In Saturday's post on VP we looked at an essay (paywall) by philosopher of science David Anderson who outlines three views of ethics based on naturalistic evolution.
Anderson considers Larry Arnhart's theory that we have evolved objective moral values to which we should adhere, Michael Ruse's supposition that moral values are an illusion, and Will Provine's view that given naturalistic evolution, there can be no free will, no genuine choices, and therefore no genuine morality.
For Ruse and Provine, moral values are simply matters of subjective preference, like our preference for one flavor of ice cream over another. There's no real right or wrong about the matter.
In the present post I'd like to briefly critique each of these views.
Recall that on Arnhart's theory human beings have evolved twenty core desires which form the basis for objective moral values, but human beings have also evolved many traits that we do not consider "moral" at all. For example, humans have evolved a penchant for violence, aggression, selfishness, promiscuity, cruelty, dishonesty, power, etc., so what are we to make of these? Are these behaviors moral? If not, why not?
If human beings have evolved both kindness and cruelty, what makes us think that kindness is right and cruelty is wrong unless we're subliminally comparing the two to some higher standard, an objective standard, which allows us to discern between them which is right? And if there is a higher objective standard where does it come from? What obligates us to obey that standard? Naturalism has no answer to these questions.
The naturalist just has to assume that we'll all agree that it's better to be kind than to be cruel, but if morality is to be based on the consensus of popular feeling then there are no objective moral values at all. They're all subjective, and no one can be obligated to live according to someone else's subjective values.
In other words, a robust morality imposes duties upon us to live a certain way, but a mindless, natural process cannot impose a duty or hold us responsible for the moral choices we make. Evolution cannot, then, be the source of genuine moral value. It can only be the source of desires and impulses, some of which we like and some of which we don't.
If naturalism is true, then Michael Ruse's position that morality is simply an illusion that we've evolved in order to get us to cooperate with each other, is doubtless correct. But if that's so then there really is no right or wrong, for what could it mean to say that someone who does not cooperate with others is "wrong"? How can it be wrong to refuse to be deluded, or to spurn an illusion? How can anything be wrong to do if there's no real standard of right and wrong nor any ultimate accountability for how we behave?
The naturalist, as Ruse tacitly admits, has no answers to these questions, either.
Will Provine also acknowledges that on naturalism there are is objective moral right and wrong, but his view is equally unsatisfactory. He wants to argue that we are biological machines whose choices are all determined by causal influences over which we have no control. In such machines there's no room for free will, but if we're not in some sense free to choose how we'll behave then there's no way we can be responsible for what we do.
It follows that a man who molests or tortures children, as horrible as that sounds to us, is not responsible, and therefore not accountable, for what he's doing. He's not doing anything wrong, he's only doing things most people don't like, but why should he care what others like and don't like? Why should he not just do what he likes? Naturalism again has no answer.
When people make a commitment to naturalism, a commitment usually motivated by a desire to reject the God of traditional theism, they often do so before they've thought through the implications. It doesn't occur to most people that naturalism, consistently applied, entails moral nihilism, i.e. the belief that there's no real accountability for our behavior, no moral duties, no genuine moral right or wrong.
If they do come to realize this they often just ignore it and go on living as before, not realizing that they've adopted a metaphysical worldview with which they can't live consistently. It's intellectually dishonest but then on naturalism there's nothing wrong with being intellectually dishonest because there's nothing morally wrong with anything.