Really Taking Darwin and the Naturalistic Fallacy

Seriously: An Objection to Rottschaefer and Martinsen

JONATHAN BARRETT

School of Philosophy
University of Southern California
Los Angeles, CA 90089
U.S.A.

ABSTRACT: Out of a concern to respect the naturalistic fallacy, Ruse (1986) argues for
the possibility of causal, but not justificatory, explanations of morality in terms of
evolutionary processes. In a discussion of Ruse's work, Rottschaefer and Martinsen
(1990) claim that he erroneously limits the explanatory scope of evolutionary concepts,
because he fails to see that one can have objective moral properties without committing
either of two forms of the naturalistic fallacy, if one holds that moral properties super­
vene on non-moral properties. In this short paper I argue that Rottschaefer and Martin­
sen's solution fails. If one takes moral properties to supervene on non-moral properties,
then either one ends up committing one of the two forms of the naturalistic fallacy or else
one is left postulating unbelievable brute metaphysical facts.

KEY WORDS: Ethics, evolution, evolutionary ethics, M. Ruse, naturalistic fallacy,

supervenience.

One might think that a merit of Michael Ruse's (1986) book Taking Darwin
Seriously is not just that he does take Darwin seriously, but that he also takes
seriously the efforts of naturalistically inclined metaethicists. The result is an
argument that we can give causal explanations of many of the ethical tendencies
of humans in terms of selectional processes, but that we cannot give justificatory
explanations of these tendencies in this way. Thus Ruse, if he succeeds in his
project, secures the relevance of evolution to thinking about ethics without
committing himself to a form of the now much maligned evolutionary ethics
(e.g., Spencer 1892). However, for William Rottschaefer and David Martinsen
(1990) this is not enough. They argue that it is possible to justify many of our
ethical practices in terms of evolutionary concepts without falling foul to the
naturalistic metaethical constraints Ruse seeks to respect. In this short paper I
seek to cast doubt on a key feature of Rottschaefer and Martinsen's position,
namely that moral properties supervene on non-moral properties.
Of central importance to Ruse's project is to avoid committing either of two
forms of the naturalistic fallacy (NF) moral properties cannot be defined in
-

terms of non-moral properties (definitional form) and moral claims cannot be

derived from non-moral claims (derivational form). By denying the existence of
objective moral properties he seemingly avoids the first form of NF and by only
allowing causal and not justificatory evolutionary explanations of morality he
seems to avoid the second form. Rottschaefer and Martinsen (1990) aim to show

Biology and Philosophy 6:433-437, 1991.

© 1991 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.
434 JONATHAN BARREIT

that Ruse can satisfy these. constraints without denying the existence of objective
moral properties and allowing for the possibility of justificatory evolutionary
explanations of morality.
Rottschaefer and Martinsen (1990, p. 161) accept that we cannot define the
moral in terms of the non-moral, but they do not conclude from this that there
are no moral properties. We cannot define moral properties in terms of non­
moral ones, they maintain, because moral properties cannot be reduced to non­
moral properties. But, irreducibility need not imply unreality. The property of
being red is not reducible to a more basic physical property, yet it is real.
Similarly, biological fitness is real (many would say), yet "there is no single
adaptation and environmental feature that makes for fitness in, for instance,
antelopes or hawks" (Rottschaefer and Martinsen 1990, p. 162). One could give
many more examples. The reason why these properties cannot be reduced is that
they can be realized in many different kinds of physical system. So failure to
reduce moral properties need not convince us of their non-existence. Instead it
might suggest to us that they are just realizable in many ways. Rottschaefer and
Martinsen (1990, p. 162) then offer reasons for thinking that this might be true.
Standardly, the idea of a property being multiply realizable is cashed out in
terms of that property supervening on more basic properties. Rottschaefer and
Martinsen characterize the relation between moral and non-moral properties in
just this way (1990, p. 162). Though we can distinguish several kinds of
supervenience, 1 the following formulation is sufficient for present purposes:
Family A of properties supervenes on family B of properties iff necessarily, for any
property Fin A, if any object x has F, then there exists a property Gin B such that x
has G, and necessarily anything having Ghas F.

