Ronald E. Merrill about 8,000 words

OBJECTIVIST ETHICS:

A BIOLOGICAL CRITIQUE

Ronald E. Merrill

Final version: August 27, 1997

The ethical system developed by Ayn Rand has proved radical, innovative, and controversial. It is a pity that so little analysis of its context in the history of philosophy has appeared. As I have previously argued (Merrill 1991), because Rand worked independently of the scholarly community, she used novel conceptual approaches. The few philosophers who have commented on her ideas have generally failed to grasp the essence of these unfamiliar arguments. More recently, a study of Rand's thought from a "dialectical" point of view has been presented (Sciabarra 1995). While thorough and provocative, it too, and for the same reason, cannot be considered fully satisfactory (Merrill 1995; Lennox 1995; Sciabarra 1996).

This essay cannot undertake to analyze all the roots of Ayn Rand's ethical system. My objective is merely to outline certain key issues. I will argue as follows: Ayn Rand's ethical system derives from a tradition, dating back ultimately to Aristotle (Durant 1961, 51-56, 60; Lear 1988, 160-164), which seeks moral consequences from biological principles. She can be understood, then, only by considering the context of scientific, as well as philosophical, thinking in her time. The biological theories on which she drew have since proved incorrect in important ways. These errors are reflected by certain problems in Rand's ethical reasoning, which deserve scrutiny in the light of modern science.

Roots of the Objectivist Ethics

The Objectivist ethics, as Rand called her system (Rand 1964), draws on several philosophical traditions. Rand acknowledged a major debt to Aristotle's metaphysics and especially epistemology. Though she was critical of his ethics (Rand 1995, 27-32), her system nonetheless seems to owe a great deal to his conception of human life and flourishing as the ultimate good (Wheeler 1984). A relationship to the ethical system of Epicurus has also been discerned (Shelton 1995). Rand was in some ways, as I have previously argued (Merrill 1991, 21-27), much influenced by Nietzsche. In particular, she adopted an explicit and unashamed egoism, though she conceived the term far differently from the ways Nietzsche or Stirner did. And she followed Nietzsche in placing values at the root of her system (Himmelfarb 1995, 9-10), though she regarded values as rooting, rather than replacing, virtues. The American pragmatist tradition of Peirce, James, and Dewey also seems relevant. Though Rand was fiercely critical of these thinkers on epistemological grounds, her ethics exhibits a similar concern with judgment on the basis of practical consequences.

From a negative point of view, Rand may be seen as reacting against the ethical theories of philosophers such as Ayer, Moore, and Hare, which were dominant during the mid-Twentieth Century. This viewpoint, which sees ethical judgments as strictly emotive or prescriptive, was repellant to Rand. A fundamental goal of the Objectivist ethics was to bridge the notorious "is-ought" disjunction of David Hume, and establish that morality could be objective, fact-based, and derived by reason. Rand's thinking might usefully be compared to that of others who have confronted this problem, such as Philippa Foot and David Gauthier. Foot, like Rand, shows a certain Aristotelian influence; in her essay "Goodness and Choice," she identifies the good with fitness for use (Foot 1978, 132-147). Gauthier, a neo-Hobbesian strongly influenced by Axelrod and modern economic thinkers, attempts to adapt the technique of Rawls to find an ex ante social contract (Gauthier 1986). Rand's approach to ethics, however, was far more radical than theirs.

Rand's ethical reasoning was influenced not only by philosophical but by scientific--particularly biological--presumptions. The Objectivist ethics is explicitly "biocentric" (though this term was only subsequently introduced, by Nathaniel Branden; see N. Branden 1969, ix) and therefore far more sensitive to its premises about biological and human nature than are most ethical systems. The relevant predecessors here are Aristotle and, as we shall see, the Social Darwinists, who grounded their ethical conclusions in contemporary biological knowledge. Like them, Rand, who was far from being a scientist, seems to have based much of her thinking on biological ideas that were "in the air" during her early and middle life. These ideas, many of which were popularizations or worse, led to certain problems in the Objectivist ethics. I have mentioned this subject briefly in passing elsewhere (Merrill 1991, 121-122); now I would like to examine it more thoroughly.

The Objectivist Ethics: Basic Principles

In order to set a context, I must first summarize some basic characteristics of the Objectivist ethics (Rand 1964).

To begin with, Rand is intensely teleological not only in the content but in the methodology of her ethics. She emphasizes the role of ethics in guiding human purposes. But more than that, she conceives of ethics itself, and defines it as a subject, in terms of its human purpose. Rand founds her system on a meta-ethical question: Why does man need morality? Or: Why do ethical issues even arise at all? Her answer is that humans need some method to choose the values they will pursue. This purpose provides the connection between fact and value, between is and ought.

