I have offered some damning criticism of Gibbard's theory, but an important question remains: does my theory measure up to the standards I suggested for Gibbard, and for metaethical inquiry in general? Let's consider this.

3.1 Metaethical Goals

Resolving the Naturalistic Fallacy

The most important goal for metaethical inquiry, I think, is to resolve the naturalistic fallacy: find some way in which material facts about the world really do imply an ought for particular circumstances.

Metaethical functionalism does this simply by recognizing intrinsic value in reflexive functionality, recognizing reflexive functionality in Life and living (and perhaps other processes), and positing that more intrinsic value is better than less. Ought, then, in a given circumstance, consists in whatever course of action is available (cognitively and physically) to an agent for maximizing the long-term net intrinsic value in the universe. Details beyond this point are the purview of ethics rather than metaethics, but we can at least note that optimal choices may not be cognitively available to an agent.

Under such circumstances, we might say that an agent ought to have done what he had no way of knowing he should have done, yet attach no blame to the failure. By the same token, we could say that the agent ought to do that which his conception of the optimal long-term net intrinsic value requires. Both of these views, I think, are in essence true, the first responding to an ideal and the second responding to real limitations of judgment. The equivocation on 'ought' should probably be resolved by adopting univalent terms for both meanings.

Don't Leave Anything Out ... or Include Too Much

I should examine here some predictable concerns about non-biological intrinsic value. I've already acknowledged that any mechanical process functioning to perpetuate itself is of the same kind as Life. So, if someday a race of self-replicating robots is created by humankind (or others), we should consider the intrinsic value of their existence when computing (a term I use loosely here) the long-term net intrinsic value in the universe.

The other crucial consideration here is cultural in nature: What of the cultural evolution of concepts? This is what Richard Dawkins (1981) considers. He proposes the term 'meme' to denote an atomistic cultural concept (my terminology). At least some memes doubtless function to promote their own propagation, so I'm committed to acknowledging that they have intrinsic value.

No problem. I'm happy to grant memes intrinsic value. But how might their value compare to that of biological systems?

Here is a quick test for anthropocentrism: Why should one care? Value is value, whether it inheres in humans or other entities. Human culture supervenes on a biological substrate, so there are inherent limits on any competition with underlying biological values. The key is to consider, over the long term, how cultural memes will promote the maximal accumulation of intrinsic value (meaning themselves and their progeny, other such memes, ordinary biological intrinsic value, and anything else that qualifies as intrinsic value by virtue of reflexive functionality).

Might this view not lead to an eclipse of human value? Possibly, but not likely. Humans have accumulated a tremendous amount of evolutionary design complexity, so it would take a long time in evolutionary terms to replace us with anything similar if we were to disappear. A lot is at stake with respect to the question of our continued existence. On the other hand, other animals (and memes, for that matter) possess a lesser complexity of evolutionary (or cultural) design. I think it's reasonable to treat, as Dennett (1996) does, evolutionary design complexity as a standard for comparing intrinsic values.

Explaining the Origins and Success of Competing Systems

The next thing I think a metaethical inquiry should provide is some explanation regarding the relations among value, virtue, duty, etc. -- the concepts underlying competing versions of ethics. This is no problem for metaethical functionalism.

Value is fundamental. Intrinsic value lies in reflexive functionality -- and perhaps in other things, though I haven't been able to find any likely candidates. Most of what we experience as value is instrumental value, which serves either our continued living or Life in the abstract -- or has the mere appearance of value, due to circumstances differing markedly from the savannah environment of our ancestors, has lost its causal connection to objective biological values and has no justification outside itself (and, I have argued, none in itself, either).

Axiology, then, is the proper focus for ethical inquiry. When it comes to motivating good behavior in ordinary people, though (at least in those who don't pursue philosophy), it does have a serious drawback compared with its competitors. Value -- particularly objective, intrinsic value such as I am promoting -- is a very abstract notion. It is questionable whether normal human beings will be able to understand it prior to, say, adolescence. By that time, much of one's moral development is complete. For the moral education of youth, then, I would recommend an alternative such as virtue theory.

