Subject: 
        RE: [evol-psych] Evolutionary psychology, dualism and ethics
   Date: 
        Thu, 14 Feb 2002 10:25:44 -0500
   From: 
        "Tom Clark" 
     To: 
        




Hilary Fisher wrote:
 
My understanding of the naturalistic fallacy is that it is generally invoked
to warn of the danger of deriving "ought" statements from "is" statements:
Just because it happens in nature doesn't mean it's a good thing.

Some of the current disagreement on this issue seems to arise from the
converse of this.

Evolutionary psychology, as a science, investigates what "is". The confusion
seems to arise because what humans consider to be an "ought" is also an
"is", one which is particularly relevant to evolutionary psychology. In
other words, our normative feelings (rational or emotional) are something
worthy of an attempt at explaining either as the product of biological or
cultural evolution.
_________________________________
 
Clearly normativity is natural, in the sense that norms are based in human biological needs and
dispositions.  However, in evaluating the rightness of these norms, we can only use as criteria some
subset of these very same norms - there isn�t a value-free Archimedean point outside them from which we
can determine which norms we ought to subscribe to.  But further, just because a norm happens to be the
case at the moment, doesn�t mean it should be the case.  In a self-reflective culture such as ours, the
�should� attached to a norm doesn�t derive from its existence, but only issues from the process of explicit
evaluation.  In this way, shoulds or oughts, even though ultimately arising from what is, aren�t a simple
�reading off� of what is (to do that is the naturalistic fallacy), but are what�s left after the evaluative
process.  The fact that the evaluative process inevitably makes use of some pre-existing norms deeply
rooted in human nature bridges the sharp duality often supposed to exist between is and ought.  But that
there is such a process insulates norms from, and deprives them of, the all too facile justificatory claim
that since something it is, it should be.
 
 
Tom Clark
www.naturalism.org 
 
Thomas W. Clark
Research Associate
Health and Addictions Research, Inc.
100 Boylston St.  Suite 300
Boston, MA 02116
617-266-9219 x110
617-266-9271 (fax)
[email protected]
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