“Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps, for he is the only animal that is struck
with the difference between what things are and what they ought to be.”
– William Hazlitt (1878 – 1930)
Our society is forged upon ideals of the sanctity of human life, though paradoxically the chief authority of the age, the decontextualised rationality of science, upholds no such belief. That the life of the individual human is more valuable than that of another species, let alone that it is somehow ‘sacred’, is a notion in direct contradiction to the West’s founding ontological model, namely the theory of evolution, and is, as many have observed, largely derived from archaic theological and philosophical separations of humanity and ‘nature’.
The implications of this are far-reaching, but cannot be reasonably accepted. The current strategy is to try to widen the privileged domain of ‘humanity’, granting citizenship to some genetically similar and charismatic mega-fauna, such as the higher primates. Still the arbitrary factors – language, transmitted learning, tool usage, self-recognition, etc. – that once accounted for humanity’s self-separation from the rest of creation are employed here. Other life, meanwhile, remains unquestioningly of lesser value.
What is the future of such attempts at ethical imperialism? Can other species be given the rights of humans, and should they be? Would they want them? Applied ethics works solely as an anthropocentric model of customs and values. Human beings, by virtue of their evolutionary past, are not geared towards the protection of other species (except perhaps for domesticates, most of which enjoy protection only preceding predation). A human ethical code is thus heavily skewed. For humans, operating within the dual streams of evolution and ethics, existence (specifically, social interaction) is an unceasing trade-off between ‘natural’ (evolved) and ‘cultural’ (moralised) behaviours. One example is the ‘natural’ act of rape, which is morally objectionable in most human cultures. No other species exhibit such dynamic restraints on their behaviour - they are, if you like, immersed solely in the evolutionary stream – and so should arguably not be afforded human ethical consideration, ‘less in a completely revised fashion.
What alternatives exist to extending the boundaries of personhood and its concomitant system of ‘rights’? It is now widely believed, if not with any demonstrable change in attitude, that humans, animals, plants and other life forms have evolved from the same stock in a process that began around 3.7 billion years ago. One might fairly suggest, therefore, that all life is in fact of equal status. Extending the logic of ethics, one might well conclude that our interactions with other life forms should not exhibit preference or prejudice, also known as speciesism. Needless-to-say, such a position is untenable. Most life-forms depend on the consumption of other life for their continued existence, and this is often only accomplished through cooperation with other members of the same species (e.g. pack-hunting). Preference and prejudice, it seems, are part and parcel of existence.
If other species can not reasonably be granted human moral status, should humans’ ethical codes follow those of the rest of the natural world? In short, should ethics exist at all? Such a question requires a detailed understanding of morality’s evolutionary context. Darwin likened human morality to the altruistic behaviour of other social species, suggesting that, as for meerkats and flocking birds, altruistic acts, though of little or no benefit to the individual, are adaptive at the level of the group:
It must not be forgotten that although a high standard of morality gives but a slight or no advantage to each individual man and his children over the other men of the same tribe, yet that an increase in the number of well-endowed men and advancements in the standard of morality will certainly give an immense advantage to one tribe over another. There can be no doubt that a tribe including many members who, from possessing in a high degree the spirit of patriotism, fidelity, obedience, courage, and sympathy, were always ready to aid one another, and to sacrifice themselves for the common good would be victorious over most other tribes; and this would be natural selection (Darwin, C. 1871. The Descent of Man. New York: Appleton. p.166).
For Darwin, morality represented not humanity’s most vital break from the tyranny of nature, as some still hold, but rather an evolved response to inter-group competition. As such, it was not associated with the belief in the immutable sanctity of human life, which owed its existence to the dualist epistemologies of Judeo-Christian doctrine and Cartesian philosophy. Instead, moral tendencies functioned, at least initially, as a means for ensuring group survival. The human propensity for unselfish acts thus stems from an innate capacity for social cooperation in the name of one’s family, tribe or clan. It is neither inclusive of other species nor indicative of the inviolability of human life.
Human ethics, then, has a biological origin, one which has been instrumental in our cultural evolution. Biomorphising ethics – bringing human morality in line with that exhibited by the other species – is therefore not a solution, for this would demand a deconstruction of age-old systems of laws and rights, upon which all civilisation has been constructed.
We have now rebuilt some parameters for our understanding of ethics. Ethical judgements cannot reasonably be applied to any species others than our own, as this is to betray the origins and function of morality. [The urge to do so can be seen as an evolutionary by-product, or spandrel, of our ancestral inclination towards pro-social behaviour for the benefit of the group, just as our fondness for baby animals is triggered by the ‘hard-wired’ obligation to protect our own infants.] Neither can ethical codes be totally jettisoned, as this would be to commit societal suicide. Instead, we must acknowledge the limitations of our value systems and seek to apply and refine these only within our species.
This brings us to the problem of empathy. It is all very well to state that our morality is merely a device for ensuring our clan’s survival, but what of the myriad permutations and nuances that now, after thousands of years of cultural development, constitute a society’s ethical code? Surely, in seeking to iron out every inequality, human morality has truly attained a righteous position? This is a question best left to the ethicists. The notions of right and wrong, though by no means universal, are so much a part of most cultures that to question them is to risk accusations of sociopathy. Despite this, most people in the western world are confronted by moral ambiguities on a daily basis. Many of these stem from apparent contradictions to the idea, mentioned previously, that all human life is holy. We are, for example, less concerned by the loss of human life in far off places than on our own doorstep (which, incidentally, fits well with the Darwinian perspective). Whether it is desirable to attempt to ‘rectify’ these contradictions, that is, whether we should strive to expand upon our evolved capacity for altruism and empathy, is again dependent on this notion of human life as sacrosanct. This is a problem which has only originated within the last two or three thousand years, perhaps since the development of city states, and which has only really gained currency since the dawning of global mass media. It can be summarised as follows:
Humans living in small groups develop a tendency towards pro-social/moral behaviour in the interests of the group.
