Nature: a terrible source for morality

15 August 2009

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ZJ: I've noticed some people have a habit of making arguments based on the idea that if something is unnatural, that means it's bad or immoral, and if something is natural, it's good or moral. Most of the time, this is only implied. They'll say something is "unnatural", and assume everyone else agrees this is bad. But they usually don't explicitly claim that the distinction between what's natural and unnatural forms the basis of morality.

And I can certainly understand why they would avoid explaining this. They've failed to make the case for any connection between what's natural or not, and what's moral or not. They don't have a reason why one should have anything to do with the other. Instead, they seem to think that description and prescription are interchangeable. That is, they believe the facts of how things are are somehow identical to imperatives for how things should be.

But this is not the case. If it were, it would preclude trying to change absolutely anything from the way it is right now. After all, if that's how it is, that's how it's supposed to be, right? Of course, this argument immediately shoots itself in the foot. The way things are now is different from the way things used to be. So shouldn't things have stayed that way, instead of how they are now? Wouldn't that mean the way things are now isn't the way things should be? And we can keep going like that, all the way into the past, throughout the entire history of human progress. And it becomes apparent that there is no clear division between what's natural and unnatural.

Was it natural for humans to control fire? What about inventing the wheel? Was it natural to transition from a hunter-gatherer society to the use of agriculture? Was it natural to fashion weapons instead of killing things with our bare hands? Was it natural to domesticate animals for work and as a source of food? Was it natural to develop systems of government, or would it be natural to have a perpetual state of anarchy?

Is it natural to surgically repair birth defects such as a cleft palate? Is it natural to use antibiotics to treat bacterial infections, or would it be natural to just let people die? Is it natural to have children? What if they have to be conceived with in vitro fertilization? Is spontaneous abortion natural? What about elective abortion?

Why should some of these things be considered natural, while others are unnatural? There's no obvious way to tell them apart, and many people will have very different ideas of what's natural and what isn't. Couldn't we say that everything people do should be seen as natural, since humans are a product of nature and natural processes?

The argument that something is bad because it's unnatural is always applied selectively, and used against that which someone already objects to: homosexuality, birth control, cloning, and so on. This indicates that people aren't using the argument from nature as a basis for their beliefs, but rather, as a retroactive justification for what they already believe.

And one notable instance of this argument is the idea that evolution determines how we are obliged to act. I sometimes hear people saying that some kind of behavior is "contrary to evolution", or "evolution says we should such-and-such", or "evolution intended for so-and-so". Once again, this mistakes description for prescription. Evolution simply describes reality; it does not prescribe morality or define how we should conduct ourselves.

And even if moral imperatives could be derived from the facts of evolution, this would be a completely inadequate basis for morality. Evolution is an undirected, ongoing process, it does not work towards a predefined end goal, and there is no conscious intention behind it. Evolution involves random variation among organisms, filtered by natural selection, leading to the increased prevalence of organisms with a greater ability to survive and reproduce.

If this is supposed to be the source of morality, does that mean only the strongest and most fertile members of a population should be allowed to exist, and they should constantly devote themselves to making more babies? No, because evolution does not tell us what to do. It does not make any moral demands which we must satisfy, and it doesn't define what's right and wrong. It's just something that happens, and it'll happen regardless of how we behave.

So we don't need to be concerned about whether or not our actions fall in line with what's natural, and we certainly don't need to live by the maxim of "What would evolution do?"

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