In 1979, Wilson gave a lecture on “Comparative Social Theory,” in a wider conference on human values, in which he defends the notion that there is a biologically based human nature and morality. “[H]uman beings possess a species-specific nature and morality, which occupy only a tiny section in the space of all possible social and moral conditions.” He begins by asking us to do a thought experiment: what if a species of termites had developed large enough brains to be able to write with a pheromone script ushering in a termitistic scholarship and the development of termitistic philosophy, ethics, and morality. To these termites, the deontological imperatives of moral behaviour would look self-evident. They would include a love of darkness and hatred of light; “the centrality of the colony…the sanctity of the physiological caste system; the evil of personal reproduction by worker castes; the mystery of deep love for reproductive siblings, which turns to hatred the instant they mate; rejection of the evil of personal rights; the infinite aesthetic pleasures of pheromonal song…the joy of cannibalism and surrender of the body for consumption when sick or injured (it is more blessed to be eaten than to eat)…” Wilson pushes the analogy with humans by asking us to consider what if a termite scientist develops the science of sociobiology arguing that “our social organization is shaped by our genes and that our ethical precepts simply reflect the peculiarities of termite evolution….that ethical philosophy must take into account the structures of the termite brain and the evolutionary history of the species. Socialization is genetically channeled and some forms of it all but inevitable.” This would be a traumatic threat to established termite science (as by this time it had been shown to be for established human sciences). “many scholars in the social sciences and termitities [humanities], refusing to believe that termite nature can be better understood by a study of fishes and baboon, have withdrawn behind the moat of philosophical dualism and reinforced the crenelated parapets of the formal refutation of the naturalistic fallacy.” The naturalistic fallacy is the idea that what is found in nature is automatically good. For Wilson the truth is more nuanced. Philosophical dualism is the idea that the mind (or soul) is immaterial and the body is material and therefore materialistic science cannot understand the mind. Wilson rejects dualism: the “mind” is a manifestation of material historical and developmental processes in and of the brain.
“If intelligent life exists on other planets (and the consensus of astronomers and biochemists is that it does, in abundance) we cannot expect it to be hominoid, mammalian, eucaryotic, or even DNA-based.” The social sciences and the humanities are a stumbling block to greater self-understanding. They focus on humanity exclusively. “To be anthropocentric is to remain unaware of the limits of human nature.” Anthropocentrism, the attribution of human qualities to non-human entities is a willful blindness to the range of possibilities. Social science that focuses only on human qualities, attributes, and behaviours are blinded to the possibilities outside human statistical norms – Wilson refers to this view as non-dimensional. To imagine a higher dimensional view, consider the variation in time and space. First in theoretical space: if you can imagine the whole range of human behavioural potential as a bell curve, then sociologist focus on a particular population near the narrow top of the curve where the line is almost flat. Anthropologists take a wider view which can see the bell shape of what is possible in social behaviours. Primatologists take an even wider view seeing that there are many bell curves for all the various primates. Zoologists see the clumping together of primate social behaviour in one corner of the spectrum that also includes other social insects and social vertebrates. “Biologists deliberately remove themselves from the human distribution. In so doing they lose a great deal of important detail, but they perceive that mankind occupies only a minute subset of all realized social systems on earth.”
In geographical space, there is statistical significant variation across human populations in “the genetic components of number ability, word fluency, memory, perceptual skill, psychomotor skill, extroversion-introversion, proneness to homosexuality, proneness toward alcoholism, liability toward certain forms of neurosis and psychosis, the timing of language acquisition, the timing of other major steps in cognitive development, the age of first sexual activity, and other individual phenotypes that affect social organization.” A single gene can be selected in or out of a population in about 10 generations. More complex social behaviour is rarely due to one gene. When multiple genes are involved the time frame moves up to hundreds or even thousands of generations to select in or out. In other words, it is very likely that we are genetically very close to our prehistoric ancestors but also equally likely that we are not exactly the same. This means that human nature is not fixed but it also is unlikely to change swiftly. Our human nature co-evolved with group culture about equally for millions of years. However, with the advent of history (i.e. written records) the cultural side of the co-evolution became the dominate selection force in our evolution. “Thus social theory could profit by extending its reach just beyond the historical period dominated by cultural evolution to the near prehistoric period during which more nearly balanced combinations of genetic and cultural change occurred.”
