one more layer?

Peter Godfrey-Smith’s Living on Earth. Author of Other Minds and Metazoa; professor of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Sydney. It had been sitting on my reading list for a long time; I finally started it. Already at the beginning, it triggered a few thoughts…

Two perspectives. On one side, we too are a creature inside the evolutionary process — a species that has evolved traits affecting other species’ evolution, but not the only one. The book actually opens with the cyanobacteria example — by polluting the atmosphere with oxygen, they had a catastrophic effect on species that had no oxygen tolerance at the time, while shaping the world we now live in, the world we need in order to live. What we do is, in the end, a “natural” process. On the other side, as conscious creatures we’re somehow responsible. We can question what we do, change it, weigh it against our conscience.

At first glance the two perspectives look separate. The more I think about it, the less sure I am they are.

What is consciousness, exactly? I don’t fully know. It’s something I want to read more about. But my current sense: a complex phenomenon that emerges from the interaction of hormones, chemicals, electrical currents. Not something apart from biology — an output of biological processes. If that’s right, then “consciously taking responsibility” is also a biological behavior. Not a separate category outside the evolutionary process — a layer within it.

Conscience fits into this whole too. We experience the discomfort of polluting the environment as “responsibility” — but conscience isn’t a separate biological component. It’s a product of our evolution as a social species. The social structure itself is also evolutionary. So conscience too, and the sense of responsibility, don’t step outside the evolutionary process. They’re its outputs. One more layer.

Here’s something interesting. Could it be that having different moral positions, different value judgments within a population — the way genetic diversity provides resilience against environmental change — makes that population more resilient too? Imagine, all at once, everyone rejecting a particular behavior — the ecological and societal consequences would be extreme, maybe “good” maybe “bad” but extreme. 1 Just as genetic diversity is a kind of insurance, moral diversity might be too. If differences in height, color, disease resistance can be an evolutionary advantage, maybe differences in value judgments belong in the same category?

But right here, one thing ends and another begins. “Evolutionarily advantageous” and “morally right” aren’t the same thing. That diversity is advantageous for the long-term persistence of a population doesn’t say other views are right. It only explains why that diversity exists. Past this point, I think, it’s no longer biology’s subject — it’s philosophy’s. We live inside certain social norms. Different social structures produce different “truths.” These truths are, for me, the frame I build my own life around. When I live by my own truths, I’m a happier person. But my truths don’t have to match anyone else’s. Environment, personal history, lived experience — all of these shape what any given person calls “right.” I can encourage others toward what I see as right, argue my case. But what’s happening is argument. Not an absolute truth — a perspective, a view.

And maybe a capacity for persuasion, itself shaped by a gene × environment interaction, is one more biological layer underneath view-diversity, and through that, behavioral diversity?

I’m early in the book. I don’t know where the author ends up. Maybe what I’m thinking doesn’t fit there at all; maybe it’s getting close…