Stud. Hist. Phil. Biol. & Biomed. Sci.

39 (2008) 292297

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Stud. Hist. Phil. Biol. & Biomed. Sci.

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/shpsc

Dolphin natures, human virtues: MacIntyre and ethical naturalism

Shane Nicholas Glackin
Department of Philosophy, Leeds University, Woodhouse Lane, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history:
Received 6 December 2006
Received in revised form 14 January 2008

Keywords:
Alasdair MacIntyre
Aristotle
Dolphins
Ethology
Naturalism
Virtue ethics

a b s t r a c t
Can biological facts explain human morality? Aristotelian virtue ethics has traditionally assumed so. In
recent years Alasdair MacIntyre has reintroduced a form of Aristotles metaphysical biology into his ethics. He argues that the ethological study of dependence and rationality in other speciesdolphins in particularsheds light on how those same traits in the typical lives of humans give rise to the moral virtues.
However, some goal-oriented dolphin behaviour appears both dependent and rational in the precise
manner which impresses MacIntyre, yet anything but ethically virtuous. More damningly, dolphin
ethologists consistently refuse to evaluate such behaviour in the manner MacIntyre claims is appropriate
to moral judgement. In light of this, I argue that virtuesinsofar as they name a biological or ethological
categorydo not name a morally signicant one.
2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

When citing this paper, please use the full journal title Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences

1. Introduction
The question addressed by this paper is what the study of certain sorts of animals behaviour tells us about certain theories of
human ethics. The animals whose behaviour will be the primary focus of the investigation are dolphins, because the scientic study of
their behaviour is crucial to the ethical theory Im going to be looking at, a particular, updated form of Aristotelianism recently propounded by Alasdair MacIntyre, which has focussed upon the
parallels between human behaviour and the behaviour of other
animals, and the ethical lessons to be drawn from those parallels.
I shall agree entirely with many of his conclusions regarding the
lack of a signicant qualitative distinction between the ethology
of humans and that of non-human animals. I take his account of
ourishing and the virtues to be correct, and I think it applies, as
he says, to humans and animals alike.
But I shall argue, at the same time, that the virtues are not, in
fact, an ethical category. Indeed, I shall claim, the parallels which
impress MacIntyre between the behaviour, experience, and rationality which contribute to the respective virtues and ourishing

E-mail address: phlsng@leeds.ac.uk

1369-8486/$ - see front matter 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.shpsc.2008.06.003

of dolphins and humans, coupled with certain facts both about

the way dolphins actually behave, and in particular about the
way the naturalists who study dolphins describe that behaviour,
suggest that moral evaluation is not properly a part of scientic
study, either of animal behaviour, or of human behaviour. MacIntyre thinks, as do all Aristotelians about ethics, that ethics is
concerned with the ourishing of the moral agent, and the virtues
conducive to that ourishing. Since he construes ourishing as a
broadly biological concept, that means that ethics becomes, in a
sense, an aspect of the biological and behavioural sciences, broadly
construed. And since I am concerned with defending the mutual
autonomy of ethical values and scientic facts, I intend to dispute
that conclusion. If virtues are a part of the sciences, as I think
MacIntyre successfully shows, then they are in turn no part of
ethics.
The argument will proceed along the following course; rst, Ill
briey explain MacIntyres current ethical theory as an updated
form of Aristotelianism. Secondly, Ill explain the relevance of dolphin behaviour and its scientic study to that theory. Following
that, Im going to outline certain facts about dolphin behaviour of

