| Abstract |
Hume’s concept of sympathy is close, closer than A. Smith’s one, to the
use ethologist F. de Waal utilizes when he describes aspects of chimpanzee,
and other primates’, behaviour. However, sympathy by itself has no other
implication than broadening our scope of morality. Morality’s purpose, which
according to Hume is “to teach us our duty” (Enquiry Concerning the
Principles of Morals, section 1) brings forth, as duty has connotations of
objectivity and sympathy cannot lead to the objective, the hypothetical nature
of a moral judgement: one acquires by sympathy the pleasure or uneasiness
they imagine people would feel by contemplating a character’s trait, were this
trait to manifest itself under usual circumstances.
This leads to the first objection to Ruse’s Darwinian ethics. There is no
guarantee that the biological approach will provide anything more than a
partial explanation of morality, since Hume himself appeals to the
imagination for the genesis of a moral sentiment. I read Hume as a proponent
of virtue as appropriateness, which requires the imagination’s creative
powers because “[taste, as opposed to reason]… is a productive faculty”
(Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, appendix 1). The
aforementioned involve an interpretation of him as a believer in the existence
of values, incorporated into morality by the imagination, as the latter is
coloured by its bearer’s character. Taste makes use of knowledge and
experience to create, collaborates with reason, the word used in a sense
different from Hume’s. This is an argument for plasticity explained by appeal
to Biology, rather than determinism, in line with our common perceptions of
ourselves.
[7]
In the previous paragraph the reasons can also be found why a)
Darwinian morality (in A. Rosenberg’s terminology) cannot be effectively
pursued from a naturalistic point of view, namely sympathy’s limited abilities
to arouse an impartial judgement, and b) Darwinian metaethics face the
difficult task of developing a theory for justification, namely, in recreated 18th
century terms, the cultivation of taste.
Ruse’s concept of objectivity, adopted from J. L. Mackie, is so narrow
that it is no longer functional. It can be summarized as ‘plain out-thereness’. It
implies that the scientific method has the desirable degree of objectivity. One
suspects that, if the last were true, a series of skeptical arguments would occur
as a result, annihilating most, if not all, things to non-identifiable somethings.
Even if Mackie and Ruse’s skepticism about values is well founded and
ultimate ethical justifications are to be abandoned in favour of evolutionary
explanations what difference would it make in daily situations? Hume’s own
answer, in accord with his causality analysis, is none (Enquiry Concerning
Human Understanding, section 12). Reasons still need to be provided, even
though from a strict fact-searching point of view, they would be an illusion.
This is because of intentionality of the highest (known) level, as automata one
might argue we are, we remain unpredictable ones, because of our brain
capacities. The explaining away of justification is sterile. While this theory
may have the grace of simplicity and the merit of avoiding some hasty
conclusions of related past attempts, its own success is its very limit.
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