开宗明义，关于纯洁存在以下悖论：
一个纯洁的人没法知道自己是否真的纯洁
如果纯洁指的是思维的简单，纯粹倾向，现实生活中的狭义的纯洁更可以理解为性方面的未开化状态。我们不妨取后一种解释，在这个解释中，纯洁的状态需要对性的了解程度来define，这样问题就来了，这个degree的高低判断意味着要对性有一定的了解才能完成，而纯洁本身意味着性的蒙昧，这就是这个悖论的由来。
从这个悖论出发可以得到以下推论：
推论1
凡自称自己纯洁的人必然不纯洁
如果这个人是故意撒慌，那他/她显然归入不纯洁之列，如果他/她没有撒谎，则意味着他/她具备判断自己纯洁与否的能力，也就是一定程度的性开化，那么他/她也就不纯洁了。
推论2
纯洁的人必然说不知道自己是否纯洁
他/她既不具备判断纯洁标准的能力，又不会撒慌，说自己不知道是唯一的可能性
推论3
自称自己不纯洁的人必然也不纯洁
这个不用多解释，无论撒慌与否，这种人必然不纯洁。我自认即在此列。
从进化心理学的角度来看，纯洁作为人类不同文化下普遍追捧的特质是有点奇怪的，更不用说很多文化里面所有的那种处女崇拜了。在哺乳动物里，和更具有性能力和性经验的也就是更不纯洁的异性交配应该是更具有生存优势的策略。第一次交配的小鼠生下的后代里面存活率会比有经验的小鼠低得多也清楚的表明这一点。高级灵长类里面，性经验多的猩猩也比“纯洁的”virgin猩猩更popular一点。
在我看来，人类社会的两性博弈中所形成纯洁的追捧实际上是一种纯粹虚伪的特质。纯洁和道德优点挂钩对个体是有利可图的──每个个体会本能的认为一个思想和性都比自己简单的partner显然比一个不那么“纯洁”的partner相比更容易控制也更容易让他/她不背叛自己。问题是，在生存竞争或者“性竞争”中，如果大家都意识到这一点，那么对每个个体利益最大化的选择就是自己“甲醇”然后试图寻找“真纯”。人类是如此善于伪装和欺骗的动物，伪装功力浅的人，会口头上标榜自己纯洁(推论1)，伪装功力高的人也会说不知道自己是否纯洁，这些人和真正纯洁的人混在了一起，人类的“性博弈”这样看来简直就是一场“装纯洁”大赛。最具讽刺性的是红男绿女们如此孜孜以求的追求纯洁，却是为了玩不纯洁的性爱和欲望游戏。
世间有真正热爱纯洁的男人么？那么他应该把他心目中纯洁的女人像圣女那样供起来，只可远观不可亵玩，只是，如果大家都如此热爱纯洁，可能人类早就绝种了。
2010/08/17
2010/08/13
婚姻与共产主义
从产权考察，婚姻在一定程度上实现了共产主义，婚姻共同体的内部的财产全部或者部分是共有的。
与所有共产主义形态一样，婚姻倡导的是一种集体主义或者说共同体主义而不是个人主义的价值观，具体体现就是婚姻内部的利他，彼此的互相负责，婚姻内部崇尚个人牺牲和奉献，自私和自由意志在是被认为是会破坏婚姻共同体的因素。
产权的不明晰决定了婚姻中种种的冲突和矛盾──婚姻中个人对共同体奉献的多少和其产权是不挂钩的，所有的婚姻必然都伴随付出更多那一方的不满和付出较少那一方的感情偷懒或者投机。
如同共产主义运动一样，大多数婚姻本身不是基于自发秩序，而是基于一套美好的利他主义价值观并为了共同体的利益而人为设计的相爱，相知，相守的人生agenda。如同哈耶克指出的社会主义的缪误那样，这是理性的自大，理性可以设计美好的爱情婚姻人生，但是真实的婚姻之路基于自发秩序而不是基于设计秩序的。从革命的轰轰烈烈，到革命后的压抑和残酷，到最终的质疑和共同体的土崩瓦解，这和很多人从相爱，到结婚和离婚的过程何其相似。
高调的提倡无私，忠贞，奉献并不能保证婚姻共同体的稳固，正如同提倡集体主义，爱国主义，奉献精神的社会主义价值观并不能保证共产主义政权稳固一样。相反，资本主义所发展的契约精神，基于利己基础上的利他长远来说是能有效降低社会运行成本并符合人性的。婚姻本身也可以理解为契约，所以在我看来具有契约精神的夫妻会远比那些表面上看起来爱的死去活来，满嘴誓言的夫妻的婚姻会更长久。契约精神在婚姻中意味着：即使自己已经不爱对方，只要对方还愿意持续婚约，自己就不能背弃这个婚姻。这如同一个合同的签订，即使合同在后来的实施过程中不能如自己意愿，也不能背弃合同。那种认为：没有爱情的婚姻是不道德的说法是荒谬的。站在自由主义的立场，爱情甚至不是婚姻的必要条件，对很多权力和金钱比感情效用更大的人来说，他们的婚姻并不需要很多感情基础，但是这不意味着他们的婚姻是不道德的。婚姻内唯一的不道德是欺骗和对契约的背弃，任何在婚姻内部基于自愿和诚实基础上的行为都是道德的。任何时候，人有爱或者不爱的自由，这是人的天然属性，但是一个理性社会人不应该有违背契约的自由。
与所有共产主义形态一样，婚姻倡导的是一种集体主义或者说共同体主义而不是个人主义的价值观，具体体现就是婚姻内部的利他，彼此的互相负责，婚姻内部崇尚个人牺牲和奉献，自私和自由意志在是被认为是会破坏婚姻共同体的因素。
产权的不明晰决定了婚姻中种种的冲突和矛盾──婚姻中个人对共同体奉献的多少和其产权是不挂钩的，所有的婚姻必然都伴随付出更多那一方的不满和付出较少那一方的感情偷懒或者投机。
如同共产主义运动一样，大多数婚姻本身不是基于自发秩序，而是基于一套美好的利他主义价值观并为了共同体的利益而人为设计的相爱，相知，相守的人生agenda。如同哈耶克指出的社会主义的缪误那样，这是理性的自大，理性可以设计美好的爱情婚姻人生，但是真实的婚姻之路基于自发秩序而不是基于设计秩序的。从革命的轰轰烈烈，到革命后的压抑和残酷，到最终的质疑和共同体的土崩瓦解，这和很多人从相爱，到结婚和离婚的过程何其相似。
高调的提倡无私，忠贞，奉献并不能保证婚姻共同体的稳固，正如同提倡集体主义，爱国主义，奉献精神的社会主义价值观并不能保证共产主义政权稳固一样。相反，资本主义所发展的契约精神，基于利己基础上的利他长远来说是能有效降低社会运行成本并符合人性的。婚姻本身也可以理解为契约，所以在我看来具有契约精神的夫妻会远比那些表面上看起来爱的死去活来，满嘴誓言的夫妻的婚姻会更长久。契约精神在婚姻中意味着：即使自己已经不爱对方，只要对方还愿意持续婚约，自己就不能背弃这个婚姻。这如同一个合同的签订，即使合同在后来的实施过程中不能如自己意愿，也不能背弃合同。那种认为：没有爱情的婚姻是不道德的说法是荒谬的。站在自由主义的立场，爱情甚至不是婚姻的必要条件，对很多权力和金钱比感情效用更大的人来说，他们的婚姻并不需要很多感情基础，但是这不意味着他们的婚姻是不道德的。婚姻内唯一的不道德是欺骗和对契约的背弃，任何在婚姻内部基于自愿和诚实基础上的行为都是道德的。任何时候，人有爱或者不爱的自由，这是人的天然属性，但是一个理性社会人不应该有违背契约的自由。
2010/08/10
庸俗兴邦，低俗抚民，媚俗治国
胡core最近提出并在天朝开展的“反三俗”运动在我看来是个不折不扣的joke。
庸俗，低俗，媚俗这三个词所代表的事物换一个说法，就是人民群众喜闻乐见的东西，或者说这些都是在某个层面上满足人性中某种欲望的东西。
对庸俗，低俗，媚俗的抵制在我看来是很可笑的，比如拉屎是很低俗上不得台面的事，不过不拉屎很可能胡core本人也要被屎涨破肚子，ML或者手淫是很低俗的事，不过人类不ML可能早就已经绝种了，毛伟人不和杨开慧ML，就不会有毛岸青，毛岸青不和邵华ML,就不会有现今天朝的活宝毛新宇，不SY可能遍街都是强奸犯;所有的流行文化都是媚俗的，要抵制媚俗天朝应该回到3个样板戏的时代，把那些刘德华，冯小刚，成龙，周杰伦，S.H.E.们统统关起来枪毙掉。
彻底拒绝庸俗，低俗，媚俗的人我很怀疑他不是彻头彻尾的伪君子或者有某种生理隐疾而失去正常人类欲望的人。比如我相信一个宦官是能摆脱庸俗，低俗，媚俗的低级趣味的人，没有了JJ,他没有incentive去看庸俗的日本AV，低俗的花花公子杂志，更不需要媚俗，他只需要“媚上”─圣上的上。
