Subject: 
            Re: [evol-psych] ought and is in relation to function
       Date: 
            Wed, 20 Feb 2002 00:15:53 -0000
      From: 
            "Jeremy Bowman" 
        To: 
            "Hill, David" 
        CC: 
            "Evolutionary Psychology" 
 References: 
            1




Perhaps the clearest way of explaining what is meant by an "ought" is by reference to simple activities
that have goals or ends (as David Hill observed), and perhaps the simplest activities of this sort are
games.

Most games have an "object" -- such as "getting the highest score" or "cornering the other player�s
king". The players� behaviour can be described (explained, predicted etc. -- to some extent anyway)
by reference to the "object" of the game. Crucially, this "teleological" sort of description (explanation,
prediction, etc.) involves "oughts", for the simple reason that it involves ends. A player ought to make
this or that move because it helps to achieve the object of the game. If he fails to make the move in
question, then he might be enjoined to make it -- even if he doesn�t in fact make it. "Oughts" enter the
picture because they express these injunctions (or prescriptions, or obligations, or duties, or
recommendations, or pleadings, or askings, or desires, whatever we choose to call them).

There is an intuitively obvious logical "gap" between a simple description of an actual move and an
injunction to make a potential (and possibly non-actual) move with an eye to the object of the game.
This is the logical "gap" that Hume was complaining about.

It is clear -- isn�t it? -- that much more is going on "behind the scenes" with the latter than the former.
At the very least, an injunction to make a move is relative to the object of the game, whereas a
description of the current "state of play" isn�t.

So David Hill is quite right to insist that there is an intimate connection between design and "oughts".
Wherever there is design, things are designed for a purpose, and so there are ends, and therefore
inevitably "oughts" as well.

But David Hill�s "derivation of ought from is" is no such thing. It is (at best) the derivation of an explicit
"ought" from an implicit "ought". Anyone can do that, because "oughts" are often disguised as "is�s".
Even I can do it: "X is murder, therefore one ought not to do X". Here, the word �murder� applies only
to morally reprehensible acts of killing, i.e. to acts one ought to avoid.

It seems to me that the "is/ought" question really has two separate parts: (1) Does nature exhibit design
(and therefore ends, and therefore "oughts")? and (2) If it does, are the "oughts" that inevitably follow
anything like moral "oughts"?

I would say that the answer to both questions is No.

1. Does nature exhibit design? -- We routinely talk as if many of the things found in nature were
designed or had a specific purpose. But the great breakthrough of evolutionary theory was to make it
possible to avoid all talk of design, purposes, ends, goals, etc. All references to design (purpose, etc.)
in evolutionary theory are merely apparent -- and all can be replaced with a purely causal story of
how things came to be as they are. A wholly design-free account is bound to be longer and more
detailed, because references to "purpose" or design in evolutionary explanations are in fact a
superficial, shorthand way of capturing the relevant details of the purely causal story.

For example, we might ask about the "purpose" of eyebrows. What are they "for"? Answer: the
eyebrows are "for" keeping liquid (rain, sweat) from flowing down the forehead into the eyes. At first,
it may look as if we have given a teleological rather than a causal account of eyebrows. But we
haven�t. The fuller evolutionary explanation is that we inherited thicker eyebrows from our ancestors --
the ones with the thinner eyebrows tended to die out before reproducing because sweat or rain got
into their eyes. "Because" -- i.e. as a historical result of sweat/rain getting in their eyes, not with the
purpose of keeping sweat/rain out of our eyes.

One might say that the "function" of eyebrows is to keep rain/sweat out of the eyes. But the word
�function� equivocates between "purpose" and what I have just described in wholly causal terms. Let
no one confuse them!

2. Are the "oughts" of merely apparent design in nature anything like moral "oughts"? -- "Social
Darwinists" might answer Yes, but anyone who disapproves of cruelty or needless suffering, or who
thinks "might is not always right" (such as Darwin) would surely answer No. In other words, even if we
allowed ourselves to be duped by everyday idioms into thinking that nature gives us a set of "oughts",
they would not be the "oughts" of a defensible morality.

It is possible to watch a game of chess and infer (in a way that Hume would not have disapproved of)
what the object of the game is and hence what players ought to do, given that they are players of that
game. And similarly, it is also possible to watch nature and infer (in a way that Hume would not have
disapproved of) what the object of "nature�s game" might be. (Dawkins would probably say something
like, "to get one�s genes into future generations in large numbers"). This may involve kindness to related
non-strangers, but it involves disregard for unrelated strangers, and cruelty to other animals.

Jeremy Bowman