Aristotelian Naturalism and Post-Darwinian Biology (3)

Continued from (2)

 

Responses to Objections

How might the Aristotelian Naturalist respond to these objections?  The first objection is that human beings are a “mess” and hence have no stable human nature that could ground ethical claims. To respond, first, we can deny the claim that there is no stable human nature.  While humans do vary in their pursuits, goals, and desires to a large degree, this variation is constrained and united by other traits.  One unifying trait, for example, is our capacity to guide our action by practical reasons.  Thus, our receptivity to reasons is a stable feature of our nature.  Other characteristics about humans are also fairly stable. For example, humans have basic needs in common (e.g., food, shelter,  and clothing) and a desire for meaningful relationships (e.g., friendship, family). 

Second, Williams is overly pessimistic.  Flourishing is not simply a matter of luck, but a matter of correctly using our practical reasoning.  While it is true that even those who have been trained by virtue will occasionally meet failure due to luck,  “characteristically,” people have terrible lives and experiences because “either they, and/or their fellow and adjacent human beings, are defective in their possession and exercise of the virtues on the standard list” (Hursthouse 264).  We can see this by tracing out the chain of causes leading up to a terrible situation in someone’s life and it usually depends on choices made by individuals who failed to act in accordance with virtuous character traits.

Third, if Williams is right, then all we are left is moral nihilism.  Ethical practice assumes that humans can harmonize their interests, desires, and pursuits both internally and externally, and unless we want to lapse into moral skepticism, we must make this assumption.  And we have good reason to, for we can see that human beings are not just a “mess.”  As Hursthouse points out, humans can and do, “through the correct moral education in their youth and then reflective, rational, self-modification, achieve a harmony that [enables] us to live well, individually and socially” (Hursthouse 263).  Thus, Williams’ contention that human beings are a “mess” for whom no way of life will reliably lead to flourishing is pessimistic at best and simply false at worst.

Responding now to Kitcher’s related concern that there is no essence that unites all humans, the Aristotelian Naturalist can reject classical essentialist views of natural kinds for more contemporary accounts.  One such account is the Homeostatic Property Cluster (HPC) view.  The HPC view claims that natural kinds like species track mechanisms/causal processes that sustain property clusters in a stable way.  The properties in a cluster are those that we typically identify with a natural kind (e.g., rationality is a typical property that humans have).  As such, one can use homeostatic mechanisms to individuate kinds; the natural kind is delineated by the homeostatic mechanism(s) that sustain(s) it and so the homeostatic mechanisms “determine the boundary and integrity of the kind” (Brigandt 9).  Mechanisms can operate on both relational (external) and intrinsic (internal) properties and so whether an individual is part of a natural kind partly depends on features external to that individual (Boyd 153, Brigandt 5). [17] 

On this view, we can and should expect some variety in the properties of the members of a kind since the members will be interacting with other mechanisms that do not define their kind (e.g., environmental background conditions).  Other varieties can be explained by the fact that mechanisms may sustain clusters of properties and not any single property (e.g., maleness and femaleness is sustained by interbreeding).  But this is permissible since kinds are individuated by mechanisms and not by properties.  As such, this view can account for the intrinsic heterogeneity that is common in biological kinds that “subsume individual entities (e.g., organisms) whose variation from one another is a natural part of what it is to be a member of those kinds” (Wilson 6).  When the variation becomes too great, we can attribute this to the breakdown of mechanisms that have sustained a kind, leading to speciation as a result of the new mechanisms that form and operate on existing individuals (Rieppel 41).  Thus, we can say that when the causal processes with which a species is identified no longer operate, then that species no longer exists. 

Furthermore, we can capture the essentialist intuition by saying that members of a natural kind all have the ‘property’ of having participated in the same causal processes.  Participating in the causal processes definitive of the natural kind is a necessary and sufficient condition for one’s being a member of that kind.  The “scope” of the kind extends as far as the mechanisms that sustain the property clusters in a kind operate (Magnus 7).  Since the causal processes universally operate on members of a kind, are responsible for the kind’s typical traits, and explain why the kind has these traits, the causal processes form the essence of the kind.  Therefore, contrary to Kitcher’s claim, we can specify an essence that unites all humans.

