Lecture 7. CHARLES DARWIN ON THE MORAL FACULTIES

Related page

Life and writings

1848 book on Coral Reefs

1858 discovered that Wallace had also arrived at the theory of evolution: a joint publication outlining it.

1859 Origins of Species

1868 Variation of Plants and Animals under Domestication

1871 The Descent of Man

1872 The Expression of the Emotions

Natural selection

The art of plant and animal breeding had existed for a long time. The step Darwin took was to postulate a similar process in nature. Presupposing that spontaneous variation somehow occurs, he postulated a process of selection, not by a human plant or animal breeder, but by nature. What could this process be? The answer occurred to him when he was reading Malthus on population. Wallace also got the idea from Malthus. (See Leakey (ed.), The Illustrated Origin of Species, pp. 9 and 10.) What Malthus said of the human population--that every pair produces more than two offspring and that there is a tendency to outstrip the food supply--occurs with every species. Just as the human population is checked and reduced from time to time by starvation, disease, war etc., so the population of every plant and animal species is checked from time to time by lack of food, predation, etc. Whatever the checks, only some individuals will survive and propagate; what matters in this context is not the parents' survival but propagation and the survival to the breeding stage of their offspring. Nature thus selects for breeding those individuals whose characteristics fit them best to survive and propagate in the face of whatever it is that is checking and reducing this population. If the check is a harsh climate, then nature selects those best fitted to survive and reproduce in a harsh climate. Notice that there is selection without any selector. Darwin does not postulate any goal in natural selection. It is not as if nature set out to produce any new variety. If there is a change to a colder climate the plants and animals that continue to propagate successfully will be better adapted to doing that in a colder climate, but simply because those are the ones that do in fact breed--not because any cosmic planner selected them with a purpose to producing a new variety. Also, whereas a plant or animal breeder will seek the same goal through many generations of his plant or animal, nature may change from time to time--the colder climate might be succeeded by a warm change. There is no steady direction of breeding toward a pre-conceived goal.

As a biological theory evolution faced some objections and difficulties. The most important was that a spontaneous variation happening in one parent would, apparently, only half be passed on to each individual of the next generation, and only half of that would be passed to the next, and pretty soon it would disappear. The theory of genes (adopted after Darwin's time) removed that objection by allowing the whole of a characteristic to be passed to some of the next generation.

However in this course we are not going to pursue these questions of biology. What interests us is the effect of Darwin's work on social philosophy. The first effect was the weakening, or further weakening, of religious belief. In the 18th century one of the most popular and effective arguments for belief in God was from the beautiful design of natural things--how the various organs of animals and plants are all well-adapted to the needs of their existence. Design implies a designer, God. This argument had been criticised trenchantly by David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (in R. Wollheim (ed.) Hume on Religion, B/1455/.W6). Among other criticisms, Hume suggests that the appearance of design can be accounted for without postulating any designer, see Part VIII (p. 155 ff). If there is an arrangement of such a kind that it can last and perpetuate and reproduce itself (and there is indeed at least one such arrangement, viz the present order of the cosmos), then over a long enough time (perhaps time is infinite) random and chaotic change may happen to produce that arrangement, and then it will last.

It is in vain, therefore, to insist upon the uses of the parts in animals or vegetables and their curious adjustment to each other. I would fain know how an animal could subsist, unless it s parts were so adjusted? (p. 158).