Our Galilean story explains why the other focii of ethical thought are responsive to value. It also explains why each is attractive to some people.

Virtue, for example, applies to character traits -- evolved and/or learned dispositions for behavior that are inclined either to produce enhanced value, or (for the antithesis of virtue) to diminish value. Perfectionistic norms (concerning what sort of person one should be) respond to the human need for a positive self-image and self-esteem, which respond in turn to the broader social need to assess one's conspecifics in many ways (Is this one a suitable mate? Is that one a potential rival? Do these ones merit trust, or are they cowards or cheats?). But virtue and character are normatively useless unless they promote good or evade ill. Virtue serves value.

Duty is an obligation to behave in ways we consider to be right or valuable. As a Galilean, I have no way to handle the concept right except in terms of benefits or harms -- of increasing or diminishing value. I can't deny that there might be some quality of rightness that isn't necessarily responsive to value, but I can't see from whence it might come -- and I place on the claimant the onus for the positive claim that there is such a thing.

If duty concerns valuable actions, we might ask, "Valuable for what?" Felt obligation is likely a species-typical output of the limbic system, evolved because of some benefit it confers (most likely social cohesiveness). Inferred obligation involves standards of behavior based on concepts of the actual and potential natures of ourselves, others we interact with, and our environment -- and cashes out in terms of benefit and harm. Duty reduces either to utility or to existential commitment; the former is concerned transparently with value, while the latter (taking a page from psychological egoism) concerns the subjective value of being true to some ideal.

Utility is usefulness -- but usefulness to what or whom? If we take the answer to be related to personal experience, treating pleasure or happiness as value and pain or unhappiness as its opposite (as Mill did), we are classical utilitarians. But if we take pleasure, pain, happiness, and discontent to be evolved responses from recurring exposure (for our ancestors) to mundane goods and liabilities, we are Galileans. If it seems difficult to imagine happiness as an evolved disposition to retain the status quo, the discussion in my thesis of the evolution of motivation might help.

Utilitarianism has traditionally treated the instrumental values, pleasure and pain, as intrinsic. From the Galilean perspective, that error is somewhat offset by the fact that utilitarianism is correct in promoting maximal universal value. My claim (and hope) for metaethical functionalism is that it corrects the error of utilitarianism and thereby opens the way for the productive development of ethics.

I think metaethical functionalism also explains the influence of moral sense theory, moral intuition, moral relativism, and the existence of so many cultural similarities of morality.

The explanation for the first two of these lies in the opacity from which limbic evaluation suffers (contrasted with the transparency of, say, visual judgments). It will naturally seem to us that we are sensing or intuiting some quality of goodness or badness in the object or situation we are regarding; that's simply how limbic evaluation works.

Moral relativism is attributable to differing geographical and cultural environments -- no surprise there! What may surprise, however, is that apparently opposite norms can be explained as specific responses to the same universal human value. A Kwakiutl chief might dazzle his fellows with generous gifts and sumptuous feasts for all, while a medieval king might insist upon receiving generous gifts as his due, and refuse to extend the smallest scrap of charity desperately needed; both attitudes and their associated behaviors are driven by the common need to achieve and maintain social status -- a drive that probably precedes primatehood in our family history.

The many similarities -- a shared core morality -- among varying cultures is attributable to shared mechanisms for judgment that have evolved as responses to the intrinsic values of Life and living (especially the latter where our conscious responses are concerned). One simply won't find human cultures in which rape, incest, murder, or theft (as a few universal examples) are endorsed; such practices run counter to the interests of human inclusive fitness, and it is attitudes and behaviors opposing them for which strong valences exist in human social structures.

Though this is a deviation from my topic, I can't resist bragging that there are even explanations for other modern theories lurking in metaethical functionalism.