A very important point should be interjected here. Rand is able to carry out her program because she does not presuppose any distinction between moral and non-moral value choices (Merrill 1991, 108-109, 174). In this she is different from other modern ethical philosophers, who begin with the assumption (usually unstated) that moral choices are, by definition, only those choices which are not decided (or at least not exclusively decided) on the basis of self-interest. Compare, for instance, Gauthier's explicit statement: ". . . rational principles for making choices . . . include some that constrain the actor pursuing his own interest in an impartial way. These we identify as moral principles." (Gauthier 1986, 3)

The first corollary is that Rand's ethical system is explicitly egoistic. It sees the task of morality as guiding the decisions of the individual human actor in pursuing his own goals or values. The integrated sum of all his values is his life; and therefore his life, which is his capacity to pursue values, must be the ultimate good for him. In evaluating Rand's egoism, however, it is crucial to understand that she does not see morality as fundamentally concerned with dealing with other people. For Rand, the purpose of morality is to guide the individual in dealing with nature; one cooperates with other people, because this is a markedly effective way to deal with nature (Rand 1961, 156, 232-235).

The second corollary is that the Objectivist ethics is firmly consequentialist. Moral judgments are based on the consequences of the action. However, as an egoistic system, Objectivism is concerned with the consequences for the actor, and only indirectly with consequences for the objects of his actions. Despite this focus on consequences, the Objectivist ethics may also be considered absolutist or at least rule-based. Rand sees nature as highly complex and frequently presenting unpredictable problems. As a practical matter, she concludes, following strict moral rules will give the most consistent success, whether dealing with nature or with other people. (See for instance Rand 1957, 363, and the discussion in Peikoff 1991, 218-219.) In this she anticipated the conclusions of modern theoretical biology, which has found that consistent compliance with simple rules, rather than attempts to adopt case-by-case expedients, are most adaptive (Axelrod 1984; Sigmund 1993).

Finally, the Objectivist ethics is "biocentric." The crucial ethical question for Rand is: How can human beings, as biological entities, not just survive but flourish? (For to "flourish" is simply to be more fully alive. For a detailed discussion of this point see Merrill 1991, 110-113.) Because of this biological focus, the Objectivist ethics must ask: What are humans like, biologically? What are their biological needs? By what means do they survive? To a great extent, of course, Rand relied on common-sense or everyday notions on these matters. But some reference to scientific fact was essential. When Rand turned to biology and anthropology for the answers to these questions, what ideas did she encounter?

Rand's Intellectual Milieu: The Background

As I have argued previously (Merrill 1991), the Objectivist ethics was not a sudden inspiration; Ayn Rand developed and evolved it during the mid-range of her career. It is probable that some of the basic ideas were worked out in the late 1930s, as she wrote The Fountainhead. However, the first detailed exposition was not written until the mid-Fifties (B. Branden 1986, 265-267). So we can reasonably conclude that Rand's thinking was influenced by biological theories that were available to her in the period between, roughly, 1935 and 1955. To understand this intellectual context, however, we must go back somewhat further, to the foundations of modern biology in the Darwinian revolution.

While the reality of evolution was widely accepted among intellectuals during the late Nineteenth Century, Darwin's explanation in terms of natural selection was not. From a scientific point of view, natural selection ran into difficulties because the then-prevailing theory of "blending" of inherited characteristics could not account for propagation of favorable mutations. On a philosophical basis, the "randomness" of natural selection was repugnant to the regnant belief in progress. The Lamarckian hypothesis of inheritance of acquired characteristics thus lingered well into the Twentieth Century as the dominant view of evolution (Bowler 1989, 171, 190; Sigmund 1993, 100).

This was reflected in the nascent fields of sociology and anthropology by the doctrines now known as "Social Darwinism." Unfortunately, common notions about this ideology are drawn almost entirely from a single very biased study, which was originally produced in the heat of the New Deal propaganda debates (Hofstadter 1959; see especially "Author's Note"). Only recently has modern scholarship challenged this simplistic demonology (Bowler 1991, 282-291). The history of Social Darwinism is a complex and important topic that would merit detailed examination in its own right, but in this discussion I can only highlight a few key points.

"Social Darwinist" is an epithet; it was not used as a self-description by the thinkers in question. The leading Social Darwinists were taken to be Herbert Spencer in Britain, and William Graham Sumner in the United States; but they have been lumped together by critics with others such as T. H. Huxley, Walter Bagehot, and Ernst Haeckel, whose views were in fact quite different. We will take Spencer and Sumner as representative.

The "Social Darwinists" were, actually, Social Lamarckists. They believed in inheritance of acquired characteristics, and they therefore saw biological reproduction as implying moral consequences. Humans, in this view, by improving themselves, improved their offspring. On the other hand, those who refused to make the effort to better themselves and flourish were not only harming themselves and society; they were impairing their own children--genetically as well as economically. The ultimate good, then, in this view, was the improvement of the human species by evolution (Spencer 1978, 575, 581).

