‘Successful Disasters’ and the Vulnerability of the Moral Argument

At the End of Prof Wolfe’s MIT Psychology Class, he introduces Evolutionary Psychology, which hypothesizes that the key to understanding and managing contemporary behaviors is to uncover the evolutionary value of those behaviors, namely: how does this behavior help propagate my genetic material into future generations. Much of this material was pretty intuitive. Men like younger women because they have more years to produce babies. Women like older men because they are more likely to have means to provide for babies. Men are drawn to multiple sexual partners because making babies is a low cost endeavor for them compared to women. Etc…. But here is the thing with Evolutionary Psychology, it is descriptive…it can never be prescriptive.

In his final two lectures Prof Wolfe covers eating disorders and coercive sexual relationships from an evolutionary psychology perspective. He calls them ‘successful disasters.’ They are disasters because they intuitively[1] chafe our moral sensibilities. Yet he is forced to concede the adjective ‘successful’ because they are adaptive mechanisms that do the ‘evolutionary work’ of propagating genetic material into future generations. Prof Wolfe taught about how to treat these behaviors, but he couldn’t tell us why to treat these behaviors.

And that is the thing I find interesting. Like all secular systems that attempt to understand and shape the human moral apparatus, evolutionary psychology LACKS OUGHTNESS. It has no mechanism to go from, ‘this is the way things are’ to ‘this is the way things should be.’ It gives us categories with which we can label eating disorders and rape.[2] We can call them maladaptive or aberrant based on their relative infrequency. But since they are simply strategies to do what the rest of us are fundamentally trying to do…there is no moral force to label them ‘wrong’. In fact, it seems to me that if my primary existential agenda is to propagate my genetic material into future generations, rape and ethnic cleansing (the two worst atrocities I can imagine) are particularly successful ways to pull that off. It also makes no sense that I would have any interest in the plight of urban schools or AIDS in Africa, because sacrificing resources that could benefit my progeny in support of the members of another ethnicity does no real evolutionary work for me.

Recently, a young man I am mentoring facilitated the theistic side of a debate of the UCD philosophy club regarding the ‘moral argument’ for the existence of God. His argument (from Lane-Craig) went like this:

1. If objective moral oughtness exists, God exists
2. Objective moral oughtness exists
3. Therefore God exists

As we debriefed the discussion, something interesting emerged. His interlocutors had spent almost of their time and effort assailing his first premise, the necessary connection between the existence of an objective moral oughtness and a creator God. But here’s the thing; that is not where the argument is vulnerable. Objective oughtness simply requires a transcendent law giver. Otherwise, you are arbitrarily selecting between totally legitimate strategies of genetic propagation. I have heard a lot of creative attempts to get around that and am simply unmoved by all of them.[3]

(VERY Important Side Note: I am not arguing that you have to believe in God to be moral. In fact, I have argued passionately and repeatedly that, at least Christianity, tends to correlate with moral failure, rather than moral success. So by extension, I am arguing that morality tends to correlate with disbelief. What I AM arguing is that, while individual morality might be a pleasant coping mechanism or evolutionary strategy for the agnostic or atheist, it has no prescriptive power over any one else…and may, actually, be irrational.)

But there are no air tight arguments for or against the existence of God. As my favorite late agnostic/atheist Stephen J Gould used to say, (paraphrase) ‘if the determining existence of God was simply a matter of intelligence, than half my colleagues are morons.’[4] Therefore, the argument is vulnerable. Most people simply do not have the courage to face the vulnerability. That’s because, it is only really vulnerable under assertion #2 above.

There are reasons to believe objective moral oughtness exists (similar moral taboos and virtues across cultures, the testimony of conscience, etc…) but it is by no means assured, particularly with the unparalleled success of the evolutionary paradigm. All one has to do to shake free of the argument above is nut up and say, ‘Objective morals just do not exist. We, like all animals simply exist to propagate our genetic material into future generations. Having evolved a curiously large brain and opposable thumbs doesn’t somehow provide a transcendent moral code.’ Now Dawkins and I have our issues,[5] but we agree on this point.

When Terry Gross asked why we haven’t we evolved more morally…"The question is the other way around. If you look at the selfish gene view of life, the question is ‘why are we as moral as we are’. And we are surprisingly moral compared to what you might naively expect in a Darwinian- nature red in tooth and claw view…(Here he notes that there are good Darwinian explanations for why we are good t relatives or people who can reciprocate our helpful actions- groups we stand to benefit from being good to)...but we are faced with the problem of why were are as moral as we are towards non-relatives and perfect strangers, indeed members of other species whom we’re never going to meet again and who have no opportunity to reciprocate. And that I think is a kind of mistaken byproduct.”[6]

But why are we so hesitant to dismiss assertion # 2…because the intuitive, common sense argument is that objective moral values exist. As JP Moreland loves to say ‘It is simply wrong to torture babies for fun.’ So, while I solidly with Nietzsche in believing that if objective moral values do not exist, we should get on with living like they do not exist.[7] But I would make the empirical argument that they do exist…and if they do, so does God.

This post was prepared while listening to Flyleaf by Flyleaf

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[1] Prof Wolfe actually uses this word ‘intuitively’ as if he is trying to make an argument from ‘common sense.’
[2] Note, by putting these two behaviors in the same sentence I do not want to suggest even the hint of moral equvilency. It appears (from the evidence covered in the class) that the former is a complex phenomena in which the individual is largely a victum, where the latter is just the most morally repugnant human behavior possible.
[3] Here, of course, I am referring to pragmatism, utilitarianism, genetic determinism, objectivism (Rynd’s virtue of selfishness), Idealism…et al. None of these approaches has the analytical power to go from, ‘wouldn’t it be nice if the world was like this’ to ‘it is a necessary consequence of the evolutionary paradigm that we each behave like this.’
[4]Gould does not assert which half, just that whatever the wrong answer is, a lot of smart people believe it, so there must be something other than reason and syllogism at work. The argument that the believeing half Gould’s colleagues are the morons, was recently taken up by Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion, by resurrecting the idea of the ‘super scientist’ (using the NAS as the criteria). But he conveniently overlooked common sociological principles like ‘peer effects’ and the fact that the NAS is a self-selecting, self-propagating, self-referential data set. I think it is typical of Dawkins to employ sociology against belief (like, the very appropriate critique of ‘confirmation bias’ which, he seems to forget, applies to his hypothesis as well) but seems to think that if someone is smart enough to eschew belief they are smart enough to avoid sociological entanglements…which is, again, self referential. I miss Gould. And not, simply because he was a more measured rhetorician…but because I am a punk-eek (punctuated equilibrium) adherent and a fan of scientists who can actually write.
[5] Mainly that he is a excellent (if emotionally manipulative) rhetorician a very good scientist a bad philosopher and an abysmal theologian.
[6] I got this from Nic’s blog, but it was on NPR.
[7] I often hear what I would call the ‘weak’ form of this argument that goes something like ‘society would fall apart if everyone rejected the existence of an intrinsic or transcendent moral code so one must exist.’ I say if this is actually the case let it. Let’s have the courage to face a new reality where altruism is just a power play on the behalf of the recipient to swindle resources to propagate their genetic material at the expense of others. But if humanness is actually qualitatively different than ‘nature red in tooth and claw’ then it is important to get straight how it is different and, more importantly, why it is different.