ASEBL Journal – Volume 13 Issue 1 , January 2018
consumed by it . I do not mean that science cannot undermine the validity of particular such explanations – science could show that knight G1 to F3 was the wrong move . Science can also contextualize such explanations – evolution makes sense of why we play games like chess at all . But science cannot replace or eliminate the sort of explanation that an agent ’ s mind provides for its own decisions .
To extend the logic of levels of explanation even further , questions of ultimate purpose , such as those that occupy the authors of Dr . Shoppa ’ s more preferred citations ( Schelling , Newman , and Schönborn ) are likewise inappropriate targets of evolutionary elimination in general . Nobody would argue for the ultimate purpose of a chess game – in that game we are creating ( or in Tolkien ’ s words subcreating ) our own cosmos for fun ; and our purposes are ultimate and inexorably imposed by us upon the pieces . But the possibility remains – decreasing in popularity today perhaps , but remaining nevertheless – that there are right or wrong moves for us humans in life , regardless of our own decisions on the matter and distinct from the sorts of explanations evolution or any other science provides . Again , the evolutionary and other sciences will illuminate circumstances and context , but will be silent on the big questions . Darwin knew this , as does Dawkins .
Evolutionary explanation pokes at metaphysics more than any other sort of scientific explanation – not because it is eliminativist , but because it is illuminating . It hacks away certain crude ideas . If a belief in God rests at all on a great chain of being among organic living things , special creation of human beings apart from other animals , or the immunity of our psychology from any ancestral influences , evolution will shake that metaphysic , that religion . However , evolution cannot tell us what metaphysic or religion to embrace . Evolutionary biologists worth their salt do not claim that whatever exists , is good . They do not claim that our motivations , even if products of natural selection , ought to be lauded for that reason . Or , if they do claim such things , they are not acting as evolutionary biologists when they do so , but acting as certain sorts of religious individuals , somewhat akin to Gnostics . Most of us , however , look at evolutionary explanations even of human behavior as ( potentially ) factual tidbits , of no more direct normative weight ( no more good or bad ) than factual tidbits about grasses and grapes , although of course of greater indirect relevance for our decision-making because of the subject matter .
If evolutionary biology were to teach me that humans tend to do X , or even that humans tend to think X is morally right , and why this is so , this would neither replace nor eliminate my own moral discernment . I do accept the premise of the evolutionary social sciences : my faculty of morality does not operate independently of my evolutionary history nor of the evolutionary functions of my behaviors and thoughts . Evolutionary biology even indicates and explains empirical tendencies or trendlines in human attitudes and behavior . Such explanations are exciting and tremendously useful . But they are limited in scope . In chess , few would think of a common tendency as an overwhelming reason for action ; “ most players move X in this situation ” or “ most people think that move X is best in this situation ” is not useless but is not the best sort of advice either . Anyone who strives to win will attempt to be excellent , a point off the trendline . Likewise , if there is any such thing as excellence or arete in human life , then there is no saying that the final arbiter of that is any sort of historical , evolution-
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