EVOLUTIONARY ETHICS
Catherine Wilson
1 INTRODUCTIONEvolutionary Ethics is the study of the relationship between the theory of natural
selection and ethical theory and practice. It is directed to topics such as the
following: (1) The implications of Darwinian evolution for the epistemological
status of moral claims. (2) The significance of our evolutionary history for an
understanding of moral practices and institutions. (3) The relevance of information
about human evolution to the formation of morally justifiable social policies and
to individual decision-making.
Moral philosophers have tended on the whole to skepticism on these issues.
Moral theory, they may observe, is a product of the enlarged human neocortex,
and the psychological and behavioural innovations associated with encephalisation
include rationality, language, impulse control, objective knowledge of causes and
effects, and the ability to represent internally, both verbally and pictorially, ab-
sent, past, and nonactual persons and events. “Rape” in ducks and “adultery” in
bluebirds, however interesting, has little in common with the human proclivities
bearing the same names. Further, variations in individual personalities and the
great diversity of cultural practices seem to throw into question any attempt to
establish an underlying human nature and to decide what constitutes a distortion
or a remodeling. In place of a novel ethical code reflecting a dispassionate state of
scientific enlightenment about human needs, evolutionists seem in their normative
moments to parade values — or at least to sigh over inevitabilities — that have
an authoritarian and archaic case to them: e.g., individualism, hierarchy, male
dominance, the double standard in sexual morality, nationalism, xenophobia and
war [Singer, 1982].
Many social species, it will be observed, interact with one another in ways that
remind observers of either good moral behaviour or infringements of decency. Their
members possess the capacity to form alliances, to categorize others as mates,
friends, enemies, leaders and subordinates, and they may share food, tend one
another’s wounds, co-operate in hunting, nest-building, and feeding the young, and
put themselves at risk to nourish and defend their offspring, as well as attacking,
deceiving, and displacing one another. They also may also punish offenders, or
engage in acts of relationship repair, mediating fights or expressing contrition
[Smuts, 1985; De Waal, 1996; Flack and De Waal, 2000]. Yet, animal behaviour,
it is sometimes objected, cannot be termed moral, since it does not reflect concepts
General editors: Dov M. Gabbay,
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Handbook of the Philosophy of Science. Philosophy of Biology
Volume editors:
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