天朝宦官不多，不过伪君子很多，举个例子，在全国人民摆脱低级趣味只有3个样板戏可看的年代，TG的老干部们，毛夫人，林元帅夫人是有低俗不堪的欧美文艺片可观的，据说这些片仅供批判，只是广大屁民的批判低级趣味的权力被剥夺了。
所以，我郑重建议胡core，为了更好的开展反三俗运动，建议在全国开展广泛的反三俗批斗会，把有代表性的三俗作品展现在屁民面前，不妨先从对广大屁民毒害最大的日本AV开始，可以想象，在反三俗批斗现场，台上高清彩电放着苍井空老师的A片，台下屁民们义愤填膺的高呼：反三俗！打到苍井空！反三俗！打到苍井空！
那场面会是相当的状观阿。
庸俗，低俗，媚俗这三个词所代表的事物换一个说法，就是人民群众喜闻乐见的东西，或者说这些都是在某个层面上满足人性中某种欲望的东西。
对庸俗，低俗，媚俗的抵制在我看来是很可笑的，比如拉屎是很低俗上不得台面的事，不过不拉屎很可能胡core本人也要被屎涨破肚子，ML或者手淫是很低俗的事，不过人类不ML可能早就已经绝种了，毛伟人不和杨开慧ML，就不会有毛岸青，毛岸青不和邵华ML,就不会有现今天朝的活宝毛新宇，不SY可能遍街都是强奸犯;所有的流行文化都是媚俗的，要抵制媚俗天朝应该回到3个样板戏的时代，把那些刘德华，冯小刚，成龙，周杰伦，S.H.E.们统统关起来枪毙掉。
彻底拒绝庸俗，低俗，媚俗的人我很怀疑他不是彻头彻尾的伪君子或者有某种生理隐疾而失去正常人类欲望的人。比如我相信一个宦官是能摆脱庸俗，低俗，媚俗的低级趣味的人，没有了JJ,他没有incentive去看庸俗的日本AV，低俗的花花公子杂志，更不需要媚俗，他只需要“媚上”─圣上的上。
天朝宦官不多，不过伪君子很多，举个例子，在全国人民摆脱低级趣味只有3个样板戏可看的年代，TG的老干部们，毛夫人，林元帅夫人是有低俗不堪的欧美文艺片可观的，据说这些片仅供批判，只是广大屁民的批判低级趣味的权力被剥夺了。
所以，我郑重建议胡core，为了更好的开展反三俗运动，建议在全国开展广泛的反三俗批斗会，把有代表性的三俗作品展现在屁民面前，不妨先从对广大屁民毒害最大的日本AV开始，可以想象，在反三俗批斗现场，台上高清彩电放着苍井空老师的A片，台下屁民们义愤填膺的高呼：反三俗！打到苍井空！反三俗！打到苍井空！
那场面会是相当的状观阿。
2010/07/24
感情不是数字化信号的而是模拟信号的
热恋中的lover容易狭隘的理解感情，把感情当作是一种要么是1要么是0的数字化信号的东西，在我看来，感情是模拟的，从无到最深的感情之间有个波谱(spectrum)，在婚姻里面，双方的关系无论是维系在这个波谱中的哪一个点都要比家的分裂要强。
更狭隘的理解是把把激情在当作真正的感情，只要激情不在，便以为感情已逝，2人的感情和世间任何人类行为一样，是高度复杂，没有具体模式的东西，把激情才当作真正感情的人是被肤浅的爱情小说和爱情电影以及文化里面一切标签化描写感情的文艺作品禁锢了思想的人，所以真正深刻理解感情的人根本不会害怕激情的逝去。
更狭隘的理解是把把激情在当作真正的感情，只要激情不在，便以为感情已逝，2人的感情和世间任何人类行为一样，是高度复杂，没有具体模式的东西，把激情才当作真正感情的人是被肤浅的爱情小说和爱情电影以及文化里面一切标签化描写感情的文艺作品禁锢了思想的人，所以真正深刻理解感情的人根本不会害怕激情的逝去。
Amy与我
Amy是一只寄养在我屋里的猫。
Amy好迷恋我的手阿，我在电脑前工作的时候，他就爬上我的桌子，小头就把我的手当作枕头，幸福地迷上了双眼。
Amy还不停对着我作揖，只不过是为了让我能垂下我的手，到她能立起来嘴巴触及的地方，然后她就雀跃的用嘴在我手上蹭阿蹭。我很怀疑，它这样蹭我的手它能得到什么真正的生理上的舒适，因为对于她来说这很累，要不断立起身子。她所需要的，也许只是个关爱的证据，知道我还care她。
即使这种证据，是她这样低声下气作揖”乞求“得到的，她也不在乎，只要触到我的手，它就会心安理得的告诉自己，我还在乎她。Amy和人一样，当她陷入某种情感境地中，她会不断justify这种情感，哪怕是通过欺骗自己的方式。
她侧身躺在我旁边地板上眯上了眼睛，看起来就像睡着了，很安逸的样子，偶尔我回头，会发现她其实眼睛开了条缝在看我，我伸出手，它就会一骨碌爬起来，贴近我的手，哪怕她如此有睡意。很显然，在她心中，我的情感对她来说毫无安全感，她如此小心翼翼，生怕怠慢了我，担心下一分钟我向它伸出的不是她朝思暮想的手，而是屋里的扫帚或是我的呵斥。她很可怜，这样的情感关系中，她只能处于被manipulate的境地。
不过今天我真抚摸了她好一会，她享受极了。他日我若忙起来几天不理她，这时的欢愉对她来说也许就是苦涩的回忆了。
除了吃喝拉撒，这种情感依恋是她唯一的生活寄托了，我想起另外一只我认识的叫做小黄的猫，她是LP以前roommate的猫，和小黄比起来，Amy要幸福些吧，她天生的漂亮为她比小黄赢得了更多的关爱。不过这是否是件好事实在很难说，她已经习惯活在了关爱中，也许有一天她苍老得失去了现在灵动和乖巧，她的主人还能像现在这样爱她吗？那时候她又情何以堪？
相比之下，姿色平庸的小黄习惯了不招人待见，无论是温暖的爱怜还是冰冷的置之不理，她都安之若素，和之则来，不合则去，她没有得到过主人最温暖的呵护，却也未必会品尝到像Amy那样的曲终人散，人老色衰后的悲痛欲绝。
Amy是个感性的爱情至上主义者，小黄是个冷漠的虚无主义者。Amy欢娱中并不曾想到日后可能的荒凉，小黄冷眼看这世界，她只是这个世界的旁观者。
Amy好迷恋我的手阿，我在电脑前工作的时候，他就爬上我的桌子，小头就把我的手当作枕头，幸福地迷上了双眼。
Amy还不停对着我作揖，只不过是为了让我能垂下我的手，到她能立起来嘴巴触及的地方，然后她就雀跃的用嘴在我手上蹭阿蹭。我很怀疑，它这样蹭我的手它能得到什么真正的生理上的舒适，因为对于她来说这很累，要不断立起身子。她所需要的，也许只是个关爱的证据，知道我还care她。
即使这种证据，是她这样低声下气作揖”乞求“得到的，她也不在乎，只要触到我的手，它就会心安理得的告诉自己，我还在乎她。Amy和人一样，当她陷入某种情感境地中，她会不断justify这种情感，哪怕是通过欺骗自己的方式。
她侧身躺在我旁边地板上眯上了眼睛，看起来就像睡着了，很安逸的样子，偶尔我回头，会发现她其实眼睛开了条缝在看我，我伸出手，它就会一骨碌爬起来，贴近我的手，哪怕她如此有睡意。很显然，在她心中，我的情感对她来说毫无安全感，她如此小心翼翼，生怕怠慢了我，担心下一分钟我向它伸出的不是她朝思暮想的手，而是屋里的扫帚或是我的呵斥。她很可怜，这样的情感关系中，她只能处于被manipulate的境地。
不过今天我真抚摸了她好一会，她享受极了。他日我若忙起来几天不理她，这时的欢愉对她来说也许就是苦涩的回忆了。
除了吃喝拉撒，这种情感依恋是她唯一的生活寄托了，我想起另外一只我认识的叫做小黄的猫，她是LP以前roommate的猫，和小黄比起来，Amy要幸福些吧，她天生的漂亮为她比小黄赢得了更多的关爱。不过这是否是件好事实在很难说，她已经习惯活在了关爱中，也许有一天她苍老得失去了现在灵动和乖巧，她的主人还能像现在这样爱她吗？那时候她又情何以堪？
相比之下，姿色平庸的小黄习惯了不招人待见，无论是温暖的爱怜还是冰冷的置之不理，她都安之若素，和之则来，不合则去，她没有得到过主人最温暖的呵护，却也未必会品尝到像Amy那样的曲终人散，人老色衰后的悲痛欲绝。