So if, as Rottschaefer and Martinsen suppose, moral properties supervene on

non-moral properties, then two events with identical non-moral properties have
identical moral properties. If this thesis is correct and it saves the objective
reality of moral properties, then Ruse's position could quite probably need
strengthening in the kinds of way that Rottschaefer and Martinsen suggest
(1990, pp. 167-170).
Now I claim that the thesis that moral properties supervene on non-moral
properties either forces Rottschaefer and Martinsen into committing one of the
two forms of NF or it leaves them postulating brute (and objectionable)
metaphysical facts. My argument for this is as follows. If moral properties
supervene on non-moral properties then there will be true statements of the
form:

(*) If x has non-moral property N then x has moral property M.

How is the truth of (*) to be explained? Well, explaining (*) is equivalent to

explaining (*2) x has moral property M, assuming (*1) x has non-moral
property N. Now, assuming that explanation is a form of deduction (Hempel and
Oppenheim 1948), we can infer that explaining (*) is equivalent to deriving (*2)
 OBJECTION TO ROTTSCHAEFER AND MARTINSEN 435

from (*1) (and some other premises). But (*l)is by any intuitive account a non­
moral claim and (*2) is a moral claim. Hence, in order to explain (*), we must
derive a moral claim from a non-moral claim. So in an attempt to explain certain
consequences of the supervenience thesis, the derivational form of NF must be
committed.
We might think that this argument can be resisted. Given that supervenience
is not confined to moral properties, analogs of (*) exist for non-moral super­
venient properties. Can they be explained? If they cannot and yet we still feel
certain of the reality of these properties, then surely failure to explain (*) should
not lead us to doubt the existence of moral properties. However, I do not think
this kind of argument can be made to succeed, because, at least in those cases in
which we are committed to the reality of the supervening properties, the
appropriate analogs of (*) can be explained. To demonstrate this let us look at
the example of fitness. Let us take the following to be an analog of (*), the kind
of claim that follows from the particular way in which the fitness of an organism
supervenes on its more basic properties:

(*f) If in the actual environment J is infertile then J has a fitness of zero in

the actual environment.

I claim that (*f) can be straightforwardly explained. Here is one way the
explanation might go:

1. Organism x in environment E has fitness n iff n is the expected number

of descendants x will leave in E.2
2. If in the actual environment x is infertile then zero is the expected
number of descendants x will leave in E.
3. In the actual environment J is infertile.
4. Therefore, J has a fitness of zero in the actual environment.
5. Therefore, if in the actual environment J is infertile, J has a fitness of
zero in the actual environment (i.e., (*f)).

A couple of features of this explanation should be highlighted. (1) Is a possible

definition of an organism's fitness, but it does not furnish us with a reduction of
it.3 (2) Relates in a general way J's condition to expected reproductive success.
Assuming (I) and (2) allows us to derive (*f). In general, if we can give a
definition of the supervening property and relate the definition to the antecedent
of the conditional that needs explaining, then we can explain the conditional. I
will assume without argument that when dealing with non-moral supervening
properties these kinds of explanation are generally available to us.
So there is reason to believe that non-moral supervening properties are
immune to the difficulty I have argued exists for moral properties that supervene
on non-moral properties. Furthermore, it should be clear that Rottschaefer and
Martinsen, in trying to explain (*), cannot avail themselves of explanations
analogous to the above explanation of (*f). The reason for this is that any
436 JONATHAN BARRETI

