Hilzoy on Wilson on Biology and Morality

E.O. Wilson's 1998 article in the Atlantic Monthly, "The Biological Basis of Morality," is a little embarrassing in places. Hilzoy's critique here (alternatively here), which makes Wilson's article timely for blogging, clearly limns the various ways Wilson insipidly misrepresents the views and methods of major moral philosophers. His argument isn't generally all that hot either.

But Wilson's broad thesis -- that moral reasoning is a "contrivance of the mind...at every level [intertwined with] the natural sciences" -- is at least in some sense eminently arguable. In trying to counter Wilson on this score, I believe Hilzoy stumbles repeatedly.

First, Hilzoy conjures up implications from Wilson's thesis that just don't follow:

[Wilson] takes the view that morality is a human contrivance to imply that we can answer moral questions only by understanding the biology behind our moral sentiments. It is worth noticing the implications of this argument. If we could not conduct any inquiry whose object is a human contrivance without inquiring into its biological roots, we would be unable to balance our checkbooks or figure out winning moves in chess without first understanding the selection processes that led us to engage in these activities -- unless, of course, we were prepared to regard truths about our bank balances or what move will mate in two as “ethereal messages awaiting revelation”. Wilson's argument depends on the idea that these are our only alternatives. But they are not.

Think of mathematics, which is arguably a human invention. Biology might explain why we have the ability to construct mathematical proofs, but it is not necessary to know anything about biology to construct the proofs themselves, since biological claims do not normally figure as premises in mathematical arguments. Likewise, the claim that morality is a human contrivance might imply the existence of a biological underpinning to our ability to construct moral arguments, but it does not follow from this that biological claims must figure in the arguments themselves.

This argument is tendentious. While Hilzoy construes Wilson as advocating the universal hegemony of biology over all our mental contrivances, a more natural reading of Wilson is that he is merely suggesting biology is a relevant inquiry when considering those contrivances of the mind that socially order (or otherwise impinge on) biologically based drives. Hilzoy says nothing at this point that would counter such a modest, and I think obviously true, claim.

Furthermore, the empirical relation between biology and moral phenomena, on the one hand, and the conceptual relation between moral phenomena and moral theory, on the other, defeat Hilzoy's subsequent analogy to mathematics. Mathematics deals in objects that are designed to abstract out "natures." This is why a truth of arithmetic (e.g., '2+2=4') can apply equally to eggs, stars, chess pieces, checkbook entires, cows or people, whereas "truths" of even the most universal normative moral theory can't. To wit, biology has object- and metalevel connections to the contrivances of morality that finds no relational counterpart in the contrivances of mathematics (or chess playing or checkbook balancing or...).

But okay, Hilzoy grants, perhaps biology is relevant to ethics "because of the particular sort of contrivance that it is." To consider the possibility, she distinguishes three ways in which this might be so:

1. Biology might inform the assumptions we make about what it is possible for people to do.
2. Biology might help us to understand the social consequences of adopting various different moral views.
3. Biology might help us decide which moral principles we should adopt.

Hilzoy stipulates that Wilson has shown that biology is relevant to moral philosophy in the first and second ways, but she insists he fails to do so in the third:

If we knew which moral principles people can act on, and the consequences of adopting them, we would still have to decide which principles we should adopt. Should we adopt those that make us happiest? Those that promote human autonomy? Those that all could endorse? [I]t is not clear how biology could answer...: how, for instance, any amount of information about the processes of selection that led to altruistic behavior could license conclusions about when that behavior should be encouraged and when it should be proscribed.

First, just to clarify, it seems doubtful that any one thing (either conceptual or empirical) could ever "answer" which principles we should adopt. The charitable way to frame the issue, it seems to me, is whether biology can at all inform our reasoning for adopting the principles we do. (In this, I think Wilson modestly succeeds.)

Second, it seems worth flagging that Hilzoy's argument here amounts to a particular case of "no oughts from ises" reasoning. So her argument is only as secure as the distinction it presupposes (which for some will be secure enough).

Third, and on the substance, if a moral theory has to be tailored to our "natures" in some sense, then by my lights Hilzoy's got her intuitions exactly backward: How could biology -- a science that gives us fundamental insight into our natures (such as they are) -- help but inform moral theory? Consider some hypothetical examples:

• Certain findings in biology suggest human individuals flourish most not when they are uniformly happy, but when they are periodically faced with disappointments and personal tragedies. Result: Any moral theory that treats happiness as its sole good is less likely justified.
• Certain findings in biology suggest that natural variation within human population will produce in a significant subset a critical impairment of frontal lobe inhibition, for whom communitarian or paternalistic moral structures would be better suited. Result: Any moral theory that posits personal autonomy as a universal imperative is less likely justified.
• Certain findings in biology suggest that the sorts of compromises that would be required by a metaethic of universal assentability (as it were) would negatively affect in equal measure the wellbeing of all competing moral factions. Result: Any metaethical theory that casts universal assent as a criterion for morality is less likely justified.

I've composed these examples to correspond to the foundational questions Hilzoy posed, and as such they are admittedly rather neat and artificial. The reality of course is that findings in biology often have a much messier relation to fundamental moral questions than in these examples. (Consider in this respect how the fact that rape might be a "natural" behavior relates to moral imperatives about rape.) The point, though, isn't that we should expect that some or other finding in biology will tidily dispose of a fundamental moral question. The point is that it is a least a priori highly unlikely that the fundaments of any moral theory will remain unperturbed by findings in biology.