A Social Evolutionary Account of Morality: The Evolution of Traditions for Anthony O'Hear-Beyond Evolution- Human Nature and the Limits of Evolutionary Explanation

Beyond Evolution

Human Nature and the Limits of EvolutionaryExplanation

Anthony O'Hear

, Professor of Philosophy, University of Bradford

Preface

The aim of this book is to examine the extent to which evolutionary accounts of humanexperience are adequate. In examining this question, I focus on human knowledge, onmorality, and on our sense of beauty. I suggest that our current activities in each areacertainly derive in important ways from our biological nature, but that once havingemerged they cannot usefully be analysed in biological or evolutionary terms. I alsoattempt to indicate the significance of human community and of our cultural inheritancein the identity and rationality of each one of us. At the same time, I attempt to vindicatethe traditional view that each human being is possessed of a rationality which means thathe or she can transcend what is given in biology and culture. We are prisoners neither of our genes nor of the ideas we encounter as we each make our personal and individualway through life.Early versions of parts of the book have been previously published as follows: part of Chapter 2, as ‘Immanent and Transcendent Dimensions of Reason’, in

Ratio

, 4 (1991),108–23; part of Chapter 3 as ‘Self-Conscious Belief’, in

The Certainty of Doubt

, editedby Miles Fairburn and Bill Oliver (Victoria University Press, 1996), 336–51; part of Chapter 4 as ‘Evolution, Knowledge and Self-Consciousness’, in

Inquiry

, 32 (1989),127–50 (reprinted by permission of Scandinavian University Press, Oslo); part of Chapter5 as ‘Knowledge in Evolutionary Context’, in

International Studies in the Philosophy of Science

, 8/2 (1994), 125–38; part of Chapter 7 as ‘Beauty, Natural and Unnatural’, in

Artists from Europe

, edited by Kevin O'Brien (Leeds Metropolitan University, 1995), 72–8; part of Chapter 8 as ‘Two Cultures Revisited’, in

Verstehen and HumaneUnderstanding

, edited by A. O'Hear (Cambridge University Press, 1997), 1–21. Whereappropriate, I thank editors and publishers for permission to reprint.As will be evident, I have worked on this book and related themes over a number of years, and have benefited from many discussions with many people for ten years or more.It would be hard to list all who have helped me in one way or another, though I wouldlike to mention my gratitude for particular help I have received from Roger Trigg,Michael Smithurst, Peter Munz, and Roger Scruton.

1 Mind and Nature

Anthony O'HearIn considering the interaction between human beings and their material surroundings, wecannot help but be struck by two things. First, and most obvious, human beings are

themselves material beings, acting in and on, and produced and influenced by thematerial world. In saying this, I do not mean to pre-empt discussion of or conclusionsabout minds, souls, or spirituality. I simply want to make the obvious point that we areembodied, and that what we do and think and feel is conditioned by our embodiment. Inour knowledge, in our morality, and in our perceptions of beauty, our materiality ispresupposed and exploited in a host of ways, some of which I hope to explore in thecourse of this book. But even before we go any further, we can take for granted that oursenses condition and filter our knowledge, in interaction with the material world; thatmorality has a lot to do with human suffering and pain due to physical limitations; andthat aesthetic experience is intimately linked to the perception of visible, aural, and tactilethings, and also to phenomena smelt and tasted.So any consideration of human nature will have to involve an examination of ourmateriality, both as it is and as it has come about, presumably in evolution. But, and thisis the second point which immediately confronts us, it is also obvious that in variousrespects we do not behave like most material objects. We are conscious, which most of matter is not, although consciousness is something we share with a good proportion of the animal kingdom. Over and above consciousness, though, human beings havedeveloped the ability to think discursively, to be aware that they are so thinking, and toexpress these thoughts in language and other symbolic forms. As the concrete expressionand development of this propensity for self-conscious thought, we have produced allkinds of cultural artefacts and systems, by which our lives are surrounded, conditioned,and made meaningful. No doubt, as we shall see in greater detail in due course, humanculture and the world in which we live—the

Lebenswelt

of theend p.1phenomenologists—draws on continuities between us and the lower animals. No doubt,too, our comparatively large and complex brains play a crucial role in the production of thought and culture, and in everything which follows we shall assume that this is so.Nevertheless, human thought and culture do exhibit certain important properties, rare if not unique in the rest of nature. Saying this does not in itself mean that they cannot begiven a naturalistic, or, more precisely, an evolutionary explanation. The reason forfocusing here on evolutionary explanations is that evolution is the generally acceptedaccount of how species in the biological kingdom have developed the physical structuresand behavioural dispositions they have. If we see a species as part of nature, we will,then, be committed to giving an evolutionary account of its origins and development.What this book is about is exploring the strengths and weaknesses of evolutionaryaccounts of human activity, which any naturalistic explanation of human activity willhave to face, but which some recent and sophisticated accounts of human activity tend toobscure.But we cannot begin to make progress here without getting clearer about the nature of ourabilities and about the relevance to them of evolutionary explanations. There is no betteror more appropriate place to begin this task of clarification than Socrates' discussion of the relationship between the mind and nature in Plato's

Phaedo

(95–101). For althoughPlato does not treat of evolutionary explanations specifically, what he does is to present ahurdle any naturalistic explanation will have to cross.

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