I have mentioned that Darwin got his key idea while reading Malthus, an economists. There are analogues of Darwin's theory in economics and other disciplines: a process that randomly throws up a variety of whatevers, some sort of filter that removes all but those that meet some requirements, results in development in a certain direction. Economists have realized that Adam Smith's "invisible hand" need not be anything more than metaphor. When A. Smith says that when men seek their own interest they are led by an invisible hand toward certain socially beneficial effects, he means by God's providence, which has designed the beautiful system of the universe, of which the human economy is part. God's providence has provided that human beings will not on the whole damage one another by their self-interested behaviour, but will in fact advance one another's good, even though that may not be what they aim at. (As Wicksteed later pointed out, "self-interested" here should be replaced by "non-tuistic" -- behaviour with whatever motives other than concern for the other's welfare.)   But in the 19th century economists would have said that men are led as if by an invisible hand: those economic agents, firms, that do not seek their own interest do not survive. The economy evolves by a process like that of natural selection--firms are all the time being founded, those which do not or cannot meet the requirements of profitability in the circumstances go out of business. Similar ideas became current in other subjects. E.g. the 19th century American philosopher C.S. Peirce suggested that knowledge evolves by the constant throwing up (never mind how) of new beliefs, some of which are then destroyed by conflict with experience. K.R. Popper, Conjectures and Refutations, has a similar theory: science does not start from careful observation and cautious inductive reasoning, but from guesses or conjectures tested by attempted refutation. Peirce hoped that this process would, if carried on long enough, lead mankind to knowledge of the truth. (In fact he defined truth as whatever would be agreed on if such a process went on indefinitely.) This general idea, of a process of random mutation its results passing through some sort of filter or selection process, was widely adopted in Darwin's time and since to explain the appearance of rational design without postulating any designer.

Of course there still could be a designer--some mind may design the whole system of random mutation plus filter, but the appearance of design is not evidence for such a designer. Darwin's theory came into conflict with Christianity not because it has atheistic implications (it doesn't), but (1) because it removed a favourite argument for God's existence, since apparent design is not evidence for the existence of a designer, and (2) because its account of world history conflicted with literal interpretations of the Christian bible--e.g. on Darwin's theory the world had to have existed for much longer than the bible seemed to imply. Thus Darwin's work contributed to the secularization of modern culture, and this weakened the influence of earlier political and ethical theories, which had often invoked the authority of God.

Another related effect is the (at least apparent) weakening of intuitionist theories of ethics. When we carefully consider a certain kind of action, we all agree (without being able to produce any argument) that this is wrong, or right. If human nature is designed by God, then such shared moral intuitions can be assumed to be part of the design and to have divine authority. This is the theory of "natural law": God has imprinted in the minds of human beings a propensity intuitively to approve or condemn various kinds of actions. But what if there is no designer? It might be possible in Darwin's theory to explain such moral intuitions, but the explanation leaves them without any supernatural warrant. (The loss of divine authority would not in fact affect most intuitionist or natural law theories, which did not generally say that the reason why we ought to be moral is that we ought to obey God--that would have been a futile move, since it would remain possible to ask why we ought to obey God.)

We'll look into this more carefully later. But let me first mention a third effect on social thinking of the publication of Darwin's theory: it provided some people with arguments against humanitarianism. If we assume that evolution is a good thing, that it means progress and improvement, and if the mechanism by which evolution takes place is the survival of the fittest, then, in so far as humanitarianism protects unfit individuals or nations against the processes of natural selection, it impedes progress and improvement and might if carried to an extreme even produce regress and degeneration. Some of Darwin's readers drew this conclusion with enthusiasm--these are called by historians the "Social Darwinists"; others, including Darwin himself and T.H. Huxley, his chief supporter and propagandist, did not like such conclusions and tried to find ways of avoiding them.

Let's turn now to Chapter 5 of Darwin's Descent of Man. Darwin agrees with Wallace (the independent discoverer of the theory) that among human beings there has been for a long time little evolution of the body. But "the case... is widely different, as Mr Wallace has with justice insisted, in relation to the intellectual and moral faculties of man". In these matters evolution has been advanced through both individual and group competition. Between individual members of the same group and between different groups, tribes or nations:

We can see, that in the rudest state of society, the individuals who were the most sagacious, who invented and used the best weapons or traps, and who were best able to defend themselves, would rear the greatest number of offspring. The tribes, which included the largest number of men thus endowed, would increase in number and supplant other tribes... from the remotest times successful tribes have supplanted other tribes... At the present day civilized nations are everywhere supplanting barbarous nations... they succeed mainly, though not exclusively, through their arts, which are the products of the intellect. It is therefore highly probable that with mankind the intellectual faculties have been mainly and gradually perfected through natural selection. (pp. 196-7).

