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Evolutionary ethics could be either a form of descriptive ethics

Descriptive ethics

Descriptive ethics, also known as comparative ethics, is the study of people's beliefs about morality. It contrasts with prescriptive or normative ethics, which is the study of ethical theories that prescribe how people ought to act, and with meta-ethics, which is the study of what ethical terms...

or normative ethics

Normative ethics

Normative ethics is the study of ethical action. It is the branch of philosophical ethics that investigates the set of questions that arise when considering how one ought to act, morally speaking...

.

Descriptive evolutionary ethics consists of biological approaches to ethics

Ethics

Ethics, also known as moral philosophy, is a branch of philosophy that addresses questions about morality—that is, concepts such as good and evil, right and wrong, virtue and vice, justice and crime, etc.Major branches of ethics include:...

(morality

Morality

Morality is the differentiation among intentions, decisions, and actions between those that are good and bad . A moral code is a system of morality and a moral is any one practice or teaching within a moral code...

) based on the role of evolution

Evolution

Evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...

in shaping human psychology

Psychology

Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...

and behavior. Such approaches may be based in scientific fields such as evolutionary psychology

Evolutionary psychology

Evolutionary psychology is an approach in the social and natural sciences that examines psychological traits such as memory, perception, and language from a modern evolutionary perspective. It seeks to identify which human psychological traits are evolved adaptations, that is, the functional...

, sociobiology

Sociobiology

Sociobiology is a field of scientific study which is based on the assumption that social behavior has resulted from evolution and attempts to explain and examine social behavior within that context. Often considered a branch of biology and sociology, it also draws from ethology, anthropology,...

, or ethology

Ethology

Ethology is the scientific study of animal behavior, and a sub-topic of zoology....

with a focus on understanding and explaining observed ethical preferences or choices and their origins.

On the other hand, normative evolutionary ethics may represent a more independent attempt to use evolution, alone or partially, to justify an ethical system. This project has not, according to one view, been especially successful; for example, Richard Dawkins

Richard Dawkins

Clinton Richard Dawkins, FRS, FRSL , known as Richard Dawkins, is a British ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author...

describes how we must rise above our selfish genes

The Selfish Gene

The Selfish Gene is a book on evolution by Richard Dawkins, published in 1976. It builds upon the principal theory of George C. Williams's first book Adaptation and Natural Selection. Dawkins coined the term "selfish gene" as a way of expressing the gene-centred view of evolution as opposed to the...

to behave morally (that is, evolution has endowed us with various instincts, but we need some other moral system to decide which ones to empower or control). Dawkins has since expressed interest in what Sam Harris

Sam Harris (author)

Sam Harris is an American author, and neuroscientist, as well as the co-founder and current CEO of Project Reason. He received a Bachelor of Arts in philosophy from Stanford University, before receiving a Ph.D. in neuroscience from UCLA...

calls a science of morality

Science of morality

Science of morality can refer to a number of ethically naturalistic views. Historically, the term was introduced by Jeremy Bentham . In meta-ethics, ethical naturalism bases morality on rational and empirical consideration of the natural world...

, which starts with the assumption that "morality" refers to "facts about the flourishing of conscious creatures".

History

In the chapter On the Development of the Intellectual and Moral Faculties During Primeval and Civilised Times of The descent of man (1871) Charles Darwin

Charles Darwin

Charles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...

set out to explain the origin of human morality in order to show that there was no absolute gap between man and animals. For Darwin, morality was a problem of natural history. He believed that a moral sense (altruism

Altruism

Altruism is a concern for the welfare of others. It is a traditional virtue in many cultures, and a core aspect of various religious traditions, though the concept of 'others' toward whom concern should be directed can vary among cultures and religions. Altruism is the opposite of...

) would have little selective advantage for the individual, but it would be adaptive for the group. He did not construct a new system of Evolutionary Ethics.

David Hume

David Hume

David Hume was a Scottish philosopher, historian, economist, and essayist, known especially for his philosophical empiricism and skepticism. He was one of the most important figures in the history of Western philosophy and the Scottish Enlightenment...

first described what is now known as the is-ought problem

Is-ought problem

The is–ought problem in meta-ethics as articulated by Scottish philosopher and historian, David Hume , is that many writers make claims about what ought to be on the basis of statements about what is...

: making unjustified claims about what ought to be on the basis of statements about what is. The problem is the justification of an ethical system. The problem is not what we ought to do, but why. Thomas Huxley

Thomas Huxley

Thomas Henry Huxley PC FRS was an English biologist, known as "Darwin's Bulldog" for his advocacy of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution....

allows that ethical sentiments have evolved but denies that this provides a basis for morality (Evolution and Ethics,1893):

The propounders of what are called the "ethics of evolution," when the "evolution of ethics" would usually better express the object of their speculations, adduce a number of more or less interesting facts and more or less sound arguments, in favour of the origin of the moral sentiments, in the same way as other natural phenomena, by a process of evolution. I have little doubt, for my part, that they are on the right track; but as the immoral sentiments have no less been evolved, there is, so far, as much natural sanction for the one as the other. The thief and the murderer follow nature just as much as the philanthropist. Cosmic evolution may teach us how the good and the evil tendencies of man may have come about; but, in itself, it is incompetent to furnish any better reason why what we call good is preferable to what we call evil than we had before.

