Human Nature after Darwin [Paperback]

[Review from the Routledge edition]

In the opening chapter of this tremendous book, Janet Radcliffe Richards writes that it "is as much a Darwinian introduction to philosophical analysis as a philosophical analysis of problems raised by Darwinism". Now, any general reader wanting a quick guide to the Darwin wars, or any scientist doubtful that philosophy has anything useful to say on such matters, or anyone who's already decided what Darwin tells us about human nature (ranging from nothing at all to everything) may well groan at the phrase "philosophical analysis" and have any remaining enthusiasm extinguished on learning that there are exercises along the way (this book began life as Open University course material). The hard work and indignity of getting a few wrong answers along the way are worth the effort, however. Radcliffe Richards explores in fascinating detail (both scientific and philosophical) an important and yet rarely addressed question: given any two competing views of human nature, say blank-slate versus gene-machine Darwinism, "how much actually turns on the question of which is true"?

The power of this approach depends on using conditionals to investigate the implications of a particular view without necessarily knowing whether or not that view is true. Of course the truth matters, but consensus is often hard to reach, especially when complex and emotive issues are at stake. Hypotheticals are familiar from ordinary situations (even if politicians are adept at sidestepping them): you don't know for sure if it will rain, but you can ask yourself, if it does rain, will I be sorry to have left my umbrella at home? And so it goes with the bigger questions. "If materialism is true, what follows for human freedom and responsibility? If evolutionary psychologists are right, is serious political change impossible?"

Much of the controversy surrounding Darwinian explanations "seems to be fuelled by anxiety about implications" and so it is surprising to discover just how many of these unwelcome implications are actually shared by rival positions. One such perceived consequence of ultra-Darwinism, for example, is its threat to freedom, to the "idea of ourselves as moral beings". The worry is that if everything about us is ultimately determined by things that happened before we were born, such as the shuffling of our genes, then we can't be held responsible for anything.

The trouble with the concept of ultimate responsibility, however, is that it's incoherent, whatever your view of human nature. As Radcliffe Richards points out, we are clearly no more responsible for the environment into which we were born than we are for our genes. In any case, some environmentally caused characteristics are as irreversible as the mixing of the parental genes that result in a particular genome. "Nobody can unbake a baked potato" is a useful counterweight to notions of "genetic determinism" bandied around by authors like Steven Rose. Radcliffe Richards shows how muddled such criticism is, and she exposes common faults such as the fallacy of equivocation and unsignalled shifts in the level of explanation. (It's rare and very instructive to see ideas tested in this way. Most of us would plead guilty to having fudged an argument now and again, and I learned a good few things about logical gaps, structural validity, soundness, and so on.)

Those who are threatened by the idea that we are gene machines and ridicule scientists like Richard Dawkins for "giving a complete explanation of our origins" forget that being gene machines does not mean we can't also be fully human in all the familiar ways. Evolution explains how human nature came into existence - it does not explain it away, but fears that it does merge in the minds of some with a vague terror of reductionism and scientific explanation in general. There is anxiety in case we explain away everything that is precious and distinctive about ourselves: consciousness, culture, art, science, philosophy, moral ideas. Radcliffe Richards is reassuring on this point. For example, both "ordinary responsibility and altruism must exist irrespective of which version of Darwinism is true" and explaining "how altruism comes to exist no more shows that it is not real altruism than explaining how a cake was made shows it is not a real cake". Indeed, the whole book is an exploration "of the extent to which these threats are all that they seem".

Underlying the culture wars and much anti-scientific thinking today, and pervading "all our habits of thought", are the skyhooks of old. Radcliffe Richards suggests that there is a good deal of evidence "that the Mind First view continues to influence the reasoning of people who have officially rejected it". The twin bogey men of determinism and materialism have many running for cover behind their soul-shaped sofas, while those who regard dualism as equally repulsive tend to deal with their fear of determinism by bottling it up and labelling it genetic, since nothing is so absurd as believing we are controlled by our genes.

For anyone interested in the social and political implications of Darwinism, this is essential reading. Janet Radcliffe Richards has convinced me that "the philosophical work is at least as important as the science". That's hardly surprising coming from a philosopher, but her respect and enthusiasm for the science are genuine, and she actually does a better job than many scientists in defending Darwinism from the kinds of simple-minded charges often condensed into single words like determinism, materialism and reductionism. That such a well-established scientific theory attracts so much ill-judged criticism is one clue to the many confusions surrounding the study of human nature. One implication of giving up skyhook thinking is clear, however. As materialists, we will have to give up "both personal immortality and a morally ordered universe" and face up to the fact that any design, any purpose, in the universe comes from us and us alone. For some, this is a dreadful prospect. For the rest of us, it's a wake-up call. Time to grow up and stop passing the buck like moral infants.