Here, briefly, are three examples from psychology:
• Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs maps nicely onto the theory of the triune brain. Unless basic survival and reproductive concerns (governed by the reptilian brain and paleomammalian cortex) are met, one's attention can't dwell on such luxuries as "self-actualization".
• Lawrence Kohlberg's stages of moral development mirror the logical progression from reliance on purely emotional judgments (from the limbic system), through emotionally weighted heuristic judgments (from the right-neocortex/limbic "coalition"), to reasoned judgments (of the left neocortex). It also, in the advanced stages, moves from self-serving, parochial concerns to embrace principles promoting universal values, just as I advocate here.
• Carl Jung's theory of psychological types also maps nicely onto modern theory of brain function. His two judging functions, Thinking and Feeling, correspond generally to left neocortex on the one hand, and the two emotionally tinged judging mechanisms on the other. His two modes of perception, Intuitive and Sensing, correspond reasonably to the intuitive (heuristic/schematic/evaluative) and nonintuitive (both the rational and the purely emotional) judging mechanisms I posit. Though not considered a complete theory of personality (and though it is more properly a theory of dimensions rather than types), it has led to the development of one of the most successful test instruments in the field, the Myers-Briggs Type Inventory, whose utility in explaining personal behaviors and social dynamics has earned a huge popular following.

It Had Better Work

Finally, I think a metaethical explanation of the origins of human normativity should take a probable path through Design Space. It should posit a chain of developments that really could have taken place, and would have resulted in viability for the species at every stage. An explanation that depends on impossibilities is worthless, and one that depends on improbabilities is implausible. It is for others to judge my success in this respect. I can only say that I have tried in my thesis to be scrupulous in developing a logical sequence of likely evolutionary developments to produce the actual functional mechanisms we now possess, applying the core theoretical elements concerning evolution and biology as faithfully as I could. I am confident that any errors I have made will turn out to be errors of disposable detail rather than errors of fundamental functional explanation.

3.2 General Galilean Standards

How does metaethical functionalism meet the general standards for Galilean inquiry? Again, this is a matter for others to judge. I have sought coherence with core Galilean beliefs and correspondence to empirical data, and have been able to detect no flaws myself. Here is a brief inventory.

Is my account fully Galilean? Does it contain the minimal number of theoretical gaps that could be expected of someone limited by today's knowledge of biological systems in general (and neuropsychological systems in particular)? Do the gaps I leave at least promise to ultimately have Galilean bridges? It is almost certain that many of the gaps I leave -- especially those regarding the detailed neurological function of the general processes I discuss -- could be explained right now by specialists. There will never be an absolutely complete Galilean explanation of the universe, for the explanation will be too complex to be expressed by humans -- even if all of us worked at it for all time. All we can do is narrow the gaps. I hope others will judge that the gaps I leave can be spanned eventually by Galilean bridges.

Is my account superior to Gibbard's in that it explains more? Does it provide more of the "how" details and rely less on "that" explanations? I think so, but others must judge this as well.

In particular, I hope others will agree that I explain more than Gibbard manages in one important respect: by identifying the ultimate cause of human normativity (evolved responses to objective value: reflexive functionality) where his explanation leads only to proximate causes (benefits of coordination).

I have offered, in bits and pieces throughout my thesis, explanations of the origins of (and motivating factors surrounding) common errors of judgment concerning the nature of judgment and conceptions of value. This, I think, is a particularly powerful result. Explaining why an opposing view would naturally come to be mistaken goes a long way toward disarming that opposing view. Still, I wouldn't expect anyone to grant full agreement with this view merely on the strength of what I was able to include therein. It will help to have a more explicit foundation developed for these arguments, and I will provide that in another paper, "Metaphysical Functionalism".

