{"id":2989,"date":"2012-04-15T14:21:36","date_gmt":"2012-04-15T19:21:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/?p=2989"},"modified":"2012-04-15T14:22:45","modified_gmt":"2012-04-15T19:22:45","slug":"more-on-e-o-wilsons-the-social-conquest-of-earth-let-the-kerfluffles-begin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/2012\/04\/15\/morality\/more-on-e-o-wilsons-the-social-conquest-of-earth-let-the-kerfluffles-begin\/","title":{"rendered":"More on E. O. Wilson’s “The Social Conquest of Earth”: Let the Kerfluffles Begin!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Group selection isn’t the only hornet’s nest E. O. Wilson poked a stick into in his latest book. The interstellar travel fans at the Tau Zero Foundation<\/a> are bound to take exception to this:<\/p>\n

The same cosmic myopia exists today a fortiori in the dreams of colonizing other star systems. It is an expecially dangerous delusion if we see emigration into space as a solution to be taken when we have used up this planet.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

and,<\/p>\n

Another principle that I believe can be justified by scientific evidence so far is that nobody is going to emigrate from this planet, not ever.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In my humble opinion, Wilson is\u00a0wrong about interstellar travel.\u00a0 I hereby predict that\u00a0we will colonize planets in other star systems.\u00a0 Our survival depends on it, and our species has a strong inclination to survive.\u00a0 I suspect his opinion is motivated less by a sober assessment of the technological possibility of interstellar travel than by ideological concerns about the environment.\u00a0 For example,<\/p>\n

Surely one moral precept we can agree on is to stop destroying our birthplace, the only home humanity will ever have.\u00a0 The evidence for climate warming, with industrial pollution as the principle cause, is now overwhelming.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I suspect a certain rather irascible\u00a0Czech physicist<\/a> may take exception to that comment.\u00a0 In any case, while I\u00a0admit to having a personal preference that the planet not be destroyed, but I would certainly not presume to elevate such idiosyncratic whims to the level of a “moral precept.”\u00a0 Here, like so many other modern thinkers who should know better, Wilson is treating moral precepts as objective things.\u00a0 In this case, he is suggesting that not destroying the planet can be legitimized as a “good-in-itself” by virtue of everyone agreeing on it.\u00a0 Otherwise, his comment becomes pointless.\u00a0 He probably wouldn’t agree, because he writes elsewhere,<\/p>\n

There is a principle to be learned by studying the biological origins of moral reasoning… If such greater understanding amounts to the “moral relativism so fervently despised by the doctrinally righteous, so be it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I can certainly sympathize with Wilson’s aversion to the doctrinally righteous or, as I would call them, the pathologically pious.\u00a0 However, virtually in the same breath, he falls back into the same old fallacy, writing,<\/p>\n

It is that outside the clearest ethical precepts, such as the condemnation of slavery, child abuse, and genocide, which all will agree should be opposed everywhere without exception, there is a larger gray domain inherently difficult to navigate.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Here we have the familiar “50 billion flies can’t be wrong” justification of the legitimacy of moral precepts.\u00a0 Wilson’s comment begs the question of what qualitative difference exists between “clear ethical precepts,” and all the rest that lie in the gray area.\u00a0 If, as he asserts, the origins of moral reasoning are biological or, in a word, evolved, in what way is it at all reasonable to claim that condemnation of slavery, child abuse, and genocide can have an objective existence as ethical precepts at all?\u00a0 Presumably, the thought that there even was such a thing as “genocide” never occurred to those of our forebears among whom the “biological origins of moral reasoning” evolved.\u00a0 \u00a0Wilson’s implicit acceptance of an objective morality is evident elsewhere in the book.\u00a0 For example,<\/p>\n

For scientific as well as for moral reasons, we should learn to promote human biological diversity for its own sake insted of using it to justify prejudice and conflict.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

On what, exactly, are we to base the legitimacy of these “moral reasons”?\u00a0 In what sense was the “promotion of human biological diversity” relevant to the australopithecines?\u00a0 Wilson has some other comments on the origin of moral precepts that are bound to make the detractors of group selection see red, such as,<\/p>\n

An unavoidable and perpetual war exists between honor, virtue, and duty, the products of group selection, on one side, and selfishness, cowardice, and hypocrisy, the products of individual selection, on the other side.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

At the risk of committing l\u00e8se-majest\u00e9<\/em>, I must admit that I find such sweeping generalizations somewhat over the top.\u00a0 Turning to less controversial subjects, Wilson mentions the concept of a superorganism in several places, such as,<\/p>\n

The queen and her offspring are often called superorganisms…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This circumstance lends credence to the view that the colony can be viewed as an individual organism or, more precisely, an individual superorganism.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

and,<\/p>\n

In this sense, I have argued, the primitive colony is a superorganism.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It would have been nice if Wilson had mentioned the great South African, Eugene Marais<\/a>, who first proposed the idea of a superorganism in the context of his studies of termites, in the course of these discussions.\u00a0 Readers of today will find some remarkably modern insights in books such as The Soul of the White Ant<\/em> and The Soul of the Ape<\/em>.\u00a0 To say Marais was ahead of his time is an understatement.<\/p>\n

In any case, I hope all the controversy Wilson’s latest is bound to inspire won’t have the unfortunate effect of toppling him from his exalted state as the “father of evolutionary psychology.”\u00a0 The field has enough unpersons as it is.\u00a0 Regardless, some rewriting of textbooks will likely be in order.\u00a0 For example, in David Buss’ Evolutionary Psychology<\/em> he refers to the “bulk of the theoretical tools” in Wilson’s Sociobiology<\/em> as “inclusive fitness theory, parental investment theory, parent-offspring conflict theory, and reciprocal altuism theory.”\u00a0 Might it not, perhaps, be best, to avoid “confusing” young undergraduates,\u00a0to just let Wilson’s group selection faux pas<\/em> pass in silence?\u00a0 If not, and his head must indeed roll, I hereby nominate Charles Darwin as the new “father of\u00a0evolutionary psychology.”\u00a0 At least he will be a safe choice.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\tTweet<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Group selection isn’t the only hornet’s nest E. O. Wilson poked a stick into in his latest book. The interstellar travel fans at the Tau Zero Foundation are bound to take exception to this: The same cosmic myopia exists today a fortiori in the dreams of colonizing other star systems. It is an expecially dangerous … Continue reading “More on E. O. Wilson’s “The Social Conquest of Earth”: Let the Kerfluffles Begin!”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[101,110,48,105,82,6,109,28,77,5,45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2989","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anthropology","category-ethics","category-evolution","category-evolutionary-psychology-2","category-extraterrestrial-life","category-good-and-evil","category-group-selection","category-human-nature","category-interstellar-travel","category-morality","category-space-travel"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pwEq0-Md","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2989","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2989"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2989\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2995,"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2989\/revisions\/2995"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}