Outlines of a Critical Theory of Ethics

by John Dewey

The Utilitarian Theory Combined With the Doctrine of Evolution.

There has lately been an attempt to combine utilitarian morality with the theory of evolution. This position, chiefly as occupied by Herbert Spencer and Leslie Stephen, we shall now examine.

Alexander, also, Moral Order and Progress, makes large use of the theory of evolution, but does not attempt to unite it with any form of hedonism.

For the combination, at least three decided advantages are claimed over ordinary utilitarianism.

1. It transforms 'empirical rules' into 'rational laws.' The evolutionary hedonists regard pleasure as the good, but hold that the theory of evolution enables them to judge of the relation of acts to pleasure much better than the ordinary theory. As Mr. Spencer puts it, the ordinary theory is not scientific, because it does not fully recognize the principle of causation as existing between certain acts as causes, and pleasures (or pains) as effects. It undoubtedly recognizes that some acts do result in pain or pleasure, but does not show how or why they so result. By the aid of the theory of evolution we can demonstrate that certain acts must be beneficial because furthering evolution, and others painful because retarding it.

Spencer, Data of Ethics, pp. 5758. "Morality properly so-called—the science of right conduct—has for its object to determine how and why certain rules of conduct are detrimental, and certain other rules beneficial. Those good and bad results cannot be accidental, but must be necessary consequences of the constitution of things; and I conceive it to be the business of moral science to deduce, from the laws of life and the conditions of existence, what kinds of action necessarily tend to produce happiness, and what kinds to produce unhappiness. Having done this, its deductions are to be recognized as laws of conduct; and are to be conformed to irrespective of a direct estimation of happiness or misery.... The objection which I have to the current utilitarianism is, that it recognizes no more developed form of utility—does not see that it has reached but the initial stage of moral science.... It is supposed that in future, as now, utility is to be determined only by observation of results; and that there is no possibility of knowing by deduction from fundamental principles what conduct must be detrimental and what conduct must be beneficial." Cf. also ch. IX, and Stephen, Science of Ethics, ch. IX.

It is contended, then, that by the use of the evolutionary theory, we may substitute certain conditions, which in the very nature of things tend to produce happiness, for a calculation, based upon observation of more or less varying cases in the past, of the probable results of the specific action. Thus we get a fixed objective standard and do away with all the objections based upon the uncertainty, vagueness and liability to exceptions, of the ordinary utilitarian morality.

Spencer, Op. cit., p. 162: "When alleging that empirical utilitarianism is but introductory to rational utilitarianism I pointed out that the last does not take welfare for its immediate object of pursuit, but takes for its immediate object of pursuit conformity to certain principles which, in the nature of things, causally determine welfare."

2. It reconciles 'intuitionalism' with 'empiricism.' The theory of evolution not only gives us an objective standard on which happiness necessarily depends, and from which we may derive our laws of conduct, instead of deriving them from observation of particular cases, but it enables us to recognize that there are certain moral ideas now innate or intuitive. The whole human race, the whole animal race, has for an indefinite time been undergoing experiences of what leads to pleasure and of what leads to pain, until finally the results of these experiences have become organized into our very physical and mental make-up. The first point was that we could substitute for consideration of results consideration of the causes which determine these results; the present point is that so far as we have to use results, we can use those of the race, instead of the short span of the individual's life.

Spencer, Op. cit., pp. 123-124. "The experiences of utility organized and consolidated through all past generations of the human race have been producing corresponding nervous modifications, which, by continued transmission and accumulation, have become in us certain faculties of moral intuition—certain emotions corresponding to right and wrong conduct, which have no apparent basis in the individual experiences of utility.... The evolution hypothesis thus enables us to reconcile opposed moral theories.... The doctrine of innate powers of moral perception become congruous with the utilitarian doctrine, when it is seen that preferences and aversions are rendered organic by inheritance of the effects of pleasurable and painful experiences in progenitors."