S.N. Glackin / Stud. Hist. Phil. Biol. & Biomed. Sci. 39 (2008) 292297

which MacIntyre makes no mention, the way in which the scientists who study dolphin behaviour describe those facts, and the
problem I think this poses for his theory. And nally, Ill consider
some possible responses available either to MacIntyre, or to rival
Aristotelians, and explain why they are unsuccessful, before taking
stock of where this leaves the Aristotelian project.
2. MacIntyres ethical theory as a form of updated
Aristotelianism
MacIntyres was, initially at least, an attempt to do Aristotelian
ethics explicitly without Aristotles biology (MacIntyre, 1981, p. 58;
1999, p. x), for the quite understandable reason thatin the aftermath of Darwinvery few people take Aristotles biology remotely
seriously. Now, a number of current Aristotelians have attempted
to give biological accounts of ourishing and function either without any reference to Darwin, DNA, or the Modern Synthesis, as in
Philippa Foots case (2001), or dismissing them, in Michael Thompsons remarkable phrase, as making no contribution to the exposition of the concept of life, or to a teaching on the question of what
life isexcept perhaps as pointing to a few gorillas and turnips
might (Thompson, 1995, pp. 256257).
For MacIntyre, that approach seemed, rightly, to be unacceptable. One either takes Darwinism seriously, or stops talking about
biology. And since Darwinism largely excluded any notion of proper function, conventionally understood, or teleology generally,
from biology, that seemed to mean either abandoning Aristotelian
ethics, or excising the biological component from them. But, again
rightly, I think, he has more recently become convinced that any
substantive account of human, or other animal, ourishing must
take actual human or other animal biology very much into account.
Any account of the rules denitive of moral behaviour must explain how adherence to those rules is possible for the sorts of animal we are. Thus, when he writes of the need to attend to and to
understand what human beings have in common with beings of
other intelligent animal species, as a means to proper understanding of our animal condition, the chief philosopher whose neglect
of this issue he seeks to correct is, in fact, himself (MacIntyre,
1999, p. x). Traditional Aristotelianism had supposed that each
species possessed a characteristic essence, and that its members
ourished insofar as they fullled that essence; Darwinism replaced that picture with one of individual, varying organisms.
But ourishing, or something very like it, does have a place in the
Darwinian system, in the form of tness, and for MacIntyre, that,
perhaps, is enough teleology to sustain an Aristotelian ethics.
So MacIntyre has here a notion of ourishing, putting aside all
the philosophical difculties which attend the denition of biological tness, which looks like it will apply both to humans
and to other animals. How does he parlay that into an account
of virtues, and how does its application to other animals illuminate our understanding of the role those virtues play in human
life?
Well, MacIntyres most recent book, in which these ideas are
contained, is titled Dependent rational animals: Why human beings
need the virtues (1999), which gives us more than a few clues.
The human being is, for MacIntyre as for Aristotle, an inherently
social and rational animal, and one that is fundamentally dependent upon other human beings in its biological nature, in childhood
and in old age, in both temporary and permanent disability. It is
this fundamental state of dependence upon others which makes
the virtuesand the moral virtues in particularnecessary for human life. But we experience this dependence biologically, as animals. Dependence is, for MacIntyre, not merely an existential
condition in which we nd ourselves, but a denitive part of our
biological nature, our environment. So the practice of the virtues
is a necessary part of our normal ethology.

