The Evolution of Moral Sentiment and the Development of Moral Theory

In the following I will provide an account of the evolution of morality that takes as the root of this, the evolution of empathy.  My aim is to move away from other evolutionary accounts which rely very heavily on rule-following and conformity.  I feel such accounts fail to adequately explain moral motivation where the popular opinion is against the motivated agent.  I also wish to stress strongly that a moral naturalist must be able to explain cases where an entire community can be wrong about the right.  I propose that this is best explained by the identification of a basic natural evil, harm, and a reliable cognitive mechanism for picking it out, sympathy.  On my account moral theory is a project of making sense of moral sentimental phenomena while explaining why some harms and not others are justified.

The fitness of morality

The survival advantage of altruism for social species has been explained from a number of angles, some in terms of group selection (Sober & Wilson) some in less technical, more political terms (Hobbes).  While evolutionary accounts manage to explain the development of altruistic behaviour at the prereflective biological level, the explanation gets more difficult at the point where one is trying to account for the normative content of linguistically articulated moral theories at the level of individual assent. 

If one’s theory of the development of morals depends upon the supposition that moral claims are normative because they are necessary to the wellbeing of society and no human can live outside of society, the questions of “What sort of society?” and “Why should I be concerned with this society?” may be brought against the theory.  It seems quite plausible that the wellbeing of a particular group may require the oppression of a segment of that group, and whether the slaves of a society may be considered part of that society is a complicated issue more in the province of sociology than metaethics.  At any rate the definition of “society” seems to extend beyond what is implied by “group” in the evolutionary story.  It also seems plausible that a society may be founded on immoral principles and normalise immoral practices, with only a small minority able to see the wrong involved.

There is the further problem, for such accounts, that at the level of normal moral reflection, “society” is entirely too abstract and remote a concept to enter into the deliberation, and at the prelinguistic level of proto-morality nothing of the sort is part of the awareness of a moral requirement.  As Michael Stingl points out, wrongs are not seen as wrong in terms of some social end, but as wrong in themselves (Stingl 257).  “The good of society” is something that rarely enters into actual moral phenomenology.

Campbell & Woodrow’s account of morality as being based on the evolution of “reason-response pairs” builds action right into the structure of moral judgements, so that motivation is linked to recognition of moral claims.  While moral claims do not always sufficiently motivate, most members of a group have learned to respond to certain circumstances in certain socially-appropriate ways.  The felt force of these responses is mediated by our natural tendency to desire to conform to the norm (Campbell & Woodrow, 355).  Their account of the bases of moral response, lacks sufficient phenomenal data to satisfactorily explain motivation for my tastes.  Also, I will propose that it is false, dangerously false, to claim that our desire to conform is indicative of a moral sentiment.  Rather it is one result of our mechanism of empathy, the other result of which is moral sentiment (sympathy).  The two are, in fact, often at odds.  Moral theory, on my account, is an attempt to provide a coherent story of moral phenomena which explains the difference between appropriate and inappropriate objects of sympathy.

The evolution of empathy

Preston and DeWaal argue that inclusive fitness and reciprocal altruism, rather than being selectors of empathy, are the outcome of the perception-action mechanisms which are also the bases of empathy (Preston & DeWaal 1.0).  The original function of perception-action mechanisms were to serve as a direct link between perception and response, e.g. ducking in response to the perception of a projectile, which would be much more efficient than a perception-representation-action system.  In group-living animals this mechanism developed further to support social cohesion and co-ordination.  The empathic response can be characterised as the infection of one individual’s emotional state by that of another’s.  The neural structures responsible for empathy partake of the same “mirror neurons” which are necessary for learning by example (2.3).  The function of mirror neurons is to process the perception of an action or expression along the pathways that would be invoked if one were actually performing that action oneself (Jason Holt, personal communication).  So there is a connection between empathy and conformity: the structures that allow us to feel what others are feeling also dispose us to imitate what others are doing.

Both imitation and empathy have clear group-fitness advantages.  Externally, attenuation to the states of others allows everyone to utilise the danger-sensing apparatus of the group's most sensitive members, instead of each relying only on its own cognitive abilities.  So a group gets afraid all at once, just in case the one in a panic is actually aware of an impending danger.  However, our inductive tendencies would lead to a cry-wolf backlash against individuals who regularly incited panic which turned out to be unjustified.