While the basic argument of the Social Darwinists was unsound both scientifically and philosophically, they must be credited with the first modern approach to grounding ethics on the basis of biological nature. Of course there had been many previous attempts to develop a "scientific" ethical system; one might note, for instance, the efforts of Spinoza, Kant, and especially the Utilitarians. But earlier thinkers had relied either on a priori or on "common-sense" notions of human nature. It was the Social Darwinists who first emphasized empirical science as the source of necessary premises for ethics. In this they were forerunners of Ayn Rand.

The influence of the Social Darwinists on Ayn Rand is another subject that would surely repay thorough investigation, though this essay cannot undertake it. Sciabarra's detailed scholarly study of Rand's thinking makes no mention of this issue (Sciabarra 1995). But there are repeated hints in Rand's works that she was familiar with the leading Social Darwinists. Note for instance that, in The Fountainhead, the stolen book with which Gail Wynand begins his education is a volume of Herbert Spencer (Rand 1943, 431). It is likely that Rand drew some of her ideas on economic and political issues from the Social Darwinists, even though she strongly disagreed with their basic premises (N. Branden 1962, 18).

Particularly notable is William Graham Sumner's essay "The Forgotten Man," which had a wide vogue in America. Here he develops two themes: First, the importance of the productive human being, who is neglected and even condemned and abused by social "improvers." Second, the mockery of morality involved when social workers attempt to do good with other people's money (Sumner 1992). Both these themes were taken up by Ayn Rand, and play a major role in her novel Atlas Shrugged (Rand 1957, 1038-1039). This is not surprising, as Rand discovered Sumner, with whose work she was "very much impressed," in 1944, when she was beginning work on the novel (Berliner 1995, 172).

Early in the Twentieth Century two developments, one scientific, the other sociopolitical, made an impact on the intellectual environment. The rediscovery of Gregor Mendel's work on genetic inheritance made it possible, for the first time, to solidly ground the theory of natural selection. This led to the "modern synthesis" of population genetics and the final defeat of Lamarckism. Around the same time, the Left intelligentsia penetrated heavily into the social sciences and, after a sharp struggle with Social Darwinism, took them over. (This history is summarized in Degler 1991, particularly part II.) By the mid-Thirties this process was more or less complete, and it was the resulting intellectual environment in which the ethical views of Ayn Rand were crystallized.

Rand's Intellectual Milieu: The Environment

The new dogma of the social sciences, in effect, detached the question of human nature from biology. The validity of Darwinian evolution by natural selection was conceded; but, it was asserted, the development of intelligence and culture had made human beings immune to biological forces. (This actually advanced somewhat the Social Darwinist agenda. Spencer, in particular, foresaw that human beings would cease to evolve when they became perfectly adapted to a civilized environment. See for instance Spencer 1969, 139.)

This approach restored the Lamarckian paradigm in new form. Human beings were now seen as being molded by their culture; so, provided the proper cultural environment was created, human evolution could continue to improve the race. This "rational" and intentional process was clearly more attractive than the "random" mutations and extinctions of natural selection. Moreover, it relied on cooperation for progress, rather than the competition which played a key role in natural selection. "Society"--ie, government--could control the process of evolution. Such a model was obviously very compatible with Marxist ideology.

The intellectual environment in which Ayn Rand crystallized her ethical system, then, was dominated by these ideas. While she drew upon earlier lines of thought, Rand seems to have been influenced by the context of the social sciences in her own time. For, with certain reservations, she adopted three crucial principles that were widely presumed:

1. Human beings, because of their intelligence, fall outside the system of Darwinian evolution. Natural laws of competition (Spencer's "survival of the fittest") do not apply to them, and cooperation is the only normal and proper human mode of intraspecies interaction.

2. Human nature is subject to environmental determinism. A person's behavior patterns are set by the culture in which he grows up, and genetic factors are irrelevant. Humans are born tabula rasa, without instincts or ingrained behavior of any kind.

3. Reproduction is a detachable feature of human biology. The bearing and raising of children is not intrinsic to the life of the individual human being, male or female.

In the remainder of this essay I want to examine each of these three key premises, in the following way: first, looking at their historical context in biology and the social sciences; second, showing how, and to what extent, they were reflected in Ayn Rand's ethical thinking; third, examining what modern biology has to say on these subjects; and finally, considering what the ethical implications of corrected (or at least, more up-to-date) scientific knowledge might be.

A disclaimer is in order here: In tracing historical influences, my claims are modest. Certainly I make no attempt to meet the extraordinarily strict standards of historical rigor laid out by James Lennox (Lennox 1995). My argument is limited to this: Certain ideas were available to Ayn Rand--in fact, they were highly prominent--during the period when she was forming her ethical theory. Similar ideas can be found in her work. It is plausible that there is a connection.