Huxley's criticism alluded to the is-ought problem

Is-ought problem

developed earlier by David Hume

David Hume

and the related naturalistic fallacy

Naturalistic fallacy

The naturalistic fallacy is often claimed to be a formal fallacy. It was described and named by British philosopher G. E. Moore in his 1903 book Principia Ethica...

developed later by G. E. Moore. The moral philosopher Henry Sidgwick

Henry Sidgwick

Henry Sidgwick was an English utilitarian philosopher and economist. He was one of the founders and first president of the Society for Psychical Research, a member of the Metaphysical Society, and promoted the higher education of women...

(1838–1900) claimed that evolution was irrelevant for ethics because it could not be used as a justification for ethics. British philosopher G. E. Moore (Principia Ethica) demonstrated that all systems of naturalistic ethics, including evolutionary ethics, are flawed. He first pointed out that even if evolution is progress, it cannot be concluded that the more advanced organisms are more advanced in every respect. So, it is impossible to infer particular moral judgements from that fact. Furthermore, the view that "we ought to move in the direction of evolution simply because it is the direction of evolution" was invalid because it was an example of the naturalistic fallacy, that is the fallacy of defining 'the good' by reference to some other thing.

American philosopher William James

William James

William James was a pioneering American psychologist and philosopher who was trained as a physician. He wrote influential books on the young science of psychology, educational psychology, psychology of religious experience and mysticism, and on the philosophy of pragmatism...

wrote about natural selection: "The entire modern deification of survival per se, survival returning into itself, survival naked and abstract, with the denial of any substantive excellence in what survives, except for more survival still, is surely the strangest intellectual stopping-place ever proposed by one man to another. John Dewey

John Dewey

John Dewey was an American philosopher, psychologist and educational reformer whose ideas have been influential in education and social reform. Dewey was an important early developer of the philosophy of pragmatism and one of the founders of functional psychology...

was also a critic of evolutionary ethics, although both philosophers accepted the fact of evolution. Dewey added that the discovery of the evolutionary origin of particular moral sentiments is not identical with the discovery of the foundation of an ethical system .

Evolutionary biologist and geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky

Theodosius Dobzhansky

Theodosius Grygorovych Dobzhansky ForMemRS was a prominent geneticist and evolutionary biologist, and a central figure in the field of evolutionary biology for his work in shaping the unifying modern evolutionary synthesis...

was highly critical of evolutionary ethics: "No theory of evolutionary ethics can be acceptable unless it gives a satisfactory explanation of just why the promotion of evolutionary development must be regarded as the summum bonum

Summum bonum

Summum bonum is an expression used in philosophy, particularly in medieval philosophy and in the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, to describe the ultimate importance, the singular and most ultimate end which human beings ought to pursue. The summum bonum is generally thought of as being an end in...

" and "even if the direction of evolution were demonstrated to be "good", man is likely to prefer to be free rather than to be reasonable".

Analytic philosophy

Logical positivist philosopher A. J. Ayer stated in Language, Truth and Logic (1936) that moral judgements are pure expressions of feeling. They are unverifiable and cannot be true or false. In 1986, Michael Ruse

Michael Ruse

Michael Ruse is a philosopher of biology at Florida State University, and is well known for his work on the creationism/evolution controversy and the demarcation problem in science...

summarized the role of evolution as the source of ethical feelings:

Our moral sense, our altruistic nature, is an adaptation—a feature helping us in the struggle for existence and reproduction—no less than hands and eyes, teeth and feet. It is a cost-effective way of getting us to cooperate, which avoids both the pitfalls of blind action and the expense of a superbrain of pure rationality.

In applying science to metaethics, Ruse writes:

In a sense … the evolutionist's case is that ethics is a collective illusion of the human race, fashioned and maintained by natural selection in order to promote individual reproduction. … ethics is illusory inasmuch as it persuades us that it has an objective reference. This is the crux of the biological position.

Descriptive evolutionary ethics

Descriptive evolutionary ethics is empirical research into moral attitudes and beliefs (humans) or moral behaviour (animals) in an evolutionary framework. Examples can be found in the field of evolutionary psychology

Evolutionary psychology

. Evolutionary psychology attempts to explain major features of psychology in terms of species-wide evolved (via natural selection

Natural selection

Natural selection is the nonrandom process by which biologic traits become either more or less common in a population as a function of differential reproduction of their bearers. It is a key mechanism of evolution....

) predispositions. Ethical topics addressed include altruistic behaviors, deceptive or harmful behaviors, an innate sense of fairness or unfairness, feelings of kindness or love, self-sacrifice, feelings related to competitiveness and moral punishment or retribution

Retributive justice

Retributive justice is a theory of justice that considers that punishment, if proportionate, is a morally acceptable response to crime, with an eye to the satisfaction and psychological benefits it can bestow to the aggrieved party, its intimates and society....