Internally, the ability to sense the emotional states of others provides the basis for social cohesion, and imitation allows for the development of technological practices, and complicated moral behaviours.

According to Preston and DeWaal, increases in the prefrontal cortex allowed empathy to 1) play a more active role in motivating action, 2) be applied to a broader range of situations with 3) more control (1.0).  As with other cognitive abilities, an increase in flexibility and control also means an increased proneness to error and an increased possibility of losing the ability altogether.[1]  It also becomes necessary to reinforce or even to initially activate our natural aptitudes through social learning.

Learning empathy

            The successful activation of empathy in primates depends fundamentally on how one is parented in infancy.  The survival benefit of parent-child empathy is obvious.  Given the helplessness of human infants, there is no chance that one would survive long without others’ being able to attend to its needs.  Cries of help are acutely and physically felt by a mother, and the meeting of these cries reinforces the child’s trust in its community (Preston & DeWaal, 1.2.1).  As a result of the actual practice of empathic perception-response, what is learned is not just the ability to recognise emotions of others, but a tendency to expect one’s emotions to be recognised.

            Thus, at the pre-moral level there is already an implicit awareness that the help and concern of others is something one can legitimately demand for the sole reason that one requires it.  This foreshadows advanced moral feelings such as resentment and indignation, and explains some of the phenomenology of morality.  This also anticipates such concepts as justice, fairness, and desert.

            Combine empathy with the patterns of care taught through mother-child relationships and our imitative tendencies and we get the first basic patterns of moral life.  The selection of responsive parents engenders the proliferation of empathetically  responsive individuals across the species (Sober&Wilson 304).  Empathy allows for the recognition of distress, and the recognition of distress carries with it an imperative that it is something to be ended (Preston & DeWaal 1.3).  To feel the distress of another is to feel something which is bad in itself, and no theory or convention is required to motivate response in a case of genuine empathic cognition. 

            However, given that not all cases of distress may be attended to, empathy needs a limiting factor for social utility.  It may be the case that some are distressed by no cause or that some are distressed by their own selfishness (those who angrily try to take more than their share, for example).  It may also be necessary to limit empathy to one’s own group for the sake of competition and confrontation.  If the group hunts, it will be harder to find food if the hunters always hesitate at the recognition of fear in the prey, or feel remorse at its injury.  At a conventional, pre-moral level, these concerns are kept in check by the mere facts of expectation and custom.  Unfamiliar individuals are generally treated with hostility, even if there is no group memory of intergroup hostilities, because this has been the general practice.  It may also be the case that the empathic response only develops between familiar individuals.  It is at least the case that it is strongest between familiar individuals (Preston & DeWaal 1.0)  However, in humans, just as we tend to induce beyond the observed, and further our understanding on the basis of analogies, so also do we progress morally through the extension of our sentiments to increasingly larger groups.  This progress will be described further below, after I have explained harm and justified harm.

Harms and justification

I would like to propose at this point that the directly perceived object of sympathy, the expressly moral manifestation of empathy, is distress.  Distress itself is the usual indicator of harms.  What counts as a harm will include certain obvious basics: physical injury, restraint, deprivation of necessary goods.  Other harms may become possible as society becomes more complex and more goods may be considered necessary for adequate social functioning.  After the development of language, and with it the development of moral theory, new types of occurrence may be responded to as cases of harm.  The concept expands with the concepts of “needs” and “rights”.  However, not every harm counts as an instance of injustice.

Hume distinguishes between private harms, which are injuries or deprivations of social goods, and public wrongs, which are violations of rules of equity (Hume 146).  In this there is the oft reviled distinction between public and private, but it seems a conceptually useful distinction in this context, since it points to the way in which social concerns are weighed against the individual harms which are the primary referents of our moral sentiment. 

            Michael Stingl agrees that morality is concerned with harms (247) but adds that it is also concerned with rules (251).  The actual origins of particular rules are murky, but however they arise, they are manifested in protomoral communities as implicitly acknowledged conventions.  The apparent function of moral rules is to police sympathy and calls of distress such that they accord with the public good.  Which is to say, they distinguish between justified and unjustified harms.  The example that Stingl gives is one of a chimp who takes more than their share and is punished by the alpha (247).  The harm inflicted on the greedy chimp is tolerated by the community because it is to the general benefit (not that they are explicitly aware of this) to discourage greed.  But an excessive punishment excites the sympathetic passions of the matrons of the group, who will intervene to stop the alpha.  So certain harms are justified if their infliction promotes the well-being of society.

