Darwin's morality

From: Michael Ragland (ragland37_at_webtv.net)
Date: 09/23/04 

Date: Thu, 23 Sep 2004 17:50:39 +0000 (UTC)

Comment: I think only a fool would insist good and evil don't exist in
the world. As a "general principle", however, I don't think Darwinian
evolution results in caring and compassionate organisms. Some would have
different definitions of morality. That would be my basic definition, a
caring and compassionate organism. I shudder at the thought of erecting
a moral ranking based on the extermination of unfit individuals and
"races". If this indeed is the path of Darwinian evolution than all
scientific means at our disposal should be utilized to eliminate it. In
today's world it is simply too dangerous to allow it to go on
indefinitely without attempting to intervene through genetic engineeting
in the future. Darwin was a European and man of his time so it not
surprising he held such racist views and linked them with his theory of
evolution. It doesn't detract from his scientific work although there
are still many today who believe the European man is morally and
intellectually superior to the Negro, American Aborigine, etc. and these
less fitter "races" will be exterminated in due time. And even among the
Europeans the less fit will be exterminated. The "savage man", not being
civilized, was more likely to weed out the unfit. Since the time of
Darwin I don't think much progress has been made...depending on how you
view progress.

Darwin and the Descent of Morality
Benjamin Wiker
Copyright (c) 2001 First Things 117 (November 2001): 10-13.

An important part of the current controversy over the theoretical status
of evolutionary theory concerns its moral implications. Does
evolutionary theory undermine traditional morality, or does it support
it? Does it suggest that infanticide is natural (as Steven Pinker
asserts) or is it a bulwark against liberal relativism (as Francis
Fukuyama argues)? Does it rest on a universe devoid of good and evil (as
Richard Dawkins has bluntly stated) or can it be used to provide a new
foundation for natural law reasoning (as Larry Arnhart contends)?

The obvious place to go in the debate is to the source. Darwin himself
considered morality of whatever stripe to be a byproduct of evolution,
one more effect of natural selection working upon the raw material of
variations in the individual. Nature did not "intend" to create any
particular type of morality, any more than nature intended to create one
certain length of finch beak. Nor does nature "judge" any particular
type of morality as long as it does not violate the principle of natural
selection. That, as we shall see, allows for such moral leeway that it
creates insuperable problems for conservatives who might solicit
Darwin's help in their cause.

We find Darwin's account of morality in his Descent of Man, a work
published after his more famous Origin of Species. As should be no
surprise, the arguments of the Origin provided the theoretical
foundations for his natural history of morality in the Descent.
True to his naturalist bent, Darwin's natural history of morality (or
more properly, moralities) assumed evolution to be true and sought to
explain how the existing moral varieties could have evolved in the same
way that natural selection had brought about the great variety of
existing species.

For Darwin the "moral faculties of man" were not original and inherent,
but evolved from "social qualities" acquired "through natural selection,
aided by inherited habit." Just as life came from the nonliving, so also
the moral came from the nonmoral.

>>From the beginning, then, Darwin rejected the Christian natural law
argument, according to which human beings are moral by nature. Instead,
he followed the pattern of the modern natural right reasoning of Thomas
Hobbes, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, which assumed that human
beings were naturally asocial and amoral, and only became social and
moral historically. That is why Darwin called his account a natural
history of morality.

For Darwin, in order to become moral we first had to become social. "In
order that primeval men, or the ape-like progenitors of man, should have
become social," Darwin reasoned, "they must have acquired the same
instinctive feelings which impel other animals to live in a body." As
with all animal instincts, the "social instincts" of man were the result
of variations bringing some benefit for survival.

What we call "conscience" was also the result of natural selection.
Darwin described it as a "feeling of dissatisfaction which invariably
results . . . from any unsatisfied instinct." Since the "ever-enduring
social instincts" were more primitive and hence stronger than instincts
developed later, the social instincts were the sources of our feelings
of unease when some action of ours violated them. Such feelings of
unease, Darwin explained, we now call "conscience."