The second objection is that post-Darwinian biology is not teleological while Aristotelian Naturalism requires the attribution of purpose and goals to biological entities.  First, we should note that Aristotelian Naturalism makes claims about species only “at a given historical time” (Foot 29).  While it is true that what would be good for humans would not necessarily be good for our distant ancestors, we need only focus on humans as they are (and have been) as a stable species.  Recalling the HPC view of natural kinds, there is a cluster of properties of which all human beings have a subset, and we can make claims about human nature based on these stable features.

Second, notice that the Aristotelian Naturalist view is at the very least not incompatible with a Darwinian view.  It is simply looking at organisms in a different way for a different purpose (that is, for an ethical purpose).  Aristotelian Naturalism modestly claims that moral claims are grounded in facts about humans, including biological facts.  However, biology is largely descriptive.  Aristotelian Naturalism does not describe humans in any way contradictory to biology, but merely uses the descriptive biological features of humans to formulate prescriptions for behavior and character.  As Foot asserts, “a moral evaluation does not stand over against the statement of a matter of fact, but rather has to do with facts about a particular subject matter, as do evaluations of such things as sight and hearing in animals, and other aspects of their behavior” (Foot 24).  Thus, Aristotelian Naturalism draws on the characteristic features of humans that we have learned from biology and other sciences and forms norms for behavior that are explained and supported by natural facts about humans (Foot 36).

One such characteristic of the human species is that it is rational; it is a fact that “human beings are creatures with the power to recognize reasons for action and to act on them” (Foot 24).  A human that recognizes a reason for acting is given a goal, purpose, or end by that reason (Foot 23).  When that reason is grounded in human nature and other natural facts, then such a goal, purpose, or end is also natural.  Perhaps biologists have completely discarded the idea that our use of reason actually determines us to do anything if biological determinism is really at work, but this is at the very least a controversial move.  And even if our use of reason does not, in the end, actually lead us to do anything we were not already biologically determined to do, this does not mean that there are no reasons for acting in certain ways.  For example, whether or not I recognize the fact that I need food to live does nothing to change this fact, and so I have a reason to obtain food even if I do not recognize this reason. 

Third, Aristotelian Naturalists can appeal to the HPC view of natural kinds to avoid the supposed impositions of value regarding the essential features of human nature.  Kitcher’s objections are aimed at a classical essentialist understanding of human nature, and if the Aristotelian Naturalist makes use of the HPC view, then his objections miss their mark.  For example, the HPC view does not take any properties to be essential in that they are shared by all members of the species.  Instead, all members of the species have sets of properties that are a subset of a cluster of properties sustained by the homeostatic mechanisms definitive of the kind.  Therefore, we need not select some properties to the exclusion of others as constituting the “essence” of human nature, for all of the properties that humans have that also cluster together due to the underlying mechanisms that sustain them are important in marking out human nature.  The clustering properties are those that are characteristic of humans and this is an objective matter.

However, one can privilege properties and mechanisms above others if they explain the other properties and mechanism.  That is, we may take such central properties and mechanisms to be only those that are needed to fully explain all of the other properties, no more and no less.   As has already been said, rationality is such a property, and for the vast majority of humans, this feature explains most of our actions and is distinctive of our kind.  Those who lack rationality are naturally defective in some way (e.g., due to disease, insufficient development).  Since this is simply a descriptive fact about humans, it is an objective assessment and as such does not impose our values upon nature. 

Regarding the interaction of the environment and a species’ characteristic features, the HPC view explicitly claims that external causal mechanisms are partly constitutive of a species’ identity since a species’ boundaries are determined by the boundaries of the homeostatic mechanisms that sustain the cluster of properties that we associate with the species.   As such, human nature is partly defined by extrinsic features such as the environment.  To separate a species from its natural environment (i.e., the environment that contains the homeostatic mechanisms that sustains a species’ property cluster) is to make a mistake; a species is essentially defined by its environment (among other things).  In other words, the ‘normal’ environment is the one that sustains a species’ characteristic features and the one to which the species has naturally adapted, and this is also an objective matter.  Thus, Kitcher’s claim that the Aristotelian Naturalist must impose value on nature can be rejected. 

