Table Of ContentON GENES, GODS AND TYRANTS
CAMILO J. CELA-CONDE
Dean of the Faculty of Arts, University of Palma, Mallorca
ON GENES, GODS
AND TYRANTS
The Biological Causation of Morality
Translated by Penelope Lock
D. REIDEL PUBLISHING COMPANY
A MEMBER OF THE KLUWER ACADEMICPUBUSHERSGROUP
DORDRECHT / BOSTON / LANCASTER / TOKYO
Libnry of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Cela-Conde, Camilo Jose.
On genes, gods, and tyrants.
Translation of: De genes, dioses y tiranos.
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. Ethics. 2.Biology-Moral and ethical aspects. I. Title.
BJ58.C4513 1987 171'.7 87-16409
ISBN-13: 978-1-55608-036-4 e-ISBN-13: 978-94-009-3389-7
001: 10.10071978-94-009-3389-7
Originally published in Spanish under the title:
De genes, dioses y tirano s
by Alianza Editorial, Madrid, 1985
Published by D. Reidel Publishing Company,
P.O. Box 17,3300 AA Dordrecht, Holland.
Sold and distributed in the U.S.A. and Canada
by Kluwer Academic Publishers,
101 Philip Drive, Norwell, MA 02061, U.S.A.
In all other countries, sold and distributed
by Kluwer Academic Publishers Group,
P.O. Box 322, 3300 AH Dordrecht, Holland
All Rights Reserved
© 1987 by D. Reidel Publishing Company.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1987
No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or
utilised in any form. or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and
retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner
To Francisco J. Ayala
Neither in gods, kings nor in courts
is the Supreme Saviour
The International
TABLE OF CONTENTS
FOREWORD IX
CHAPTER 1. Moral levels 1
CHAPTER 2. The Alpha-moral level. In the beginning
was Darwin 17
CHAPTER 3. The Beta-moral level: to feel or to reason.
The Kantian obstacle 34
CHAPTER 4. The Beta-moral level. The good and the
yellow 48
CHAPTER 5. The Beta-moral level: rational preference
from Smith to Rawls 73
CHAPTER 6. The Gamma-moral level: genes and tyrants 98
CHAPTER 7. The Delta-moral level: gods and genes 120
CHAPTER 8. Moral progress 132
CHAPTER 9. Adversus liberales: the right to excellence
and distributive justice 145
NOTES 166
BIBLIOGRAPHY 180
INDEX OF NAMES 188
INDEX OF SUBJECTS 192
Vll
FOREWORD
Our future was with the collective, but our
survival was with the individual, and the
paradox was killing us everyday.
John Le Carre Smiley's People (1979)
Since the time of Ancient Greek lyrical poetry, it has been one of
man's dreams to explain his own conduct. This is the background
to all his activities, from literature to speculative philosophy,
including those odds and ends which, for want of a better name
and more precise boundaries are called "human science". Over
the past nine or ten years a new member has been added to this
inquisitive family, one which, moreover, claims to be scientific to
an extremely high degree: biology. This is in fact a recurrent
event, since theses designed to introduce causal biological expla
nations into the general field of human action had already been
formulated on at least two occasions (in original Darwinism and
the Neo-Darwinist synthesis).
Ethologists and sociobiologists are today taking over and as
suring us that they have the necessary tools to provide an answer
to what perhaps seemed the most slippery subject in the hands of
science: the social being. As might be expected, philosophers
have reacted with some scepticism. Though human conduct is
undoubtedly subject to determinants, the lion's share of responsi
bility lies with society itself. At the time when biology was
beginning to develop the theories necessary to overcome cre
ationism, Karl Marx had already managed to construct highly
sophisticated interpretive models of human social behaviour.
Even those who take pride in questioning the ability of Marxism
(or indeed of any other set of theories,) to construct "laws of
history" - something they consider impossible - are to a certain
extent indebted to Marx because their criticism makes use of the
body of doctrine he introduced. Marxism may be of no use in
IX
x FOREWORD
predicting our actions, but it is impossible to understand human
social behaviour without bearing in mind a large part of Marx's
teachings.
The biological contribution is therefore faced with the tragic
risk of being true in the long run, but irrelevant. Its determinants
may come to the surface only at the cost of forgetting those others
from the social field which disguise and transform primary bio
logical impulses. Ethologists and sociobiologists would deny this,
and would even reverse the terms, but the difficulties they meet in
finding support for their case are still so immense as to be
discouraging.
However, there is one aspect of human behaviour where the
presence of biological determinants may be more balanced in
relation to social determinants: moral action. Ethical behaviour
is, in the final instance, a matter of individual decision; a charac
teristic which favours biological theses. Unfortunately, this is also
where free will comes in, that is to say, human will proud of its
bill of freedom and reluctant to admit determinants of any sort.
But this may be a mirage like so many others created from an
anthropocentric point of view. So it would be somewhat risky to
reject biological determinants in morals by resorting to the petitio
principii which by definition identifies ethics with freedom.
The following pages are an attempt to establish the relationship
between biology and morals, taking as a starting-point certain
theses related to Darwinism. The aspect of social determinism
will hardly be touched on, a decision which, in my opinion, is
sufficiently justified by the overwhelming amount of literature on
the subject. This does not imply, however, that the role of society
is irrelevant as a source of determinants, and its presence will be
felt in some cases. After all, our future lies in the collective. But
what is under discussion here is not which is the greater source of
moral determinants, assuming these exist, but rather, to what
extent we can accept a biological basis for the ethical phenomenon.