It might seem that Darwin's arguments for human sociability and the
moral conscience could be marshaled to support a conservative moral
position. Yet mere "sociality," even with a conscience grounded in
evolutionary imperatives, does not at all mean that nature has created a
definite moral standard, such as natural law. Quite the reverse. At
bottom, everything is variable. As Darwin writes:
If . . . men were reared under precisely the same conditions as
hive-bees, there can hardly be a doubt that our unmarried females would,
like the worker-bees, think it a sacred duty to kill their brothers, and
mothers would strive to kill their fertile daughters; and no one would
think of interfering. Nevertheless the bee, or any other social animal,
would in our supposed case gain, as it appears to me, some feeling of
right and wrong, or a conscience. . . . In this case an inward monitor
would tell the animal that it would have been better to have followed
one impulse rather than the other. The one course ought to have been
followed: the one would have been right and the other wrong.

The same variability holds as well within the natural history of human
moralities as they actually evolved. So, for example, the "murder of
infants has prevailed on the largest scale throughout the world, and has
met with no reproach." Indeed, "infanticide, especially of females, has
been thought to be good for the tribe, or at least not injurious." As
for suicide, in "former times" it was "not generally considered as a
crime, but rather from the courage displayed as an honorable act. . . .
For the loss to a nation of a single individual is not felt." Neither
did infanticide or suicide cause the "feeling of dissatisfaction which
invariably results . . . from any unsatisfied instinct."

Monogamy, too, Darwin in­ formed the reader, was a fairly recent
evolutionary phenomenon.
Yet Darwin balked at embracing the relativism he created, and insisted
on ranking evolved moral traits. The unhappy result, however, was his
espousal of views we would today call racist, and his justification of a
program of eugenics.

Ranking evolved moral traits meant ranking the races accordingly. Thus
Darwin cheerfully asserted that the "western nations of Europe
immeasurably surpass their former savage progenitors and stand at the
summit of civilization." As a member of the favored race, Darwin
embraced a typically nineteenth-century view of moral progress. "Looking
to future generations," he wrote, "there is no cause to fear that the
social instincts will grow weaker, and we may expect that virtuous
habits will grow stronger, becoming perhaps fixed by inheritance . . .
[so that] virtue will be triumphant."

But the engine of evolution, even moral evolution, is natural selection.
Therefore, Darwin believed that the evolution of morality would require
the extermination of "less fit" races and individuals—a process that
could be helped along by artificial selection, or eugenics.
This unsavory conclusion was derived directly from the principles of
evolution. We see in animals that, "in regard to mental qualities, their
transmission is manifest in our dogs, horses, and other domestic
animals. Besides special tastes and habits, general intelligence,
courage, bad and good temper, etc., are certainly transmitted. With man
we see similar facts."

Since different races, like different breeds of dogs or horses, develop
different capacities, it followed that distinct gradations in moral
capacities would be found among human races.
Whereas St. Thomas' natural law account began from the assumption that
all human beings belonged to the same species (and were therefore all
subject to the same moral demands), Darwin tried to determine whether
human races should be considered distinct species. In the end, he was
unsure whether to rank the races "as species or sub-species" but finally
asserted that "the latter term appears the most appropriate."

Whether races are species or sub-species, it is easy to see how such
reasoning allowed Darwin to rank the races on an evolutionary scale.
Because natural selection must be the cause of the existence of
different races, Darwin argued that the various races would necessarily
have varying intellectual and moral capacities. So that, for example,
the "American aborigines, Negroes, and Europeans differ as much from
each other in mind as any three races that can be named." As we have
seen, the Europeans came out on top.

Darwin argued further that the different races created by natural
selection were necessarily and beneficially locked in the severest
struggle for survival. As he put it in the Origin,
It is the most closely allied forms . . . which, from having nearly the
same structure, constitution, and habits, generally come into the
severest competition with each other; consequently, each new variety of
species, during the progress of its formation, will generally press
hardest on its nearest kindred, and tend to exterminate them.

This argument translated directly to his assessment of the evolutionary
history of human races, and the necessary and beneficial extinction of
the less favored races.
The civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace
throughout the world the savage races. At the same time the
anthropomorphous apes . . . will no doubt be exterminated. The break
will then be rendered wider, for it will intervene between man in a more
civilized state, as we may hope . . . the Caucasian, and some ape as low
as a baboon, instead of as at present between the Negro or Australian
and the gorilla.

The European race will inevitably emerge as the distinct species "human
being," and all the transitional forms—such as the gorilla, the Negro,
and so on—will be extinct.