Fourth, post-Darwinian biology is teleological to a large degree, although such teleology has been naturalized.[18]  Allen and Bekoff notice that “even a cursory scan of the theoretical literature reveals that biologists have found it difficult and even undesirable to eliminate teleological notions from their discussions of biological phenomena” (Allen and Bekoff 610).  And while claims about “function” or “design” are rarely explicitly made in the empirical literature, it is not difficult to find implicit claims regarding both function and design (Allen and Bekoff 611).  Krohs similarly remarks that “biologists ascribe functions to characters or components of organisms without great hesitation” (Krohs 69).  So Foot is right to claim that scientists frequently employ “a certain network of interrelated concepts such as function and purpose [when] there is evaluation of all kinds of living things, including human beings” (Foot 40). 

Perhaps Kitcher denies that teleology can be naturalized because he equates function with design,[19] but other philosophers of biology[20] do not equate them.  For instance, according to Allen and Bekoff, there are three components that make up the standard view of functional claims within biology:

(1) Functional claims in biology are intended to explain the existence or maintenance of a trait in a given population;

(2) Biological functions are causally relevant to the existence or maintenance of traits via the mechanism of natural selection;

(3) Functional claims in biology are fully grounded in natural selection and are not derivative of psychological uses of notions such as design, intention, and purpose.  (Allen and Bekoff 612).

So far, such “function” need not be oriented towards any ends or goals.  These functional claims are purely descriptive.  However, Allen and Bekoff go on to claim that a suitable characterization of “design” can also be naturally grounded:

Trait T is naturally designed to do X if and only if 

(i) X is a biological function of T, and           

(ii) T is the result of a process of change of (anatomical or behavioral) structure due to      natural selection that has resulted in T being more optimal (or better adapted) for X than   ancestral versions of T. (Allen and Bekoff  615)

For example, we can say that a bird’s wings are designed for flying because “(i) enabling flight is a biological function of birds' wings and (ii) extant morphological forms of such wings are the result of natural selection for variants that were better adapted for flying than earlier forms” (Allen and Bekoff  616). 

Since “the design of an entity serves as an instance that fixes the norm of functionality,” a designed entity can be assessed as to whether it is functionally good or bad (Krohs 79).  Krohs states that “a component is hypo/hyper-functioning with respect to its contribution to a capacity of an entity with design iff the actual component functions worse/better… with respect to this capacity then the standard one does” ( Krohs 84).  So if a particular bird’s wings do not allow it to fly well (compared to the standard wing found in its species), these wings are properly called defective.  Similarly, if human beings are not acting (morally) in accordance with the characteristic (ethical) features that humans have (and hence are violating their natural design), we can say that they are (morally) defective in some way. This is all that Aristotelian Naturalists like Foot wish to claim.  Consequently, Aristotelian Naturalism accords with contemporary biology and is not employing pre-Darwinian concepts.

Moving to the third objection that evolutionary theory is more compatible with an expressivist meaning of ethical terms, there is nothing that Kitcher has claimed that is necessarily at odds with an Aristotelian Naturalist understanding of moral terms.  In fact, many of his claims implicitly rely on the fact that humans have a nature that we ought to act in accordance with.  First, notice that the coordination of social behavior will only be successful if the rules that do the coordinating are properly based on human nature.  They must reflect truths about human nature, and so by learning them, one does in fact gain knowledge about the sorts of beings that humans are.  It is true that “each of us inherits a moral framework from those who socialize us” (Kitcher, “Biology” 175).  However, the framework that we inherit has been tested by human nature over thousands of years.  It has been refined and is based on what works and what does not work in accordance with our nature.  Facts about humans ground moral truths, and so contrary to Kitcher,[21] moral truths do play a role in “constraining the normative systems adopted” since normative systems that are contrary to human nature will ultimately fail (e.g., communism in the former Soviet Union).  The system will only be transmitted if it accurately reflects (to a high degree) moral truths, which is to say, only if it accurately reflects and represents human nature.  Thus, Kitcher is incorrect in claiming that “the criterion of success [for moral norms] isn’t accurate representation but the improvement of social cohesion in ways that promote the transmission of the system itself” (Kitcher, “Biology” 176).

