The evolutionary origin of ethics 

John Baird Callicott (in Jamieson ed A Companion to Environmental Philosophy pages 206-7)

source: http://hettingern.people.cofc.edu/Environmental_Philosophy_Sp_09/Callicott_The_Land_Ethic.pdf

The existence of ethics presents a problem for Darwin’s attempt to show how all things human can be understood as gradually evolved by natural (and sexual) selection, from traits possessed by closely related species, his project in The Descent of Man. Ethics demands that moral agents selflessly consider other interests in addi- tion to their own. The theory of evolution would seem to predict. however, that the selfish would out-compete the selfless in the “struggle for existence,” and thus survive

and reproduce in greater numbers. Therefore greater and greater selfishness, not selflessness. would seem to be nature’s choice in any population of organisms. including those ancestral to Homo sapiens. But history indicates the opposite: that our remote human ancestors were more callous, brutal, and ruthless than are we. At least so it seemed to a refined English gentleman who, while serving as naturalist on

the round-the-world voyage of the HMS Beagle, had observed first hand what he and his contemporaries regarded as states of savagery and barbarism similar to those from which European and Asian civilizations were believed to have emerged.

[n the absence of a convincing evolutionary explanation of its existence and progressive development, Darwin’s pious opponents might point to ethics among human beings as a clear signature by the hand of Providence on the

human soul.

To the conundrum presented him by the existence and progressive development of ethics. Darwin’s resolution is straightforward and elegant. For many kinds of animals, and especially for Homo sapiens, life’s struggle is more el’llcicntly prosecuted collectively and cooperatively than singly and competitively. Poorly armed by nature, as solitaries hominids would fall easy prey to their natural enemies or starve for lack of the wherewithal to obtain food. Together our primate ancestors might stand some chance of fending off predators and attacking prey larger than themselves. Like many other similarly situated species. evolving human beings thus formed primitive societies; or, put more precisely. those hominids that formed primitive societies evolved. But without some rudimentary ethics. human societies cannot stay integrated. As Darwin puts it: “No tribe could hold together if murder, robbery, treachery. &c.. were common; consequently such crimes within the limits of the same tribe ‘are branded with everlasting infamy’; but excite no such sentiment beyond these limits” (1871, p. 9

Darwin’s speculative reconstruction of the evolutionary pathway to ethics begins with altruistic “parental and filial affections” which motivate parents (perhaps only the female parent in many species) to care for their offspring and their otTspring to desire the company of their parents. Such affectionally bonded nuclear families are small and often ephemeral societies, lasting, as in the case of bears, only until the next reproductive cycle. But the survival advantage to the young of being reared in such social units is obvious. Should the parental and lllicd affections chance to spill beyond the parental-filial relationship to that between siblings, cousins, and other close kin. such plurally bonded animals might stick together in more stable and permanent groups and defend themselves and forage communally and cooperatively. In which case there might also accrue additional advantages to the members of such groups in the struggle for life. Thus do mammalian societies originate in Darwin’s account.

By themselves. the social impulses and sentiments are not ethics. An ethic is a set of behavioral rules, or a set of principles or precepts for governing behavior. The moral sentiments are. rather. the foundations of ethics. as David Hume (1711-76) and Adam Smith (1723-90) argued. a century or so before Darwin considered the matter. In addition to the social sentiments and instincts. Homo sapiens evolved a high degree of intelligence and imagination and uniquely possesses a symbolic language. Hence we human beings are capable of generally representing those kinds of behavior which are destructive of society (“murder. robbery. treachery. &c. “) and articulating prohib- itions of them in emotionally colored formulae – commandments – which today we call moral rules (see MET A-ETHICS and EARL Y MODERN PHILOSOPHY).