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The Ethical Primate
In The Ethical Primate , Mary Midgley, 'one of the sharpest critical pens in the West' according to the Times Literary Supplement , addresses the fundamental question of human freedom.
Scientists and philosophers have found it difficult to understand how each human-being can be a living part of the natural world and still be free. Midgley explores their responses to this seeming paradox and argues that our evolutionary origin explains both why and how human freedom and morality have come about.
Scientists and philosophers have found it difficult to understand how each human-being can be a living part of the natural world and still be free. Midgley explores their responses to this seeming paradox and argues that our evolutionary origin explains both why and how human freedom and morality have come about.
204 pages, Paperback
First published November 9, 1994
About the author
Mary Midgley
51 books164 followersMary Beatrice Midgley (née Scrutton; 13 September 1919 – 10 October 2018[1]) was a British philosopher. She was a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at Newcastle University and was known for her work on science, ethics and animal rights. She wrote her first book, Beast And Man (1978), when she was in her fifties. She has since written over 15 other books, including Animals and Why They Matter (1983), Wickedness (1984), The Ethical Primate (1994), Evolution as a Religion (1985), and Science as Salvation (1992). She has been awarded honorary doctorates by Durham and Newcastle universities. Her autobiography, The Owl of Minerva, was published in 2005.
Midgley strongly opposed reductionism and scientism, and any attempts to make science a substitute for the humanities—a role for which it is, she argued, wholly inadequate. She wrote extensively about what philosophers can learn from nature, particularly from animals. A number of her books and articles discussed philosophical ideas appearing in popular science, including those of Richard Dawkins. She also wrote in favour of a moral interpretation of the Gaia hypothesis. The Guardian described her as a fiercely combative philosopher and the UK's "foremost scourge of 'scientific pretension.'"
Midgley strongly opposed reductionism and scientism, and any attempts to make science a substitute for the humanities—a role for which it is, she argued, wholly inadequate. She wrote extensively about what philosophers can learn from nature, particularly from animals. A number of her books and articles discussed philosophical ideas appearing in popular science, including those of Richard Dawkins. She also wrote in favour of a moral interpretation of the Gaia hypothesis. The Guardian described her as a fiercely combative philosopher and the UK's "foremost scourge of 'scientific pretension.'"
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
March 2, 2019
The first two parts of the book, not entirely rehash, are in large part stage-setting. These chapters cover the major, if not perennial problems in ethics and practical philosophy that have appeared in the wake of two tendencies of modern thought.
One, reductionism, holds out for a simple, parsimonious explanation of human motives. There is no real conflict between our various desires; what moves us is really pleasure or self-interest, which (conveniently enough) can be explained with the all-powerful theory of evolution.
The other, labeled here as separatism, seeks (rightly) to salvage the self from greedy reductionism. Yet it fails at this precisely because it grants so much of the reductionist's own argument -- that scientific objectivity carries authority over immediate, first-personal forms of understanding, that the ontology of physical science is authoritative and that old bogeyman of determinism must be taken seriously. What's left of human freedom could only be a rapidly vanishing space in which not much happens. Not the kind of thing we'd want from our sense of autonomy and agency.
The later chapters dig into these assumptions, taking aim at their flaws with Midgley's characteristic incisiveness. The most novel and interesting thing here, I found, was Midgley's use of Darwin's own exploration of ethics in his The Descent of Man. Like most everyone else, I was convinced that any evolutionary ethics had to be spelled out in terms of the usual sociobiological jargon -- talk of selfish genes and explanations of altruism in terms of motives evolved to secure group fitness.
Midgley argues that this whole outlook, the entire system of concepts which takes "survival of the fittest" as a centerpiece, derives from Spencer's Social Darwinism and has little to do with what Darwin himself wrote. Indeed Darwin drew upon the work of Aristotle, Hume, and Kant to defend a view of human beings as enmeshed in a fundamental conflict of motives. Far from the self-interested, pleasure-seeking, gene-reproducing automata we are so often made out to be, Darwin saw in us a genuine plurality of motives, most of which conflict, requiring the active intervention of reflective reason to make the hard decisions.
We are not alone in this, of course. A simple experiment: offer a treat to a dog who knows he's getting a bath if he comes to you. You can see the gears spinning away as the pull of 'want treat' conflicts with the push of 'no bath'. Humans also have a range of perennial needs and desires, for food, for companionship, and the like; and we also have our familiar range of transient, though more forceful emotions and thoughts.
