http://www.britannica.com/eb/article?eu=115092&tocid=36181#36181.toc

Key Excerpts:

"One of the best known issues threatening accepted
beliefs about moral responsibility is probably that
raised by the proponents of the theory of innate
aggression ...

If there is an instinct for aggressiveness, then the notion
that it is acceptable to blame individuals and society for
outbreaks of violence or war loses its validity.

The thrust must then be elsewhere: not in faultfinding
but in shoring up against what is felt to be pedestrian
and inevitable. ...

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Another aspect of the innate aggression inherited from
man's primate forebears is militant enthusiasm ... In reality,
militant enthusiasm is a specialized form of communal
aggression, clearly distinct from and yet functionally
related to the more primitive forms of petty individual
aggression.

Every man of normally strong emotions knows, from his
own experience, the subjective phenomena that go hand
in hand with the response of militant enthusiasm.

A shiver runs down the back and, as more exact obser-
vation shows, along the outside of both arms.

One soars elated, above all the ties of everyday life, one
is ready to abandon all for the call of what, in the moment
of this specific emotion, seems to be a sacred duty.

All obstacles in its path become unimportant; the instinc-
tive inhibitions against hurting or killing one's fellows lose,
unfortunately, much of their power.

Rational considerations, criticism, and all reasonable argu-
ments against the behavior dictated by militant enthusiasm
are silenced by an amazing reversal of all values, making
them appear not only untenable but base and dishonorable.

Men may enjoy the feeling of absolute righteousness even
while they commit atrocities.

Conceptual thought and moral responsibility are at their
lowest ebb. As a Ukrainian proverb says: "When the banner
is unfurled, all reason is in the trumpet." ...

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The myth of the ferocity of "wild animals" constitutes one
of Western man's supreme rationalizations, for it not only
has served to "explain" to him the origins of his own aggres-
siveness, but also to relieve him of the responsibility for
it—for since it is "innate," derived from his early apelike
ancestors, he can hardly, so he rationalizes, be blamed for
it! ...

The matter remains moot; but there appears to be a growing
consensus that, given a certain genetic constitution—and
within the bounds of that endowment—whatever man is, he
learns to be, especially in respect to values, morality, and
customs.

Baser appetitive needs, however, may have a genetic com-
ponent that is greater than an environmental one. ...

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Evolutionary ethics

The question of whether nature provides guides to the actions
of humankind has held a fascination for many biologists.

Those who call themselves evolutionary ethicists say that it
does.

The defenders of evolutionary ethics contend that external
moral standards exist in the facts and process of evolution. ...

At one extreme we have discussions framed in terms of
extremely wide scope, which treat of evolution not only in
the animal world but throughout the cosmos, and attempt
to relate such broad concepts to man's religious and spiri-
tual life. ...

The opposite tendency ... is the attempt to demonstrate, in
a logically coherent argument, a real connection between
evolutionary processes and man's ethical feelings. ...

Some biologists continue to insist, therefore, that biological
facts can provide a yardstick by which to measure the mor-
ality of a given course of action. Julian Huxley, for one, has
long claimed that moral principles can be found in nature
and in the evolutionary process in particular:

When we look at evolution as a whole, we find, among the
many directions which it has taken, one which is character-
ized by introducing the evolving world-stuff to progressively
higher levels of organization and so to new possibilities of
being, action, and experience.

This direction has culminated in the attainment of a state
where the world-stuff (now moulded into human shape)
finds that it experiences some of the new possibilities as
having value in or for themselves; and further that among
these it assigns higher and lower degrees of value, the
higher values being those which are more intrinsically or
more permanently satisfying, or involve a greater degree
of perfection. ...

The facts of nature, as demonstrated in evolution, give us
assurance that knowledge, love, beauty, selfless morality,
and firm purpose are ethically good. . . . In the broadest
possible terms evolutionary ethics must be based on a
combination of a few main principles:

o that it is right to realize ever new possibilities in evolution,
notably those which are valued for their own sake;

o that it is right both to respect human individuality and to
encourage its fullest development;

o that it is right to construct a mechanism for further social
evolution which shall satisfy these prior conditions as fully,
efficiently, and as rapidly as possible.

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Simpson, however, contends, in the article "Biological Sci-
ences," in The Great Ideas Today (1965):

The facts and the processes of evolution are neither ethical
nor unethical.

The questions of good or bad are simply irrelevant to this
field, with the important reservation that evolution has pro-
duced a species, Homo sapiens, concerned with ethics.

Denial of man's naturalistic origin and animal nature is flatly
false, and any ethic based on such denial is invalid.

Evolution controverts primitive creation myths, but it is
consistent with higher values in the Judeo-Christian tradition
and those in most now-current religions and philosophical
systems.

One need only think of the brotherhood of mankind—a
biological fact, not only an ethical idea.

Beyond such considerations as those, efforts to combine
science and religion may be noble in intention but usually
end up distorting or stultifying both. ...

It is almost as irrational to deny evolution as to deny gravity.

The management of life and the goals of aspiration, to be
sane, must take account of all such truths of nature. ..."

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