Evolution and Cooperation

The adjective "Darwinian" has come to be used to connote brutal competition in which the losers perish. This somewhat exaggerates Darwin's own views; however, his work certainly did emphasize the "struggle for existence" and he was willing to adopt Spencer's phrase, "the survival of the fittest." It was Alfred Wallace, the co-discoverer of natural selection, who began the challenge to this view of evolution. Wallace believed that the human brain, which seemed to him more powerful than needed for survival, had not simply evolved but was a gift from God. Man, in this view, had escaped from natural selection; moreover, there was an inherent equality in human intellectual capacity (Degler 1991, 59-61).

This viewpoint was carried on by the Russian biologist (and political activist) Petr Kropotkin. Darwin had studied nature in tropical and temperate climes, where the environment was favorable and lush populations of living organisms competed for space. Kropotkin, observing the harsh Northern ecologies, found organisms struggling against the weather and poverty of resources instead of one another. He perceived less competition and more cooperation (de Waal 1996, 21-22).

Around the same time another strand was woven into this web: the idea that by collective action, humans could take control of evolution. Eugenics (contrary to popular impression) was primarily a movement of the Left; the Social Darwinists expressed little if any support for it (Degler 1991, 32-55). It was far more popular among Socialists, such as H. G. Wells (Berneri 1971, 299-301). But when Hitler put these precepts into practice, eugenics lost its attraction, and intellectuals turned to more subtle approaches.

The missing cornerstone was provided by anthropologist Franz Boas. What was needed was a scientific--or at least scientific-seeming--alternative to a biological account of human capacities and behavior, as opposed to the religious justification suggested by Wallace. Boas satisfied this need when he asserted that behavior derived from culture, not genetics. His views became enormously influential, not only in anthropology (Margaret Mead, for instance, was one of his students), but in all the allied social sciences, including psychology (where Behaviorism developed from the same premises). (See Degler 1991, part II.) Human beings, therefore, were not subject to impersonal and destructive forces of nature; they were molded by their social environment, which could be consciously controlled and optimized.

The full implications of this view of human nature were enormous, and extend into the other topics to be discussed below. At this point we will only note the first consequence. Human beings could, in this view, escape from a horrifying Darwinian world of "nature red in tooth and claw" by adopting social cooperation rather than competition.

Can we see this intellectual environment reflected in Ayn Rand's ethical views? At first glance, it might seem that her egoism must inherently oppose such views. But Rand is a very unusual egoist. As noted above, she perceives the task of the ego as conquering nature, not other persons. We might see this as suggestively similar to the biological views of another Russian, Kropotkin--a thinker with whom Rand was familiar (Sciabarra 1995, 105-106).

The classical argument against ethical egoism is that it cannot be universalized. Suppose the egoist Joe competes with another man (Sam) for, say, the hand of a certain woman. What does he advise his rival? If he tells Sam to marry her, Joe is not being an egoist; if he tells Sam not to, he is advising Sam not to be an egoist. (Of course, as Rand pointed out, exactly the same argument applies against altruism.)

Rand counters this argument by cutting the Gordian knot: she simply asserts that such conflicts do not arise: "there are no conflicts of interest among rational men." (Rand 1964, 50) This is a very radical position, and one that may appear quite as unrealistic as the saccharine altruism of the most optimistic socialist utopias. Nonetheless Rand argues it effectively (Rand 1964, 50-56). In her novel Atlas Shrugged, she repeatedly illustrates this theme by developing apparent conflicts, including the paradigm example of the suitors, and showing how they can be dissolved. While advocating "ruthless" competition in business, she makes a point of showing the "losers" actually winding up better off. (See for instance Rand 1957, 723-724.) In fact, Rand views economic competition not as a means of ensuring the triumph of the able, but as a process that sorts each person into the niche where he can be most productive. Rand was a firm believer in "win-win" solutions long before the term was invented.

This aspect of the Objectivist ethics seemed to fade from view for a while in the glare of controversy. Rand's opponents delighted in presenting her as a Stirnerian egoist who advocated destroying or enslaving other people. Her supporters developed a certain pugnaciousness in response that tended to drift away toward a rather harsher concept of egoism. Recently, however, David Kelley has stressed the importance of reviving and extending Rand's benevolent view of egoism (Kelley 1996). Similar arguments have been made by Nathaniel Branden (N. Branden 1997, 211-226).

To what extent, then, may we detect the influence of the anti-evolutionary viewpoint on Rand's ethics? To begin with, it is striking that in the entire ouvre of a writer with such a strong biological emphasis we find scarcely a single reference to evolution. Along with this we find her contention that competition is not an evil, not even a necessary evil, but a benevolent process that can be made to function without producing any losers. Finally, there is the almost utopian view of a perfectly positive society in which cooperation eliminates all conflicts among persons' interests. The congruence to the premises of the biological and social sciences during Rand's middle life is evident; but not complete. What Rand rejected was the idea of using collective action to control the human environment and thus the human character. While accepting the biological background, she retained her distinctive individualism.