If we want to understand human normativity, we must first understand human judgment. Though I expect the general functionality of the three mechanisms for judgment I've posited to be borne out by research, the reality will probably be more complicated than what I have sketched. Perhaps other functionally independent mechanisms will be added to the list. Perhaps, though functions of our judging mechanisms are much as I've claimed, the neurological architecture involved is different. These questions, and others like them, can readily be answered with existing equipment and methods. Brain imaging can show which areas are active during the consideration of moral questions; during exposure to emotion-laden objects, situations, and concepts; during dispassionate reasoning; during heuristic and intuitionistic problem solving; etc. Careful comparison of clinical data involving brain lesions and other abnormalities can lead to inferences about the normal functions leading to judgment. Probably no more than a half dozen carefully chosen studies could confirm or refute the claims I make here and in my thesis -- and, in the bargain, provide a reasonably definitive answer as to how humans make judgments.

If human judgments are produced by a number of functionally separate mechanisms as I claim, we should determine which of these mechanisms (if any) can produce consistently apt judgments under changing conditions in a manmade environment. My guess is that reason will turn out to be that mechanism. If so, then we need to promote actively the preferential development and use of that mechanism.

Once we understand how we judge -- and how to judge effectively -- we can attack the problems of moral judgment. This will be a matter of requiring the proponents of each variety of moral theory to justify, in objective terms, the position they take. Given that so many opposing views can't all be correct, we can hope that one will emerge in which we can place our full confidence. I believe that will turn out to be an axiology much as I have outlined here.

If axiology emerges by consensus as the best approach to ethics, we next need to settle on what constitutes value. The primary thrust of my work here has been to advance what I believe the winning candidate must be: reflexive functionality as objective, intrinsic value -- a physical property belonging to certain forms of material organization.

Finally, if we have settled on metaethical functionalism as the preferred framework for ethical inquiry, we need to pursue two tracks. First, we need to promote the varieties of intrinsic value of which we are already aware. Second, we need to see whether we can discover -- or create -- other forms of intrinsic value ... and then promote them, as well. Always, however, we must maintain a long-term and nonlocal perspective, recognizing that value here and now is no more important than equivalent value elsewhere and elsewhen -- and that working to maximize the aggregate intrinsic value everywhere and for all time is the highest goal available to us.

Practically speaking, I think our present and future success with morality depends on adopting several strategies for adjusting human goals and normative practices. One of these would be to develop tendencies in people to promote the long-term interests of humankind (and of Life in the abstract) -- interests that are now routinely eclipsed by narrow personal and parochial concerns. Another would be to make normative judgments according to rules (not norms) that are based on principles (related as I describe in Appendix A to the thesis, "Norms, Principles, Rules, and Goals") and include an explanation of how a prescribed action should promote a desired goal. (Norms simply prescribe action without justifying it.) We commit ourselves to such rules through the motive force of perfectionistic personal norms such as integrity, honor, and adherence to principle -- norms of self-image, self-worth, and self-respect.

The combination of principle-based rules and internalized moral commitment (not only to those rules, but to the ends they claim to promote and to understanding the causal mechanism alleged to connect action and goal) should prove much more fruitful than prevailing practices in dealing with the ethical concerns of modern (and future) humans -- concerns stemming from situations vastly different from anything for which our evolutionary past has equipped us. That is because it will allow us to move beyond mere acceptance of norms, the apex of normativity on Gibbard's view, to the justification of norms (the standard for normativity I am promoting).

I realize that I am asking for the abandonment of nearly universally held conceptions of value, of judgment, and even of self. Most particularly, the abandonment of happiness as the primary good in life will seem to many to be unacceptable. Fortunately, however, one need not lose happiness because one has chosen other, larger goals. In fact, human experience reveals that happiness is maddeningly elusive when pursued directly as an end in itself, but appears unbidden when one is working at something one believes is truly valuable. The greater the value pursued, the greater the happiness experienced in its pursuit -- just the sort of feedback mechanism that Nature excels at developing!

So, take your happiness ... please! And make it as exquisite as possible by choosing ambitious, far-ranging goals promoting the greatest value you can conceive.

Now ... tell me whether you can envision a value greater than a universe brimming with Life to its farthest reaches, teeming with intelligent races exploring more modes of living, in more fascinating ecologies and environments than a human can imagine.

The Devil's bargain: would you trade that for perpetual ecstasy for yourself and everyone with whom you care to share it?

