After just writing a conference paper the other week on five forms of selective altruism that can be related to the work of Plato, Aristotle, Jesus, Adam Smith, and Carol Gilligan, it was a very pleasant surprise to learn that Gilligan was coming to the Paduano seminar. (The others on my list were unavailable, as one of the seminar organizers quipped to me.)
I thoroughly enjoyed her presentation and the questions yesterday afternoon. I felt myself some distance closer to appreciating rather than being disturbed by the cross-currents of moral passion and moral skepticism that run through modern politics and science and that I felt both in Gilligan (advocating an ethic of care that simultaneously is its own form of passionate moralism and a form of questioning passionate moralism) and in her questioners (e.g., a man asking whether the ethic of care properly understood suggests opposition to abortion, a woman asking about early-appearing differences between boys and girls).
CG's account of a gendered split, coming at a young age for boys and at adolescence for girls, between an ethic of care and an ethic of rights-duties made me wonder about various Darwinian stories one could tell about the split and their relative merits...
Story 1: "The split is in some key ways advantageous for men. Allowing that it has serious negative psychic and practical repercussions for them, it also gives them the figurative and all too often the literal whip hand in human affairs. For women, for children, and for society, on the other hand, the consequences of the split are clearly negative, even it contributes to reproductive success for people who follow the approved gender scripts. The question is whether we can join together to overcome a painful split that in the end is harmful for all--very much including men--in favor of a better way of life that liberates people to live in plurality and that elevates democracy over patriarchy."
Story 2: "The split is against our interests as individuals. We would be richer, fuller, happer people if we did not find ourselves occupying boy-man rights-duties roles or girl-woman care-nurturing roles. But it is important in raising children to have a friendly opposition between the two ethics. Just as the opposition between liberals and conservatives makes modern democracies work, the opposition between a male ethic of duty and a female ethic of care has made human child-rearing work for millennia. The split, painful as it is, is in the interests of children and of society. One can improve how the split plays out in people's lives, but one needs to respect its underlying logic for our children and our species even as one laments its limiting effects on men and women as individuals."
Story 3: "The split and its associated gender hierarchy is desirable in Darwinian reproductive terms for parents, children, and society as a whole. More than that, it makes sense at psychic and practical levels. In order to resolve basic issues of leadership in as effective a way as possible, it makes sense to have people perform their core activities in gender-mized groups--families--with an "A" gender in the family that is the default leader though not necessarily the leader in a given case and a "B" gender that is the default follower though not in all cases. Making gender hierarchy less rigid may be very useful, but the fundamental idea of gender hierarchy makes sense in evolutionary and practical terms, disturbing as it also is to part of our moral sensibilities."
Story 1 is more or less Gilligan's; Story 2 is what I was spinning out as I was listening to her; Story 3 is one that I just spun out.
I'll forbear comment on the normative merits and demerits of the stories in favor of a note or two on their scientific issues. For Story 2, there is an interesting theoretical-practical issue as to how evolution has succeeded in getting us to overcome our individual inclinations toward union in the interest of a split that helps the collective; my quick take is that the problem is not such a big one, since Story 2 relies on an effect on one's offspring that fits fine into mainstream Darwinian reasoning. For Story 1, the reliance on a split between what works in Darwinian terms and what is actually good for individuals and the species strikes me as fine in theoretical terms. For Story 3, there is an issue with how the collective benefit of clear leadership works its will on the assigned followers; that doesn't seem like a big problem, though, given a linkage in followers' and leaders' reproductive success through families.
In other words, all three stories strike me as fine in Darwinian terms, much as they all may reasonably raise hackles for other reasons. Person A may be bothered by a tendency toward complacency and resignation in Story 2, while Person C worries about demonizing and lack of common sense in Story 1, and Person B is annoyed by what feels like chauvinist piggery in Story 3. All fair enough--but on the face of it I don't see a basis for A, B, or C trashing their disfavored stories as poor science.