293

In order to stress the biological nature of this dependence, MacIntyre presents it, and our rational strategies for coping with it, as
not being unique to humans, as continuous with those of other animals. (And, as a good Aristotelian, he is careful always to speak
thus; of other animals.) For obvious reasons, the most useful animals for this purpose are the higher cognitive functioning ones.
And in particular, MacIntyre stresses the comparative similarity
of human dependence to that of the bottlenose, and the common,
dolphin.
3. Why dolphin behaviour and its scientic study matters for
MacIntyre
Now, focussing on a particular species like this, and on the actual scientic eldwork done in studying it, is extremely useful
for getting an accurate picture of the degree to which rationality
may be attributed to non-human animals, which, as MacIntyre
notes (1999, p. 40), philosophers have standardly tended to discuss
in terms of rather inane, detached examples of dogs chasing cats
up trees and the like. Norman Malcolm (1977, Ch. 2), Donald
Davidson (2001) and Stephen Stich (1983, Sect. 5.5) have all used
such examples in arguments which purport to show that thoughts,
or beliefs, or reasons, cannot be attributed to non-linguistic animals. But looking closely at the behaviour of actual animals, MacIntyre suggests, is likely to give us a different picture.
Davidsons criteria, for instance, are notoriously restrictive. Because he allows us to attribute thoughts and beliefs only to those
creatures to which we can attribute propositional content expressing
the though or belief, prelinguistic children, by his denition, lack
thoughts and beliefs. As do our not-quite-as-fully-linguistic ancestors. Rationality and language, for Davidson, sometimes seem to have
been achieved instantaneously in evolutionary history, rather than
acquired gradually; rationality, on this view, is an all-or-nothing sort
of deal. Which suggests that hes simply using a much more stringent
sense of the term than the rest of us do. While MacIntyre grants that
these criteria do tell us important things about what it is to have a
language, and what it is to have thoughts and beliefs, he suggests that
dolphinsalong with dogs, chimpanzees, gorillas, and various other
speciesbe classed as prelinguistic, rather than non-linguistic. This
enables us to attribute to them thoughts and beliefs of approximately
the correct (compared to humans, relatively low) level of sophistication which can be observed in their behaviour.
In fact, argues MacIntyre, dolphin behaviour is entirely intelligible to us, or at least to those who study dolphins closely, in terms
of reasons, thoughts, and beliefs. Wittgenstein (1953, IIxi, p. 223), a
favourite gure for many modern Aristotelians, famously remarked
that If a Lion could talk, we could not understand him, given the
radical differences between Lions understanding of the world
and our own. MacIntyre, however, is insistent that in the case of
dolphins even although [sic] their modes of communication are
so very different from ours, it is nonetheless true that if they could
speak, some of the greatest of recent interpreters of dolphin activity would be or would have been able to understand them (1999,
p. 59). We share, he says, a kinship with dolphins, not only with
respect to the animality of the body, but also with respect to forms
of life (ibid., p. 58). So although human and dolphin virtues may be
markedly different, what constitutes virtuous, or ourishing-conducive, behaviour for a dolphin ought to be comprehensible to
those intimately familiar with the ways of dolphins.
This kind of familiarity, of empathy, does seem to be the conscious aim of dolphin studiers. Thus, Kenneth Norris (1998a, p.
12) describes not only the need to see other dolphins as a dolphin
sees them, but also
to see and understand the shafts of downwelling light in the
open sea, the icker of sunlight magnied through thousands

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S.N. Glackin / Stud. Hist. Phil. Biol. & Biomed. Sci. 39 (2008) 292297

of lenses of curved water on the sea surface, that are so constantly part of what a dolphin sees. We need to understand
the underside of the surface as dolphins see it.
This anthropomorphic stress on the afnities between dolphin
and human experience is a frequent, and often amusing, theme in
the literature; researchers in the Black Sea named a particular diagonal formation adopted by dolphin groups moving perpendicular to
the tide an echelon, apparently after a similar arrangement of racing cyclists in a crosswind (Belkovich et al., 1998a, p. 20). And surveying playing behaviour, they remark offhandedly that Of course,
the purest play behaviour was seen in calves (Belkovich et al.,
1998b, p. 69). Researchers describe dolphins using clearly rational
and strategic behaviour in hunting, problem-solving, understanding
grammatical distinctions in human speechbetween, for instance,
take the surfboard to the frisbee and take the frisbee to the surfboard (Herman, 1998, p. 351)scouting for the group, and communicating to others about food sources, dangers, and the like.
Dolphins can distinguish between impossible and merely difcult
questions (Norris, 1998b, p. 300), and understand complex categories like anything man-made and bigger than a breadbox (Pryor,
1998, p. 346).1 They can, on request, volunteer novel behaviour,
and may refuse a reward for performing a particular trick until they
have mastered it to their own satisfaction (ibid.). They even seem to
be capable of metacognition, of knowing and acting upon their own
mental states (Browne, 2004). To their trainers, dolphins are prime
candidates, not to be domesticated, but to accept domestication
as willing partners in a mutual enterprise (Pryor, 1998, p. 347).
So the rationality, and the experience of dolphins does seem to
be intelligibly similar to that of humans. We can, argues MacIntyre
(1999, p. 64), meaningfully attribute reasons for action to dolphins
when they act so as to achieve some particular good by analogy
with our ascriptions of reasons to human agents. Of course, the
human virtues will not be the same as the dolphin virtues, or those
of any other sort of organism. But when we speak of both dolphins
and humans ourishing, we are not using the term analogically, but
univocally:
What it is to ourish is of course not the same for dolphins as it
is for gorillas or for humans but it is one and the same concept
of ourishing that nds application to members of different animaland plantspecies. And correspondingly it is one and the
same concept of needs that nds similar broad application.
What a plant or an animal needs is what it needs to ourish
qua member of its particular species.
The virtues are, remember then, those characteristics of any species, or any individual, in virtue of which their possessor ourishes,
or is at any rate likely to do so. And it is, for MacIntyre, those parts of
human ourishing which are most continuous with dolphins ourishing in virtue of which the moral and intellectual virtues are useful to us. Our dependence, and our vulnerability, are aspects of our
specically animal nature, and it is reection upon the same features in dolphins which makes this most clear. Thus, the virtues
of acknowledged dependence, as MacIntyre calls them, though
they may allow us to move beyond mere animality, both arise in response to, and exist as part of, our normal animal functioning. This
being the case, the task of evaluating the virtues of an individual
be it human, dolphin, or any other sort of organismis properly a
part of the normal scientic study of its functioning. And while
we may typically reserve the term moral for the behaviour of humans, the moral virtuesas a subset of the natural human virtues
arise in response to the same sorts of considerations as, and overlap
substantially with, the natural virtues of dolphins.

