Questions of ethics have troubled humanity since the dawn of time. In the Book of Genesis, the first controversy involved the decision to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil – in other words, to know that it was possible to commit evil, and to experience temptation. The serpent couches this as the chance to be like God; when the first couple actually eats the fruit, though, they find that the possibility of evil in the world is not a source of empowerment but instead is a recipe for tragedy. The consequences of their decision only takes one generation to bring disastrous consequences, as one of their sons murders the other – over a religious offering. Ever since the classical age of the Greeks, ethics has been primarily the province of philosophers; however, E.O. Wilson first asserted in 1975 that ethics could also be viewed from a sociobiological perspective, that the evolutionary process did not just pass down physiological traits but also selects sets of emotional and psychological traits that are more desirable than others, leading to a biological transmission of ethical principles (among other things). According to Philip Kitcher, though, Wilson’s ideas come from the confusion that ensues when idealism and obligation collide inside the ethically flawed mind of the human being.
Kitcher breaks down Wilson’s ideas about biologizing questions about ethics into four categories: to explain how people have developed ethical concepts; to use moral principles and facts about people to develop a set of new ethical norms; to explain the nature of ethics; and to update and improve our existing set of ethical principles. Kitcher does not have a problem with using this process to look at the first two, because they have been areas of study for millennia. Learning how people have come about their ethical systems has intrigued philosophers going back to Aristotle (and King Solomon, depending on your view of the authorship of Ecclesiastes). Kitcher suggests, though, that Wilson oversimplifies the attempt to explain this search by arguing that looking at the transmission of ethics as a biological process means that those ethics could not have come from an extrasomatic source, such as a deity. Wilson appears to require that ethicists study the brain in detail before moving to considerations of ethical principles; Kitcher sees this as an unnecessary step, arguing that even if some ethical traits are passed biologically, to rule out an extrasomatic source makes the answer to the question too simplistic.
Then, according to Kitcher, Wilson moves to the notion that moral objectivity is impossible, because finding distance from one’s ethical principles is not possible if those principles are biologically transmitted. Because ethical principles are already lodged in one’s brain at birth, so to speak, it is impossible for the individual to view ethical questions objectively, because that implantation makes the requisite distance for objectivity beyond the capacity of the human mind.
Kitcher denied Wilson’s attempt to use sociobiology to analyze and alter social norms for similar reasons; he writes that Wilson’s theories ignore social science, psychology and neuroscience by hearkening back to an older, outdated of evolution that seems to have sailed on the same ship as Darwin himself. Because Wilson’s theories do not integrate the psychological experiences of the species as a whole, Kitcher argues, they cannot satisfactorily explain the development of the individual.
Kitcher focuses his objections against Wilson’s theories by asserting that Wilson turns ethical statements into affective reactions. In other words, ethical decisions are made on the basis of emotions, and those emotional responses are instincts that were implanted at birth, on the basis of evolved genetics – this is how Kitcher explains Wilson’s view of biologization of ethics. Kitcher argues that permitting statements of preference and palate to take on the status of ethical principles is dangerous, because it can allow horrors to occur when the ethical statements allow moral loopholes of considerable size. Kitcher uses this principle as an example: “Human beings should do whatever is required to ensure the survival of a common gene pool for Homo sapiens.” Kitcher argues that this ethical statement could lead to coerced copulation, as a male might feel the reproductive imperative in a postholocaust situation, but the only available female might dislike the male, or not want to copulate for a variety of reasons. This ethical imperative would, ostensibly, give the male the “right” to insist.
Kitcher argues that Wilson turns the questions of ethics into emotionally charged, instinctual responses that, to him, reflect the biological imperatives that have been passed down by dominant elements of the population on the basis of their survival. Kitcher has many objections to this way of thinking, not the least of which is Wilson’s exclusion of logic and other tools of philosophy to form conclusions. To allow for the existence of a middle road, as is the case in so many other areas of research and study, might well improve the results of ethical study.