We must now ask how modern science views these questions. The answer is, very differently indeed. Evolution has become the central concept of modern biology. Every species is analyzed in terms of how the forces of natural selection created it, and it is now widely accepted that our own species can be understood only in terms of the process by which it evolved. In fact, the evolutionary model is now applied in areas, such as immunology and brain development, far beyond its original scope (Cziko 1995).

Modern biology sees a much larger role for cooperation, with such mechanisms as "kin selection," than did the primitive Darwinian model. Nonetheless, competition retains its central role. The fundamental insight of Darwinism is realization of the constant conflict caused by the efforts of organisms (or, ultimately, genes) to maximize their reproduction within an environment of limited carrying capacity.

In contrast to earlier steady-state models, though, modern biology understands that cycles of overpopulation followed by disastrous crashes form one of the normal modes of ecology (Murray 1989, 63-78; Sigmund 1993, 43-54). It used to be thought that these biological catastrophes must always be caused by some outside, abnormal force. It is now known that they are a natural outcome of population dynamics.

What implications can this have for ethics? We must begin by recognizing that the Objectivist ethics is context-dependent: change the "is" and you change the "ought." The conclusions drawn by Objectivist ethics are valid only within a certain range of assumptions about human nature (presumably constant) and the environment in which humans live (which is not constant). Rand in fact recognized that when these key assumptions break down, ethical prescriptions for action may have to be modified (Rand 1964, 43-49).

However, Rand titled her essay on this subject "The Ethics of Emergencies." As examples of situations that could alter the normal ethical context she chooses such events as fires, earthquakes, and shipwrecks. This reflects her Kropotkin-like vision of a sparse population endangered primarily by outside environmental disruptions. She perceives the essential threat to people as upsets in nature, not other people.

But as we have just seen, modern biology perceives another way in which the normal context can break down: overpopulation and crowding. When a population becomes too dense, normal behavior patterns for the organism no longer promote survival. The implications of this principle for humans were suggested by experiments with rats in which overcrowding produced sociopathic behavior strikingly evocative of conditions in inner-city ghettos.

It should be pointed out that extrapolations from rodents, though suggestive, are far from conclusive. Thus de Waal has challenged this argument, pointing out that primates such as chimpanzees adapt far more smoothly to crowding than do rodents (de Waal 1996, 194-200). One might criticize de Waal's experiments, however, on the grounds that they do not impose competition for resources; moreover, his definition of "aggression" is very simplistic.

Although a full analysis of the biological issues of population dynamics is beyond the scope of this paper, we can identify certain conclusions. Modern biology no longer sees population constraints in terms of simple space density of organisms. Rather, the key constraints are mutual interference with individual action; shortage of resources; and limits imposed on effluent flow and waste recycling. These must be evaluated in the context of the perturbation of the entire ecosystem which takes place when one population approaches an extremum.

Ayn Rand's model of human society is based on sparse populations exploiting abundant resources; despite her urban settings, the American frontier is her implicit paradigm. We need to consider the possibility that her ethical system breaks down under conditions of heavy crowding. As effective population density increases, a point comes where competition dominates cooperation.

Nature and Nurture

The second paradigm which dominated the social sciences as Rand was developing the Objectivist ethics was environmental determinism. The same struggle that established the idea of human immunity from biological forces also resulted in the overwhelming triumph of "nurture" in the "nature vs. nurture" struggle. Once it was concluded that the human species is no longer controlled by evolutionary (ie, genetic) forces, variation among individuals was explained by environmental factors, particularly the conditions under which children are brought up. This model, in which people are assumed to be born in a plastic state and molded by their family, society, and possibly government, was unquestioned dogma for decades.

Did Ayn Rand accept this dogma? She did, quite explicitly. She denied the existence of instinct (defined as inborn knowledge) in human beings, and repeatedly stressed that all human behavior is learned behavior. Though much "psycho-epistemology" develops from the child's simple experience with the physical environment, crucial premises are absorbed from the social environment. Rand's position is brought out most clearly in her essay on children and education, "The Comprachicos."

"Give me a child for the first seven years," says a famous maxim attributed to the Jesuits, "and you may do what you like with him afterwards." This is true of most children, with rare, heroically independent exceptions. The first five or six years of a child's life are crucial to his cognitive development. They determine, not the content of his mind, but its method of functioning, its psycho-epistemology. . . . At birth, a child's mind is tabula rasa. (Rand 1971a, 155)

The extent to which Rand's thinking on this issue was influenced by her contemporaries requires investigation; the description of infants as tabula rasa (a blank slate) dates back at least to Locke. Regardless of where she acquired this idea, clearly her basic premise is that not just our knowledge, but our very ways of thinking, are primarily fixed by our childhood environment. Throughout "The Comprachicos" Rand emphasizes the plasticity of the young mind and the power of family and society to mold it.