Moral behaviour is codified through religions, still in the interests of group-living.
Moral behaviour is further codified and intellectualised in philosophy.
Religious and philosophical notions of right and wrong become increasingly rigid, and are used, in conjunction with Judeo-Christian and Enlightenment thought etc., as evidence of humanity’s uniqueness.
Humanism challenges Judeo-Christian orthodox but continues to assert humanity’s uniqueness, leading to the idea of the ‘sanctity’ of human life.
The ‘sanctity’ of human life becomes the dominant ideology of the modern era.
Global communication stretches the boundaries of one’s ‘moral community’ to include one’s whole country and, finally, the entire planet.
Disproportionate concern over the plight of others in one’s global moral community hints at limitations of human empathy.
Most people feel a moral obligation towards their family and local community. Others extend this feeling to their country (patriotism). In recent years many people have been encouraged to include all humanity in their moral community, a scheme facilitated by global mass media, which can trigger feelings of empathy – originally reserved for our close kin – from a great distance. In the days prior to widespread media coverage of wars and famines, such events were morally unproblematic. Now, however, television images engage our empathetic brains, giving rise to apparent moral ambiguities. In a similar vein, the separation, objectification and commoditisation of domestic animals (and the extinction of some wild ones) is causing increased confusion for that part of our reason that serves to protect our close kin. Vegetarianism and wildlife protection agencies are just two phenomena triggered by this ancestral predisposition to kin protectionism.
What can be done about these alleged moral ambiguities? Should we confine altruistic acts to our closest kin, as ‘dictated’ by our evolutionary history, or should we confront our ‘hypocrisies’ and strive to extend protection to all humanity (as suggested by our ‘evolutionary present’)? These questions prompt further, larger ones. Again, the idea of human life as sacred demands we seek to look out for all our species. But once the myth of sanctity is neutralised, where does that leave us? To whom, if anyone, do we have moral obligations? In this modern atomised society the idea of a moral community of close kin has lost all meaning; is this therefore also true of the concepts of good and bad, right and wrong?
The answer to such questions, if any indeed exists, lies within the domain of meta-ethics. Meta-ethical schools of thought are commonly divided into realist and anti-realist. Theorists of the former hold that moral values are objective, intrinsic properties of the world that are simply discovered or intuited. Anti-realists, to the contrary, assert that moral values are contingent on the history and belief systems of individuals and cultures, and that differing moral codes are as numerous as there are people on earth. It is here not my intention to provide tentative responses to the above anomalies. Rather, I wish to explore the nature of this dilemma in the hope of shedding light on some causal mechanisms.
It should be apparent that the paradox discussed here is above all else a secular problem: unlike moral codes enmeshed in religion, secular ethics afford no consensus and no ultimate salvation. Morality, extrapolated over centuries by human reason, is now crumbling under the weight of global relativism (akin to what Henri Bergson termed the ‘dissolving power’ of human intelligence). The real issue here is not so much ‘what is good:bad/right:wrong?’ as ‘how can we agree on a notion of good:bad/right:wrong?’ It is this writer’s opinion that the lack of consensus on moral issues in western secular society derives from the decontextualisation of many fields of knowledge, such as scientific and economic thought. By disembedding such knowledge, reducing it to that which can be tested empirically, modelled and predicted, we have inadvertently narrowed our realm of understanding and meaning. Economics, for instance, gives objects, experience and beings a specious commensurability:
The application of a common monetary metric to dissimilar things reduces their qualitative distinctiveness to the status of mere qualitative difference. The most appropriate answer to questions of the type “What is the difference between a forest and a parking lot?” becomes so many dollars per acre (Rappaport, R. 1979. Ecology, Meaning and Religion. Richmond, C. A.: North Atlantic Books. pp. 130).
Of great importance to the sustainability of human societies is ‘higher-order meaning’[1] - not of distinctions but of similarities underlying distinctions, as in metaphor, symbol, aesthetics and so on. It has been argued by Gregory Bateson among others that such levels of meaning compensate for the inability of the linear, problem-solving nature of human consciousness to comprehend the circular connectedness of living systems. In other words, aesthetics, ritual and so on can make people aware of the holisticity of existence by alluding to underlying unity. A common understanding of this could do much to dampen the pathological insecurity of modern moralists.
What does this mean for the future of ethics? Given the failure of conscious reason alone to construct solid moral foundations for secular society (as described above), it seems much could be gained from re-embedding ethical knowledge. Through a more holistic conception of the nature of living systems - their circularity and interconnectedness – we would likely be better qualified to answer questions relating to the way in which individuals should act in the world. This is a less a matter of building water-tight moral systems as it is of gaining some perspective on, and reverence for, the systems of which we are a part. It should be of little surprise that all cultures and creeds who have managed their societies and environments sustainably have exhibited a heightened awareness of their part in a great network of life, coupled with respect for each node and interconnection. The future course of ethics, if it is to be anything other than deleterious, depends on realigning it with the spiritual and, in so doing, restoring meaning to the natural world.
[1] This term was coined by the anthropologist Roy Rappaport (1979) in his book Ecology, Meaning and Religion. Richmond, C. A.: North Atlantic Books.