            Normally, conformity to rule needn’t be coerced.  Because of our (chimps and humans) imitative and social nature, once a convention is observed, it is generally followed.  Where the convention is specifically moral, we tend to feel guilt at its violation.  This makes sense if the process of internalising a rule involves forming a connection between rule-recognition and emotive response.  If by default we tend to regard all conventions as rules, we would tend to feel some kind of shame at transgressing any convention.  This is in fact true of many who have not stopped to distinguish between custom and righteousness, between harms and taboos, between superstition and the real bases of morality.[2]

Morality vs. social utility

While empathy evolves because it is fit, and rules develop initially because they benefit a community, it would be a mistake to think that the project of morality is primarily concerned with the preservation of a society or species.  To draw this conclusion would be analogous to the mistake that a naturalised aesthetic which explains our colour attractions in terms of finding food has shown that the beautiful is reducible to the edible.  Clearly more than what we can eat or mate with is beautiful, and I hold that the good is not always the same as what promotes the interests of society (if “society” can be said to have interests).  I accept that there may be as many goods as there are beauties, but evil, on the other hand, I would reduce to harm.  The infliction of harm may sometimes be necessary, even justified, but it is never good, and actions which in no way contribute to harm cannot be deemed bad (morally wrong), although there may be reasons that they are illegal. 

For example, I hold Pretty Boy Floyd and the mythical Robin Hood to be heroes.  Property rights have a certain social function, and so laws against stealing have something to commend them.  But I cannot conceive of what sense of harm could be plausibly invoked by a miser who loses ten thousand of his millions of dollars to a bandit.  My sympathy does not extend so far.  On the other hand, a hunter-gatherer society faces the necessity of killing other species (or their own if they happen to be cannibals), but death-by-arrow or bludgeon is clearly a harm, and insofar as such actions are necessary, they are necessary evils.

This is where I think Catherine Wilson has provided a useful image of the sphere of morality.  While she takes herself to be an error theorist, I read her as, at least in part, providing an empirical account of what morality actually is: certain behavioural dispositions (I would say sentiments, rather) given articulation and guidance by moral theories.  The part of her theory I find most attractive is the picture of a moral sphere with concern for only one’s kin at the centre and a Jainist ethic on the periphery (236).  While it is not clear that her specific examples of what kinds of concern fit where in the sphere are accurate,[3] the basic idea that morality starts with our closest relationship and progresses to include all sentience (I would be reluctant to allow that non-sentient objects can be “harmed” in the relevant sense) parallels the extension of sympathy from parent-child to group to species and beyond.  Wilson, however, rather than seeing this as a progression, considers it an example of the expansiveness of what can count as an object of moral consideration.  Also, I disagree with her conclusion that the variance and seeming flexibility with which people decide how central or peripheral they want to be in their moral concern is a problem for moral realism.  As I see it, the question is not whether or not one has moral obligations toward the periphery, but how much evil one is prepared to stomach.  Moral concern is not the only concern that enters into our decisions and I would rather advocate honesty about our motivations and practices than attempt to glean the hidden moral meaning of every questionable practice in which we regularly engage.  One unfortunately common function of moral theory is just this attempt to ease our conscience regarding our chosen evils.

The development of moral theory

            With the development of language comes the tradition of telling stories, many of which are meant to be explanatory.  As scientific theory is a story told to unify the phenomena of our senses, moral theory is the story told to unify the phenomena of our sentiments and explain our moral conventions.  From divine commands to categorical imperatives to reflective equilibria, all manner of imaginative states and entities have been invoked to explain and critique extant practice.  While some of these hold more rational appeal than others, none gets very far without addressing at least some of our basic moral intuitions.  This is just to reiterate Hume’s point that moral reasoning is blind without sentiment.  However, as I will also discuss below, theory sometimes warps moral sentiment.

