1 Sociological studies can explain why there is a given level of consensus on a given issue in the natural sciences without appealing to the truth of a doctrine. An empirical study of moral acculturation would also reveal to what extent there is moral agreement amongst humans and would explain its basis; the alleged truth of some moral judgment need play no role in explaining anyone's beliefs or behaviour. Gilbert Harman notes in this connection the absence of any genuine explanatory function for moral truth as opposed to moral belief; see Tile Nature of Morality (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), 7.

2 The imperative theory was defended by R. M. Hare over his fifty-year career but has fallen out of favour, though d. Harman, Nature of Morality, 63-4. A clever version of moral objectivism that interprets “ought” as indicating the’ existence of a kind of reason was defended by the late Jean Hampton. Hampton argued that “Human beings should not be cruel to animals” “ … gives us a metaphysically necessary reason not to be cruel to animals,” and that by virtue of knowing about this reason, a given instance of animal torture is correctly described as morally wrong. The Authority of Reason (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 47. To say that a reason as opposed to a proposition is metaphysically necessary is I think to say that it compels universally and overridingly. But Hampton failed to show that it is metaphysically necessary reasons themselves rather than (mere) belief in (nonexistent) metaphysically necessary reasons that induces people (wrongly) to think their moral judgments are factually true. On the view defended here, “Human beings should not be cruel to animals” is a pseudo-declarative corresponding to the command to human beings not to be cruel to animals.

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4 Compare the anti-utopian programmes of Williams, Bernard in Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (London: Fontana, 1985)Google Scholar, repr. 1999, and Nagel, ThomasEquality and Partiality (London: Oxford University Press, 1991)Google Scholar with the comparative rigorism of Unger, PeterLiving High and Letting Die (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar or Kagan, ShellyThe Limits of Morality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989).Google Scholar

5 Harman, Nature of Morality, 7ff.

6 Hume, DavidA Treatise of Human Nature, ed. Selby-Bigge, L.A. 2d ed. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1978), II:III: VII, 535 ffGoogle Scholar.

7 Hume, Treatise, II:III:II, 500.Google Scholar

8 Smuts, BarbaraSex and Friendship in Baboons (New York: Aldine, 1985), 61ffGoogle Scholar. Smut's research shows that these animals choose their friends much as human adolescents do. On the possible advantages of such friendships, see 251ff.

9 Koehler, WolfgangThe Mentality of Apes (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1925), 321–2Google Scholar. Koehler observed that “[If] one is on friendly and familiar terms with an ape who has been injured - say by a bite - one can easily induce the creature to extend the injured limb or surface for inspection, by making the expressive sounds which indicate sorrow and regret, both among us and among the chimpanzees.“

10 Cheney, Dorothy and Seyfarth, RichardHow Monkeys See the World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 235ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 Rheingold, H.L. and Hay, D.F. “Prosocial Behaviour of the Very Young,” in Morality as a Biological Phenomenon, ed. Stent, Gunther (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1980), 93–108Google Scholar.

12 Rheingold, and Hay, “Prosocial Behaviour,” 97–8Google Scholar.

13 Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, 186 fGoogle Scholar.

14 Ruse, MichaelTaking Darwin Seriously (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986) 212Google Scholar. Ruse defends his views in subsequent articles, including “Evolutionary Ethics: Healthy Prospect or Last Infirmity?” in Philosophy and Biology, ed. Matthen, Mohan and Linsky, Bernard (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 1988), 27–74Google Scholar.

15 At least there are people (reputedly the Etoro of Papua-New Guinea) who consider sexual intercourse with boys as young as ten to be a good thing and so presumably morally acceptable, since it is considered to preserve male powers by restricting the circulation of valuable and nutritious semen to men. (Thanks to my colleague John Russell for bringing this to my attention.) The practice may have some hidden fitness-increasing population-control rationale, but it is not dignified by the beliefs concerning human excellence surrounding it. It involves the use of underage subjects who have little choice in the matter, and probably helps to consolidate the men's power over the women of the tribe too.

16 Hume, An Inquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, 2d ed., ed. Selby-Bigge, L.A. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1902), V. II, 226Google Scholar.

17 Wrangham, Richard and Petersen, Dale describe high levels of interspecies injury and killing amongst some populations of chimpanzees, a species to which we are closely related. Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence (London: Bloomsbury, 1996)Google Scholar. Infanticide, Hrdy, Sarah Blaffer concludes is a widespread and well-established reproductive strategy of primate males. The Woman That Never Evolved (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981), 76ffGoogle Scholar.