Moral valuation also varies across time scales. “Human values are based largely on a perception of physiological time, over a range encompassing at most several generations.” We rarely think about the consequences of value choices beyond the time of our grandchildren However, ethical valuations change when we go farther than a few generations. Ecological time, around five or more generations, and evolutionary time where species’ gene changes can be detected and ecosystems come and go, are two timeframes Wilson wishes us to consider. As individuals we can see that we are genetically programmed and socialized to value ourselves and those closest to us most. People further away genetically, geographically, culturally and socially are valued less as can be seen by how we react to the death of various peoples. “For himself and his family, ego [Wilson’s name of a hypothetical average person] wants health, security, freedom, and pleasure. For distant generations he wishes the same but not at the cost of these benefits to himself. Natural selection,…has programmed him to dream only in physiological time….Only by an unusual amount of education and reflective thought will ego come to place a high premium on distant generations. Thus the ecological and antinuclear movements are phenomena of the educated upper middle classes, who have learned to think to some extent in ecological and evolutionary time.” Now consider how our descendants might think about us from several thousand of years in the future. This will be analogous to us thinking about the ancient Egyptians. Our civilization is about 500 years old. Ancient Egypt was first formed about 3100 BCE. Consider your ethical valuation of ancient Egypt 500 hundred years into its existence or roughly about 4623 years ago. “All that will matter to our distant descendants is whether we made it possible for them to enjoy health, security, freedom, and pleasure. Indeed, if it were perceived that our benighted existence was the essential evolutionary step leading to their own liberation, they will be glad we suffered.” Imagine if the ancient Egyptians had managed to exterminate all the large domesticable animals (such as elephants, camels, horses, cattle all of which existed in the Americas’ fossil record) in their quest for food like the indigenous population of the Americas likely did. At the level of ecological and evolutionary time the good and evil quality of actions committed at physiological time do not necessarily persists. “And, of all the evils of the twentieth century, the loss of genetic diversity ranks as the most serious in the long run….The quality most likely to emerge as crucial and irreplaceable for the greatest future development is genetic diversity: first, the variety of human genes out of which endless new combinations can be drawn for the attainment of genius and further genetic evolution, and second, the numbers of species of other organism … from which virtually unlimited pleasure and benefit can be enjoyed…. To continue to destroy a large fraction of the species, as we are now doing carelessly in the pursuit of physiological-time genetic fitness, is the surest way to injure future generations and earn their deepest contempt.”
One goal of comparative social theory is “the deducting of principles that define the evolution of social life in intelligent, culture-transmitting species wherever they might occur.” He is referring to extraterrestrial aliens. Not to consider them is naive theory. In the shorter term the colonization of space, the moon and other planets will set some human populations on different evolutionary and social trajectories.
The most popular complaint about sociobiology is that it is reductionist – reducing everything to biology. Wilson’s answer is nuanced. “The genes hold culture on a leash.” Sometimes a short leash as in facial expressions; sometimes on a long leash as in “forms of dress, religious ritual, artistic expression”. “The question of the forms of that constraint, precisely of the dynamics of the coupling between genetic and cultural evolution is the central problem of human sociobiology and the point of departure for comparative social theory.” To say that everything is reduced to biology is not wrong, but it is naïve. Many great advances have started with an apparent reductionist move “which then led back to synthesis and the more efficient description of particular complex arrangements.” Genes also hold morality on a leash: “Innate moral imperatives exist in the form of learning rules and the brain-reward systems.” Such as in the ease of acquiring a spider phobia and the criteria that release reward chemicals and hormones in the brain. “With the advent of literacy, technology, and the modern state, many of the imperatives were no longer adaptive. In the case of proneness toward ethnocentricity, xenophobia, territoriality, moralistic aggression, and unfettered reproduction they have become dangerous.” These negatives are species-specific and part of our human nature. “It is natural that philosophers who did not understand the origin of this dilemma should invent and stress the dichotomy of deontology and consequentialism.” The further a moral system gets from our human nature the more dissatisfaction, social instability, and loss of genetic fitness. We are likely stuck with our human nature if we do not take the reins.