Tribes do not prevail exclusively through their arts; moral qualities have also led to success in competition:

In order that primeval men, or the ape-like progenitors of man, should become social, they must have acquired the same instinctive feelings, which impel other animals to live in a body... They would have felt uneasy when separated from their comrades, for whom they would have felt some degree of love; they would have warned each other of danger, and have given mutual aid in attack or defence. All this implies some degree of sympathy, fidelity and courage. Such social qualities... were no doubt acquired... through natural selection, aided by inherited habit [note the Lamarckian idea here]. When two tribes... came into competition, if... the one tribe included a great number of courageous, sympathetic and faithful members, who were always ready to warn each other of danger, to aid and defend each other, this tribe would succeed better and conquer the other. (p. 199)

Why the prominence here of group competition? Because competition between individuals cannot explain the evolution of characteristics that make the individual a valuable member of the group but do not increase that individual's chances of leaving offspring. "He who was ready to sacrifice his life... would often leave no offspring... The bravest men... would on average perish in larger numbers" (p. 200). If evolution is to explain the development of altruistic characteristics, it must be by way of the increased chances of survival not of altruistic individuals but of the groups to which those individuals belong. The modern explanation of this, in terms of the theory of the gene, Darwin anticipated in the following remark:

Even if they left no children, the tribe would still include their blood-relations; and it has been ascertained by agriculturalists that by preserving and breeding from the family of an animal which when slaughtered was found to be valuable, the desired character has been obtained. (pp 198-9)

Darwin recognises that virtue does not give much advantage to the virtuous individuals or their offspring, but tries to explain how it will nevertheless spread through the human population by the advantage it gives to groups:

It must not be forgotten that although a high standard of morality gives but a slight or no advantage to each individual man and his children over the other men of the same tribe, yet an increase in the number of well-endowed men and an advancement in the standard of morality will certainly give an immense advantage to one tribe over another. A tribe including many members who, from possessing [a high degree of] the spirit of patriotism, fidelity, obedience, courage and sympathy, were always ready to aid one another, and to sacrifice themselves for the common good, would be victorious over most other tribes; and this would be natural selection (p. 203)

Well, it would be natural selection in a sense, but not the sense the term has in his theory. Notice that on this account warfare is the mechanism of moral evolution, so presumably it will be the militarily-useful characteristics that will be selected--indeed not only militarily useful characteristics, but also the aggressiveness that provokes the wars in which people with such characteristics prevail. Moral evolution can hardly lead to universal peace. A disposition to sympathize with people outside the group will lessen the chances of the group's survival. These consequences were welcome in the 19th century to proponents of militarism and colonialism--19th century imperialism sometimes used Darwinian rhetoric.

In fact Darwin's argument does not necessarily require that the conflict be with other tribes. Suppose different tribes with little contact and no warfare, each struggling separately with a harsh natural environment. The virtues of courage, sympathy, fidelity, mutual helpfulness might well aid them in surviving in this difficult environment and might even make them friendly and helpful to members of the other tribes on the rare occasions when contact did take place. If one tribe happened to be short on these qualities it might perish, not as a result of conflict with the other tribe but as a result of the harshness of the natural environment. So there need not be warfare. Still, there has to be some sort of struggle, on this account of the evolution of moral qualities--some process that eliminates the tribes that don't acquire them. Consequently, if one tribe was being eliminated, it would seem to impede the further evolution of moral qualities if another tribe, on humanitarian grounds, came to its rescue.

A civilized nation does just this, with respect to some of the groups within it. And Darwin worries about the long-term effects. We will take that up in the next lecture.

Reading:

William Irvine, Apes, Angels and Victorians: a Joint Biography of Darwin and Huxley QH/31/.D2/.I7

Richard Alexander, Darwinism and Human Affairs HM/106/.A44

C.H. Waddington, The Ethical Animal BJ/1311.W16

J.W. Burrow, Evolution and Society HM/106/.B8

See also the Reading Guide on Darwin and Huxley, the appendix on Dawkins, The Selfish Gene.

Return to Teaching Materials on Political Thought
Return to Home Page