18 Richards, Robert “A Defence of Evolutionary Ethics,” Biology and Philosophy 1 (1986): 286Google Scholar.

19 Smith, John MaynardEvolution and the Theory of Games (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 14CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20 Extreme shyness in a male, for example, might be thought a priori to reduce his breeding capacity. Let's pretend for the sake of the argument that there are “shy genes.” These have nevertheless remained in the human population for perhaps one hundred thousand years, so either the assumption that shyness interferes with breeding is wrong, or shyness confers compensating benefits, or it is inexorably linked with some trait that does.

21 Maynard, SmithEvolution and the Theory of Games, 171Google Scholar.

22 The classic work of this genre is Wundt, WilhelmEthics, 3 vols., tr. Washburn, Margaret FloyGulliver, Julia and Titchener, Edward (London: Swan and Sonnenschein, 1897-1908)Google Scholar. Gibbard, Alan however, notes our “broad [natural] propensity to accept norms, engage in normative discussion, and to act, believe, and feel in ways that are somewhat guided by the norms one has accepted.” Wise Choices, Apt Feelings: A Theory of Normative Judgement (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990), 27Google Scholar.

23 brooke, David Bray “The Representation of Rules in Logic and Their Definition,” in Social Rules, ed. Braybrooke, D. (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1996), 3–20Google Scholar.

24 Edgerton, Robert B.Rules, Exceptions and Social Order (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1985), 221ff.Google Scholar

25 This is one way of reading Williams's discussion of “Gauguin” in “Moral Luck,” reprinted in Moral Luck and Other Essays (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983). Gauguin has in his possession a powerful excusing condition from a prima facie matrimonial obligation; he is a talented, destined-to-be-great-in-the- future artist! (Or he has correctly guessed that he will acquire this excusing condition.) The critical discussion surrounding this famous essay indicates that altering the contextual information about a given “case” alters our assessment of whether something wrong was done or not.

26 Edgerton, Rules, Exceptions, and Social Order, 254.Google Scholar

27 Freud, Sigmund “Taboo and the Ambivalence of Emotion,” in Basic Writings, trans. and ed. Brill, A.A. (New York: Modern Library, 1931), 824Google Scholar. Scheffler, Samuel recapitulates Freud's theory of the development of the superego in Human Morality (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 80ffGoogle Scholar, noting that “psychoanalytic theory has the resources to offer serious explanations of the way in which moral concerns resonate through human personality,” and that it is in a better position than standard accounts to respond to Kant's challenge to naturalism” (83). Freud's may, however, be an unnecessarily specialized theory that overexplains the tendency to ritualism and ascetic motives in the human personality.

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29 Ruse, Taking Darwin Seriously, 236Google Scholar.

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32 Nietzsche, FriedrichThe Genealogy of Morals, trans. Kaufmann, Walter and Hollingdale, R.J. (New York: Random House, 1969), 34.Google Scholar

33 Kummer, Hans “Analogs of Morality Among Nonhuman Primates,” in Morality as a Biological Phenomenon, ed. Stent, Gunthe43–4.Google Scholar

34 Scorned by biologists since the Williams vs. Wynne-Edwards event, group-selection has risen from the ashes and is forcefully defended by Sober, Elliot and Wilson, David Sloan throughout the first half of Unto Others: The Evolution and Psychology of Unselfish Behavior (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998)Google Scholar.

35 Trivers, RobertSocial Evolution (Menlo Park: Benjamin Cummings, 1985), 388Google Scholar.

36 As Gehlen, Arnold argues, morality leads to a “stabilisation of the inner life” so that it is not ruled by affective impulses or subject to psychologically costly and inefficient reflection. Moral und Hypermoral, 2d ed. (Frankfurt and Bonn: Athenaeum, 1970), 97Google Scholar.

37 Dover, KennethGreek Popular Morality in the Time of Plato and Aristotle (Oxford: Blackwell, 1974), 181Google Scholar.

38 Herodotus, The Histories, trans. Waterfield, Robin (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 135Google Scholar. I am trying to allow for Herodotus's famously dim view of foreigners.

39 Douglas, Mary and Isherwood, BaronThe World of Goods (London: Allen Lane, 1979), 34Google Scholar.

40 Dover reports various ancient sayings to the effect that the wise man readily changes his mind in Greek Popular Morality, 122. The context makes it clear that these references are to the effect of rational deliberation, not endorsements of erratic behaviour. Williams is a typical antimodernist on this point.