4. A problem for MacIntyre; some awkward facts about

dolphins
The problem with this theory is best brought out by looking
back at those dolphins, and the way researchers describe certain
aspects of their behaviour. By way of due warning to the reader,
I shall in this section examine a rather lurid example. I take it to
be helpfully lurid, however, as it provokes our instinctive moralising, and what is worth stressing, here, is just how dolphin experts
refuse to moralise in this way, how moralising is not, in fact, an aspect of dolphin ethology.
Not to put too ne a point on it, young male dolphins regularly,
and as part of their normal goal-oriented biological functioning,
engage in whatwere we to continue anthropomorphisingwe
would have to term gang rape. The following is a report of the rst
known such incident in European waters, from the Irish Dolphins
website, tracking a solitary, human-associating (ambassador) dolphin off the Irish coast:
On 3rd October 2003 a most dramatic incident occurred in
which three larger dolphins, believed to be male, chased Dusty
into the shallows where she was apparently taking refuge and
forcibly took her out to seas with them. This was witnessed by
observers both in the water . . . and on the shore and was concisely described to use (sic) by one local commentator as Dusty
was gang-banged. That may sound over-dramatised, but during
the late 1980s researchers in Shark Bay, Western Australia, did
indeed record the forcible abduction of female bottlenose dolphins in oestrus. Richard Connor and Rachel Smolker observed
that male bottlenoses, in that population at least, form durable
alliances, typically of 3 animals (one dolphin on its own cannot
effectively coerce another dolphin), apparently for the specic
purpose of forcing copulation on unwilling females, either by
all the males or by the two most dominant ones amongst them.
(Irishdolphins.com, 2001, para. 3)
Tursiops.org takes up the story rather more graphically and
unsettlingly (and in a rather more explicitly Darwinian fashion),
in an interview with Phil Coulthard of the Bunbury Dolphin Discovery Centre in Koombana Bay, Western Australia:
Often the males in the alliances are related. In this way, the
chances of passing on family genes are optimised. The males
scream and make popping noises to intimidate the females,
sounds Phil Coulthard describes are (sic) horric. Shanti
meantime is trying to escape. She spins and leaps out of
the water, her pink belly signifying to the males that she is
ready. Mating can take anything up to a month before the
males are satised that shes impregnated. (Tursiops.org,
2004, para. 10).
Such behaviour is, clearly, both cooperative and interdependent. It involves just those strategic, goal-oriented faculties which
so impress us as to the dolphins intelligence and rationality. It is
obviously fundamentally linked to the dolphins biological ourishing. It is absolutely, paradigmatically, the sort of behaviour
which MacIntyre seems to have in mind when discussing the continuities between the rationality, intelligence, and way of life of
dolphins and that of humans. But it doesnt look at all like what
wed call virtuous, or moral behaviour. Yet MacIntyres theory
was supposed to explain virtue and morality to us. What, exactly,
has gone wrong here?
For some Aristotelians, nothing. There are those who bite the
bullet, and say that were human beings signicantly different sorts

1
I do not know how the dolphin dened that, but he soon found engine blocks, a movie camera, quite a lot of shing equipment, and a World War II airplane (Pryor, 1998, p.
346).