Amy是个感性的爱情至上主义者，小黄是个冷漠的虚无主义者。Amy欢娱中并不曾想到日后可能的荒凉，小黄冷眼看这世界，她只是这个世界的旁观者。
自由主义者的爱情
自由主义者相信个人选择，那种海枯石烂，山盟海誓的承诺无疑是对自由的绑架。
自由主义者不欺骗自己也不欺骗对方，他们assume相爱的恋人有一天还是会有背叛的可能，但是仍然能付出自己的所有，这个意义上，一个devoted的liberal lover是这个世界上最好的lover,他们深知人性的本质，但也并不逃避爱情的脆弱和飘渺。
他们深知自己背对绝壁，面临沧海，但仍然选择微笑面对初升的朝霞，哪怕这朝阳有一天也会变成炙烤大地的毒火。
他们深谙所有热恋中的幻像，情深处的谎言，可是仍然选择维护和lover在一起每个瞬间的美好，哪怕那些幻象和谎言会在夜深人静之时撕咬他的内心。
本质上来说，一个自由主义的lover是在人性的荒漠上仍然选择遥望绿洲的人。
自由主义者不欺骗自己也不欺骗对方，他们assume相爱的恋人有一天还是会有背叛的可能，但是仍然能付出自己的所有，这个意义上，一个devoted的liberal lover是这个世界上最好的lover,他们深知人性的本质，但也并不逃避爱情的脆弱和飘渺。
他们深知自己背对绝壁，面临沧海，但仍然选择微笑面对初升的朝霞，哪怕这朝阳有一天也会变成炙烤大地的毒火。
他们深谙所有热恋中的幻像，情深处的谎言，可是仍然选择维护和lover在一起每个瞬间的美好，哪怕那些幻象和谎言会在夜深人静之时撕咬他的内心。
本质上来说，一个自由主义的lover是在人性的荒漠上仍然选择遥望绿洲的人。
2010/07/16
ZT-Darwinian Liberalism
by Larry Arnhart
Libertarians need Charles Darwin. They need him because a Darwinian science of human evolution supports classical liberalism.
In his review of Darwin’s Origin of Species in 1860, Thomas Huxley declared, “every philosophical thinker hails it as a veritable Whitworth gun in the armory of liberalism.” The Whitworth gun was a new kind of breech-loading cannon — a powerful weapon, then, for liberalism.
In 1860, liberalism meant classical liberalism — the moral and political tradition of individual liberty understood as the right of individuals to be free from coercion so long as they respected the equal liberty of others. According to the liberals, the primary aim of government was to secure individual rights from force and fraud, which included enforcing laws of contract and private property. They thought the moral and intellectual character of human beings was properly formed not by governmental coercion, but in the natural and voluntary associations of civil society.
Although Darwin in his scientific writing was not as explicit as Herbert Spencer in affirming the evolutionary argument for liberalism, those like Huxley saw that Darwin’s science supported liberalism. Darwin himself was a fervent supporter of the Liberal Party and its liberal policies. He was honored when William Gladstone (the “Grand Old Man” of the Liberal Party) visited him at his home in Down in 1877.
Like other liberals, Darwin admired and practiced the virtues of self-help, as promoted in Samuel Smiles’ popular book Self-Help, with its stories of self-made men. Darwin was active in the charitable activities of his parish. He was the treasurer of the local Friendly Society. In Great Britain, friendly societies were self-governing associations of manual laborers who shared their resources and pledged to help one another in time of hardship. In this way, individuals could secure their social welfare and acquire good character through voluntary mutual aid without the need for governmental coercion.
Darwin was also active in the international campaign against slavery, one of the leading liberal causes of his day. In their recent book Darwin’s Sacred Cause, Adrian Desmond and James Moore have shown that Darwin’s hatred of slavery was one motivation for his writing The Descent of Man, in which he affirmed the universality of humanity as belonging to one species, against the pro-slavery racial science of those who argued that some human beings belonged to a separate species of natural slaves.