Our nature is fragmented, not into feeling and reason, as Hume argued, and not into contingent motives and the duties of pure reason, as Kant argued. Our fragmentation is more fundamental, as we are broken into many irreconcilible needs, desires, and emotions.
Our freedom is not freedom to do as we will without interference. Our freedom is our agency, our ability to consider what is important in our conflicting motives and act as we think best. Reason belongs here, as neither master nor slave. It must have our motives to direct it, as our intelligence is not that of a blind calculator. But our motives are also transformed by the fact that we recognize them as motives, that is, as having significance for us. It matters to us that we feel a pull this way and not that.
This book makes for a powerful complement to other recent Aristotelian ethical naturalists (Hursthouse's On Virtue Ethics and Foot's Natural Goodness) and Charles Taylor's similarly inspired writings on human agency ( Philosophical Papers: Volume 1, Human Agency and LanguageSources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity)
One, reductionism, holds out for a simple, parsimonious explanation of human motives. There is no real conflict between our various desires; what moves us is really pleasure or self-interest, which (conveniently enough) can be explained with the all-powerful theory of evolution.
The other, labeled here as separatism, seeks (rightly) to salvage the self from greedy reductionism. Yet it fails at this precisely because it grants so much of the reductionist's own argument -- that scientific objectivity carries authority over immediate, first-personal forms of understanding, that the ontology of physical science is authoritative and that old bogeyman of determinism must be taken seriously. What's left of human freedom could only be a rapidly vanishing space in which not much happens. Not the kind of thing we'd want from our sense of autonomy and agency.
The later chapters dig into these assumptions, taking aim at their flaws with Midgley's characteristic incisiveness. The most novel and interesting thing here, I found, was Midgley's use of Darwin's own exploration of ethics in his The Descent of Man. Like most everyone else, I was convinced that any evolutionary ethics had to be spelled out in terms of the usual sociobiological jargon -- talk of selfish genes and explanations of altruism in terms of motives evolved to secure group fitness.
Midgley argues that this whole outlook, the entire system of concepts which takes "survival of the fittest" as a centerpiece, derives from Spencer's Social Darwinism and has little to do with what Darwin himself wrote. Indeed Darwin drew upon the work of Aristotle, Hume, and Kant to defend a view of human beings as enmeshed in a fundamental conflict of motives. Far from the self-interested, pleasure-seeking, gene-reproducing automata we are so often made out to be, Darwin saw in us a genuine plurality of motives, most of which conflict, requiring the active intervention of reflective reason to make the hard decisions.
We are not alone in this, of course. A simple experiment: offer a treat to a dog who knows he's getting a bath if he comes to you. You can see the gears spinning away as the pull of 'want treat' conflicts with the push of 'no bath'. Humans also have a range of perennial needs and desires, for food, for companionship, and the like; and we also have our familiar range of transient, though more forceful emotions and thoughts.
Our nature is fragmented, not into feeling and reason, as Hume argued, and not into contingent motives and the duties of pure reason, as Kant argued. Our fragmentation is more fundamental, as we are broken into many irreconcilible needs, desires, and emotions.
Our freedom is not freedom to do as we will without interference. Our freedom is our agency, our ability to consider what is important in our conflicting motives and act as we think best. Reason belongs here, as neither master nor slave. It must have our motives to direct it, as our intelligence is not that of a blind calculator. But our motives are also transformed by the fact that we recognize them as motives, that is, as having significance for us. It matters to us that we feel a pull this way and not that.
This book makes for a powerful complement to other recent Aristotelian ethical naturalists (Hursthouse's On Virtue Ethics and Foot's Natural Goodness) and Charles Taylor's similarly inspired writings on human agency ( Philosophical Papers: Volume 1, Human Agency and LanguageSources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity)
February 16, 2019
Started slow -- the editing wasn't good -- but the last 40% was very interesting. Would re-visit the last third and take notes.
March 17, 2007
Midgley argues against much of the materialist reductionism present in modern philosophy of mind, as well as against social contract theorists, to recover a more holistic notion of what it means to be human. Her writing is deceptively simple, though underneath it she constructs a rather elaborate (and I believe sound) argument. She covers much of the ground from her earlier Beast and Man, but condenses and updates much of this.
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August 23, 2007nonfiction,science,philosophy
August 21, 2008
Misguided and misleading.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews