Can sociobiology be used as foundation of ethics?

Question

A primatologist or sociobiologist may claim that humans share a basic sense of (distributional) fairness with certain other primates. This claim has in fact been made and is based on rather simple observations and repeatable experiments. If the claim is true, it also seems plausible that this basic sense of fairness ("equals deserve equal parts of the pie, in otherwise equal conditions") is innate - even though we don't yet have the scientific knowledge or adequate theories to determine how this manifests at a neurological level.

Is it justified for ethical philosophers to dismiss a claim like that as irrelevant for developing a system of ethical norms because it's a merely empirical claim and normative statements or prescriptions "can not" (should not?) be derived from empirical facts? -- Looked at from the other side: Would it be justified for an ethical philosopher to posit the shared norm as a basic, "foundational" norm, because empirically it is shared and (perhaps also) innate?

An ethical philosopher could, of course, claim that such a norm is (introspectively) self-evident. But this seems like a terribly weak move to me. For one thing, the actual behavior exhibiting this norm is decidedly non rational (in the sense of going against one's own best interest). For instance, when a cappucin monkey angrily throws away the unpreferred food after seeing that his mates got the "good" food. Claiming self-evidence has no explanation for this breakdown of rational behavior. Sociobiology could also explain those aspects and in that sense be more powerful than simply relying on self-evidence.

So, can (or even should) sociobiology be used as "foundation" of ethics?

Answer 1

I'd suggest taking a look at moral sense theory, the idea that we discover our moral values through introspection of our feelings regarding such or such action. It's highly probable that the complex moral sentiments we experience stemed from the crude sense of fairness we observe in less socially evolved primates (or even dogs, IIRC).

Now, from a philosophical standpoint, basing our ethics on this feelings sounds like a very crude position, at best a starting point. Philosophy at its core is the endeavour of defining and refining concepts. If our concept of "good" comes from our hardly understandable, often contradictory, feelings, it can hardly be a useful concept.

What is more, clear ethical concepts are necessary for us to debate about desirable social behaviors. The social aspect of our individual moral feelings entering in conflict with each other is covered by politial philosophers with theories like the Social Contract (or how, from all our individual moral feelings, a concensus can be found that most of us will find acceptable).

I think that's what most philosophers who tackle the subject of ethics are trying to do: put some order into the chaos of our moral sentiments. But this sentiment seems to be innescapable, at the root of everything. Even the most rational ethic systems, like kantism, are not operative without a deep feeling that our actions ought to be taken according to reason.

Answer 2

Ethics - like philosophy in general - does not only discuss the means to reach a goal. Ethics also discusses the goal itself.

1. If the goal has been fixed there exist possibly several paths to reach the goal. Nothing speaks against to learn from the behaviour of animals. What are typical strategies applied by animals who live in social groups?
2. But to discuss the goals themselves, to argue in favor or against a specific goal, is a typical philosophical task. History and present cultural pluralisms shows that no common agreement about final goals for humanity has been obtained so far - not even the human rights are implemented all over the world. And the approach, to ground ethics on final goals, is absent from the domain of non-human animals and from biological evolution in general.

Hence I vote against any attempt to ground the normative discipline of ethics on the descriptive science of sociobiology.

Answer 3

Some people do attempt to use sociobiology as a foundation for ethics, but I'd point out at least a couple of problems I see:

1. It is not universally objective. Sociology can change across time and culture, and so an ethic based solely on it are like a house built on shifting sand. For example, could we say that the slave trade was definitely wrong in the past using sociobiology alone? Perhaps, but I think the task would be far more difficult than we'd imagine; who's to say it wasn't consistent with the sociobiology back then? Different time, different place, different people, different culture, different sociobiology...different rules? Sociobiology simply doesn't have the adequate grounding it needs for a solid response, in my view.
2. It often leads to repugnant conclusions. For example, some animal species eat their own young, or eat other members of their own species, or do other things which most people (including myself) would intuitively recognize as terrible if humans were to immitate. As I understand it, a professor named Peter Singer has leaned heavily on sociobiology for ethics, and people with physical challenges have protested him because they see the horrible dangers which can result from his teaching. I was listening to someone who had read his books, and what stood out to him in the passages he read was how often Peter Singer stressed that his beliefs are not what the Nazis taught; but the mere fact that Singer felt the need to stress this so often concerned the reader.

As a Christian, I do believe we can learn something of ethics from nature, including from animal and insect behavior. For example, King Solomon said (Proverbs 6:6-8):

Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise: which having no guide, overseer, or ruler, provideth her meat in the summer, and gathereth her food in the harvest.

Yet the Bible also says the world is a broken place; and so while sociobiology can be one advisor to ethics, I believe it is a very unsatisfactory foundation for it.

Answer 4

Update - Medical Ethics

Medical Ethics in the United States is embedded in the liberal political and legal traditions. Liberal societies try to curb paternalism, where some Authority figure knows and does what is best for others, and to promote autonomy. The individual with autonomy has liberty of conscience to think what one thinks, to feel what one feels, to believe what one believes; and liberty of action to say and do according to one's will. But one's autonomy may limit or adversely impact the autonomy (will) of others.