Also in The Descent of Man, Darwin showed that the moral order of human life arose through a natural moral sense as shaped by organic and cultural evolution. He thus provided a scientific basis for the moral liberalism of David Hume, Adam Smith, and the other Scottish philosophers, who argued that the moral and intellectual virtues could arise through the spontaneous orders of human nature and human culture.
Darwin and the Libertarians
One might expect that today’s libertarians — who continue the tradition of classical liberalism — would want to embrace Darwin and evolutionary science as sustaining their position.
But libertarians are ambivalent about Darwin and Darwinism. That ambivalence is evident, for example, in The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism, edited by Ronald Hamowy, under the sponsorship of the Cato Institute. There is no entry in the encyclopedia for Charles Darwin. But there are entries for Herbert Spencer, Social Darwinism, and Evolutionary Psychology. In these and other entries, one can see intimations that libertarianism could be rooted in a Darwinian science of human nature. But one can also see suggestions that Darwin’s science has little or no application to libertarian thought.
The entry on Evolutionary Psychology is written by Leda Cosmides and John Tooby, the founders of the research tradition that goes by the name of “evolutionary psychology.”
They indicate that evolutionary psychology was begun by Darwin. They say that its aim is to map human nature as rooted in the evolved architecture of the human mind. They summarize some of this evolved human nature, including reasoning about social exchange and cheater detection that provides the cognitive foundations of trade and the moral sentiments that make moral order possible. They contrast this idea of a universal human nature with the idea of the human mind as a blank slate that is infinitely malleable by social learning. They say that the false idea of the blank slate explains the failure of those experiments in social engineering that denied human nature, as illustrated by the failed communist regimes. This all suggests that a Darwinian evolutionary psychology could support a libertarian view of human nature.
But Cosmides and Tooby also cast doubt on this conclusion. Although the implementation of public policy proposals needs to take human nature into account, they say, “the position most central to libertarianism — that human relationships should be based on the voluntary consent of the individuals involved — makes few if any assumptions about human nature.” They don’t explain what they mean by this. One interpretation is that they are making a fact-value distinction, and suggesting that while the calculation of means to ends is a factual judgment that might be open to scientific research, the moral assessment of ends — such as the value of individual liberty — is a normative judgment that is beyond scientific research.
Perhaps their thought is more clearly stated by Will Wilkinson in his essay on “Capitalism and Human Nature”
We cannot expect to draw any straightforward positive political lessons from evolutionary psychology. It can tell us something about the kind of society that will tend not to work, and why. But it cannot tell us which of the feasible forms of society we ought to aspire to. We cannot, it turns out, infer the naturalness of capitalism from the manifest failure of communism to accommodate human nature. Nor should we be tempted to infer that natural is better. Foraging half-naked for nuts and berries is natural, while the New York Stock Exchange and open-heart surgery would boggle our ancestors’ minds.
Wilkinson argues that while our evolved human nature constrains the possibilities of social order, the historical move to liberal capitalism — the transition from personal to impersonal exchange — was a “great cultural leap,” as Friedrich Hayek emphasized. Within the limits set by evolved human nature, the emergence of liberal capitalism depends on cultural evolution. “We have, through culture, enhanced those traits that facilitate trust and cooperation, channeled our coalitional and status-seeking instincts toward productive uses, and built upon our natural suspicion of power to preserve our freedom.”
This dependence of classical liberalism on cultural evolution is also stressed by George Smith in his encyclopedia entries on Social Darwinism and Herbert Spencer. Smith argues that Spencer’s view of evolution was Lamarckian, and therefore quite different from Darwin’s view. While Spencer’s Lamarckian conception of evolution through the inheritance of acquired characteristics has been discredited as biological theory, Smith observes, this is actually a better approach for understanding social history than is Darwin’s biological approach. Social evolution — including the evolution of liberal capitalism — really is Lamarckian in that the social practices successful for one generation can be passed on to the next generation through social learning as a system of cultural inheritance. Most importantly for Spencer, the move from regimes of status based on coercive exploitation to regimes of contract based on voluntary cooperation was a process of cultural rather than biological evolution. Smith suggests, therefore, that the liberal principle of equal liberty arose not from biological nature but from cultural history.
Furthermore, Smith argues, Spencer and other classical liberals understood that market competition differed radically from biological competition. Biological competition is a zero-sum game where the survival of one organism is at the expense of others competing for the same scarce resources. But market competition is a positive-sum game where all the participants can gain from voluntary exchanges with one another. In a liberal society of free markets based on voluntary exchanges, success depends on persuasion rather than coercion, because we must give to others what they want to get what we want. Smith concludes: “It is precisely in a free society that Social Darwinism does not apply.”
There’s a big problem with Smith’s analysis. If Social Darwinism means explaining all social order through biological evolution based on zero-sum competition, then Darwin was not a Social Darwinist.
Darwin saw that social animals are naturally inclined to cooperate with one another for mutual benefit. Human social and moral order arises as an extension of this natural tendency to social cooperation based on kinship, mutuality, and reciprocity. Modern Darwinian study of the evolution of cooperation shows that such cooperation is a positive-sum game.
Moreover, Darwin accepted Lamarckian thinking about what he called “the inherited effects of the long-continued use or disuse of parts.” And he saw that the moral and social progress of human beings came much more through cultural evolution by social learning than biological evolution by natural selection. Darwin’s reasoning has been confirmed by recent research on gene-culture co-evolution. As Eva Jablonka and Marion Lamb have shown, a broad understanding of evolution must encompass four systems of evolutionary inheritance — genetic, epigenetic, behavioral, and symbolic.
Darwin’s liberalism combines an Aristotelian ethics of social virtue and a Lockean politics of individual liberty. This is the sort of liberalism that has been recently defended by Douglas Rasmussen and Douglas Den Uyl in their books Liberty and Nature and Norms of Liberty and by Den Uyl in his book The Virtue of Prudence.
To anyone who knows about my advocacy of “Darwinian conservatism,” it must seem odd that I am now arguing for “Darwinian liberalism.” But the conservatism I have defended is a liberal conservatism that combines a libertarian concern for liberty and a traditionalist concern for virtue. This is similar to the “fusionist” conservatism of Frank Meyer, which is close to the Aristotelian liberalism of Rasmussen and Den Uyl.
To see how Darwinian science supports classical liberalism, we must see how the liberal principles of equal liberty have arisen from the complex interaction of natural desires, cultural traditions, and individual judgments.
Natural Desires
If the good is the desirable, then a Darwinian science can help us understand the human good by showing us how our natural desires are rooted in our evolved human nature. In Darwinian Natural Right and Darwinian Conservatism, I have argued that there are at least 20 natural desires that are universally expressed in all human societies because they have been shaped by genetic evolution as natural propensities of the human species. Human beings generally desire a complete life, parental care, sexual identity, sexual mating, familial bonding, friendship, social status, justice as reciprocity, political rule, courage in war, health, beauty, property, speech, practical habituation, practical reasoning, practical arts, aesthetic pleasure, religious understanding, and intellectual understanding.
In Darwin’s writings on human evolution — particularly, The Descent of Man and The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals — he accounts for these 20 desires as part of human biological nature. We now have anthropological evidence — surveyed by Donald Brown and others — that there are hundreds of human universals, which are clustered around these 20 desires. Psychologists who study human motivation across diverse cultures recognize these desires as manifesting the basic motives for human action.
Rasmussen and Den Uyl identify the natural ends of human action as corresponding to a list of generic goods that resembles my list of 20 natural desires. Their list of generic goods includes health, beauty, wealth, honor, friendship, justice, artistic pursuits, and intellectual pursuits.