S.N. Glackin / Stud. Hist. Phil. Biol. & Biomed. Sci. 39 (2008) 292297

of animal, signicantly different moral standards would apply. This

sort of behaviour merely seems wrong or immoral to us because
were so used to the moral standards appropriate to humans. Very
different species ourish in very different ways, however, and
moral concepts are properly applicable only to humans and human actions.
But these, typically, are the followers of Aristotle content
blindly to follow Wittgensteins maxim about the Lion; we cant,
they hold, understand animal lives in the appropriate manner. Often, some reference will be made to Thomas Nagels famous paper
What is it like to be a bat? (Nagel, 1979). But as MacIntyre (1999,
pp. 5859) points out, the bat example is convincing onlyor at
least, in large partbecause the bats perceptual apparatus is so
different to our own. In fact, as we have seen, the intimate study
of dolphins, among other species, does incline usand certainly inclines Macintyreto say that its possible for a human to understand their ways of life; keen observers of dolphin behaviour do
have a pretty good idea of what it is like to be a dolphin. This
being so, and since on MacIntyres view, the evaluation of virtues
is part of their purview, how do dolphin experts assess this organised, coercive mating behaviour? Is their attitude primarily approbatory, given an understanding of the virtues appropriate to the
ourishing of dolphins qua dolphins? Or do they insist on applying
the moral standards appropriate to humans, and condemning the
behaviour as immoral?
Actually, neither. The majority of scientic experts on dolphin
behaviour, faced with the evidence of gang-rape among their subjects, simply deny that any moral stance towards it is appropriate;
in fact, they cease to anthropomorphise at exactly this point. Phil
Coulthard, though horried by the behaviour, declines to use
the word rape when describing dolphin sexual activity. He says
thats a human value judgement (Tursiops.org, 2004, para. 10).
The Irish Dolphins site, while reporting a local commentators
description of a gang-bang, and accepting that Certainly this
behaviour could be describes as gang rape if it took place within
human society, nonetheless insists that we should as usual avoid
anthropomorphising such incidents (Irishdolphins.com, 2001,
para. 3). In fact, however, the usual practice is to anthropomorphise freely, except in moralising cases. And when the New York Times
published an expos of the less endearing aspects of dolphin
behaviour, labelling them senseless killers (Broad, 1999), Tim Cahill (1999), at the time producing an IMAX lm and companion National Geographic book on the subject of dolphins, described the
differing reactions of his friends; laypeople were typically
shocked and surprised, whereas the dolphin specialists, uniformly
found the article highly sensational and the headlines especially
inammatory. It isnt that we were unaware of the information
in the Times piece or that any such material had been omitted
from my book . . . we supposed our audience would be composed
of people who are aware that dolphins are wild animals and
erce predators. The Times piece supposed that its readers loved
dolphins uncritically and was designed to shock the credulous.
Ultimately, he concludes, We imagine that the dolphin is peaceful,
loving, joyous, and wise, because these virtues are the sum of our
yearning. But dolphins are neither wise nor cruel. Not in the human sense.
So, heres an apparent problem for MacIntyres theory. The scientists who study dolphin behaviour, the humans who, he argues,
understand dolphin natures sufciently well that they would be
able to understand were a dolphin able to talk to them, and part
of whose expertise is to evaluate the dolphins normal animal functioning, withdraw their anthropomorphising, their empathetic
understanding, precisely at the point of expressing moralor equivalently virtue-evaluative, if we wish to reserve moral for humans
attitudes, either pro or anti, towards that behaviour. The most com-

295

plete accounts of dolphin behaviour, it seems, see that behaviour,

the clear exercise of dolphin virtues in the pursuit of dolphin ourishing, as neither moral nor immoral, but rather amoral.
5. Some possible responses and their inadequacies
Now, a number of responses to this does seem to be available to
MacIntyre, or to other, rival, formulations of Aristotelianism about
ethics. Three will be considered here: the objection that the problem springs from a faulty denition of virtue and ourishing; the
objection that theres nothing new here, that this is just the good
thief problem in a new guise; and the objection that good is used
differently in different contexts, is ascribed differently to people
and to dolphins.