Second, Kitcher explicitly relies on human nature to support his claims.  In his responses to the moral nihilist, he says that by denying the claims of morality the nihilist “is failing to realize his full human potential” (Kitcher, “Biology” 179).  But he can only say such a thing if there is a human nature that sets the standard by which we measure whether an individual is achieving his or her potential.  Consider what Kitcher says in full against the nihilist: 

To repudiate the authority of norms is… to abandon one’s human identity, to prefer to it a nonhuman mode of psychological life… [Consequently,] nihilism begins to look like a psychopathology, a deliberate rejection of part of ourselves.  It’s as if the nihilist had        decided to abandon the use of some faculty – the ears or the memory – in some exercise of self- mutilation… What’s at issue [then] is whether [the nihilist] can avoid the characterization of [denying moral authority] as an exercise in self-mutilation, an interference with normal human functioning.  Nor is this a small excision… but the deletion of a capacity central to human lives.  (Kitcher, “Biology” 180-1)
I doubt that an Aristotelian Naturalist could respond to the nihilist any better, for she would make the exact same point that Kitcher does.  As such, it is unclear what precisely Kitcher is attacking, for his arguments presuppose such a view of human nature.

Conclusion

Thus, I conclude that Aristotelian Naturalism is not at odds with contemporary biology, and is in fact supported by it to a very significant degree.  Each of the objections raised against Aristotelian Naturalism has either mischaracterized the view or has assumed that no simple modification could be made to avoid the objection, and so I have argued that a suitably explained and modified view does answer each of these objections.  Consequently, Aristotelian Naturalism is an internally coherent and objectively grounded metaethical theory that is extremely powerful, plausible, and, I believe, persuasive.

Works Cited and Consulted

Alexander, John.  “Non-Reductionist Naturalism: Nussbaum Between Aristotle and Hume.” Res
            Publica 11 (2005): 157-183. SpringerLink. Web. 10 Nov. 2011

Allen, Colin, and Marc Bekoff. “Biological Function, Adaptation, and Natural Design.”
            Philosophy of Science 62.4 (1995): 609-622. JSTOR. Web. 30 Nov. 2011.

Boyd, Richard. “Homeostasis, Species, and Higher Taxa.” Species: New Interdisciplinary
            Essays. Ed. Robert Wilson. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999. 141-185. PDF file.

Brigandt, Ingo. “Natural Kinds in Evolution and Systematics: Metaphysical and Epistemological
          Considerations.” Ingo Brigandt – Publications. University of Alberta, n.d. Web.  9 Sept. 2011.

Craver, Carl.  “Mechanisms and Natural Kinds.”  Philosophical Psychology 22.5 (2009): 575-
            594.  Philosopher’s Index. Web. 9 Sept. 2011.

Foot, Philippa. Natural Goodness. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. Print.

Hacker-Wright, John. “What is Natural About Foot’s Ethical Naturalism?” Ratio 22.3 (2009):
            308-321.  Wiley Online Library.  Web. 10 Nov. 2011.

Hursthouse, Rosalind. On Virtue Ethics. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. Print.

Kitcher, Phillip. “Biology and Ethics.” The Oxford Handbook of Ethical Theory. Ed. David
            Copp. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. 163-185. Print.

---. “Essence and Perfection.” Ethics 110.1 (1999): 59-83.  JSTOR. Web. 30 Nov. 2011.

Krohs, Ulrich. “Functions as Based on a Concept of General Design.” Synthese 166.1 (2009): 69-
            89. JSTOR. Web. 30 Nov. 2011.