My assertion that the good is the desirable will provoke a complaint from some philosophers that I am overlooking the distinction between facts and values or is and ought. They will insist that we cannot infer moral values from natural facts. From the fact that we naturally desire something, they say, we cannot infer that it is morally good for us to desire it.
But I say that there is no merely factual desire separated from prescriptive desire, which would create the fact/value dichotomy. Whatever we desire we do so because we judge that it is truly desirable for us. If we discover that we are mistaken — because what we desire is not truly desirable for us — then we are already motivated to correct our mistake. Much of Darwin’s discussion of moral deliberation is about how human beings judge their desires in the light of their past experiences and future expectations as they strive for the harmonious satisfaction of their desires over a whole life, and much of this moral and intellectual deliberation turns on the experience of regret when human beings realize that they have yielded to a momentary desire that conflicts with their more enduring desires.
Whenever a moral philosopher tells us that we ought to do something, we can always ask, “Why?” The only ultimate answer to that question is because it’s desirable for you — it will fulfill you or make you happy by contributing to your human flourishing.
But even if we know what is generally or generically good for human beings, this does not tell us what is good for particular individuals in particular circumstances. Although the 20 natural desires constitute the universal goods of human life, the best organization or ranking of those desires over a whole life varies according to individual temperaments and social situations. So, for example, a philosophic life in which the natural desire for intellectual understanding ranks higher than other desires is best for Socrates and those like him, but not for others.
Evolutionary biology allows us to generalize about natural desires as the universals of evolved human nature. And yet evolutionary biology also teaches us that every individual organism is unique. After all, the Darwinian theory of evolution requires individual variation. Even identical twins are not really identical. Evolutionary biology also teaches us that human evolutionary adaptations enable flexible responses to the variable circumstances of the physical and social environment, which is why the human brain has evolved to respond flexibly to the unique life history of each individual.
If there is no single way of life that is best for all individuals in all circumstances, then the problem for any human community is how to organize social life so that individuals can pursue their diverse conceptions of happiness without coming into conflict. And since human beings are naturally social animals, their individual pursuit of happiness requires communal engagement. Allowing human beings to live together as children, parents, spouses, friends, associates, and citizens without imposing one determinate conception of the best way of life on all individuals is what Rasmussen and Den Uyl identify as “liberalism’s problem.”
Liberalism’s solution to this problem is to distinguish between the political order of the state as protecting individual liberty and the moral order of society as shaping virtuous character. While a liberal political community does not enforce one determinate conception of the human good, it does enforce procedural norms of peaceful conduct that secure the freedom of individuals to form families, social groups, and cooperative enterprises that manifest their diverse conceptions of the human good.
Cultural Traditions
Natural desires constrain but do not determine cultural traditions. If I am right about my list of 20 natural desires, this constitutes a universal standard for what is generally good for human beings by nature, and we can judge cultural traditions by how well they conform to these natural desires. So, for example, we can judge the utopian socialist traditions to be a failure, because their attempts to abolish private property and private families have frustrated some of the strongest desires of evolved human nature. We can also judge that political traditions of limited government that channel and check political ambition are adapted for satisfying the natural desire of dominant individuals for political rule, while also satisfying the natural desire of subordinate individuals to be free from exploitation. But cultural traditions like socialism and limited government arise as spontaneous orders of human cultural evolution that are not precisely determined by genetic nature or by individual judgment.
Recognizing that natural desires constrain but do not determine cultural traditions, Darwinian liberalism avoids the mistaken assumption of biological determinism that biology is everything, culture nothing, while also avoiding the mistaken assumption of cultural relativism that culture is everything, biology nothing.
The interaction of human nature and human culture is manifest in the cultivation of moral and intellectual character through the spontaneous order of civil society. Classical liberals believe that while we need the coercive powers of the state to secure those individual rights of liberty that are the conditions for a free society, we need the natural and voluntary associations of civil society to secure the moral order of our social life. The associations within civil society — families, churches, clubs, schools, fraternal societies, business organizations, and so on — allow us to pursue our diverse conceptions of the good life in cooperation with others who share our moral understanding.
Darwin showed how this moral order of civil society arises from the natural and cultural history of the human species. The need of human offspring for prolonged and intensive parental care favors the moral emotions of familial bonding, and thus people tend to cooperate with their kin. The evolutionary advantages of mutual aid favor moral emotions sustaining mutual cooperation. And the benefits of reciprocal exchange favors moral emotions sustaining a sense of reciprocity, because one is more likely to be helped by others if one has helped others in the past and has the reputation for being helpful. “Ultimately,” Darwin concluded, “our moral sense or conscience becomes a highly complex sentiment — originating in the social instincts, largely guided by the approbation of our fellow-men, ruled by reason, self-interest, and in later times by deep religious feelings, and confirmed by instruction and habit.” Recent research in evolutionary psychology has confirmed and deepened this Darwinian understanding of moral order that arises in civil society through the spontaneous order of human action rather than the coercive order of governmental design.
Individual Judgments
Natural desires and cultural traditions constrain but do not determine individual judgments. Classical liberals recognize that the human good or flourishing is complex in conforming to the natural ends, the cultural circumstances, and the individual choices of human life. Our shared human nature gives us a universal range of natural desires that constitute the generic goods of life. Our diverse human cultures give us a multiplicity of moral traditions that shape our social life. But ultimately, individuals must choose a way of life that they judge as best conforming to their natural desires, social circumstances, and individual temperaments. For that reason, liberals believe that the fundamental human right is liberty of judgment or conscience.
Darwinian moral psychology explains the evolutionary history of the human capacity for individual moral judgment. Most recently, neuroscience has begun to uncover the emotional, social, and cognitive capacities of the brain that make moral judgment possible. For example, while Darwin explained the evolutionary importance of sympathy for human moral experience, contemporary neuroscientists have studied the “mirror neurons” in human beings and other primates that allow animals to imaginatively project themselves into the experiences of other individuals.
Created from Animals
I have argued that Darwinian science is compatible with a classical liberal understanding of how moral order in a free society arises from natural desires, cultural traditions, and individual judgments. But does Darwinism make any unique contribution to liberal thought — something that could not have been derived from the moral and political thought of liberalism without the help of Darwinian science?
Yes, I think it does. Evolution provides a purely naturalistic grounding for liberal thought, so that there is no necessity to appeal to the supernatural. That’s important, because if liberal thought required supernatural beliefs, this might seem to require a coercive enforcement of those supernatural beliefs, which would subvert the individual liberty of conscience.
From Locke’s Two Treatises of Government to Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence to Spencer’s Social Statics, liberal thought has justified equal liberty as an expression of the unique dignity that human beings have as created in God’s image. For Locke, our natural desires give rise to natural rights because they have been implanted in us by God, and we are all naturally equal in our rights to life, liberty, and property, because we are all “the Workmanship of one Omnipotent and infinitely wise Maker.” For Jefferson, looking to the “Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God,” we can hold it to be self-evident “that all men are created equal” and that “they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.” For Spencer, since God wills human happiness, He also wills that human beings should have equal liberty as the condition for satisfying their desires.
If liberalism requires such religious beliefs, then the liberal doctrine of religious toleration cannot include tolerating atheists. This was Locke’s conclusion, because he warned that denying the existence of God as the Creator of human beings and of the moral law dissolved the moral bonds of human society.