            Just as early physical theories operate on poetic principles in their quest for explanation, so too do moral theories.  In fact, the earliest mythical explanatory stories pay no mind to the distinction between the origins of species and the origins of morals.  I suspect that the topical distinction between the two has its origins in philosophical systems that separate body and spirit.  Once this separation was established it was an unfortunate side-effect of the death of theology that the spiritual came to be seen as requiring a radically different type of explanation than the physical.  But I digress.

            Moral theories develop in response to the why-questioning typical of linguistic creatures.  In a chimpanzee community, one sees and does, or tests and is punished (Stingl 253).  In human society both children and adults regularly question the norms they are expected to abide by.  Given the complexity of modern society, the original harms and the socially-pragmatic considerations which went into the development of a set of rules are hard to apprehend clearly.  So there must be an explanation of why cases which are in some ways similar are morally dissimilar.  Why is it okay to paint on a canvass and not on the neighbour’s windows?  Why should I honour my mother and father, but use the rod on my child?  Why can the state hang someone, but not the mob?  Why can I marry my cousin, but not my sister?  The answers to these will be in terms of some theory or other, but any plausible answer will have to be in terms of harm and social utility, since these are the only morally relevant natural facts left when all the metaphysics is stripped away.

            But it is the positing of other morally relevant facts that characterises moral theory.  One begins with the assumption that the moral beliefs one holds are justified.  One then attempts to find the relevant feature common to all cases of moral obligation.  Where there is none, one creates.  For example, Kant’s judgement of sex as a case of treating others as means only leads him to postulate the marriage contract as a rationalisation (and therefore legitimisation in his rationalistic ethical system) of the sex-act.  This conveniently allows him to avoid condemning sex, a social necessity (he would not have been comfortable with “necessary evils”), while reaffirming the social norm of the day that sex is immoral outside marriage.  However, his theory could not accommodate shifts in sentiment—we (many of us) now feel it is wrong to forbid lovers from the loving embrace, that this is a harm not adequately justified by any pragmatic concerns.[4]

            Another important example is the theory of souls.  At one time it was justifiable to submit beasts to the yoke and slaughter them for sustenance.  Many areas could not have been settled without hunting.  Agriculture could not proceed without domestication.  But this same agriculture has provided us with the means to fulfil all our dietary needs without harming sentients.  This means that animal slaughter is not a necessary evil let alone any sort of good.  How is it that the practice persists?  We are able to identify the distress calls of other animals, clearly they can be harmed.

            That animal slaughter is still central to the lifestyles of North Americans shows three things which bode ill for moral progress:

1)      the persistence of ideology beyond the demise of its theoretical underpinnings

2)      the susceptibility of sentiment to ideological conditioning

3)      the ease with which group conformity will often trump morality

Campbell & Woodrow offer a useful insight into the nature of moral reasoning in their explanation of the use of analogy (364-365).  It would be interesting to see if the neural structures which allow us to see analogous similarity share anything with those enabling empathy, but that is research for another day.  For now I am interested in exploring the uses and limitations of analogy.

Clearly, analogy is a very effective means of achieving moral agreement or assessing a particular situation in terms of past ones.  In the example used by Campbell & Woodrow, (drawn from G. E. Hughes) a prophet uses a parable to illustrate an ethical situation to King David.  David’s response is condemnation of one party in the story, which signifies his commitment to a particular moral principle.  When the prophet draws parallels between the culprit in the story David’s own recent behaviour, the king is forced to admit that he is in the wrong.  According to Campbell & Woodrow, the analogy works according to the following principles:

1)      it contains a normative premise, that David’s counterpart in the parable was in the wrong

2)      translation, substituting David for the culprit in the story should “bring David’s behaviour and feeling into line with an existing norm” (364)

3)      appeal to normative consistency, David is expected to explain why he would condemn the fictional culprit and not himself

4)      condemnation of one example, David must accept that the character in the story is guilty to be persuaded of his own fault

5)      citation of relevant difference would be necessary for David to avoid admitting culpability

6)      generalisability, David must be prepared to apply the same standards to other situations

It seems to me that David is not forced into any profound moral insights outside of the already extant theory, and that many theories would be able to cite theoretically relevant differences between cases which were not actually morally relevant.  In David’s case, he could have cited “I am king” as the relevant difference between the cases (5).  If the social norms allow that the king has impunity in most matters (2), then this would allow David to admit the wrong in the story (1)&(4), while successfully exempting himself from the guilt (3) consistent with a belief that the same would hold for any other king (6).  So analogy alone will not be enough to bring about assent if the dominant ideology of morals is sufficiently well-entrenched, and has explanations for exceptions which would seem inconsistent in other theories.  It is in the way that a moral theory is set up that the possibilities for consistency or inconsistency arise.

