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22. Metaethics / A. Ethics Foundations / 2. Source of Ethics / d. Biological ethics

[ethics derived from needs of evolution]

10 ideas
Natural law is supplied to the human mind by reality and human nature [Cumberland]
     Full Idea: Some truths of natural law, concerning guides to moral good and evil, and duties not laid down by civil law and government, are necessarily supplied ot the human mind by the nature of things and of men.
     From: Richard Cumberland (De Legibus Naturae [1672], Ch.I.I)
     A reaction: I agree that some moral truths have the power of self-evidence. If you say they are built into the mind, we now ask what did the building, and evolution is the only answer, and hence we distance ourselves from the truths, seeing them as strategies.
Plotinus was ashamed to have a body [Feuerbach]
     Full Idea: Plotinus, according to his biographers, was ashamed to have a body.
     From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], §29)
     A reaction: When Feuerbach draws our attention to this, we see what an astonishing state it is for a human being to have got into. Modern thought is appalled by it, but it also has something heroic about it, like swimming all the time because you want to be a fish.
Nietzsche felt that Plato's views downgraded the human body and its brevity of life [Nietzsche, by Roochnik]
     Full Idea: Nietzsche believed that by elevating the importance of the mind, Plato downplayed the wonders of the body, and by searching for a timeless Truth he degraded the indisputable fact of human temporality.
     From: report of Friedrich Nietzsche (Beyond Good and Evil [1886], Pref) by David Roochnik - The Tragedy of Reason Prol. X
     A reaction: Both ideas are very important. The second is widely misunderstood. Nietzsche was not a denier of truth. He asked us to scrutinise the role and value we assign to truth.
Values are innate and inherited [Nietzsche]
     Full Idea: Valuations are innate (despite Locke!), inherited.
     From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 01[21])
     A reaction: This would conform with Charles Taylor's views (e.g. Idea 4002). But how are we sheep ever going to fall in with the values of our Superman when he arrives, if we are stuck with our own innate values?
Our values express an earlier era's conditions for survival and growth [Nietzsche]
     Full Idea: The feeling of value is always antiquated, it expresses a much earlier era's conditions for survival and growth.
     From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 10[23])
     A reaction: Nice. I myself grew up in the aftermath of the Second World War. Have I ingested values that were created for that era, and are no longer required?
We created meanings, to maintain ourselves [Nietzsche]
     Full Idea: Man first implanted values into things to maintain himself - he first created the meaning of things, a human meaning!
     From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Thus Spake Zarathustra [1884], 1.16)
Evolution suggests prevailing or survival as a new criterion of right and wrong [James]
     Full Idea: The philosophy of evolution offers us today a new criterion, which is objective and fixed, as an ethical test between right and wrong: That is to be called good which is destined to prevail or survive.
     From: William James (The Sentiment of Rationality [1882], p.44)
     A reaction: Perceptive for its time. Herbert Spencer may have suggested the idea. James dismisses it, because it implies a sort of fatalism, whereas genuine moral choices are involved in what survives.
Human defects are just like plant or animal defects [Foot]
     Full Idea: We describe defects in human beings in the same way as we do defects in plants and animals. …You cannot talk about a river as being defective.
     From: Philippa Foot (Interview with Philippa Foot [2003], p.33)
     A reaction: This is a much clearer commitment to naturalistic ethics than I have found in her more academic writings. My opinion of Foot (which was already high) went up when I read this interview. …She says vice is a defect of the will.
Genetic behaviours that have enhanced human success include aggression, rape and xenophobia [Wilson,EO, by Okasha]
     Full Idea: Wilson claimed that many human behaviours, including aggression, rape, and xenophobia, had a genetic basis, and were adaptations favoured by natural selection because they enhanced the reproductive success of our ancestors.
     From: report of Edmund O. Wilson (Sociobiology [1975]) by Samir Okasha - Philosophy of Science: Very Short Intro (2nd ed) 7
     A reaction: This led to the Sociobiology Wars, when E.O. Wilson was attacked by Richard Lewontin and Stephen Jay Gould.
Human exceptionalism plagues biology, and most other human thinking [Seth]
     Full Idea: Human exceptionalism has repeatedly plagued biology, and has darkened the history of human thought everywhere.
     From: Anil Seth (Being You [2021], I.2)
     A reaction: I increasingly agree with this, as much in philosophy as in biology. We really need to get used to our place in evolution.