Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- I Action, freedom, responsibility
- II Philosophy, evolution, and the human sciences
- 7 Making sense of humanity
- 8 Evolutionary theory and epistemology
- 9 Evolution, ethics, and the representation problem
- 10 Formal structures and social reality
- 11 Formal and substantial individualism
- 12 Saint-Just's illusion
- III Ethics
- Index
9 - Evolution, ethics, and the representation problem
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 January 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- I Action, freedom, responsibility
- II Philosophy, evolution, and the human sciences
- 7 Making sense of humanity
- 8 Evolutionary theory and epistemology
- 9 Evolution, ethics, and the representation problem
- 10 Formal structures and social reality
- 11 Formal and substantial individualism
- 12 Saint-Just's illusion
- III Ethics
- Index
Summary
This chapter is concerned with culture and with evolution, but not with cultural evolution. It discusses the relations between biological evolution and the areas of human culture which may broadly be called ‘ethical’. The concept of cultural evolution is problematical, and there are notorious difficulties about applying the notions of evolution and natural selection to cultural development. That area, however, is not the concern of the present discussion.
There are two kinds of connection between evolutionary theory and ethics: one normative, and one explanatory. There is also a connection between these two, to which I shall come later. The first of these is older than the second, and has acquired a bad name; indeed, it acquired it fairly early, in some part from the monumental and unappealing system of Herbert Spencer. In fact, as John Burrow has shown (Evolution and Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966)) a lot of this material antedated The Origin of Species; the concept of ‘the survival of the fittest’ (Spencer's own phrase) was already implicit in earlier sociological work which Spencer derived from Malthus. Darwin himself had little sympathy for these ideas and not much, personally, for Spencer, though he did once say – I quote Burrow (p. 182) – ‘in a moment of enthusiasm … that Spencer's Principles of Biology made him feel that he “is about a dozen times my superior”, and thought that Spencer might one day be regarded as the equal of Descartes and Leibniz, rather spoiling the effect by adding, “about whom, however, I know very little”’.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Making Sense of HumanityAnd Other Philosophical Papers 1982–1993, pp. 100 - 110Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1995
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