Magnus, P.D. “Drakes, Seadevils, and Similarity Fetishism.”  Biology and Philosophy (2011): 1-
            14. SpringerLink. Web. 9 Sept. 2011.

McDowell, John. “Two Sorts of Naturalism.” Virtues and Reasons: Philippa Foot and Moral
            Theory: Essays in Honour of Philippa Foot. Ed. Rosalind Hursthouse, Gavin Lawrence, and
            Warren Quinn. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.  149-179. Print.

Rieppel, Olivier.  “Species as a Process.”  Acta Biotheoretica 57.1-2 (2009): 33-49.
            SpringerLink. Web. 9 Sept. 2011.

Toner, Christopher.  “Sorts of Naturalism: Requirements for a Successful Theory.”
            Metaphilosophy 39.2 (2008): 220-250. Wiley Online Library.  Web. 10 Nov. 2011.

Wilson, Robert, Matthew Barker, and Ingo Brigandt.  “When Traditional Essentialism Fails:
            Biological Natural Kinds.”  Ingo Brigandt – Publications. University of Alberta, n.d. Web.  9
            Sept. 2011.

Footnotes

[1] McDowell is suspicious of attempting to validate an ethical view purely “on the basis of the facts of nature, on the disenchanted conception of nature yielded by modern science” (McDowell 157).  Following his lead, Hursthouse claims that ethical views must be validated “from within an acquired ethical outlook, not from some external ‘neutral’ point of view,” since we cannot get outside of them and because a scientific account of human nature will not get us very far (Hursthouse 165, 193).  Instead, an ethical viewpoint can be subjected to scrutiny bit by bit, changing significantly over time through a ‘Neurathian’ procedure (Hursthouse 166).  Such a procedure may not completely objectively ground one’s ethical view, but it will show that it is internally consistent and rationally justified.  However, I think that Aristotelian Naturalism must attempt to give a completely objective and natural account of morality that is completely justified by natural facts if it is to convince its critics that it is not only a coherent theory, but also a persuasive theory (since critics may hold a contrary view that is also coherent and rationally justified).  At best, the ‘Neurathian’ procedure should be a fall-back defense.  So, borrowing from Toner, any naturalist project must satisfy four requirements:

(1) Natural norms must be intrinsically able to motivate the bearer of the nature.

(2) Natural norms must be intrinsically able to justify themselves to the bearer of the nature.

(3) Natural norms must be anchored in and express universal human nature.

(4) First and second nature must be related so that the second is a natural outgrowth of the first... (Toner 234-6)

[2] There are many versions of Aristotelian Naturalism.  I will lump them together and only make distinctions where necessary.  However, I will primarily be using the views given by Hursthouse and Foot.

[3] Hursthouse believes that “’good’, like ‘small’, is an attributive adjective” (Hursthouse 195).  Similarly, Foot asserts that “evaluations of human will and action share a conceptual structure with evaluations of characteristics and operations of other living things, and can only be understood in these terms” (Foot 5).

[4] Foot similarly claims that “the way an individual should be is determined by what is needed for development, self-maintenance, and reproduction,” which is what all of the characteristic features of plants and animals directly or indirectly aim at (Foot 31, 33).  Some biologists might object that an organism’s traits are ultimately oriented towards gene replication, but it is obvious that at the very least, an individual’s survival and reproduction is an intermediate end and therefore a means to this ultimate end (Hacker-Wright 309).

[5] Similarly, an individual’s “goodness or defect is conceptually determined by the interaction of natural habitat and natural (species-general) ‘strategies’ for survival and reproduction” (Foot 42).

[6] It is important that this is characteristic freedom from pain. For example, for animals that characteristically feel pain upon receiving tissue damage, the lack of pain would be a defect.

[7] As Foot similarly writes, “human defects and excellences are similarly related to what human beings are and what they do” (Foot 15).

