Ethics as an Autonomous Theoretical Subject

Ethics as an Autonomous Theoretical Subject

Description

The usefulness of a biological approach to ethics depends on what ethics is. If it is just a certain type of behavioral pattern or habit, accompanied by some emotional responses, then biological theories can be expected to teach us a great deal about it. But, if it is a theoretical inquiry that can be approached by rational methods, and that has internal standards of justification and criticism, the attempt to understand it from outside by means of biology will be much less valuable. This is true for the same reason that the search for a biological explanation of mathematical or physical theories, or biological theories for that matter, would be relatively futile. First, we have no general biological understanding of human thought. Second, it is not a fixed set of behavioral and intellectual habits but a process of development that advances by constant reexamination of the total body of results to date. A being who is engaged in such an open-ended process of discovery cannot at the same time understand it fully from outside: otherwise he would have a decision procedure rather than a critical method. In most interesting subjects we do not want a decision procedure because we want to pursue a deeper level of understanding than that represented by our current questions and the methods we have for answering them. No one, to my knowledge, has suggested a biological theory of mathematics; yet the biological approach to ethics has aroused a great deal of interest. There is a reason for this. Ethics exists on both the behavioral and the theoretical level. Its appearance in some form in every culture and subculture as a pattern of conduct and judgments about conduct is more conspicuous than its theoretical treatment by philosophers, political and legal theorists, utopian anarchists, and evangelical reformers. Not only is ethical theory and the attempt at ethical discovery less socially conspicuous than common behavioral morality but the amount of disagreement about ethics at both levels produces doubt that it is a field for rational discovery at all. Perhaps there is nothing to be discovered about it by such methods, and perhaps it can be understood only as a social and psychological peculiarity of human life. In that case biology will provide a good foundation, though psychology and sociology will be important as well. In this paper I want to explain the reality of ethics as a theoretical subject. The progress of that subject is slow and uncertain, but it is important, both in itself and in relation to the nontheoretical forms that ethics take, because the two levels influence each other. The ethical commonplaces of any period include ideas that may have been radical discoveries in a previous age. This is true of modern conceptions of liberty, equality, and democracy, and we are in the midst of ethical debates that will probably result in a disseminated moral sensibility two hundred years hence which people of our time would find very unfamiliar. Although the rate of progress is much slower, the form of these developments is somewhat analogous to the gradual assimilation of revolutionary scientific discoveries into the common world view. As in science, also, by the time one advance has been widely assimilated, it is being superseded by the next, and further developments use accepted current understanding as the basis for extension and revision. In ethics the two levels interact in both directions, and the division between them is not sharp. Acute questions of social policy produce widespread attempts to theorize about the basic principles of ethics. A common idea of progress is found in all these fields, although it is not very well understood in any of them. It is assumed that we begin, as a species, with certain primitive intuitions and responses that may have biological sources. But in addition we have a critical capacity that has allowed us, starting a long time ago, to assess, systematize, extend, and in some cases reject these prereflective responses. Instead of estimating size and weight by touch and vision, we develop devices of measurement. Instead of guessing about numerical quantities, we develop mathematical reasoning. Instead of adhering to an idea of the physical world that comes directly from our senses, we have progressively asked questions and developed methods of answering them that yield a picture of physical reality farther and farther removed from appearance. We could not have done any of these things if we had not, as a species, had some prereflective, intuitive beliefs about numbers and the world. Progress beyond this has required both the efforts of creative individuals and the communal activities of criticism justification, acceptance, and rejection. The motivating idea has been that there is always more to be discovered, that our current intuitions or understanding, even if commendable for their time, are only a stage in an indefinite developmental process.

Source Publication

Morality as a Biological Phenomenon: Report of the Dahlem Workshop on Biology and Morals, Berlin 1977, November 28—December 2

Source Editors/Authors

Gunther S. Stent

Publication Date

1978

Edition

1

Ethics as an Autonomous Theoretical Subject

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