ASEBL Journal – Volume 11 Issue 1, January 2015
versal and justifies its claims on us with its logical inevitability. If we, as a species,
were to choose wants that did not lead to our survival, then we, and those wants,
would go extinct. Therefore, we ought to want to survive over the long term. We can
choose otherwise. Nothing in this universe says we must choose this path. But no other want will come out of an evolutionary process, and the history of science tells us
we are locked in just such a universe – one that is governed by evolutionary processes
where things on a macro scale don’t just wink in and out of existence by natural or
supernatural means. We ought to accept that fact and align our moral obligations with
it. Nothing else can subvert this fact or override it. This is the fundamental, objective,
universal, and justified basis on which human morality is built. All other wants are
proximately caused in service of this ultimate cause.23
To see this from another direction, let’s go back to Hume. As he put it in one of his
later works:
Ask a man why he uses exercise; he will answer, because he desires to keep his
health. If you then enquire, why he desires health, he will readily reply, because
sickness is painful. If you push your enquiries farther, and desire a reason why he
hates pain, it is impossible he can ever give any. This is an ultimate end, and is
never referred to any other object.…And beyond this it is an absurdity to ask for a
reason. It is impossible there can be a progress in infinitum; and that one thing can
always be a reason why another is desired. Something must be desirable on its own
account, and because of its immediate accord or agreement with human sentiment
and affection.24
Sadly, Hume wrote this in 1777, just over 80 years before Darwin was to publish On
the Origin of Species. Had he been introduced to that book and been able to think
through the ramifications of evolution, Hume may have arrived through his root cause
analysis at the fact that existence is the ultimate end, and survival is the thing that
must be desired on its own account. Prior to existence – or after it is extinguished –
there are no human desires. If the state of existence is not satisfied, then there is no
one to answer any further inquiries. There would be no more passions to drive our
reason. Even if our ontological questions about the universe have no regressive end to
them at the moment, our moral questions about our place in this universe do have an
end. They end with whether or not we will continue to exist. The fundamental nature
of being implied by the use of the word is, is the very thing that helps us get from is to
ought. We are alive. We want to remain alive. We ought to act to remain so.
Expanding the Circle
So far, we have been talking about human morals and human concerns, but is that
enough? And when I say, “we are alive,” whom exactly am I talking about? An individual? A family? A tribe? A race? A nation? The human species? Is that consideration even enough? If we say that the ultimate want is long-term survival, then whose
survival needs to be considered as part of that desire?
In The Expanding Circle, philosopher Peter Singer argued that “altruism began as a
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