The informed reader will no doubt be aware of a blatant
absence: that of Frankfortians and Erlangians, who have prob
ably gone most deeply into the ethical and political aspects of
linguistic universals. I take the blame for this, since my intention
is to justify a second part to this book dealing with the problems
of legitimizing collective instances by making use of many of the
FOREWORD xi
theoretical constructs to be raised here. Should anyone be misled
by such cryptic words, I suggest he look up the paper I presented
at the III lornadas de Etica y Filosoffa po[(tica, held in Granada
in 1983, entitled "La legitimaci6n politica de la etica" (The
political legitimization of ethics), where I make a formal state
ment of my intentions.
I should like to clear up a few other points. Throughout the
text, the words "morals" and "ethics" will be used as equivalents.
This may seem an unfortunate choice, since "morals" has re
cently been used only for normative morals and "ethics" for
metamorals in this sense. But I hope to be granted this licence as I
am going to propose a different classification of the various
aspects which intervene in the phenomenon of moral action. In
any case, I may quote the illustrious precedent set by Ferrater
Mora (1981, p. 19), who chooses the same solution. Ferrater is
one of the rare philosophers in Spain to have dealt with sociobio
logical matters and lowe a lot more to his book (written jointly
with Priscilla Cohn) than just the licence to identify ethics and
morals. The specialist reader may also be taken aback by my lack
of precision when referring to norms, criteria, judgements, laws
and values, without making more accurate distinctions. Or by my
reference to only one sense of such evaluative terms as "good",
when so much paper has been devoted to monographs attempting
to establish the meaning of such a word. It is a question of
understanding that biology projects extremely primary determi
nants, when at all, on the moral field, and under no circumstances
are these open to such sophistications. I hope that those prepared
to draw more accurate boundaries for themselves will find in my
proposals sufficient means by which to do so.
I also use "biological determinant" and "genetic determinant"
indistinctly. I should, indeed, distinguish between them (as anthro
pologists in the style of Malinowski have done), but insofar as the
determinants to be discussed here (those proposed by sociobiol
ogy) clearly refer to genetic content, I allow myself this liberty!.
The manuscript was sent for their inspection and criticism to
several people, who helped me to straighten out my ideas and
weed out some nonsense here and there. I cannot claim to have
exorcised all my mistakes, nor can I refer to all their suggestions
one by one. For their patience and good intentions I wish to
xii FOREWORD
thank Francisco Ayala, Gustavo Bueno, Jose Ferrater Mora,
Manuel Garrido, Ernesto Garzon Valdes, Enrique Lopez
Castellon, Emilio Lledo, Jacobo Munoz, Alberto Saoner and
Amelia Valcarcel. I also wish to publicly express my gratitude to
the Ministry of Culture for granting me an aid to literary creation
in order to write the book, and to the Universitat de les Illes
Balears for the aid I was granted for translation. My gratitude
also to Cathy Sweeny and Alberto Saoner for reviewing the Eng
lish translation. And, finally, I am most grateful to Francisco
Ayala, Michael Ruse and Edward O. Wilson for their help in
promoting the English version.
In the following pages I have made use of material from some
earlier articles of mine, more or less modified in all cases. These
articles are: "Una aproximacion a la 'Hipotesis de las ideas
innatas' de Noam Chomsky" (Mayurqa, 16, 1976, pp. 139-188);
"La virtud del azar" (Taula, 1, 1982, pp. 7-13); "En torno al
concepto de simpatia" (jointly with Alberto Saoner. Aetas de las
las Jornadas de Etica e Historia de la etica, Madrid U.N.E.D.,
1979, in press -sic-); "Tres tesis falaces de la ideologia liberal"
(Sistema, 50--51, 1983, pp. 51-60); "Nature and Reason in the
Darwinian Theory of Moral Sense" (History and Philosophy of
the Life Sciences, 6,1984, pp. 3-24); and "La determinacion etica
segtin los modelos r y K de la genetica de poblaciones" (Aetas del
II Congreso de teoria y metodologia de la ciencia, Oviedo, 1983,
Vol. II, pp. 377-380).
NOTE
1 I wish to thank Jose Sanmartin for pointing out this possible abuse during the
sessions of the international symposium on the philosophy of Karl Popper
(Madrid, November 1984)
CHAPTER 1
MORAL LEVELS
When T. H. Huxley states that ethical
sense is not a product of, but is rather
opposed to, biological evolution, he is con
sidering principally whether moral codes
generally accepted by humanity are in
spired by biological evolution and at the
same time promote it; although T. H.
Huxley's terminology is at times ambi
guous, it appears that he does not intend to
deny that ethical capacity is rooted in bio
logical nature. J. S. Huxley and C. D.
Waddington support this root and also
claim that biological evolution specifies
those moral codes to be accepted and pre
determines mankind to accept them;
neither of these two authors seems to real
ise clearly that biological determinism of
ethical capacity does not necessarily imply
a determinism of ethical standards to be
followed. A distinction between ethical ca
pacity and ethical standards is found,
though not always explicitly, in the work of
Dobzhansky and Simpson.
Francisco J. Ayala: Origen y evoluci6n del hombre (1980)
This book is concerned with moral questions, considered almost
always from a biological perspective. Just reading the above
quotation from Ayala reveals that this task is neither easy nor
free from confusion. In fact, it is not usually even considered by
philosophers to be worthy of attention. Until recently, those
engaged in the study of morals would limit the scope of genuinely
philosophical ethics to the analysis of the language in which moral
preference was expressed. 1 This cannot be said to be the standard
approach to ethical questions since the now distant times of the
1
