202 Michael Bradie
questions ultimately lead to the question of the justification of norms. The norms
themselves justify our behavior or beliefs but what justifies the norms themselves?
One traditional answer — we do it this way because we have always done it this
way — falls afoul of the naturalistic fallacy. I do not propose to enter the tangled
web of literature on the naturalistic fallacy and whether it is or is not a fallacy.
Suffice it for our purposes that it strangely non-compelling to say that just because
thingsaresuch and such a way that therefore theyoughtto be such and such a way.
In any case, the naturalistic fallacy or rather the fear of committing it stands as a
road block to the introduction of evolutionary facts and processes as considerations
relevant to the justificational grounding of norms be they epistemic or ethical.
Another traditional answer is that moral norms are divine commands. This
does not fare much better that the ‘appeal to tradition’ answer. James Rachels,
for one, argued that Darwinism undermines the fundamental rationale for believing
in ethics as grounded in divine commands [Rachels, 1990]. We return to this below.
In any case, divine command theories run afoul of the Socratic dilemma as posed
in theEuthyphro: Is something good or right because God commands it or does
God command something because it is right or good? The former alternative can
be seen as committing a version of the naturalistic fallacy. The latter alternative
leaves the question of what makes something good or right open.
The Big Question then becomes: “Can our evolutionary history inform us in
any meaningful way either about the source or the force of epistemic or ethical
norms?” Philosophical opinion is here divided. On the one hand, there is the
verdict of John Dewey writing fifty years after the appearance of Darwin’sOrigin
of Species:
Old ideas give way slowly; for they are more than abstract logical forms
and categories. They are habits, predispositions, deeply ingrained at-
titudes of aversion and preference. Moreover, the conviction persists -
though history shows it to be a hallucination - that all the questions
that the human mind has asked are questions that can be answered in
terms of the alternatives that the questions themselves present. But
in fact intellectual progress usually occurs through sheer abandonment
of questions together with both of the alternatives they assume - an
abandonment that results from their decreasing vitality and a change
of urgent interest. We do not solve them: we get over them. Old
questions are solved by disappearing, evaporating, while new questions
corresponding to the changed attitude of endeavor and preference take
their place. Doubtless the greatest dissolvent in contemporary thought
of old questions, the greatest precipitant of new methods, new inten-
tions, new problems, is the one effected by the scientific revolution that
found its climax in the “Origin of Species”. [Dewey, 1910]On the other hand, there is the quip by Ludwig Wittgenstein to the effect that
“Darwin’s theory has no more to do with philosophy than any other hypothesis in
natural science” (Tractatus, 4.1122). Philosophical purists are liable to side with