\) and \(t?\) they cannot be parts of the same species.
It is important to note that Wright’s account is a conceptual analysis of what he takes the meaning of functional claims to be (or at least some paradigm cases). Current accounts do not necessarily claim to be offering a conceptual analysis. Thus, consider Donald Davidson’s “swampman” (1987)—suppose a molecule-for-molecule replica of a human is created by lightning in a swamp. According to the selected effects historical account, this swampman’s heart would have no function. However, if one is not giving a conceptual analysis of the concept biological function, then it is not clear what force such recondite examples have (Millikan 1984; Neander 1991). Michael Thompson however suggests no natural-historical judgments would be true of it.
[T]he thing has no ears to hear with and no head to turn; it has no brain-states, no brain to bear them, and no skull to close them in; prick it, and it does not bleed; tickle it, and it does not laugh; and so forth. It is a mere congeries of physical particles and not so much as alive. (2008, p. 60)
Elijah Millgram mentions evolutionary psychologists’ work on rape in his discussions of the “Polyanna problem” for the natural goodness approach (2009, p. 562). Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for drawing my attention to this review. However, he does not consider the cultural “escape hatch” I do in the next section.
Here I am thinking of R. M. Hare’s (1979) response to the objection that utilitarianism would condone slavery. His response is twofold. First, if slavery were really harmful, then utilitarianism would not condone it. Second, if it were not really harmful, then it might condoned, but so what?
In other work, I have argued that we should embrace Cummins’ approach in thinking about functions in ecology (Odenbaugh 2010).
On Cummins’ view, one might wonder why normativity is undercut by \(x\) not having \(F\hbox {-ed}\) in the past. If x should F even if it never has, then this would mean that the normativity of \(F\hbox {-ing}\) is built right into the dispositions themselves; this just assumes away the problem of normativity. Proponents of natural goodness could just assume character traits as dispositions that come pre-packed with the relevant normative properties. This eschews naturalism.
The details of the following story come from Henrich and McElreath (2003).
Proponents of the natural goodness note talk of flourishing of some life-form is not reducible to the replication of genes. Following Richard Dawkins, William Fitzpatrick (2008) has argued that if evolutionary biology supplies ends, it is the replication of genes. However, evolutionary theory does not imply this. Dawkins (1976, p. 33) argued that something is a replicator if it possesses longevity, fecundity, and copying-fidelity. He likewise claims that only genes possessed these properties. However, if we consider phenotypic traits as types and not tokens, then they could possess these properties as well (Sober 1993).
Hacker-Wright acknowledges this by noting a Kantian strain in the natural goodness approach (2009, p. 308).
I am particularly indebted to William Rottschaefer and Nicholas D. Smith for discussion of the points in this section.
Thanks to Richard Boyd for discussion on these points.
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Acknowledgments
Thanks to Richard Boyd, Rebecca Copenhaver, Marc Ereshefsky, J. M. Fritzman, Thomas Hurka, Joel Martinez, Bill Rottschaefer, and Nicholas D. Smith for useful conversations about human nature, virtue ethics, and evolutionary biology. Likewise, thanks to Boyd, Copenhaver, Fritzman, Rottschaefer, and Smith for detailed comments on an earlier draft. Without these conversations and comments, this paper would not exist. Additionally, I thank John Basl and Sune Holm for their interest and support in this paper and two anonymous reviewers for their comments.
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Odenbaugh, J. Nothing in ethics makes sense except in the light of evolution? Natural goodness, normativity, and naturalism. Synthese 194, 1031–1055 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-015-0675-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-015-0675-7