5.1. MacIntyres denition

Given that this problem exists for MacIntyres account of virtues,
there seem to be two possibilities here. Either there is a problem
with the denition of virtues, or as I suspect, virtues are being dened and attributed correctly, but do not in fact name a moral category. Has MacIntyre, as a more orthodox Aristotelian might claim,
simply misdened ourishing and virtues, and so himself created
a problem unique to his own theory? Well, recall that the more
orthodox versions MacIntyre rejects simply didnt take the actual
mainstream scientic picture of the living world very seriously at
all. So if scientic verisimilitude is worth anything, as it has to be,
certainly for any theory which purports to locate ethics within science, MacIntyres account looks like the onlyAristoteliangame
in town. Certainly, the denition of biological ourishing seems, if
not entirely unproblematic, then at least intuitively correct. And given that particular account of ourishing, MacIntyre seems to have
provided a clear sense of just what virtues involve, how they enter
into ourand dolphinslives, and how they facilitate our ourishing. So while various other sorts of Aristotelian would dispute his
denitions, it seems that MacIntyres is as good an account of ourishing and the virtues as we can have. At a minimum, anyway, for
current purposes, it is not an obviously awed account.
5.2. The good thief
So we can talk, intelligibly, about a dolphin that is a good gangrapist. Or a good cooperating coercive copulator, if a less anthropomorphising term is preferred. And we can easily imagine the sort
of virtues which would make the dolphin good in this regard; agility, for instance, or fecundity, or loyalty to ones allies. Perhaps this
is still not a problem for MacIntyre; Aristotelians have always had
to explain, for instance, the paradox of the good thief, a person
who exhibits apparent virtues, like dexterity, skill, and stealth, in
the pursuit of a vicious aim. In such cases, though, the aim itself
is vicious, and the possession of that aim is evidence of derangement, or of a disrupted formation of character. Theft, it is claimed,
is simply not conducive to the thiefs well being, whether through
the ravages of guilt, the formation of bad character traits, or the
likelihood of capture and punishment. It arises, moreover, because
the thief has failed to develop correctly, and in a manner conducive
to or consistent with his or her ourishing. A human participant in
gang-rape would, too, be acting in a manner thoroughly at odds
with his or her own ourishing, and presumably the result of a severe disruption in the formation of his or her moral character. But
this is assuredly not the case regarding the dolphin; the behaviour
exhibited seems quite straightforwardly to serve the biological
ends of the dolphin qua dolphin, with no discernible downside,
nor is there any evidence that the behaviour springs from any
discernible process of disruption to the dolphin. In any case, such

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S.N. Glackin / Stud. Hist. Phil. Biol. & Biomed. Sci. 39 (2008) 292297

a deviation from normal dolphin nature is precisely the sort of

thing we would expect dolphin behavioural experts, on MacIntyres view, to identify and evaluate, just as ethicists identify and
evaluate human behaviour as virtuous or vicious on the basis of
derangement or disruption. If the human virtues really do arise
from our animal nature, then we seem to be using good univocally, to be describing this behaviour as good for the dolphin in just
the same sense as we judge moral behaviour among persons. A
dening insight of Aristotelian ethics, after all, is supposedly that
good is univocal in just this sort of respect. But as we have already
noted, this sort of evaluative description is in fact just what dolphin ethologists refuse to do.