analogous explanation would require an analog of (1), or in other words, a

definition of a moral property in terms of non-moral properties. In proposing
such an analog they would be committing the definitional form of NF.4
So if you maintain, as Rottschaefer and Martinsen do, that moral properties
supervene on non-moral properties, you have to explain statements like (*). I
have argued that if we try to explain (*), we end up committing either the
definitional or the derivational form of NF. This might seem sufficient to show
that we cannot maintain the supervenience of moral properties on non-moral
properties and avoid both forms of NF. However, maybe this conclusion can still
be resisted. We might want to argue that our inability to explain statements like
(*) does not count against the existence of objective moral properties. Instead,
all it shows is that the truth of statements like (*) is inexplicable. If this kind of
argument is to be taken seriously, then it has to be that the inexplicability of (*)
is grounded in the more general inexplicability of the supervenience of moral
properties on non-moral properties.
Having naturalistic inclinations, I find this position untenable. I have three
reasons for thinking this. If the supervenience of moral properties on non-moral
properties is inexplicable, then it seems that no account can be given of what
causes something to have a particular moral property. Imagine a sequence of
events that culminates in the gratuitous killing of a healthy infant. We can
explain this event in terms of its antecedent causes, but we cannot explain its
wrongness. All we can say is that when appropriate non-moral events occur,
suddenly, as if by magic, the property of wrongness becomes instantiated in the
killing. Nothing, it seems, causes the wrongness. This all looks rather im­
plausible. Second and worse still, we cannot give justificatory explanations of
the moral in terms of the non-moral. Imagine trying to justify the wrongness of
the above case of infanticide. We describe the non-moral properties and then
point out that as a matter of brute fact anything that has those non-moral
properties also is morally wrong. Such an account could hardly be called a
justificatory explanation, if an explanation at all. Third, it is unclear how we
perceive these brute moral properties. One can, I suppose, retreat to G.E.
Moore's desperate position of asserting that there exists a special sense that
allows us to intuit the moral, but such a position is surely no more convincing
now than it was then. In light of these difficulties (and there may be more than
just the three I outlined), I suggest we abandon the position that the super­
venience of the moral on the non-moral is inexplicable. If you are inclined to
brazen it out, then you should note that you do not have a position that allows
scope for a real evolutionary ethics anyway, because of the second problem just
noted.
In summary, Rottschaefer and Martinsen's (1990) attempt to develop Ruse
(1986) in order to secure a justificatory evolutionary ethics has serious
problems. In light of these problems, one can only conclude that Rottschaefer
and Martinsen cannot hold their supervenience thesis and avoid committing one
of the forms of NF. Instead, we should either take Darwin only as seriously as
Ruse does, or if we feel we must take Darwin really seriously, then we must
 OBJECTION TO ROTTSCHAEFER AND MARTINSEN 437

realize that we can do this only by showing how the NFs should not be taken
seriously at an.s

NOTES

1 On the various kinds of supervenience see Kim (1984, 1987). The formulation I give

here is what Kim calls"strong supervenience".

2 This is Mills and Beatty's (1979) "propensity interpretation of fitness". Of course it is a

very controversial analysis (e.g., Rosenberg 1985, pp. 161-164), one which I employ
only for illustrative purposes.
3 Thus, unlike Rottschaefer and Martinsen I do not think that irreducibility implies

undefinability. Ultimately, I believe, the difficulties associated with their position derive
from their mistakenly taking the definitional form of NF to be a thesis about reduction.
4 Actually we could attempt to give an analogous explanation of (*) without committing

the definitional form of NF. To do this we need only to replace our analog of (I) by an
appropriate conditional that is licensed by the way in which the moral supervenes on the
non-moral and in which the antecedent is a non-moral claim and in which the consequent
is a moral claim. Unfortunately, we are then forced into a regress. For then our analog of
(1) is just another conditional like (*) that itself cries out for explanation.
5 An alternative, one which Rottschaefer and Martinsen (1990) do not consider and

which might conceivably allow justificatory explanations of the moral in terms of the
non-moral without committing one of the NFs, is to surrender the claim that moral
statements purport to state facts. One then adopts some form of emotivism. However, I
am doubtful that such a strategy would be successful. Even in its recent incarnations (for
example, Blackburn 1984), emotivism has considerable weaknesses (see Brighouse
1990).

REFERENCES

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Kim, J.: 1984, '"Strong" and "Global" Supervenience Revisited', Philosophy and
Phenomenological Research 45, 153-176.
Kim, J.: 1987, 'Concepts of Supervenience', Philosophy and Phenomenological
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Mills, S. and Beatty, J.: 1979, 'The Propensity Interpretation of Fitness', Philosophy of
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