What would be useful in demonstrating the case to David to emphasise not facts, but sentiment.  True, the demonstration of similar facts is meant to evoke a particular sentiment, since one’s moral beliefs have an emotive phenomenal quality, but I my counterexample, David’s sentimental response to the one case is not carried over into the other precisely because his moral beliefs include the impunity of kings.  This blocking of sentiment is one of the functions of moral theory, and a bar to moral progress.  Even scientific theories tend to have conservative features which would make many parties unwilling to part with it. 

A simplified account of analogy which privileges sentiment would look like this: 1)  successful analogy invokes the empathic response, when one sees A as similar to B, one either:

i)                    emotes to B as it would to A,

ii)                   emotes to A as it would to B, or

iii)                 rejects the relevance of the analogy.

2)      such discussion helps identify the relevant features of the situation, through identifying its most pathetic elements, refining the theory.

Where what are taken to be “relevant features” are metaphysical in nature, the result is often inhumane.  The inhumane elements of moral theories are usually a combination of metaphysical (or abstract metaethical) doctrine combined with empirical assertions.  But this double-barrelled approach to justifying harms is actually reliably indicative of a sentimental concern that is being suppressed.  Example A:

1)      metaphysical-ethical premise: the existence of souls is the basis of moral concern,

2)      non-human animals have no soul, (we know because they do not speak)

3)      therefore there are no moral concerns regarding our conduct toward other species.

In this, 1 is a false metaphysical premise which explains, with 2, why humans are treated differently in practice than other species.  2 is a pseudo-empirical  fact insofar as there are taken to be exterior signs of soulhood.  Indeed, if a pig spoke in a world committed to these ideas, it would be taken to be possessed.  Example B:

1)      abstract metaphysical premise: rationality is the basis of moral consideration

2)      women are not rational

3)      therefore women are not to be accorded rights

In this 1 is a commonly held (I would say false) metaethical premise, 2 is a false empirical premise.  But the theory was successful in explaining actual moral behaviour, and the most common moral sentiments.

            How can I hold that 3 expresses a common moral sentiment yet still hold that sentiment is the basis of morality?  Simple, no one is born a bigot.  Misogyny, racism, and speciesism are learned attitudes.  The distinction between appropriate and inappropriate objects of sympathy is taught according to the dominant ideology.  Sometimes our natural revulsion to harm is so strong that elaborate rituals of encouragement and indoctrination are required to overcome it, where group conformity is not enough.  I believe this is the source of many “rites of passage” where one is expected to make their first kill, or taught how they are fundamentally different from the other gender.

Moral progress

            To quote Michael Stingl, “ideologies can lead humans astray, to avenues of social interaction where both chimps and angels fear to tread.” (256) There is nothing as consistent as a well-thought-out totalitarian ideology, and the ability of a theory to answer challenges on its own terms is more a testament to the artistry of its authors than its actual moral value.  To save consistency as a major desideratum of moral theory, it may help to offer two different versions of it:

1)      Theoretical: Theoretical inconsistency may be dealt with in theories’ terms, it provides limited progress, mostly in the form of refinement.  Sometimes this refinement is not progress at all but the further entrenchment of injustice.

2)      Sentimental: The emotional dissonance created by a theory when it is considered by those who are not sufficiently indoctrinated to be dull of sentiment leads to more radical re-evaluations.  Sometimes emotional dissonance may be a result of misunderstanding, sometimes it points to a theoretical inconsistency, sometimes it is the result of one’s emotional dysfunctions, but often it is a genuine apprehension of an unjustified harm that is made permissible by the theory.