If so ... you have my pity.

¹ Parsimony would favor an evolutionary account (for that approach produced our explanations of other biological developments), but that would place the trait in question back in the natural domain -- something that arose through a physical process (such as mutation) and was thereafter sustained because it conferred some natural advantage. Click on note number to return.

² There is an uncomfortable tension in Gibbard's norm-expressivism between our claims of normative objectivity and our acceptance of non-epistimic normative authority. Gibbard's discussion of the latter offers an explanation of why we do accept normative authority, but it simply doesn't include any reasons why we should accept it. Click on note number to return.

³ I owe a large debt to Ayn Rand. She preached that "Metaphysically, life is the only phenomenon that is an end in itself: a value gained and kept by a constant process of action. Epistemologically, the concept of 'value' is genetically dependent upon and derived from the antecedent concept of 'life.' To speak of 'value' as apart from 'life' is worse than a contradiction in terms. It is only the concept of 'Life' that makes the concept of 'Value' possible." See Binswanger (1986), pp. 520-1. The influence of these thoughts on my own will be apparent. I should make it equally apparent, however, how I disagree with Rand. She holds the ultimate value for any organism to be its own life -- living. I hold the ultimate value for any organism (for the foreseeable future, at least) to be Life. I explain the distinction in the following section. This fundamental disagreement entails many subsequent differences between Rand's view and mine. Click on note number to return.

⁴ See van Inwagen (1990), p. 87. Click on note number to return.

⁵ Manfred Eigen explained how a series of different kinds of simple organic molecules might each increase the abundance of another kind, ultimately leading to an increased abundance of the first kind in the series. Such a "hypercycle" may have been the breeding ground for larger self-replicating molecules. See Dennett (1995), pp. 157-8. Click on note number to return.

⁶ Gibbard relegates his discussion of inclusive fitness to two footnotes (28 note 4; 62n), focusing in the text on personal reproductive success as an individual's telos (29). This has the effect of emphasizing the goals and interests of individuals over the telos of life as a whole. Click on note number to return.

⁷ Stuart Kauffman (1995) offers what I think is a very plausible account of the origin of life as a result of natural processes of self-organization that emerge from the properties of matter. Sadly, no brief page reference will suffice here; Kauffman's argument is book-length. Click on note number to return.

⁸I introduced this concept of valence in an amateur monograph, "Evolutionary Foundations for Philosophy", in March 1989. Click on note number to return.

⁹ 'Situation' could be viewed as a promiscuous term. We can talk about a situation in which Mars is opposite Saturn, the Suns are playing the Lakers, and I am eating pizza while watching "Nova" on TV. But this "situation" is merely a matter of accident. The situations we will want to associate with valences are those which are defined by causal interactions among their components. Such causal situations should include all components that are necessary contributors to the existence of the valence in question, and they should exclude components that are irrelevant to it. This is why we might as well say that a valence defines a causal situation -- and if some external force changes the behavior of the components of that situation from what would have resulted from its internal interactions alone, then this new interaction (taken together with the internal ones) defines a new causal situation that subsumes the original one. For our purposes, then, 'situation' will refer to a causal situation unless otherwise specified. Click on note number to return.

¹⁰I stress interactive properties of situations because I don't want to treat purely accidental conglomerations as being situations or as having valences. Two rocks, for example, may tend to stay at rest with respect to one another, but only because each tends to stay at rest by virtue of friction with the surface upon which it rests; there was no valence for them to adopt that particular spatial relationship. Similarly, one might think of entropy as a valence for any closed thermodynamic system, but that tendency toward disorder is purely statistical, and not the result of interactive properties of objects that tend specifically to bring about maximum disorder. Click on note number to return.

¹¹It may seem at first that many of the interactions in the world are one-way actions by an agent upon some other agent or object. If I scratch my dog behind her ears, or throw a baseball, my hand and arm are not getting scratched in return or tossed in an equal and opposite reaction. Where's the mutuality? Where's the valence? Click on note number to return.