[8] Humans may have a different fundamental kind other than being primarily animals (e.g., souls, psychological persons, brains).  However, I doubt if any substantial changes to the meaning of our moral terms would depend on this change since the psychological and physical characteristics of what we are are present in each kind. 

[9] Notice that our rationality does not need to explain everything that we do.  Kitcher seems to assume that by making rationality a characteristic feature of human nature that it must explain everything about us, and since “the most consistently rational members of our species also do a host of things that aren’t explicable in rational terms [(e.g., breathe, blink, flinch)]” then rationality cannot be a defining feature of humans (Kitcher, “Essence 74).  However, our rationality only needs to explain many or most of our actions, especially in comparison to other living things, for it to be a distinctive feature of our species.

[10] Hursthouse is not alone in stressing the importance of our rational faculties.  Foot marks the distinction between animals and humans by saying that, “while animals go for the good (thing) that they see, human beings go for what they see as good” (Foot 56).  That is, humans assess things as good based on whether they have reasons to obtain or do them, whereas animals do not abstract away to a concept of ‘good’ nor reflect on reasons for obtaining or doing something.  Alexander attributes to Nussbaum the view that practical reason is an “architectonic principle that organizes the whole life, providing for its many activities” and which turns basic functionings that we share with plants and animals into human functionings by making them “parts of a life organized and infused by practical reason” (Alexander 176).  Finally, Toner interprets MacIntyre as claiming that “the power most distinctive of human beings as a species is, of course, rationality” (Toner 237).  Clearly, our capacity for rationality is the most important fact about our human nature.

[11] Similarly, Foot observes: “there is so much diversity in human beings and human cultures that the schema of natural normativity may seem to be inapplicable from the start” (Foot 43).

[12] McDowell claims that, “with the onset of reason, then, the nature of the species abdicates from a previously unquestionable authority over the behavior of the individual animal” (McDowell 154).  While he, Foot, and Hursthouse are worried that this leaves “the individual interest of the deliberator looking like the only candidate to take over the vacant throne,” I do not think this is a problem (McDowell 154).    If it is in the best interest of humans to be moral, then  humans should be (properly) self-interested.

[13] One cannot question the use of reason.  To ask, “why should I be rational?” is to seek a reason for seeking reasons, and so the very question presupposes the importance of rationality (Foot 65).

[14] Hursthouse points out that many smokers live to a ripe old age.  Still, we can confidently say that smoking will likely lead to a shortened and unhealthy life, due to the fact that there is a well-established link between smoking and a shortened and unhealthy life.  To disprove the claim that the virtues do not benefit their possessor, “what is needed… is not just a few cases, but a clearly identifiable pattern” that the virtues actually harm their possessor (Hursthouse 174).

[15] Biological altruism: “an organism A acts altruistically toward another organism B just in case A’s action increases B’s reproductive success while diminishing A’s own reproductive success” (Kitcher, “Biology” 166).

[16] Psychological altruism: “a tendency to adjust one’s desires, plans, and intentions in light of one’s assessment of the desires, plans, and intentions of others, the adjustment consisting in bringing one’s own attitudes closer to those attributed to the others (closer in the sense that the altruist comes to have wants, plans, and intentions with a content that is favorable to the other’s achieving or fulfilling his wants, plans and intentions)” (Kitcher, “Biology” 170).

[17] Examples of homeostatic mechanisms for species include “unique common evolutionary origin” (Rieppel 34), “social roles” (Boyd 153), “gene exchange between certain populations and reproductive isolation from others, effects of common selective factors, coadapted gene complexes and other limitation on heritable variation, developmental constraints, the effects of the organism-caused features of evolutionary niches” (Boyd 165), and other “historical relations among the members” (Magnus 8). 

[18] Teleology has become naturalized when it does not “involve the goals or purposes of a psychological agent” (Allen and Bekoff  611).

[19] Allen and Bekoff quote Kitcher as claiming that “the function of an entity S is what S is designed to do” (Allen and Bekoff  611).

[20] Allen, Bekoff, Krohs, and Millikan are just a few. 

[21] (Kitcher, “Biology” 176).