Morality and Natural Behavior in Watson

In his piece, “A Critique of Anti-Anthropocentric Ethics”, Richard Watson discusses the unattractive implications of the anti-anthropocentric, egalitarian view, which he believes amounts to self-contradiction. However, I will offer objections to his treatments of morality and ‘natural human behavior’. I begin by offering two quotations. The first highlights Naess’ distinction between ‘moral’ and ‘life’ communities, which Watson quickly dismisses. He writes, “Animals cannot be citizens [i.e., members of a human moral community]. But animals may, as far as I can understand, be members of life communities” (237). Watson goes on to argue, “If we are to treat man as a part of nature on egalitarian terms with other species, then man’s behavior must be treated as morally neutral too” (238). However, why is it that humans cannot be equal to other species by being a member of Naess’ “life community”, and at the same time be the lone member of the moral community?

An alarming implication of anti-anthropocentric and egalitarian view, if Watson is correct that people must be “morally neutral” in the above sense, is a kind of “inactivism” (236); when the biocentrist’s “hands-off” view towards other species is combined with egalitarianism, Watson believes he is similarly required to ‘take his hands off’ his own species. Notice how this absolute and unapologetic inactivism strikes us a kind of moral failing. I believe that it is an overextension on Watson’s part to say that we would need to restrain ourselves in this way and to actually refrain from following our moral impulses. To act in such a way would be like attempting to imitate a species incapable of moralizing, as opposed to really acting in a way that is “natural” for humans.

Watson expresses his understanding of ‘natural behavior’ when he argues, “Human ways—human culture—and human actions are as natural as are the ways in which any other species of animals behaves. But if we view the state of nature or Nature as being natural, undisturbed, and unperturbed only when human beings are not present, or only when human beings are curbing their natural behavior [emphasis added], then we are assuming that human beings are apart from, separate from, different from, removed from, or above nature” (238). The italicized passage highlights a conflict between natural behavior and morality, but this is not how we think about these issues. Consider, if we were to use “natural” in this way, we would be hard pressed to identify when a human is living in his or her “natural state”—is it (1) when acting morally (which will require the rejection of some desires, such as the desire to pursue “evolutionary potential” (239)), or is it (2) when living out our evolutionary potential (which might involve denying the morally relevant features of a situation and the accompanying intuitions we experience)?

Watson’s treatment of the issues of morality and natural human behavior are problematic and ultimately stand in the way of his argument against the anti-anthropocentric view.