Natural urges: a criticism of Michael Ruse's Darwinian ethics

Abstract

Historically, evolutionary ethics has been dismissed as falling foul of the naturalistic fallacy. However, a number of contemporary thinkers are rejecting this conclusion, and are examining our evolutionary past for clues about the nature of our ethical feelings. In this thesis I give an explication and critique of the views of Michael Ruse (and, to a lesser degree, E. O. Wilson). Ruse believes that our moral feelings are the product of our evolutionary history, that ethics is just a psychological mechanism to encourage us to adopt adaptive behaviour patterns. From this proposition, he concludes that there is no objective foundation for our ethical principles, and that there are no moral facts. I examine and discuss what I see as the two sides of his argument: firstly, the claim that morality is an adaptation (chapter three), and secondly the claim that this implies that there are no moral facts (chapter four). I argue that the evidence that Ruse and Wilson give for the first claim is inadequate, although the position could be made tenable by dropping their reliance on genetic causation for behaviour. However, the second claim (that there are no moral facts) relies on an invalid genetic argument, and assumes that in at least some cases a causal explanation is the only justification we can give for a proposition - a highly contentious assertion at best. Finally, in chapter five I turn to what I consider to be the other primary line of argument that an evolutionary ethicist such as Ruse could give - that our psychology (which has presumably been shaped by evolution) must play a role in our ethical theory. I examine such "sneaking evolution in the back door" claims, and conclude that their justification will be minimal.