, moral "cheating" or hypocrisy

Hypocrisy

Hypocrisy is the state of pretending to have virtues, moral or religious beliefs, principles, etc., that one does not actually have. Hypocrisy involves the deception of others and is thus a kind of lie....

, and inclinations for a wide variety of actions judged morally good or bad by (at least some within) a given society.

A key issue of evolutionary psychology has been how altruistic feelings and behaviors could have evolved when the process of natural selection is based on the multiplication over time only of those genes that adapt better to changes in the environment of the species. Theories addressing this have included kin selection

Kin selection

Kin selection refers to apparent strategies in evolution that favor the reproductive success of an organism's relatives, even at a cost to the organism's own survival and reproduction. Charles Darwin was the first to discuss the concept of group/kin selection...

and reciprocal altruism

Reciprocal altruism

In evolutionary biology, reciprocal altruism is a behaviour whereby an organism acts in a manner that temporarily reduces its fitness while increasing another organism's fitness, with the expectation that the other organism will act in a similar manner at a later time...

(both direct and indirect, and on a society-wide scale). Group selection

Group selection

In evolutionary biology, group selection refers to the idea that alleles can become fixed or spread in a population because of the benefits they bestow on groups, regardless of the alleles' effect on the fitness of individuals within that group....

theories have also been advanced.

Normative evolutionary ethics

Normative evolutionary ethics aims at defining which acts are right or wrong, and which things are good or bad in an evolutionary context. It is not merely describing, but it is prescribing goals, values and obligations. For example eugenics

Eugenics

Eugenics is the "applied science or the bio-social movement which advocates the use of practices aimed at improving the genetic composition of a population", usually referring to human populations. The origins of the concept of eugenics began with certain interpretations of Mendelian inheritance,...

is a form of normative evolutionary ethics, because it defines what is "good" on the basis of genetics and the theory of evolution. Social Darwinism

Social Darwinism

Social Darwinism is a term commonly used for theories of society that emerged in England and the United States in the 1870s, seeking to apply the principles of Darwinian evolution to sociology and politics...

is a more wide ranging topic. However, to the extent it promotes ethical values and policies based on the theory of evolution, it can also be classified as a normative evolutionary ethics. According to philosopher G. E. Moore (see above) all systems of naturalistic ethics, including normative evolutionary ethics, do commit the naturalistic fallacy. The naturalistic fallacy does not apply to descriptive evolutionary ethics because no ethical statements are inferred from facts. Also, the naturalistic fallacy does not apply to weaker forms of normative evolutionary ethics, namely those which are consistent with evolution, but not derivable from evolution.

Criticisms

P. G. Woolcock argues that all normative evolutionary ethics are invalid. For example the argument

1. The human species can survive only if we let severely physically and mentally handicapped infants and children die.

2. Therefore: we ought to let severely physically and mentally handicapped infants die.

is a fallacy because the first statement is a purely descriptive premise containing no values, and a value pops up in the conclusion. It is the famous naturalistic fallacy (G. E. Moore). Additionally, the first premise is almost certainly false. We could make the argument valid by adding a second premise, namely:

1b We ought to do whatever is necessary to ensure the survival of the human species

but then we would no longer be deducing a value conclusion from a purely factual premise, because 1b has a value component. This can also be explained in this way: if the definition of "good" is "whatever furthers human survival", then it should be nonsensical to ask "Is human survival itself good?", but it seems a perfectly meaningful question. This is Moore's open-question argument.

Another fallacy according to Woolcock is the confusion between an instrumental and a categorical justification. Consider the argument "We ought to be altruistic because evolution has selected altruism over millions of years as a reliable guide to what is good". Evolutionary theory, however, tell us only that altruism is good for the survival of our species, not that the survival of the human species is good. A categorical justification would justify people's actions regardless of what their goals are.

The future

Given the current state of knowledge, Huxley's statement with regards to "why what we call good is preferable to what we call evil" is still accurate with regards to individual human tastes and predispositions. Yet research in the fields of evolutionary psychology and primatology is beginning to reveal, in the general case, what is good and bad for our species in order for it to thrive and, in turn, more likely be happy. Evolutionary psychology's primary focus is to derive, especially through the deep analysis of hunter-gatherer culture and primate models, what is the most accurate description of general human predispositions (i.e. our innate "hard-wiring"). And as this understanding grows, it will become more and more feasible to redesign culture itself to be more "user friendly" to its human members. After all, in the ultimate sense, culture (like a computer) is a tool to serve its users. Noted primatologist Frans De Waal

Frans de Waal

Fransiscus Bernardus Maria de Waal, PhD , is a Dutch primatologist and ethologist. He is the Charles Howard Candler professor of Primate Behavior in the Emory University psychology department in Atlanta, Georgia, and director of the Living Links Center at the Yerkes National Primate Research...

asserts, "In the words of Edward Wilson, biology holds us "on a leash" and will let us stray only so far from who we are. We can design our life any way we want, but whether we will thrive depends on how well the life fits human predispositions" Thus, the goals of evolutionary psychology overlap with the science of morality