5.3. Different ways of ascribing good

Now, even though good means the same in every context for
the Aristotelian, its still possible, the claim might run, that we attribute it differently in different contexts. In particular, we may wish
to say that moral goodness is attributable only to humans, and only
with reference to human virtues. The fact that moral goodness is
not attributed to dolphins would then be a rather trivial observation, and would certainly not present any problem for virtue-based
accounts of (human) morality. However, nothing in the argument
depends upon attributing specically moral goodness or badness
to dolphins. Rather, the problem posed by the dolphin case is that
the type of attribution of good, which in the human case is necessary for moral evaluation, does not seem to be a proper part of
the behavioural or other biological study of an organism, as MacIntyre would have us believe. For this reason also, we need not worry
that dolphin ethologists are reserving moral judgement simply because they do not hold the correct (Aristotelian) account of morality; the sort of judgement they are being askedand refusingto
make is not a specically ethical one.
MacIntyre distinguishes three different senses in which goodness can be ascribed: purely as a means to some other acknowledged good (it is good to be indoors, seeing as it is raining
outside, and dryness is a good); to the performance of some role
or function within some socially established practice with recognised internal goods (Zinedine Zidane is a good football player); and
to those established practices and acknowledged goods, whether
they deserve the place they do within the life of society (it would
be good to reduce the number of homeless in Leeds). And our
judgements about how it is best for an individual or a community
to order the goods in their lives, he writes,
Exemplify this third type of ascription, one whereby we judge
unconditionally about what it is best for individuals or groups
to be or do or have not only qua agents engaged in this or that
form of activity in this or that role or roles, but also qua human
beings. (MacIntyre, 1999, p. 67)
The problem is, this type of judgementjudging unconditionally, for instance, that dolphins ought not engage in the socially
established practice of gang-rapeis precisely the sort that those
who study dolphins, who according to MacIntyre can understand
what it is like to be a dolphin, refuse to make. And this, in turn,
suggests a basic conceptual distinction between the third sort of
ascription of goodwhether or not we elect to call it moral in
non-human casesand the rst two. Because the third, the absolute, unconditional value judgement, simply doesnt appear in
ethology, simply is not engaged in by ethologists. More than that,
ethologists qua ethologists are reluctant, are too well informed to
make such judgements. And if human ethology and behaviour
really is continuous with dolphin ethology and behaviour, and
its virtues arise from the same sorts of facts about humans as
about dolphins, as MacIntyre has so convincingly argued, then

this strongly suggests that the scientic study of human

behaviour, too, has no place making category three ascriptions
of goodness, that moral goodness is not, after all, univocal
with the sort of goodness captured by the idea of biological
ourishing.
6. Conclusion
This is not to say, of course, that morality and ethology do not
overlap. As MacIntyre clearly demonstrates, moral behaviour is conducive to ourishing. And as numerous game-theoretic and similar
analyses have shown, a denite tness advantage may be conferred
by such behaviour. These facts explain, in large part, the prevalence
of moral behaviour, as a biological phenomenon, among human
beings. They explain why moral behaviour is, for humans, virtuous,
conducive to ourishing. But virtuosity, and the etymology is
instructive here, ultimately concerns only the humans, or other
animals, skill at the tasks of living. Whether those tasks, or those
ways of life, are morally worth living is another question altogether.
So where does this leave MacIntyres theory? I consider him to
have given the best possible account of human ourishing as a biological, animal phenomenon, and a clear picture of what the human virtues are, and what role they play, in that context. He
provides an extremely compelling account of the continuities between the consciousness, the rationality, and the ourishing of human beings and of other animals, particularly dolphins, and a
convincing case for the understanding of what it is like to be a dolphin by humans.
But as I hope I have shown, it is just this understanding which
seems to undermine his attempt to locate ethics in ethology. The
humans who best understand dolphins ethologically, we have
seen, refuse to assess them ethically. And in light of the impressive
continuities between dolphin ethology and human ethology, then,
the prospects for deriving human ethics from a knowledge of human ethology are no better. That the virtues exist, describe important aspects of our biological functioning, and are thus evaluable
by the biological sciences is not in doubt. That they are moral in
nature, in anything more than an accidental sense, must now be
subject to very strong doubt indeed. If we want, then, to derive ethical facts from scientic values, or vice versa, MacIntyres version of
Aristotelian naturalism is not the way to do so.
Acknowledgements
Thanks are due to Dr Mark Nelson of Westmont College, Santa
Barbara andespeciallyto Dr Gregory Radick of Leeds University
for their assistance in the preparation of this paper, as well as to
the two anonymous reviewers of an earlier draft for their detailed
and helpful commentary, to Kate McLarnon, and to all who provided feedback on a still more primitive version at the symposium
on Philosophy and the Sciences of Animal Mind and Behaviour at
the Leeds Humanities Research Institute on 12 July 2006. The
author is deeply grateful to the AHRC for the scholarship award under which the research was conducted. As usual, responsibility for
all errors should be ascribed solely to the author.
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