How is it that some individuals are able to identify sentimental inconsistency, having been raised inside the theory?  One answer is that they have been insufficiently indoctrinated, or are insufficiently conformist to accept the norm without question.  Another is that by accident of birth, and life experiences, they have come to be more sensitive than others.  Both these may be true, but I think the most important feature in these situations, especially for the moral realist, is the apprehension of a harm that is not justified.  Sensitive individuals not convinced by theories which do not have pragmatic necessity on their side.  Necessity is seldom explicitly invoked by moral theories, but often arises as proponents of a theory run out of other defences:

A-4) We need meat to survive.

B-4) Society will crumble if we allow women rights.

            I believe that what we have evolved along with the moral sentiment and the tendency to follow rules is an implicit recognition of social necessity, parallel to the implicit recognition involved in the original submission to certain rules, as with DeWaal’s chimps (Stingl 247-248).

The evolution of morality, recapitulated

Moral life is a system of perception-action-models constrained by theory.  Hume’s mistake (if he believes it) is that moral judgement does not depend on reasoning from facts besides the psychological facts of sentiment.  In fact, without (not necessarily propositional) knowledge of certain, non-moral features of a situation, we either would fail to respond properly to situations, or have no way to prioritise conflicting moral claims (dual sense “statement” and “hold”).

Morality evolved because of its fitness, but moral facts are not just facts about social utility.  In fact, socially expedient, or survival-promoting strategies may come into conflict with moral concerns, for example, the pacifist has a moral edge, but not necessarily a survival edge.  The great flood and Sodom and Gommorah are mythical examples of situations where the society had to go for the sake of the right.

The function of empathy is to co-ordinate action and prevent intragroup harm.  But who one recognises as an appropriate empathetic object is learned.  It has to be possible to feel aggressive and violent behaviour against certain others if there is inter-group competition or the hunt.  In chimpanzees this learning is done through direct concrete relationships and social example of who gets treated how when.  In linguistic creatures, it is done both by example and by theory.[5]

Since it is not possible (or has not always been possible) to avoid harm (for the sake of meeting obligations closer to the centre of the relationship web, or maintaining general social stability, survival), a viable moral theory must explain why it is necessary to inflict some forms of harm.  A theory with a compelling story will serve to ease social conscience sufficiently to dull the response to harms considered justified (or theoretically defined as not-harm). Given our sociality, which includes the need for acceptance by the community and the desire to garner their esteem, one’s sentimental gravitation will be towards their community and any sympathy likely to be felt toward outsiders will be suppressed by this social preference.  But the fact that there is a tension involved in taking life for the first time, that it is an act associated with overcoming fear and “childish sentiments” reveals that there is a tendency latent in us to feel for those outside our group and other creatures. 

As justification becomes doubtful, more and more sentimental individuals find themselves sceptical of the moral rule, and perhaps the dominant moral theory.  For example, when a culture is able to produce food surpluses from its agricultural technology alone, the original necessity, that of needing meat for nourishment, is no longer present, and the justification is undermined.  But the denial of the moral status of the animal remains part of the dominant moral paradigm.  Since the strength of the moral rule (or exception) “it is permissible to kill animals for food” has lost its pillar of justification, all that remains to overturn the rule is to demonstrate that the killing of animals is an act of genuine harm.  The success of this demonstration depends on the sympathetic response of the community at large (or at least those who are in a position to influence the community at large) to the harm.

The sympathetic response depends in part on empathy.  Empathy has of course evolved as a species-preserving trait, which is why it depends on the recognition of likeness in others.  Sympathy is extended when there is shown to be a likeness in others.  The likeness that ends up being relevant as moral consideration extends beyond the species are things like “feels pain”.  Other considerations such as “is rational” are products of certain theories developed to justify certain exemptions from moral consideration.  Some of these criteria may have been invoked to justify certain necessities (such as the ancient necessity of killing other species) but have often been perverted toward various political ends (such as the subjegation of women, who have been defined as irrational by many moral theorists).

The maintenance of moral sentiment, “entrenchment”, and moral regress

The discussion of the progress of morality often suffers from the teleological fallacy underlying many lay interpretations of evolution.  The evolutionary version of the fallacy assumes that the best possible forms will be selected for, rather than those which are just good enough to survive.  The myth of moral progress is that societies move along a single path, learning new moral lessons at various stages of history which could not possibly be forgotten.  Such presumption is itself an act of forgetting.

