Original scientific paper
Sociobiology and the "Selfish Gene". Morality and Ethics from the Viewpoint of Contemporary Biology
Ivan KEŠINA
Abstract
Sociobiology, the recent variant of researching behaviour on
an evolutionary-theoretical basis, has set itself the task to
explore these evolutionary foundations of human morality.
The starting point of sociobiology is the phenomenon of
human altruism. From the evolutionary-theoretical perspective
altruist behaviour can originate and survive if it
contributes to the further transmission of genes encoding this
behaviour. The main authors of sociobiology, E.O. Wilson
and R. Dawkins are trying to "biologise" ethics. They want not
only to explain the biological functions of ethics, but also to
attach ethics completely to biology and with the help of the
theory of evolution give ethics a new natural-science
foundation. Sociobiologists draw on the fact that the ability
of ethical behaviour has manifested itself as evolutionary
adaptable, therefore useful. Morality is a refined trick of the
genes, which grant people what is required of it, in other
words, to effectively reproduce. Radical naturalism, as
represented by sociobiologists, no longer recognises any
values, because good and evil are only the result of human
imagination. All that is supposedly moral is ultimately a
function of gene-egoistical strategies. The author of this
article criticises the fundamental ideas of the sociobiological approach to the phenomenon of morality. Sociobiology does
not understand at all what the "ethical phenomenon" is, nor
that its "interpretation of morality and ethics" is merely an
interpretation of its own understanding (better:
misunderstanding) of morality and ethics. Sociobiology's
demand for its truthfulness is the abolition of its very self. In
its own interpretation it cannot be truthful, but only
represents a scientifically-coloured expression of both
paradoxical and radical theoretical nihilism. The ethical
phenomenon is such in nature that it destroys any
reconstruction allowing only the interpretation of the material
and factual. The problem of ethics is not the theoretical
explanation of altruism, but the nurturing of attention
towards good. As sociobiology manifests itself in theoretical
self-abolishment, the same thing happens in the practical-
philosophical understanding of good.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
19595
URI
Publication date:
31.12.2002.
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