What, though, are the ethical implications of the dogma of environmental determinism? The key conclusion here is the malleability of individual humans, and the logical consequence is a corresponding plasticity of human society. Here is a weapon that can smash the conservative defense of tradition. The idea that a society does things in a certain way because in doing so it accommodates immutable human nature becomes untenable. Instead, we have the option of reorganizing society in virtually any way we wish, and molding its inhabitants (by controlling their childhood environment) to have whatever nature will fit. This is the ideology that Aldous Huxley scrutinized in Brave New World.

To what extent did this influence Ayn Rand? Certainly she did not advocate anything remotely resembling Brave New World (though her objections to it would surely have been different from Huxley's.) Rand was not a determinist. She saw the malleability of human nature as limited by the fact that humans are intelligent, reasoning creatures. This unique identity, she pointed out, imposes certain requirements on individual behavior and social structure. In particular, humans, because they are rational, are volitional. This volitional capability is crucial to the Objectivist ethics because it imposes the need for moral choices. In a social or political context, Rand argues that freedom is necessary to give scope to this volition, which is the root of human creativity and productiveness.

Nonetheless, the prevailing conventional wisdom left its mark on Rand's thinking. This appears clearly in her utter contempt for tradition. Unlike Hayek, for instance, she does not accept the idea that culture develops a "spontaneous order" which adapts to human nature and ought to be respected. On the contrary, she is as ready as any Leninist to rip out the roots of any social institution and replace it with a structure designed by human reason. Rand, in fact, postulated a moral plasticity for human beings. "A code of values accepted by choice is a code of morality." (Rand 1957, 1013; emphasis added)

What does modern biology have to say on the "nature vs. nurture" controversy? The issue is no longer set out in quite these terms. Though a few bastions of the Left maintain a last-ditch defense, the behavior of human beings is clearly understood to depend on biology. Culture may modify the genetic message, but ultimately our behavior, like our morphology, depends on our biology. (For a survey of evidence on this issue, see for instance Plomin 1980.) The childhood environment, however, is increasingly seen as crucial, not because it overrides, but because it activates and amplifies the biological roots of behavior. "Nature" and "nurture" are regarded as cooperating rather than competing forces. Just as an adequate diet is needed in childhood in order for an individual to attain his genetically determined height as an adult; so an adequate social environment is required for development of normal and functional behavior.

The process by which Darwinism returned to the social sciences, gaining a beachhead and expanding it despite savage political hostility, is another topic meriting more space than it can be given in this forum for nonsocial philosophy. Contrary to Rand's own theory of history as driven by philosophy (Rand 1961), we see here a process in which particular philosophical premises were driven to defeat by empirical science. Just as the religion-based Ptolomaic system was undermined by the observational data of astronomy, so did politics-based anthropology collapse under the accumulating impact of biological facts. This fascinating case study in scientific epistemology can only be briefly summarized here.

Degler traces the roots of this intellectual shift to the early 1950s, when anthropologists and psychologists began to be impressed by the disquieting accretion of observational evidence supporting the supposedly discredited notion of "instinct." As ethology, the study of animal behavior, developed and expanded, Darwin's principle that humans must be understood as biological creatures came once more to be asserted. By the 1960s, even sociologists were compelled to take notice. The appearance of "sociobiology" a decade later prompted a ferocious counterattack from the Left. Nonetheless, it has now become widely accepted that human behavior is fundamentally driven by biological, that is, genetic, nature. (See Degler 1991, part III.)

What implications does this have for a biocentric ethics? Increasingly it is argued, contrary to Rand's idea that a morality is "accepted by choice," that basic moral principles are inborn, genetic, instinctive. This was a crucial implication of sociobiology, and it has been elaborated in considerable detail (Dawkins 1976; Sigmund 1993). Although sociobiologists have been criticized for advocating a "might makes right" egoism, in fact they have been very interested in searching out the biological roots of "altruism" (Barash 1977, 70-103). Some left-wing thinkers now invoke the principles of sociobiology to justify their ethical conclusions (Diamond 1992; Wright 1994). At the other end of the spectrum, traditionalist conservatives do the same. Thus James Q. Wilson identifies four moral sentiments--sympathy, fairness, self-control, and duty--as biologically based (Wilson 1993). The controversy is shifting, increasingly, from whether ethical conclusions should be drawn from biological data, to the issue of what specific conclusions are justified. That human moral values are genetically based appears to be crystallizing into a scientific consensus.

Rand defines a value as "that which one acts to gain and/or keep." (Rand 1964, 15) For her, as we have seen, the task of morality is to select those values which support human life. A fundamental premise for her is that values must be chosen: Man has "no automatic sense of values." (Rand 1964, 19) If, as modern biology seems to tell us, man does have at least some automatic values built into his brain, how should Rand's system of value-choice deal with this? Are these automatic or instinctive values reliable? If not, under what circumstances are they to be over-ridden by reasoned choice? And how is this to be done?