If we are to allow the continued analogy to science, it must be acknowledged that this venture has suffered many setbacks in its progress, and stands on no unshakable foundation.  Think of the stores of knowledge burned at Alexandria, the various peoples extinguished by colonialism and all the medical knowledge they’ve taken with them, the Mayan astronomy only now coming to be understood. 

“But that is all in the past,” you may assert, “now we are beyond the bigotry that caused the destruction of those edifices of knowledge.”  If we are so far beyond this, I ask, what are we to make of the persistent suspicion in many American states of evolutionary theory, or the persistence of racism despite evidence of the artificiality of race?  What are we to make of widespread denial of the environmental damage caused by human activity, and the still implicit belief of many, perhaps a majority in North America, of the intellectual inferiority of women?  What of the tenacious dedication of the masses to the superstitious lies of religion?  It is a political contingency that the latest discoveries of science are available at all, and given the ease with which certain societies let go of their commitment to historical accuracy for the support of ideology, it does not seem so far-fetched that bonfires await in the near future those works of science which cause discomfort to the precariously seated elite or the superstitious masses.

And if scientific knowledge is on so insecure a footing, how can we expect our moral knowledge to stand up to the vested powers of the industrial-military complex, religious conservatism, and the egoism being touted as a moral doctrine by those who would bring all down to their level rather than rise to meet altruistic moral standards?  Campbell and Woodrow suggest, in passing, that the “stable convergence” of morals is part of an identifiable moral progress (368).  However, I see insufficient evidence for either convergence or stability, and I wonder if this is a claim that is meant to be true of (some) society, or whether it is meant to be true of canonical moral theorists, whose actual mark upon society is questionable.

Just as it is conceivable that we lose technology and scientific knowledge, it is perfectly conceivable that civilisation fall into moral barbarity, and many have at various stages.  In fact, the moral fibre is a loosely woven blanket, which stands to be ripped apart at the slightest tug of a malevolent orator, or burned up in the inflammation of the mob.  I do believe that to be sympathetic is our natural tendency individually or in pairs, but because of the power of theory to affect our affects, and because of our empathy itself, in situations where a rancorous opinion or sentiment catches hold, the reliability of our morals gives way.  And it is not only in flash situations where this is a problem, but can become entrenched.[6] 

Conclusion: eternal vigilance and the practice of love

The safest way to stabilise our morals is to cultivate, inculcate, propagate, perpetuate, and reciprocate our moral sentiments.  The recognition of sympathetic features continues to draw us forward in our aspirations to moral progress because without this pull to move forward we would lose the critical edge which keeps us from collapsing into a dark age.  If we do not pay attention to our sentimental intuitions and investigate them when they emerge, we dull them and forget the basis of what we’ve already found.  Morality turns to mere legality which quickly turns against morality once its sentimental relevance dissipates.  On an egoistic moral theory, the question “why should I care about the poor?” is met with too many incoherent answers (given the premises of the paradigm) for the sentiment motivating the question to be maintained against the force of the apathy which has developed among the masses.  Ironically, empathy can be the cause of apathy in an individual, since it is our natural tendency to feel with our neighbour which makes such states into malaises sociales. 

Bibliography

Campbell, Richmond, and Hunter, Bruce, eds. Moral Epistemology Naturalised. (Calgary, University of Calgary Press, 2000).

Campbell, Richmond, and Woodrow, Jennifer. “Why Moore’s Open Question is Open: The Evolution of Moral Supervenience.” PHIL5220 reading package.

Hume, David. Hume’s Ethical Writings. Ed.Alasdair MacIntyre. (New York: Collier Books, 1965).

Preston, Stephanie D., and DeWaal, Frans B. M. “Empathy: Its ultimate and proximate bases” <http://www.bbsonline.org/Preprints/Preston/Preston.pdf> (2001).

Sober, Elliott, and Wilson, David Sloan, “The Evolution of Psychological Altruism.” PHIL5220  reading package.

Stingl, Michael. “All the Monkey’s Aren’t in the Zoo: Evolutionary Ethics and the Possibility of Moral Knowledge” in Campbell and Hunter, pp.245-266.

Wilson, Catherine. “The Biological Basis and Ideational Superstructure of Morality” in Campbell and Hunter, pp.211-244.