The Sociobiological Conceit by Gene Callahan

As the Darwinian paradigm gained ground throughout the life sciences in the century after the publication of The Origin of Species, some crucial topics remained beyond its explanatory scope. One especially vexing problem for Darwinians was the frequency of apparently altruistic behavior among living beings. In Darwin's theory of organic evolution, there is no room for the persistence of any behavior that does not promote the advancement of the genetic line of the organism exhibiting it. If, for example, dolphins often seem to act to rescue drowning humans by pushing them to shore, then there must be some way in which their behavior promotes the survival of the dolphins themselves. That dolphins might simply have sympathy for the plight of the humans is an impermissible hypothesis within Darwinism.

Human behavior, especially, was a puzzle. People join celibate religious orders, donate to charity, become martyrs, risk their lives in daring rescues of people they have never met, die for some cause in a bloody revolution, and so on. How could the primary Darwinian postulate, that all biological phenomena can be explained in terms of mutation and natural selection, be reconciled with such behavior?

Starting in the 1960s, Darwinists began to formulate solutions to the problem of altruism. The approach they generally adopted attempted to demonstrate that every apparent example of altruism was either self-serving in some way or was simply an isolated pathology. For example, sacrificing to defend one's homeland was interpreted as an adaptation that promoted the survival of one's offspring or close relatives, and therefore advanced the cause of one's genes, even if not one's own life.

However, there were still many examples of human behavior that could not easily be attributed to such factors, for example, Mother Teresa ministering to the poor of Calcutta, who were not genetically close to her. Darwinists sought for further explanations. Suggestions included the survival benefits of reciprocal "altruism" (scratch my back and I'll scratch yours), the possibility of enhanced sexual status through acts of bravery and sacrifice, and the manipulation of one creature's genuinely adaptive mechanism by another creature, in order to further the second creature's ends. Examples of the last case include things like warblers being "tricked" into raising the young of cowbirds (Schloss, p. 245).

A sociobiological consensus arose, which viewed any notion a person might have that he "really" was acting morally or altruistically as an illusion. Darwinists often came to see morality as simply a trick played on humans by natural selection. It was a way of duping humans into acting so as to promote the survival of their genes. For example, Edward Wilson, one of the founders of sociobiology, says "[m]orality has no other demonstrable function" than keeping "the human genetic material intact" (quoted by Schloss, p. 246). In a similar vein, Robert Wright contends, "What is in our genes' best interests seems 'right.' … Moral guidance is a euphemism" (quoted by Schloss, p. 248).

The first thing I wish to note about the sociobiological viewpoint is that if sociobiologists are sincere in their beliefs, then they are, by their own reckoning, enemies of human survival. If morality is indeed "a collective illusion of the human race, fashioned and maintained by natural selection in order to promote individual reproduction" (Ruse, quoted by Schloss, p. 248), then exposing that illusion could only be destructive to our species. Per the sociobiologists' own view, any belief that there are moral principles to which humans ought to adhere could only have become widespread because it conferred survival value to the genes of those who held it. Therefore, debunking such a belief must threaten human existence itself. If sociobiologists think they have discovered a fact that destructive, shouldn't they, for the sake of humanity, hide their discovery, rather than, at every chance they get, advertise it?

However, I do not think sociobiologists are really threatening the human race by forwarding their ideas, because their thinking is flawed in even more fundamental ways, so that, rather than exposing an illusion, they are actually spouting nonsense. First of all, if natural selection requires certain modes of behavior from humans, why should any sort of "illusion" be involved in eliciting that behavior? Why didn't humans simply evolve so that such modes of behavior were automatic for them? The idea that humans must experience "a collective illusion" in order to behave in genetically beneficial ways implies that there is some common feature of humanity, the very feature that necessitates the "morality illusion," that does not promote genetic survival. But, per Darwinian theory, how could such a common feature have survived?

However, the most decisive argument against this sort of theorizing is its self-contradictory nature. After all, if moral ideas are simply an "illusion" fostered on us by our genes then so are all of our other ideas – including the ideas of sociobiology!

Therefore, rather than putting forward their theories as something "true," as the way things really are once we see through our silly moral illusions, sociobiologists would have to admit that their own theories are simply a product of their genes. Far from being a "scientific" reality derived from looking at "evidence," sociobiological theories must be some sort of "display," much like the male peacock opening its tail. Sociobiological theories must increase the reproductive success of sociobiologists – perhaps their brand of "hard-nosed realism" goes over well with young academics at cocktail parties, or something of the sort.

Michael Oakeshott has called ideas like the "sociobiological explanation" of morality "categorically absurd" (p. 38). As he points out:

"When a geneticist tells us that 'all social behaviour and historical events are the inescapable consequences of the genetic individuality of the persons concerned' we have no difficulty in recognizing this theorem as a brilliant illumination of the writings of Aristotle, the fall of Constantinople, the deliberation in the House of Commons on Home Rule for Ireland and the death of Barbarossa; but this brilliance is, perhaps, somewhat dimmed when it becomes clear that he can have nothing more revealing to say about his science of genetics than that it also is all done by genes, and that this theorem is itself his genes speaking" (p. 15).

January 17, 2003

Gene Callahan [send him mail], the author of Economics for Real People, is an adjunct scholar of the Ludwig von Mises Institute and a contributing columnist to LewRockwell.com.