Darwin offered an alternative. In one of his early notebooks, he wrote that “man in his arrogance thinks himself a great work, worthy of the interposition of a deity, more humble, and I believe true, to consider him created from animals.” Although scientists and philosophers had long speculated on the possibility of a purely natural evolution of life, Darwin was one of the first thinkers to lay out a rigorous theory of how this could have happened, which included an evolutionary theory of the natural moral sense.
In his review of The Origin of Species, Huxley explained that Darwin’s book was a great weapon for liberalism because it refuted the Biblical doctrine of “special creation.” To protect liberty of thought from coercive theocratic authority, liberals needed to explain all of nature, including human nature, as the product of purely natural causes.
And yet, despite the claims of some of its religious opponents, Darwinism does not dictate atheism. Although Darwin by the end of his life was an agnostic, he recognized that religious beliefs were often important for the cultural evolution of morality. Recently, evolutionary theorists such as David Sloan Wilson have shown how the evolution of religion through group selection can strengthen the cooperative moral dispositions of religious believers.
But even without religion, Darwin suggested, believing that we were “created from animals,” we can see that moral order stands on purely human grounds—human nature, human tradition, and human judgment.
That’s why libertarians need Charles Darwin.
Libertarians need Charles Darwin. They need him because a Darwinian science of human evolution supports classical liberalism.
In his review of Darwin’s Origin of Species in 1860, Thomas Huxley declared, “every philosophical thinker hails it as a veritable Whitworth gun in the armory of liberalism.” The Whitworth gun was a new kind of breech-loading cannon — a powerful weapon, then, for liberalism.
In 1860, liberalism meant classical liberalism — the moral and political tradition of individual liberty understood as the right of individuals to be free from coercion so long as they respected the equal liberty of others. According to the liberals, the primary aim of government was to secure individual rights from force and fraud, which included enforcing laws of contract and private property. They thought the moral and intellectual character of human beings was properly formed not by governmental coercion, but in the natural and voluntary associations of civil society.
Although Darwin in his scientific writing was not as explicit as Herbert Spencer in affirming the evolutionary argument for liberalism, those like Huxley saw that Darwin’s science supported liberalism. Darwin himself was a fervent supporter of the Liberal Party and its liberal policies. He was honored when William Gladstone (the “Grand Old Man” of the Liberal Party) visited him at his home in Down in 1877.
Like other liberals, Darwin admired and practiced the virtues of self-help, as promoted in Samuel Smiles’ popular book Self-Help, with its stories of self-made men. Darwin was active in the charitable activities of his parish. He was the treasurer of the local Friendly Society. In Great Britain, friendly societies were self-governing associations of manual laborers who shared their resources and pledged to help one another in time of hardship. In this way, individuals could secure their social welfare and acquire good character through voluntary mutual aid without the need for governmental coercion.
Darwin was also active in the international campaign against slavery, one of the leading liberal causes of his day. In their recent book Darwin’s Sacred Cause, Adrian Desmond and James Moore have shown that Darwin’s hatred of slavery was one motivation for his writing The Descent of Man, in which he affirmed the universality of humanity as belonging to one species, against the pro-slavery racial science of those who argued that some human beings belonged to a separate species of natural slaves.
Also in The Descent of Man, Darwin showed that the moral order of human life arose through a natural moral sense as shaped by organic and cultural evolution. He thus provided a scientific basis for the moral liberalism of David Hume, Adam Smith, and the other Scottish philosophers, who argued that the moral and intellectual virtues could arise through the spontaneous orders of human nature and human culture.
Darwin and the Libertarians
One might expect that today’s libertarians — who continue the tradition of classical liberalism — would want to embrace Darwin and evolutionary science as sustaining their position.
But libertarians are ambivalent about Darwin and Darwinism. That ambivalence is evident, for example, in The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism, edited by Ronald Hamowy, under the sponsorship of the Cato Institute. There is no entry in the encyclopedia for Charles Darwin. But there are entries for Herbert Spencer, Social Darwinism, and Evolutionary Psychology. In these and other entries, one can see intimations that libertarianism could be rooted in a Darwinian science of human nature. But one can also see suggestions that Darwin’s science has little or no application to libertarian thought.
The entry on Evolutionary Psychology is written by Leda Cosmides and John Tooby, the founders of the research tradition that goes by the name of “evolutionary psychology.”
They indicate that evolutionary psychology was begun by Darwin. They say that its aim is to map human nature as rooted in the evolved architecture of the human mind. They summarize some of this evolved human nature, including reasoning about social exchange and cheater detection that provides the cognitive foundations of trade and the moral sentiments that make moral order possible. They contrast this idea of a universal human nature with the idea of the human mind as a blank slate that is infinitely malleable by social learning. They say that the false idea of the blank slate explains the failure of those experiments in social engineering that denied human nature, as illustrated by the failed communist regimes. This all suggests that a Darwinian evolutionary psychology could support a libertarian view of human nature.
But Cosmides and Tooby also cast doubt on this conclusion. Although the implementation of public policy proposals needs to take human nature into account, they say, “the position most central to libertarianism — that human relationships should be based on the voluntary consent of the individuals involved — makes few if any assumptions about human nature.” They don’t explain what they mean by this. One interpretation is that they are making a fact-value distinction, and suggesting that while the calculation of means to ends is a factual judgment that might be open to scientific research, the moral assessment of ends — such as the value of individual liberty — is a normative judgment that is beyond scientific research.
Perhaps their thought is more clearly stated by Will Wilkinson in his essay on “Capitalism and Human Nature”
We cannot expect to draw any straightforward positive political lessons from evolutionary psychology. It can tell us something about the kind of society that will tend not to work, and why. But it cannot tell us which of the feasible forms of society we ought to aspire to. We cannot, it turns out, infer the naturalness of capitalism from the manifest failure of communism to accommodate human nature. Nor should we be tempted to infer that natural is better. Foraging half-naked for nuts and berries is natural, while the New York Stock Exchange and open-heart surgery would boggle our ancestors’ minds.
Wilkinson argues that while our evolved human nature constrains the possibilities of social order, the historical move to liberal capitalism — the transition from personal to impersonal exchange — was a “great cultural leap,” as Friedrich Hayek emphasized. Within the limits set by evolved human nature, the emergence of liberal capitalism depends on cultural evolution. “We have, through culture, enhanced those traits that facilitate trust and cooperation, channeled our coalitional and status-seeking instincts toward productive uses, and built upon our natural suspicion of power to preserve our freedom.”
This dependence of classical liberalism on cultural evolution is also stressed by George Smith in his encyclopedia entries on Social Darwinism and Herbert Spencer. Smith argues that Spencer’s view of evolution was Lamarckian, and therefore quite different from Darwin’s view. While Spencer’s Lamarckian conception of evolution through the inheritance of acquired characteristics has been discredited as biological theory, Smith observes, this is actually a better approach for understanding social history than is Darwin’s biological approach. Social evolution — including the evolution of liberal capitalism — really is Lamarckian in that the social practices successful for one generation can be passed on to the next generation through social learning as a system of cultural inheritance. Most importantly for Spencer, the move from regimes of status based on coercive exploitation to regimes of contract based on voluntary cooperation was a process of cultural rather than biological evolution. Smith suggests, therefore, that the liberal principle of equal liberty arose not from biological nature but from cultural history.
