Introduction

In The Ethical Project the distinguished philosopher and historian of science Philip Kitcher attempts an ambitious project: to bring together post-Darwinian fatalism about the self with human reason’s not unreasonable desire to keep itself at the centre of our species-story. The first – rooted in the idea that we are what our genes tell us to be; nothing less and certainly nothing more – has ridden off the back of recent neurological breakthroughs to grab the attention of mass audiences (via Pinker, Dennett et al.) with its seductive tale of hard-wired brains predisposing each of us to this or that, practically pre-determining (albeit in a general sense) what we do. The latter, though, having human vanity and centuries of learning on its side, is not proving that easy to dislodge: Kant, Hegel and the rest of us are not just the products of lumps of interconnections behind our foreheads. Doing right, behaving properly, leading a good life are qualities we get to, not the side-effects of genetic composition. Reasoning matters in a way that is different from wanting food or not wanting to be cold or needing sex, or even cleverly using our thumbs. Sociologists are not slow to join in the critique as well, seeing in the Darwinian perspective a challenge to the assumptions upon which their specialism may seem to depend.

Kitcher says about reason, society and our genes words more or less to the following effect, ‘Hey relax, we can have all of this.’ And – this is the Houdini trick – you don’t have to turn all those ‘is’ things you find in nature into a bunch of ‘oughts’ simply because they are part of our evolutionary story, helping us to get our genes through another generation. What we ought to do is part of what we are but not all of what we are is what we ought to do; ‘[t]here is . . . no such thing as the naturalistic fallacy’. There have been other Houdinis of course; as Oliver Curry demonstrates in his excellent discussion of the topic, the father of is/ought scepticism is David Hume, for whom the passions were a guide to conduct with this term including moral passions.