The Seven Sins of Evolutionary Psychology - Konrad Lorenz Institute

Evolutionary Ethicsmorality is a useful human construct, a necessaryartifice.Our second reason for paying to attention to conventionsis that an evolutionary perspective forcesus to take an explicitly historical view of our moralstandards. Much of moral theory is weakened by theextent to which it fails to appreciate the importanceof considering moral agents as historically and sociallysituated. Moral theory mistakenly assumes, forthe most part, that agents (or societies) are in a positionof radical choice vis-à-vis their moral principles,or more generally, their social arrangements. Attentionto social conventions—actual, existing, workingbits of cooperative behaviour—is a way of takingseriously the moral work already done by culturalevolution.2. ValueWe begin by looking at the implications of evolutionarytheory for value theory. The most fundamentalshift that an evolutionary perspectivebrings about—or should bring about—in ourunderstanding of value lies in the undermining ofwhat RACHELS (1990) calls the ‘Human Dignity Thesis’.According to the Human Dignity Thesis,humans have special value not shared by nonhumannature; also according to the Thesis,humans have this special value just by beinghuman, which implies that all human lives havethis value to some extent or another. Both of thesevalue claims have wide-reaching implications forethics. But, according to RACHELS, an evolutionaryperspective casts doubt upon the two claims that hecalls the ‘twin pillars’ holding up the Human DignityThesis. First, the acceptance of evolutionarytheory renders unnecessary (as an explanatoryhypothesis) the Western religious claim thathumans were made in the image of God. Secondly,in situating humans on a developmental spectrumof cognitive capacities, as creatures with capacitiesdifferent in degree but not in kind from other animals,evolutionary thinking undermines the secularclaim that humans are of special value onaccount of their unique rationality.Although the theory to which, I argue, the evolutionaryperspective drives us is the theory of valueassumed by our most well-developed social science—economics—itis also a theory of value that isat odds with most modern moral theories. A full theoryof value is beyond the scope of this paper, butthe basics—borrowed from David GAUTHIER’s accountof value—can be stated briefly. The value theoryto which an evolutionary perspective drives us isone that holds that all value is dependent upon theaffective relationships of the individual, and is thereforeboth subjective (as opposed to objective) andrelative (rather than absolute).First, that value is subjective means that the ascriptionof value is taken to be attitudinal, not observational(GAUTHIER 1986, p25). That is, a thing’sbeing valuable depends upon some sentient beinghaving a positive attitude toward it. GAUTHIER(1986, p46) puts the point quite simply: “Value… isa measure of preference”. Thomas HOBBES is perhapsthe classic exponent of the subjective view of value.HOBBES (1985, p24) writes, “For these words ofGood, Evill… are ever used with relation to the personthat useth them: There being nothing simplyand absolutely so; nor any common Rule of Goodand Evill, to be taken from the nature of the objectsthemselves; but from the Person of the man”. Forthe value subjectivist then, nothing is ever valuablesimpliciter; it is always valuable to someone. Accordingto GAUTHIER (1986, p56), we should decide“whether any adequate account of our experienceor environment must refer to objective value” byconsidering “whether any reference to objectivevalue occurs in the best explanation we can providefor our actions and choices” (emphasis original).The value objectivist, according to (GAUTHIER 1986,p55) “…holds that any adequate account of our experienceor our environment must refer to value orto the valuable as being independent of sentient beingsand their affections”. GAUTHIER suggests insteadthat “…the only serious candidate for an explanatoryschema for human action is… [oneaccording to which] choice maximizes preferencefulfilment given belief. Objective value plays no rolein this account” (p56). GAUTHIER continues: “Objectivevalue, like phlogiston, is an unnecessary part ofour explanatory apparatus, and as such is to beshaved from the face of the universe by OCKHAM’srazor”.I would argue that objective value died (or at anyrate, should have died) in 1859, with the publicationof DARWIN’s The Origin of Species. DARWINIAN theorypulls down the two supporting pillars of the HumanDignity Thesis. Under the scientific world-view withwhich we are left, objective value is simply an unnecessaryexplanatory hypothesis.On the theory of value to which evolutionarythinking drives us, not only is value to be taken tobe subjective, but it is also relative. On the relativeconception of value, according to GAUTHIER (1986,p50), “…each person has his own good (and bad),Evolution and Cognition ❘ 99 ❘ 2001, Vol. 7, No. 1