Children lack prudence, the ability to govern action by the use of reason. They lack inherent autonomy. And their will is emergent over time. Paternalism versus autonomy is baked into human biological social psychology.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK535361/

Heuristics for carrying out medical ethics decisions

Philosophers Tom Beauchamp (1939-) and James Childress (1940-) introduced a transitional approach to medical ethics, providing simple heuristics emphasizing 4 principles based on a culmination of philosophies throughout time (Beauchamp T, Childress J. Principles of Medical Ethics. Oxford University Press; 1979).

Relying on these 4 principles allows healthcare professionals to make ethical decisions more quickly. Evolving from the AMA’s 1957 word preferences, the chosen principles are:

Beneficence: Advocate for the course of action that aligns with the patient’s best interests. In other words, show altruism toward the patient.

Nonmaleficence: Do not harm the patient.

Distributive justice: Apply equal or equitable treatment when handling matters involving more than 1 patient.

Autonomy: Preserve patients’ ability to make decisions independently of external control.

This heuristic is the dominant heuristic used by ethics code-writing organizations. The 2019 ACP’s ethics code includes Beauchamp and Childress’s 4 principles by name.[5] The 2017 AMA code defended all 4 principles in particular circumstances without explicitly using the word “nonmaleficence” or the word “distributive” before the word justice. By putting these principles, which are, in fact, virtues, into ethics codes, the AMA and other bodies have combined the concepts of virtue ethics, duty ethics, and act utilitarianism for beneficence, nonmaleficence, and autonomy and virtue ethics and rule utilitarianism for distributive justice.

Original Answer

I think the effort to understand motivation of humans and lower apes in the dramatic context is contemplated in many fields including anthropology, behaviorism, sociology, psychology, and theories of folk psychology. None of them can provide a commonly accepted scientific foundation for the experience of drama. Drama itself seems to be necessary to our experience and expression of sociobiology or whatever label we give to modes of self-other interaction and self-other communication in the social context.

SEP - Folk Psychology as a Theory

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/folkpsych-theory/

Folk psychology is a name traditionally used to denote our everyday way of understanding, or rationalizing, intentional actions in mentalistic terms. This quotidian competence is known by other names in the philosophical literature: commonsense psychology; naïve psychology; Homo sapiens psychology; the person theory of humans; the intentional stance; propositional attitude psychology; belief-desire psychology (see, e.g., Churchland 1979; Dennett 1987; Goldman 2006; Bogdan 2009). As some entries on this list suggest, folk psychology can be conceived of in wider or more narrow terms, picking out different extensions accordingly.

There is great interest in folk psychology not only because of its status as a familiar way of making sense of our actions and those of others but also because it is thought to underwrite a range of moral, legal, educational, clinical, and therapeutic practices (Fodor 1987; Baker 1988). For this reason, a great deal of work in analytic philosophy has been devoted to better understanding folk psychology and its cognitive basis.

SEP - Behaviorism:

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/behaviorism/

Wilfred Sellars (1912–89), the distinguished philosopher, noted that a person may qualify as a behaviorist, loosely or attitudinally speaking, if they insist on confirming “hypotheses about psychological events in terms of behavioral criteria” (1963, p. 22). A behaviorist, so understood, is someone who demands behavioral evidence for any psychological hypothesis. For such a person, there is no knowable difference between two states of mind (beliefs, desires, etc.) unless there is a demonstrable difference in the behavior associated with each state. Consider the current belief of a person that it is raining. If there is no difference in his or her behavior between believing that it is raining and believing that it is not raining, there is no grounds for attributing the one belief rather than the other. The attribution is empirically empty or unconstrained.

I hate getting my clothes wet when commuting to or from the city by train. I carry an umbrella rain or shine independent of the forecast. People see me and sometimes ask if the forecast is for rain? I tell them my motivation. Then they can update their memories of drama and perhaps learn something new about possible motives for carrying an umbrella.

My Sketch Model of Political Interactions

My model for biology driving the experience and expression of drama is the body of an ape inherently makes efforts to answer three questions.

1. Who do I want to be like?
2. What is good in the dramatic context?
3. How should one act to cause the good in the dramatic context?

These items can also be stated as one question: What do I want in this social context and how can I get it? Cooperation or conflict arise via the individual efforts to satisfy wants or needs in the dramatic context.

In human psychology the child inherently wants to grow up and become like some adult role model in their experience of drama. But then the role model can do things that cause the child to simultaneously want to be unlike the role model. Ambivalence is a feature of the pattern recognition system and effort to govern action in the dramatic context. The ambivalence can be resolved or persist. The distinction between male and female sexual anatomy and gender psychology arises from preferences for who one wants to be like or unlike independent in the psyche from physical attributes of the body. Some people report being born with gender type. I cannot contradict their experience of drama I could only infer that maybe they lack memories of social adaptation.

The lower apes seem to have a sense of fairness and justice in this dramatic context just like humans based on the patterns of behavior and folk psychology models reported by behavioral scientists or behavioral economists. The traditional assumption of economic rationality is broken by behavioral models.

But to me there is always the experience and expression of drama informing the models. There is no independent scientific method to establish behaviorism. I think a plurality of ethical preferences emerge from the adaptive psyche in the context of social biology.

The sense of fairness seems to exist in apes because I experience it myself and I witness modes of interaction that evoke my sense of fairness. But people in the jury or court of public opinion do not all agree on the meaning of justice or injustice in any specific case.

I do not see patterns of drama wherein humans agree on who they want to be like or unlike; on what is good in the dramatic context; or on how to cause the good. I think this plurality of dramatic motivations is the proximate cause of social conflict and political compromise. I just call it politics.