ASEBL Journal – Volume 11 Issue 1, January 2015
oped into a consciously chosen ethic with an expanding circle of moral concern.”25
Singer described the growth of this expanding circle by starting with the selfish concerns of one individual and using moral reasoning to show how it widens step by step
to eventually encompass all of humanity:
If I have seen that from an ethical point of view I am just one person among the
many in my society, and my interests are no more important, from the point of
view of the whole, than the similar interests of others within my society, I am
ready to see that, from a still larger point of view, my society is just one among
other societies, and the interests of members of my society are no more important,
from that larger perspective, than the similar interests of members of other societies...Taking the impartial element in ethical reasoning to its logical conclusion
means, first, accepting that we ought to have equal concern for all human beings.26
Singer went on to extend this ethical scope to include all sensitive species, but that has
remained a contentious idea even as societies have enacted more prohibitions against
cruelty to animals. Setting that controversy aside for the moment, however, Singer
does bring us to a larger point. While we have been discussing morals and how they
are rules for living, we have been led to talk about individuals, species, and survival
over long terms. We began to talk about issues concerning biology, and in particular
the natural sciences of biology, sociobiology, ecology, and evolutionary biology. This
makes sense as biology is the study of life and we are talking about rules for living,
but I would like to make the connection even clearer and stronger by outlining the
entirety of the circle that Singer began to push into shape.
In 1998, biologist E.O. Wilson published the book Consilience in which he complained about the general splintering of knowledge that kept scientists in the dark
about facts that had already been discovered in other fields. In particular, he bemoaned the divide in his own area of specialty and noted the means by which they
could be united. He wrote that the “conception of scale is the means by which the biological sciences have become consilient during the past fifty years. According to the
magnitude of time and space adopted for analysis, the basic divisions of biology”
from the bottom to the top are:27 (1) Biochemistry -> (2) Molecular Biology -> (3)
Cellular Biology -> (4) Organismic Biology -> (5) Sociobiology -> (6) Ecology -> (7)
Evolutionary Biology
These seven mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive categories28 describe the
study of life in its totality. They provide the list of individual lenses we need to look
through to understand everything there is to know about life. These lenses can also,
therefore, be used to study and understand morals through ever-widening circles, and I
believe this is particularly instructive. For example, to follow Singer’s descriptions,
personal interests such as individual flourishing make sense in the light of needs at the
organismic biology level, societal interests such as justice and cooperation make sense
in the light of needs at the sociobiological level, and the welfare concerns for other
sensitive creatures makes sense in the light of needs at the ecological level. By bringing in this comprehensive analytical model from the field of biology, we see that
Singer’s circle makes sense, it just fails to expand wide enough to take into account
the needs of societies and ecologies over evolutionary timeframes. It also fails to nar-
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