Furthermore, Smith argues, Spencer and other classical liberals understood that market competition differed radically from biological competition. Biological competition is a zero-sum game where the survival of one organism is at the expense of others competing for the same scarce resources. But market competition is a positive-sum game where all the participants can gain from voluntary exchanges with one another. In a liberal society of free markets based on voluntary exchanges, success depends on persuasion rather than coercion, because we must give to others what they want to get what we want. Smith concludes: “It is precisely in a free society that Social Darwinism does not apply.”
There’s a big problem with Smith’s analysis. If Social Darwinism means explaining all social order through biological evolution based on zero-sum competition, then Darwin was not a Social Darwinist.
Darwin saw that social animals are naturally inclined to cooperate with one another for mutual benefit. Human social and moral order arises as an extension of this natural tendency to social cooperation based on kinship, mutuality, and reciprocity. Modern Darwinian study of the evolution of cooperation shows that such cooperation is a positive-sum game.
Moreover, Darwin accepted Lamarckian thinking about what he called “the inherited effects of the long-continued use or disuse of parts.” And he saw that the moral and social progress of human beings came much more through cultural evolution by social learning than biological evolution by natural selection. Darwin’s reasoning has been confirmed by recent research on gene-culture co-evolution. As Eva Jablonka and Marion Lamb have shown, a broad understanding of evolution must encompass four systems of evolutionary inheritance — genetic, epigenetic, behavioral, and symbolic.
Darwin’s liberalism combines an Aristotelian ethics of social virtue and a Lockean politics of individual liberty. This is the sort of liberalism that has been recently defended by Douglas Rasmussen and Douglas Den Uyl in their books Liberty and Nature and Norms of Liberty and by Den Uyl in his book The Virtue of Prudence.
To anyone who knows about my advocacy of “Darwinian conservatism,” it must seem odd that I am now arguing for “Darwinian liberalism.” But the conservatism I have defended is a liberal conservatism that combines a libertarian concern for liberty and a traditionalist concern for virtue. This is similar to the “fusionist” conservatism of Frank Meyer, which is close to the Aristotelian liberalism of Rasmussen and Den Uyl.
To see how Darwinian science supports classical liberalism, we must see how the liberal principles of equal liberty have arisen from the complex interaction of natural desires, cultural traditions, and individual judgments.
Natural Desires
If the good is the desirable, then a Darwinian science can help us understand the human good by showing us how our natural desires are rooted in our evolved human nature. In Darwinian Natural Right and Darwinian Conservatism, I have argued that there are at least 20 natural desires that are universally expressed in all human societies because they have been shaped by genetic evolution as natural propensities of the human species. Human beings generally desire a complete life, parental care, sexual identity, sexual mating, familial bonding, friendship, social status, justice as reciprocity, political rule, courage in war, health, beauty, property, speech, practical habituation, practical reasoning, practical arts, aesthetic pleasure, religious understanding, and intellectual understanding.
In Darwin’s writings on human evolution — particularly, The Descent of Man and The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals — he accounts for these 20 desires as part of human biological nature. We now have anthropological evidence — surveyed by Donald Brown and others — that there are hundreds of human universals, which are clustered around these 20 desires. Psychologists who study human motivation across diverse cultures recognize these desires as manifesting the basic motives for human action.
Rasmussen and Den Uyl identify the natural ends of human action as corresponding to a list of generic goods that resembles my list of 20 natural desires. Their list of generic goods includes health, beauty, wealth, honor, friendship, justice, artistic pursuits, and intellectual pursuits.
My assertion that the good is the desirable will provoke a complaint from some philosophers that I am overlooking the distinction between facts and values or is and ought. They will insist that we cannot infer moral values from natural facts. From the fact that we naturally desire something, they say, we cannot infer that it is morally good for us to desire it.
But I say that there is no merely factual desire separated from prescriptive desire, which would create the fact/value dichotomy. Whatever we desire we do so because we judge that it is truly desirable for us. If we discover that we are mistaken — because what we desire is not truly desirable for us — then we are already motivated to correct our mistake. Much of Darwin’s discussion of moral deliberation is about how human beings judge their desires in the light of their past experiences and future expectations as they strive for the harmonious satisfaction of their desires over a whole life, and much of this moral and intellectual deliberation turns on the experience of regret when human beings realize that they have yielded to a momentary desire that conflicts with their more enduring desires.
Whenever a moral philosopher tells us that we ought to do something, we can always ask, “Why?” The only ultimate answer to that question is because it’s desirable for you — it will fulfill you or make you happy by contributing to your human flourishing.
But even if we know what is generally or generically good for human beings, this does not tell us what is good for particular individuals in particular circumstances. Although the 20 natural desires constitute the universal goods of human life, the best organization or ranking of those desires over a whole life varies according to individual temperaments and social situations. So, for example, a philosophic life in which the natural desire for intellectual understanding ranks higher than other desires is best for Socrates and those like him, but not for others.
Evolutionary biology allows us to generalize about natural desires as the universals of evolved human nature. And yet evolutionary biology also teaches us that every individual organism is unique. After all, the Darwinian theory of evolution requires individual variation. Even identical twins are not really identical. Evolutionary biology also teaches us that human evolutionary adaptations enable flexible responses to the variable circumstances of the physical and social environment, which is why the human brain has evolved to respond flexibly to the unique life history of each individual.
If there is no single way of life that is best for all individuals in all circumstances, then the problem for any human community is how to organize social life so that individuals can pursue their diverse conceptions of happiness without coming into conflict. And since human beings are naturally social animals, their individual pursuit of happiness requires communal engagement. Allowing human beings to live together as children, parents, spouses, friends, associates, and citizens without imposing one determinate conception of the best way of life on all individuals is what Rasmussen and Den Uyl identify as “liberalism’s problem.”
Liberalism’s solution to this problem is to distinguish between the political order of the state as protecting individual liberty and the moral order of society as shaping virtuous character. While a liberal political community does not enforce one determinate conception of the human good, it does enforce procedural norms of peaceful conduct that secure the freedom of individuals to form families, social groups, and cooperative enterprises that manifest their diverse conceptions of the human good.
Cultural Traditions
Natural desires constrain but do not determine cultural traditions. If I am right about my list of 20 natural desires, this constitutes a universal standard for what is generally good for human beings by nature, and we can judge cultural traditions by how well they conform to these natural desires. So, for example, we can judge the utopian socialist traditions to be a failure, because their attempts to abolish private property and private families have frustrated some of the strongest desires of evolved human nature. We can also judge that political traditions of limited government that channel and check political ambition are adapted for satisfying the natural desire of dominant individuals for political rule, while also satisfying the natural desire of subordinate individuals to be free from exploitation. But cultural traditions like socialism and limited government arise as spontaneous orders of human cultural evolution that are not precisely determined by genetic nature or by individual judgment.
Recognizing that natural desires constrain but do not determine cultural traditions, Darwinian liberalism avoids the mistaken assumption of biological determinism that biology is everything, culture nothing, while also avoiding the mistaken assumption of cultural relativism that culture is everything, biology nothing.
The interaction of human nature and human culture is manifest in the cultivation of moral and intellectual character through the spontaneous order of civil society. Classical liberals believe that while we need the coercive powers of the state to secure those individual rights of liberty that are the conditions for a free society, we need the natural and voluntary associations of civil society to secure the moral order of our social life. The associations within civil society — families, churches, clubs, schools, fraternal societies, business organizations, and so on — allow us to pursue our diverse conceptions of the good life in cooperation with others who share our moral understanding.
