240 Catherine Wilson
of human societies being governable, especially large societies. Darwinian nihilism
is nevertheless not a coherent philosophical position. In fact, social animals will
co-operate whether they have a system of morality or not, according to game-
theoretic analysis, because co-operation enhances fitness, or, more precisely, non-
co-operation can put an animal at a disadvantage. In thinking there is a higher
code, we have the thought that some nonprudential behaviour — including often
the refusal to co-operate, with, for example, an unjust regime, or in a war — is
more noble, valuable, obligatory, etc. than prudential behaviour.
Since anyone’s pattern of behaviour lends itself to description and evaluation
in moral terms, and since, in conscious creatures, behaviour patterns of social
complexity generally require reference to beliefs, the formation of moral beliefs is
a human universal, and it is difficult for humans not to be concerned with the
contents of one another’s beliefs as well as their overt behaviour. One might as
well argue that the contents of cookbooks are illusions fobbed off on us to get us
to eat as argue that the contents of ethics books are illusions fobbed off on us
to get us to co-operate. We have evolved, not only the disposition for unselfish
behaviour, which makes morality possible, but, equally importantly, the cognitive
abilities needed to represent merely hypothetical states of affairs, to attach evalu-
ative predicates to these representations, and to prefer well-reasoned argument to
poorly reasoned argument, making moral theorizing and its application possible.
Morality cannot therefore be “imaginary”. Just as more critical and sophisticated
ideas about the basis of political obligation have succeeded divine right theories
without bringing about a collapse of political authority, more critical and sophis-
ticated views concerning the meaning and truth-status of moral judgments have
succeeded ancient divine command theories, without ethics losing its regulatory
importance.
As noted earlier, it is often claimed that Evolutionary Ethics contains an in-
trinsic bias towards social inequality, and it can be difficult to separate the impli-
cations insinuated by its practitioners from the implications of the data they cite.
Most evolutionary ethicists recognize in principle that some human dispositions,
though “natural,” ought, for moral reason, to be controlled: Thus Barash inThe
Whispering Within:
If sociobiology is correct, we’ve got to be carefully taught not to hate
others who are different from ourselves, because it may be our biological
predisposition do so. If evolution does incline us to a degree of racial
bigotry, that certainly does not mean that such inclinations are justified... Perhaps one lesson to be gained from sociobiology is that we must
demand that our cultural institutions such as education and child-
rearing make sure that we are “carefully taught” to love one another
[Barash, 1979, 155].
The vigour with which they denounce racism or the persecution of homosexuals
and insist on correction by culture makes the evident tolerance of sociobiologists
for sexism very difficult to understand, and their tendency to trivialize revisionary