41 Nussbaum, Martha for example, praises Henry James's Maggie Verver's use of her social intelligence and talent at prevarication as exemplifying a better morality than adherence to rigid rules and formulas in “Flawed Crystals: James's The Golden Bowl as Moral Philosophy,” in Love's Knowledge (London: Oxford University Press, 1990), 125–47Google Scholar. Human needs can overrule morality, and perhaps Maggie Verver’ s predicament is an example of where they might be thought unproblematically to do so, but Maggie need not be considered an example of a higher morality.

42 Hume, Inquiry,V, II, 228ff.Google Scholar

43 Kummer, “Analogs of Morality,” 43.Google Scholar

44 Goody, “Literacy and Moral Rationality,” in Morality as a Biological Phenomenon, ed. Stent, Gunther161.Google Scholar

45 Smuts observed in the case of baboons that ‘paternal” behaviour is not necessarily directed at a male animal's own offspring. Its function may be to gain favour with a mother and increase the likelihood of future mating opportunities. Sex and Friendship in Baboons, 181ff.; 250ff.

46 I use the term “hypermoral” with approximately the same meaning as Arnold Gehlen, Moral und Hypermoral, passim. Gehlen's useful analysis of hypermorality's evolution is however directed towards a questionable attack on the feminization of culture, decadent art, and other supposed ills of modernity. See 146 ff.

47 Ruse explains that he is not deducing ought from is, but rather” trying to derive morality from a factual theory, in the sense of explaining our moral awareness, by means of the theory.” Taking Darwin Seriously, 256. Richards tackles the old problem more directly and explains that he is deriving his “ought” from his “is” with the help of Alan Gewirth's notion of a rationally justifying context; see “A Defence of Evolutionary Ethics,” 286f.

48 This line of argument has been advanced by Wilson, E.O.On Human Nature (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978), 132Google ScholarPubMed ff and by Nagel, ThomasEquality and Partiality, 27 et passimGoogle Scholar.

49 Ruse, Taking Darwin Seriously, 236ff.Google Scholar

50 Richards, “A Defence of Evolutionary Ethics,” 285.Google Scholar

51 From one perspective, the mass murderer is not a full human being, insofar as he or she lacks the normal complement of empathy, inhibition, and sound judgment about consequences. The notion that this empirically “monstrous” creature is nevertheless a human being in an honorific sense is “metaphysical.” Moral thoughts often do seem to require metaphysical language for their expression (e.g., “spiritual brotherhood.“) Is this a vindication of Kantianisrn in ethics? Not quite: Kant never thinks of metaphysics as a belief-system that can be described by the anthropologist. It is in some objective way “higher” than all the descriptive sciences, and noumenal causality is even thought to have real workings in the empirical world.

52 Railton, Peter in “Moral Realism,” Philosophical Review 95 (1986): 163–207CrossRefGoogle Scholar, argues that the sheer pressure of reality over the long term has to mould institutions into forms better suited for human beings, thanks to the negative feedback people exert against forms of life unsuitable for them. This is an impressive idea, but it faces several unaddressed problems: 1) the operation of opposing and perhaps equal antimoral forces in the social world; 2) adaptive preferences; 3) trade-offs.

53 A sophisticated version of this position that allows for moral evolution is defended by Macintyre, AlasdairAfter Virtue, 2d ed. (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984)Google Scholar.

54 For example, unwed motherhood and drug addiction are considered major social problems. Many people appear to think that both are paradigms of immoral behaviour. Clearly, both unwed motherhood and drug addiction are deeply impractical in the modern world and incompatible with economic success. They also symbolize personal defilement and represent and may really entail a loss of personal control and autonomy. But they are only immoral, as opposed to undesirable for other reasons, if they involve advantage-taking of the weaker by the stronger. When it is felt that some social phenomenon is very bad, and that extreme measures are needed to change it or make it go away, it is important to sort out the respects in which it is impractical or violates a taboo from the respects in which it is morally objectionable.

55 It might be objected that the physician may have only these motives. Nevertheless, unbeknownst to her, her actions belong to the realm of social phenomena that are recognizably moral. The same is true of ambulance drivers, even if they regard their jobs much as bus drivers do. Driving a bus is, in my view, a somewhat moral activity (since it helps to compensate for the limited mobility of persons without cars or chauffeurs.) Bus transportation is part of the public sector, which has important advantage-reducing concerns, and this would be obvious to, say, a visitor from Mars, though it is less evident, for various reasons, to people inside the system. I ignore complications deriving from the objection that health-care and public transportation serve to maintain an enslaved class of low-paid workers at subsistence level, etc.