Darwin showed how this moral order of civil society arises from the natural and cultural history of the human species. The need of human offspring for prolonged and intensive parental care favors the moral emotions of familial bonding, and thus people tend to cooperate with their kin. The evolutionary advantages of mutual aid favor moral emotions sustaining mutual cooperation. And the benefits of reciprocal exchange favors moral emotions sustaining a sense of reciprocity, because one is more likely to be helped by others if one has helped others in the past and has the reputation for being helpful. “Ultimately,” Darwin concluded, “our moral sense or conscience becomes a highly complex sentiment — originating in the social instincts, largely guided by the approbation of our fellow-men, ruled by reason, self-interest, and in later times by deep religious feelings, and confirmed by instruction and habit.” Recent research in evolutionary psychology has confirmed and deepened this Darwinian understanding of moral order that arises in civil society through the spontaneous order of human action rather than the coercive order of governmental design.
Individual Judgments
Natural desires and cultural traditions constrain but do not determine individual judgments. Classical liberals recognize that the human good or flourishing is complex in conforming to the natural ends, the cultural circumstances, and the individual choices of human life. Our shared human nature gives us a universal range of natural desires that constitute the generic goods of life. Our diverse human cultures give us a multiplicity of moral traditions that shape our social life. But ultimately, individuals must choose a way of life that they judge as best conforming to their natural desires, social circumstances, and individual temperaments. For that reason, liberals believe that the fundamental human right is liberty of judgment or conscience.
Darwinian moral psychology explains the evolutionary history of the human capacity for individual moral judgment. Most recently, neuroscience has begun to uncover the emotional, social, and cognitive capacities of the brain that make moral judgment possible. For example, while Darwin explained the evolutionary importance of sympathy for human moral experience, contemporary neuroscientists have studied the “mirror neurons” in human beings and other primates that allow animals to imaginatively project themselves into the experiences of other individuals.
Created from Animals
I have argued that Darwinian science is compatible with a classical liberal understanding of how moral order in a free society arises from natural desires, cultural traditions, and individual judgments. But does Darwinism make any unique contribution to liberal thought — something that could not have been derived from the moral and political thought of liberalism without the help of Darwinian science?
Yes, I think it does. Evolution provides a purely naturalistic grounding for liberal thought, so that there is no necessity to appeal to the supernatural. That’s important, because if liberal thought required supernatural beliefs, this might seem to require a coercive enforcement of those supernatural beliefs, which would subvert the individual liberty of conscience.
From Locke’s Two Treatises of Government to Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence to Spencer’s Social Statics, liberal thought has justified equal liberty as an expression of the unique dignity that human beings have as created in God’s image. For Locke, our natural desires give rise to natural rights because they have been implanted in us by God, and we are all naturally equal in our rights to life, liberty, and property, because we are all “the Workmanship of one Omnipotent and infinitely wise Maker.” For Jefferson, looking to the “Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God,” we can hold it to be self-evident “that all men are created equal” and that “they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.” For Spencer, since God wills human happiness, He also wills that human beings should have equal liberty as the condition for satisfying their desires.
If liberalism requires such religious beliefs, then the liberal doctrine of religious toleration cannot include tolerating atheists. This was Locke’s conclusion, because he warned that denying the existence of God as the Creator of human beings and of the moral law dissolved the moral bonds of human society.
Darwin offered an alternative. In one of his early notebooks, he wrote that “man in his arrogance thinks himself a great work, worthy of the interposition of a deity, more humble, and I believe true, to consider him created from animals.” Although scientists and philosophers had long speculated on the possibility of a purely natural evolution of life, Darwin was one of the first thinkers to lay out a rigorous theory of how this could have happened, which included an evolutionary theory of the natural moral sense.
In his review of The Origin of Species, Huxley explained that Darwin’s book was a great weapon for liberalism because it refuted the Biblical doctrine of “special creation.” To protect liberty of thought from coercive theocratic authority, liberals needed to explain all of nature, including human nature, as the product of purely natural causes.
And yet, despite the claims of some of its religious opponents, Darwinism does not dictate atheism. Although Darwin by the end of his life was an agnostic, he recognized that religious beliefs were often important for the cultural evolution of morality. Recently, evolutionary theorists such as David Sloan Wilson have shown how the evolution of religion through group selection can strengthen the cooperative moral dispositions of religious believers.
But even without religion, Darwin suggested, believing that we were “created from animals,” we can see that moral order stands on purely human grounds—human nature, human tradition, and human judgment.
That’s why libertarians need Charles Darwin.
2010/07/10
2010/07/07
献给所有70后阿迷和我自己
阿根廷回家了，尽管无论比分还是审美意义上都惨败给德国，在阿根廷，老马仍然享受到了英雄般的欢迎。而和阿根廷一样止步于8强的巴西，回到巴西所受待遇却大相径庭。
球迷和他们所支持的球队关系大约就像一对怨偶吧，彼此爱恨交错，欢乐与苦涩纠缠，这个世界有多少阿迷是因为蓝白军团水银泄地般的进攻，老马的王者风范，雷动多的飘逸，里克尔梅的优雅而喜欢阿根廷的，这正如同一对恋人因为彼此身上散发的美而坠入爱河。从此，一段欢爱与痛苦，愉悦与纠结的旅程就已经book下了。
所有的阿根廷人和阿迷都永生不忘，86，90老马给大家带来的颤悚，狂喜，梦幻……还有94老马被禁赛后的剧痛，这种体验可以和任何世间的男欢女爱所带来的在天堂和地狱之间穿行的高峰体验相比。
一个曾经纠结了一个decade的爱侣，在过去的这20多年，换个更精确的说法是过去的这6个世界杯的时光隧道的坐标中，老马就是那把尺子，每个从90世界杯开始看球的70后内心隐隐都希望老马梦圆南非，这也是这帮而近中年的或父亲，或丈夫，或还有梦想，或早已向现实妥协的老男人们的梦，这个梦最后破了……
梦中人白发归来时，阿根廷人和全世界阿迷耳边想起的是那首memory……
梦中人终将远去，memory依旧灿烂。
球迷和他们所支持的球队关系大约就像一对怨偶吧，彼此爱恨交错，欢乐与苦涩纠缠，这个世界有多少阿迷是因为蓝白军团水银泄地般的进攻，老马的王者风范，雷动多的飘逸，里克尔梅的优雅而喜欢阿根廷的，这正如同一对恋人因为彼此身上散发的美而坠入爱河。从此，一段欢爱与痛苦，愉悦与纠结的旅程就已经book下了。
所有的阿根廷人和阿迷都永生不忘，86，90老马给大家带来的颤悚，狂喜，梦幻……还有94老马被禁赛后的剧痛，这种体验可以和任何世间的男欢女爱所带来的在天堂和地狱之间穿行的高峰体验相比。
一个曾经纠结了一个decade的爱侣，在过去的这20多年，换个更精确的说法是过去的这6个世界杯的时光隧道的坐标中，老马就是那把尺子，每个从90世界杯开始看球的70后内心隐隐都希望老马梦圆南非，这也是这帮而近中年的或父亲，或丈夫，或还有梦想，或早已向现实妥协的老男人们的梦，这个梦最后破了……
梦中人白发归来时，阿根廷人和全世界阿迷耳边想起的是那首memory……
梦中人终将远去，memory依旧灿烂。
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