Life and Reproduction

One of the specific consequences of the tabula rasa view of human nature is that there is no essential (in the Aristotelean sense) difference between the sexes. People are male or female because of their genes; so if genetic heritage is not controlling, sex differences, like all other significant differences between human individuals, must be culturally determined.

The trend, therefore, was for the social and biological sciences to argue a logically interconnected set of principles.

First, feminism was of course a natural consequence. Men and women should be seen as essentially interchangeable. An ingenious linguistic innovation, the term "sex roles," smuggled into discourse the implication that the functions carried out by men and women in society were arbitrarily assigned. A man could be a nursery school attendant, or a woman a combat soldier, as easily as a boy could play Ophelia or a woman Hamlet. The term "roles" connoted that ultimately the very identity of the sexes was subjective, socially determined, and without metaphysical basis. Another linguistic innovation, referring to sex as "gender," reinforced this by implying that the distinction between the sexes was merely an arbitrary linguistic convention.

Second, the family came to be seen as dispensable, or even undesirable. If there is no natural distinction between the sexes, there is no logic to assembling the family group. If children develop solely based on their environment, it makes no sense to leave their upbringing to the untrained, amateurish efforts of their parents, whose only qualification is their quite irrelevant genetic connection. Why not turn children over to the professionals?

Did these ideas leave their mark on Ayn Rand's thinking? We can see a number of signs that they did.

Rand, as I have pointed out previously (Merrill 1991, 69-71), was profoundly ambivalent on the issue of feminism and "sex roles." Rand proclaimed the equality of the sexes, and her novels presented strong female characters who worked and prospered in the male world of business and the professions; yet she described herself as a "male chauvinist," and argued that a woman ought not to want to be President (Rand 1988a).

Sciabarra argues that feminism is the true implication of Objectivist theory, pointing out that Nathaniel Branden and Leonard Peikoff, in recent years, have veered strongly toward pro-feminist positions. In his view, Rand's anti-feminist statements are merely artifacts of her personal eccentricity (Sciabarra 1995, 199-201). I agree that this separation and tension between Rand's ideological and her personal opinions is real. The issue is whether pro-feminism is essential in Objectivism, or whether it is derivative to incorrect biological ideas. As will be argued below, I assert that it is the latter.

Ayn Rand's attitude toward the family exhibits a similar ambivalence. However, it is not at all difficult to find a current of anti-family feeling underlying much of her work. With the sole exception of Francisco D'Anconia, all of her fictional heroes and heroines are estranged from their families. Rand is particularly negative about mothers, who in her fiction are repeatedly shown as repellant creatures. Howard Roark and John Galt, Rand's ideal men, separate from their families at an early age and neither know nor care what becomes of their parents. With the exception of Prometheus and Gaia in Anthem, no positive character of any significance has, or wants to have, children. Rand's fictional portrayals of family life repeatedly depict it as stifling, crippling, something to be escaped. (Rand's fiction ought to be given weight in estimating her views, because she herself repeatedly stressed the importance of art for concretizing ethical principles. See for instance Rand 1971b, 21; 133-135.)

What we see here is the anti-family viewpoint, dominant in the intelligentsia of the 1930s, that argued for bringing up children in creches (a la Brave New World) or even Skinner Boxes. Rand did not agree with the solution, but she had the same vision of the problem.

Ayn Rand's personal attitude toward childbearing was very negative, as indicated by her lecture "Of Living Death." Even making every allowance for the context--an attack on the Catholic Church's opposition to contraception--this essay is striking in its dark imagery of childbearing: ". . . parents chained, like beasts of burden, to the physical needs of a growing brood of children . . . the silent terror hanging, for every couple, over every moment of love." (Rand 1988b, 47)

In the few passages in which Rand deals with childbearing as a normal part of human life, she stresses the obligations it imposes. Raising a child, she says, is "a grave responsibility" (Rand 1988b, 55). Completely missing is any suggestion that having children is pleasurable or life-enhancing. There is no indication of why a rational person would undertake this "grave responsibility." On the contrary: "In comparison to the moral and psychological importance of sexual happiness, the issue of procreation is insignificant and irrelevant, except as a deadly threat . . ." (Rand 1988b, 55; emphasis added)

In this same passage Rand asserts a position that appears problematic for a "biocentric" premise for ethics:

The capacity to procreate is merely a potential which man is not obligated to actualize. The choice to have children or not is morally optional.

(Rand 1988b, 55; emphasis added)

Rand's closest followers exhibit similar premises. Peikoff's text on Objectivism, in its sole reference to the issue of procreation, dismisses it as a concern of intrincicists who damn sex (Peikoff 1991, 346). Binswanger's Ayn Rand Lexicon contains no entries for "children," "family," "procreation," or "reproduction" (Binswanger 1986).

