Reaction to Collier & Stingl's Evolutionary Moral Realism

A reaction to:

John Collier and Michael Stingl. “Evolutionary Moral Realism.” Biological Theory (Forthcoming 2013). Accessed September 3, 2024. [via academia.edu]

 I’ve already looked at a more recent paper by these authors (so this will be a bit cursory. I’ll ignore the LLMs this time):

REACTION Collier, John and Stingl, Michael. “Evolutionary Naturalism and the Objectivity of Morality.” Biology and Philosophy (1993) 8: 43-50 via academia.edu Web. 2 Sept. 2024.

Which contained: “The position we propose combines the advantages of Kantian objectivity with the explanatory and motivational advantages of moral naturalism.”

How has their position evolved to that?

Less Kant upfront for a start. Kant as ladder I guess.

Abstract opening:

“Evolutionary moral realism is the view that there are moral values with roots in evolution that are both specifically moral and exist independently of human belief systems.”

Moral values floating out there like Plato’s forms. Somewhere. The worlding urge is strong in these two.

Okay, this is a weird one, the set up between “contemporary approaches to evolution and ethics” and a late arrival for ‘ethical’  computational abilities (moral humans versus bestial animals), and their criticism of that approach, means I disagree with their position in approach to “contemporary approaches to evolution and ethics” but agree in general with:

“We suggest that what is most morally interesting and important from a biological perspective is the existence and development of such trajectories, rather than the position of one particular species, such as our own, on one particular trajectory.”

I.E. I disagree that evolution can select for any animal getting hold of moral goods as they are out there floating around available for selective pressures, while agreeing that this whole mess is completely available for evolutionary selection by any animal.

They expand the circle while remaining wedded to outcomes as sources (Kant I guess). While I expand the circle because moral goods, if I can call them that, are outcomes of an urge to world, and do not float around in some sort attractor or form which evolution moves towards in some kind of fitness solution landscape.

We do that work more directly, but more messily than evolution, or more quickly with more mistakes, more review, more learning. It might make us human as in humane rather than beastly, but any animal who does that would then be human.

This urge to world I would argue, thus can possibly predate recent Homo spp. By a suspension of hard judgement in extension, this means ‘it’ is part of life itself as it separates and dances the differences between the body and the landscape, which in social animals we can call the self and the world. (The necker cubic relations)

With the standard view, we think morality is tied to cooperative behavioral patterns. Against this view, we think that moral values are a real part of the biological world, whether or not animals are able to perceive them.

They are saying moral values require a certain sense, with which any animal could respond to with selective pressures and develop. This is putting the cart before the horse.

I can see it makes sense only if the worlding urge is already strong, and one takes it for granted, like fish do swimming in water. They describe this as ‘commonsense morality’ quite well. I feel this proves my point more than theirs… (Duckrabbit).

On the other hand, commonsense morality, as well as the moral theories that respond to it, like Kantian ethics or utilitarianism, is likely to get many important things right about morality. Complicating matters further is the fact that religious values and natural moral values are often intertwined in human cultural responses to their environment in ways that make these different kinds of values difficult to prise apart. So while religious beliefs may always have an illusory component, some of them may also track real moral values. The evolutionary relationship between religion and morality is complex, and in the context of our argument here we leave it aside.

I argue, instead, the worlding urge does not make coherent things, even if we feel it can or should be coherent, nor that there is even a coherent explanation waiting for us if we clear out the mess of illusion. The worlding urges does not care, it makes us world together, and that is all. And together we make mistakes, and learn as a group, and those groups who make no mistakes do not learn (especially learn how to do all that socially) and fall by the wayside. Maybe I should call it the urge to make mistakes by inducing the feeling that there should be a right way to do it. There are benefits in feeling we should should, but not what exactly. And this is available as a pathway or ‘trajectory’ for all animals, true. But not because there are moral values or goods or gods out there providing an itinerary of action.

We make up that itineray as we go, and post-rationalise it as necessary and imperative, and we do that because we world and it helps maintain what we have learned. How much of that is hardwired is up for discussion.

Garvey reckons our success is actively due to rolling any hardwired features back into the learning domain, he calls it outsourcing, and thus a sense for it is deprecated.

I call it the world.

A list of reactions to other evolution~morality papers, including Garvey's, and chapters and stuff can be found at the linkpost Reactions to papers on evolution~morality.

This is crossposted at substack.com