The answer lies in properly defining the situation. In one situation, my dog and I are in close proximity and each possess psychological dispositions that lead naturally to ear-scratching in a way that would not emerge were I to pass by some mutt guarding a junkyard. In the other case, I have an urge to throw that would not have been elicited by an anvil had it been in the ball's place. The situation is defined by my physical relation to the baseball and my psychological state (which has been determined to some extent by my experience with baseballs in the past).

A more difficult example is parasitism, which looks for all the world to be a one-way action instead of a mutual interaction. The problem is that we are accustomed to looking at advantages and disadvantages for entities which interact, rather than simply looking for tendencies for stable, long-term interaction. Where there is an organism processing an abundance of nutrients for its own sustenance, along with another organism needing the same sort of nutrients in comparatively small quantities, there is a valence for parasitism.

The tendency for a parasite to take nutrients from the host is readily understood, but does the host have a tendency to feed the parasite? It does, though in a roundabout way. It has a tendency to feed itself, and by doing so in the company of a parasite, feeds it as well. It wouldn't do for the host to stop processing the nutrients the parasite needs, for that would be suicidal. The host actually has an indirect interest in feeding the parasite, so long as its presence can't be avoided.

The obvious implication here is that the situation of which the parasite and host are components also has a valence for its own self-destruction. Should the host component develop the ability to destroy or repel the parasite component, there will cease to be an interaction between them, and the situation will evaporate. Click on note number to return.

¹² This is a brief rebuttal to Van Inwagen (1990), whose worries about what might constitute objects brought a wealth of valuable rumination, along with the bizarre conclusion that objects are either simples (things without parts) or living organisms -- and everything else that we are inclined to treat as an object is merely an aggregate of simples. Click on note number to return.

¹³ The Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics holds that certain properties (and even the existence) of subatomic particles (and presumably of aggregates of them) are matters of random chance. But that view has never been shown to be due to anything other than our inability to witness causal interactions that are beyond observation. I think our epistemic limits have been inappropriately interpreted as a metaphysical fact: randomness.

A theoretical reason for believing in randomness is that the mathematics of probability predicts quantum behavior exceptionally well. But it also predicts the behavior of any number of larger-scale, fully deterministic systems quite admirably. We can grant that if there is quantum randomness, then probabilities will predict the average behavior of subatomic particles. But let's not jump at affirming that consequent!

There is no inductive warrant for believing in randomness; our experience has been that every level of material organization has turned out to have parts -- parts that we discover as our powers of observation improve. We have no reason to expect that the current (or theoretical) limits to our observation are due to a lack of parts for the smallest objects we can observe. Indeed, physicist David Bohm has developed a theoretical alternative to the Copenhagen interpretation that allows for infinite detail in the structure of the universe -- much as there is no smallest feature in a fractal entity such as the Mandelbrot set. The causal order includes interactions below the subatomic level. For a concise examination of Bohm's view, see Albert (1994).

¹⁴ In case the reader lacks a half dozen or more sources examining the Prisoner's Dilemma, a good discussion is available in Nozick (1993), pp. 50-59. Click on note number to return.

¹⁵ See de Waal, pp. 84-86. Click on note number to return.

¹⁶ Smith was most interested in the remote, "hidden" benefits to others that naturally emerge when an individual pursues his own self-interest -- particularly the production of wealth. However remote they may be, they result from a filled valence for property rights, without which Smith's hand would be not only invisible but idle. Click on note number to return.

¹⁷ See Brehm and Kassin, pp. 424-433. Click on note number to return.

¹⁸ See Binswanger, p. 520. Click on note number to return.

¹⁹ Paired virtual particles (say, an electron and a positron) are thought to appear occasionally out of nothingness, and observed radiation from black holes has been interpreted as evidence of this: when virtual particles appear near the event horizon of a black hole, one particle may be captured while the other escapes, giving the appearance that the black hole is radiating energy. Click on note number to return.

²⁰ See Binswanger, pp. 512, 520. Click on note number to return.