Once again it is time to turn to modern science to see how ideas have changed. While feminism still rides high in the social sciences, biology has shot the horse out from under it. Research, quite simply, has refuted the basic idea of socially defined and malleable "sex roles." Males and females are now known to be driven by powerful biological mechanisms into different behavior patterns. Their brains are organized differently. And these distinctions serve the evolutionary purpose of promoting reproduction (Goy and McEwen 1980; Daly and Wilson 1983; LeVay 1993). (It should be noted, however, that modern biology does not support the view that the sexes ought to be straightjacketed into traditional social functions. Freud's "biology is destiny" has been replaced with Bacon's "nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed.")

These conclusions have serious implications for the Objectivist ethics. Rand's description (apparently she did not consider it a formal definition) of life, which lies at the root of her ethical reasoning, is: "a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action." (Rand 1964, 15) Conspicuously absent is any mention of reproduction, an essential component in any reasonable biological definition of life. A textbook definition, for instance, cites "adaptation" (Rand's "self-sustaining action"), "metabolism" ("self-generated action"), and reproduction (Goldsby 1979, 4-5). On a more sophisticated level, Jacques Monod's widely cited definition calls on the same three factors: "goal-directed behavior," "self-constructing action," and reproduction (Monod 1971).

This points up an essential contradiction at the core of the Objectivist ethics. It is most obvious when we look at Rand's fictional characters. Would Rand's ideal men and women have existed had their parents considered procreation "a deadly threat" to be avoided?

Conclusions

It is always perilous to attempt to trace "intellectual influences," since only in the rarest cases can complete and unambiguous historical evidence be adduced. And few thinkers--Ayn Rand least of all--are mere passive receptacles for a blend of prevailing opinions. It is not my intention, therefore, to overemphasize the historical roots of Rand's ideas.

The evidence, though, I think suggests a pattern. Rand's philosophical method stressed congruence of concepts to reality. She therefore had to have a scientific basis for her ethical reasoning, and she took the necessary premises from the prevailing science of her time. As we have seen, she did not do so uncritically or unthinkingly. Again and again we find her accepting as much as she can, while rejecting certain conclusions that she could not integrate into her system without contradiction. This is the reason her positions on certain key issues are ambivalent.

More important is to ask: What are the implications of the changes in biological premises for the ethical reasoning of Objectivism? Referring to the analysis above, we may summarize the issues to be confronted as follows:

1. The Objectivist ethics must deal with the importance of competition and conflict in crowded ecologies. The "frontier" model of abundant resources and steady growth needs to be supplemented with an account of ethics in a crowded, constricted environment in which discontinuities are the norm and not the exception.

It should be noted here that by "resources" I do not mean classic "natural resources" such as iron ore. Crucial, and diminishing, resources today are things like empty land that can be exploited without externalities that damage neighbors. Austrian economic theory, which takes as given that "submarginal" land is always available and unused, does not yet comprehend this issue (von Mises 1963, 640-644).

We must consider the possibility that in modern, high-density societies, Objectivist ethics as currently formulated may break down. Empirically, individualism seems to be associated with conditions of low population density (though the converse does not hold). It remains to be shown that Rand's version of egoism can be adaptive in a crowded and constrained environment.

2. A fundamental presumption of Objectivist ethics is that it is universalizable in a very strict sense, that any human person can practice it by a simple act of choice. Modern biology challenges this premise, and asserts that much human behavior, especially in those areas we characterize as "moral," is partly or wholly instinctual. This raises the question of how compatible Objectivist morality is with inborn human nature. Objectivists argue that their ethics is, in some fundamental sense, biologically "natural." The task for Objectivism is to reconcile rational choice with "moral sentiment."

3. The Objectivist ethics, as currently formulated, fails to offer any useful guidance for family formation. A question difficult to answer within the Objectivist ethics is, "Why is it in my self-interest to have children?" It is not unfair to suspect some sort of "stolen-concept fallacy" in an ethical viewpoint which regards as "morally optional" the behavior that produced the very existence of the moral actor.

Of course, in a sense, any specific action is "morally optional" because right action depends on context; ethics can no more mandate a particular person to reproduce than, say, to run a transcontinental railroad. Nonetheless, if Objectivist ethics is to retain its coherence with biological reality, it must consider childbearing a fundamental ethical purpose. To explain how reproduction fulfills egoistic objectives presents a formidable, though by no means insurmountable, challenge.

I argue, then, that the Objectivist ethics is not a finished structure. These questions are serious and significant, and the Objectivist ethics, in the state in which Ayn Rand left it, cannot answer them. Since biology is fundamental to this ethical system, if we bring Rand's ethical reasoning into line with modern biological knowledge we will have better prospects of solving these problems.

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