Reaction: John Berkman's 2018 “The Evolution of Moral Wisdom: What Some Ethicists Might Learn from Some Evolutionary Anthropologists.”
A list of reactions to other evolution~morality papers and chapters and stuff can be found at the linkpost Reactions to papers on evolution~morality.
Today we have:
Berkman, John R. “The Evolution of Moral Wisdom: What Some Ethicists Might Learn from Some Evolutionary Anthropologists.” from Evolution of Wisdom: Major and Minor Keys. Notre Dame, Indiana: Center for Theology, Science, and Human Flourishing, 2018. 183–199. [PDF via academia.edu. Accessed 2 Sept. 2024.]
John Berkman is a Professor of Moral Theology at Regis College at the University of Toronto.
TL;DR —The description of EES, niche construction, listening to evolutionary anthropologists, and locals in their landscapes, in this paper are exactly the background which lead to the essay why we should (2016).
Its a chapter in a book so the abstract’s job is an introduction:
Can ethicists learn from evolutionary anthropologists? Yes, but unfortunately we should not expect it to happen frequently. Why? First, because it appears that many ethicists are temperamentally unwilling to look to evolutionary theorists for insight. Second, and more significant for my argument, only some ethicists can learn from evolutionary anthropologists because only some ethicists hold views about their own discipline that allow them to learn from evolutionary anthropologists. This paper will lay out this thesis. It will first discuss which approaches to ethics will not be open to evolutionary anthropology. Then, it will discuss approaches to ethics that can and should be open to learning from evolutionary anthropology. And finally, it will provide examples of what might be learned.
Goes on to agitated about various usages of the terms under consideration: ethics, and evolution.
People not realising there is:
- more than one evolutionary theory… — modern evolutionary synthesis (MES) versus extended evolutionary synthesis (EES)
- the lack of a moral domain (realising there is no one morality – its not a trait let alone that the one-eyed MES can work with), because of,
- the lack of understanding generally about genetics and traits and their MES' just-so stories, and
- confusion about the ‘natural’.
Sociobiologists get a burn with “This makes no sense, not least because on this understanding there is no “unnatural” inclination.”
Inclination, nice.
Oooh, niche construction gets a mention, it’s an EES mechanism.
The author splits both ethicists and evolutionists into those who can and don’t listen to each other for methodological and epistemo-ontological reasons, and thus who will or will not be able to learn from the other’s work.
I’m just agreeing with the author all the way down here. This means I don’t have to write a version of this paper I can just cite it on occasion, and so I will say that even these groupings of these social theorists (as I lump the ethicists and evolutionists) and the urge to call the groupings out are of course a perfectly natural thing to do.
“In the opening chapter of Human Evolution and Christian Ethics, Stephen Pope discusses” [p. 186]. Might have to look that up one day.
The following is interesting because theology is the reason, the order, we have universities, historically the great change of being that our university faculties and latter departments are all sub-types of theology. Theology is a type of worldbuilding of course, a type of more intentional worlding, often with state backing, if only by way of lands granted feudally as if university colleges were an earl or something.
“As theologian Jean Porter puts it, “by investigating the basic intelligibilities and form of ordering found in the natural world, [evolutionary theory] provides data for theological reflection on the structure of creation. [12]” [Jean Porter, Nature as Reason (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2006), 57.]
We move on from evolutionary theorists to evolutionary anthropologists. And the rest of the chapter examines five insights of extended evolutionary synthesis (my gloss in brackets):
shared capacities (of which empathy is an intentional subset I guess)
Social learning (can also be neckered or described as outsourcing mental effort see Reaction: Brian Garvey's “The Evolution of Morality and Its Rollback”)
Niche Construction theory (the self worlds the self into the world, umwelten um umwelten, landscape with landscape, necker cubes all the way down)
Domestication (it’s natural, its niche construction doubled down on…, —cybernetically turned back onto its self, into itself, (Garvey's 'rollback' can be seen as the white patches domesticated animals pick up as camouflage becomes less import to survival)(as we moved toward and into the world)
Wisdom traditions (my influence is living on the Australian continent with people who have always been here, see Worldbuilding 101)
I highly recommend this paper to be read as an introduction to the subject. I haven’t read the rest of it thoroughly yet, but I feel I will start repeating myself, and that is a clue as to when I should stop a reaction piece. Also get the feeling I should start, or rebrand, the reaction page linkpost listing these resources with a filter, i.e. put a evolution_morality 101 course guide reading list together.
Final thoughts: The description of EES, niche construction, listening to evolutionary anthropologists, and locals in their landscapes, in this paper are exactly the background which lead to the essay why we should (2016).
This reaction is crossposted at substack.com
A list of reactions to other evolution~morality papers and chapters and stuff can be found at the linkpost Reactions to papers on evolution~morality.