CRITICAL NOTICE

than the earlier book. It does not broach any new empirical ground, but puts Alexander's views into a broader context of philosophical and sociological discussions of morality. It discusses and criticizes alternative philosophical and biological views of morality, and presents his views on the significance of biology to moral issues in law, democracy and pursuit of the Good. In one interesting section that I will not be able to discuss here, Alexander provides an evolutionary hypothesis to explain each of Kohlberg's stages of moral development (pp. 131ff). The book ends with a discussion of some specific moral problems. The book rambles, and the arguments are not as tight as most philosophers would want. Apparent inconsistencies and confusions, some of which I will discuss below, mar crucial parts of the presentation. A serious problem with the book is that it makes little attempt to answer the most damaging criticism of human sociobiology: that its empirical support is weak because of methodological flaws. Alexander relies heavily on a view of evolution that assumes adaptations are optimised for their function and that morally significant biological traits are evolutionarily functional to fill empirical gaps in his argument. Both of these assumptions are questionable based on current biological knowledge. Even if Alexander's general approach to evolution is correct, his conclusions about human nature are untested speculations. Despite these problems, the book is interesting as a speculative work on the inter-relations of biology and morality, and provides a useful map of the main points of contact. The central argument, that to understand morality we must understand biology, depends on neither the correctness of the empirical details of sociobiology nor the coherence of Alexander's representation of human social behaviour. Moralists and ethical theorists can ignore biology only at our peril. The Aim and Limits of Alexander's Program Alexander's interest in his project stems, at least in part, from a concern over the failure of traditional moral systems to deal with current moral problems. We are facing unprecedented changes in our physical and social environment, and our power to alter our environment. Increasingly destructive weapons, increasing use of limited resources, increasing pollution, and climate change are potentially disastrous because of their global scale. Although we have survived historical challenges with varying success, the unprecedented scale of these problems leaves little room for error. Despite widespread admission that these problems are serious, we seem unable to take the steps needed to deal with them. In the face of this, Alexander pleads that we must understand the biological basis of our behaviour to solve the problems we have created. On Alexander's view, our problem is not an inadequate ethics, but an inadequate understanding of our motivations in moral matters. In both The Biology of Moral Systems and his earlier Darwinism and Human Affairs, Alexander investigates the reasons moral systems have arisen, what we can do to change our behaviour, and why this is so difficult. His basic thesis is that the ultimate cause of our behavioral traits is that they enhance the survival of our genes, but that this etiology is obscured to us, also to promote the survival of our genes. To change our potentially self-destructive behaviour effectively, we must come to understand its biological foundations. Without this understanding, we will continue to behave inappropriately, like a blind man who thinks he can see. Our ignorance creates an illusion of morality, particularly a shadow cast by what Alexander calls "group selfishness". We must subvert this illusion if we are to survive (p. 254).