Furthermore, natural selection functions not only between races, but
also among individuals within races. Here, oddly enough, Darwin
maintained that savage man has an advantage over civilized man. In
savage man, the intellectual and moral qualities are not as developed,
but such lack actually works to weed out the unfit: "With savages, the
weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive
commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health." Unfortunately, the very
development of human compassion which serves to mark the Europeans as
more civilized also works against the principle of survival of the
fittest.

We civilized men . . . do our utmost to check the process of
elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the
sick; we institute poor laws; and our medical men exert their utmost
skill to save the life of everyone to the last moment. . . . Thus the
weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has
attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must
be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want
of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a
domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly anyone
is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.

What could be done to prevent the European race from devolving under the
influence of the weak and the sick? Let the principles of natural
selection be applied without obstruction. "Man, like every other animal,
has no doubt advanced to his present high condition through a struggle
for existence," Darwin reminded the reader, "and if he is to advance
still higher he must remain subject to a severe struggle." Turning to
the wisdom of animal breeders, Darwin proclaimed that "there should be
open competition for all men; and the most able should not be prevented
by laws or customs from succeeding best and rearing the largest number
of offspring." The worst, of course, should not be allowed to breed at
all.
How forcefully ought this program to be carried out? Darwin was vague,
but ended with the remark: "All do good service who aid toward this
end."

What may we gather from Darwin's evolutionary account of morality? To
begin with, Darwin rightly understood that bare sociality allowed for a
startling variety of moralities. In contrast to the very determinate
list of requisite virtues, definite commands, and established ends in
the traditional natural law account, evolution brings forth many
different modes of group survival. Just as male lions, when taking over
a pride, kill the young that were fathered by the ousted dominant male,
so also human societies have flourished quite well with the murder of
rivals to regal authority. And just as many female animals will let the
runt of the litter die by refusing it nourishment, so also many human
societies have survived for hundreds of years by exposing their unwanted
and deformed babies. Merely having "social instincts" includes so much
that it excludes almost nothing considered morally reprehensible.

Although many today would shudder at Darwin's racism, we must concede
that Darwin's conclusions were correctly drawn from his evolutionary
principles. If evolution is true, and the races themselves are the
result of the struggle to survive, then how could intellectual and moral
qualities not be diversely acquired by different races?

As for the survival of the fittest, contemporary liberals have attempted
to separate Darwin from Social Darwinism, but Darwin's own words
advocating severe struggle show us quite clearly that he was the first
Social Darwinist. Conservatives (who are often early modern liberals in
outlook and temperament) sometimes look fondly at the purifying effects
of "severe struggle," substituting economic for natural battle. Such
fondness is not rooted in the natural law of Aquinas, but, as Leo
Strauss argued, in the modern natural right theory of John Locke (as
filtered through Adam Smith). But modern natural right theory has led to
the world according to Pinker and Dawkins.

Larry Arnhart, in particular, seems to have blurred this fundamental
distinction, for he quotes Aquinas ("Conservatives, Darwin & Design: An
Exchange," FT, November 2000) as saying that "natural right [emphasis
added] is that which nature has taught all animals," when Thomas
actually said that "those things are said to belong to the natural law
[lex naturalis] which nature has taught to all animals." In the Summa
Theologiae, Aquinas does not mean to say that natural law is shared by
all animals including human beings—the natural law, as the
"participation of the eternal law in the rational creature," pertains
only to human beings (I-II, 91.2)—but that natural law includes
natural inclinations shared by other animals, "such as sexual
intercourse, education of offspring, and so forth." But for Darwin, we
don't just share some aspects of our nature with animals. We are
ultimately indistinguishable from other animals, and therefore subject
to the very same laws of evolution.

The effort of Arnhart and others to affirm the premises of evolution,
and to affirm at the same time a morality grounded in natural law,
inevitably fails. Natural law doctrine only makes sense in a universe
governed by a benevolent Creator. Nor will it do to affirm both
Darwinian evolution and a vague theism, for the engine of such evolution
is, on principle, incompatible with any design or direction from
above—and that includes moral design and direction. The Darwinism of
Pinker and Dawkins, one must conclude, is much more coherent than that
of Fukuyama and Arnhart.

Benjamin Wiker teaches in the Department of Philosophy at the Franciscan
University of Steubenville and is a fellow of the Discovery Institute.

"It's uncertain whether intelligence has any long term survival value.
Bacteria do quite well without it."
 Stephen Hawking