Reaction: Marian Hillar's “Morality Is a Principle of Nature Discovered by Philosophy and Evolutionary Sciences.” 

Hillar, Marian. “Morality Is a Principle of Nature Discovered by Philosophy and Evolutionary Sciences.” English version via academia.edu of the chapter ‘Koncepcja naturalnego prawa moralnego w świetle historycznego rozwoju filozofii etyki i jego interpretacja w świetle nowoczesnych nauk ewolucyjnych’ [pp. 137 – 159.]
From: Szymczyk, Paulina, and Ewelina Chodźko (eds). Dialog Filozoficzny o Człowieku. Wydawnictwo Tygiel, Lublin, 2021. [book pdf: source]

The title alone is troublesome. Morality is an outcome. Principles claim more than models. Nature refers to everything and thus nothing, least of all our divisions and scoring upon it, from within it or out. Discovered implies they are out there in nature. Philosophy, well we all do that despite ourselves. At the very end we have Evolutionary Sciences.

Perhaps everything before that is linkbait for normies. Let’s see.

Most likely: The worlding urge to should or make all these elements hang to together is strong in this one, or at least constructive in inclination.

(Did you noticed all the prepositions above. This kind of stuff gets worse when we go into another language.)

We are here because it is a Polish book title. My Polish is not great. I thought it might be a journal but it is a book [PDF]. The book titles google-translates as Philosophical Dialogue on Man. This is wrong should actually be Philosophical Dialogue on People, or rather, Philosophical Dialogue about Humanity.

I have to research the author now. Marian Hiller, not very Polish. And then the book, are the chapters proceeding from a conference? Hmmm. This was supposed to be a quick reaction, suddenly it’s all complicated. So far, I’ve only read and corrected the bibiographical information and word-bothered the title of Hillar’s chapter and the book.

Checking Marian Hiller’s chapter in the PDF I see the whole book is in Polish. In her references I see

Nowak M.A., Highfield R., Super Cooperators. Altruism, Evolution, and Why We Need Each other to Succeed, Free Press, New York 2011

which I reacted to here.

OK.

Finally I look at the pdf of the Chapter from academia.edu.

Marian Hillar is from Texas. Or at least was at Center for Philosophy, Socinian and Religious Studies Texas Southern University, Houston, when this came out.

On to the abstract, finally:

This work concerns metaethics and its goal is to present a short summary 1. How philosophers attempted to justify our moral behavior by postulating the existence of a „natural moral law”, and 2. how the achievements of modern psychology, ethology, and evolutionary sciences led to the confirmation of its existence and elucidation of its origin. Author offers a new interpretation of the natural moral law as an unwritten principle which regulates behavior of the entire living world. Our morality, i.e. cooperative behavior in social systems, is a result of biological evolutionary process, and is expressed in the entire living world at the subconscious level in the process of cooperation. When the evolution reached the rational level, it is also expressed in the conscious intellectual constructs.

So, this bit: “1. How philosophers attempted to justify our moral behavior by postulating the existence of a „natural moral law”, and 2. how the achievements of modern psychology, ethology, and evolutionary sciences led to the confirmation of its existence and elucidation of its origin.”

No.

And as suspected, the worlding urge is strong in this one and seeks to paper (or chapter) over the gaps by just saying the outcomes (morality pure forms) are the source which then are the outcomes we express as part of the expression ‘in the entire living world at the subconscious level in the process of cooperation’.

A type of position or worlding which produces efforts towards theodicy in which evolution itself is the christ figure if not the christ. It could then also unite all this in both cosmodicy (attempts to justify the fundamental goodness of the universe) and an anthropodicy (attempts to justify the goodness of humanity).

Goodness me!

Very similar to Super Cooperators’ position. Zooming through the English text I see a bit of Plato and lose interest.

Remember here if you say everything is basically evil, or just selfish, you are still worlding, because that is bad theodicy.

BTW: An example of bad worlding would be to say that Center for Philosophy, Socinian and Religious Studies Texas Southern University, Houston, Texas, should be shut down because Marian Hillar is wrong.

Crossposted on substack.com