Mary Midgley, Philosopher, Ethicist - Background and Philosophy

1. MARY MIDGLEY
Philosopher
1919 - present

2. Mary Midgley
▪ Born in London in 1919
▪ Known for her work in moral philosophy,
animal rights, philosophy of science, ethology,
evolution
▪ Educated at Somerville College, Oxford.
Received an Honorary D. Litt (1995), Durham
University and an Honorary DCL (2008),
Newcastle University

3. Midgley’s context
She lived through WWII and its aftermath, which
has influenced not only her moral philosophy, but
also given her an historical perspective that
informs her critiques of other scientists and
philosophers.
Midgley engages in fierce critique of those
scientists and philosophers who think themselves
and their ideas to be more than they actually are.
“Midgley combines both the ability to place
intellectual fashions in their broader context with
having lived long enough to personally witness
the rise and fall of many of them.” Steven Cave,
Review of Midgley’s AreYou an Illusion.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/70476606-ae8e-11e3-
aaa6-00144feab7de.html#axzz3Ewq9YR1X

4. Midgley’s Academic Publications
▪ Beast and Man:The Roots of Human
Nature,1978
▪ Heart and Mind:TheVarieties of Moral
Experience, 1981
▪ Animals andWhyThey Matter: AJourney
Around the Species Barrier, 1983
▪ Wickedness: A philosophical Essay, 1984
▪ Evolution as a Religion:Strange Hopes and
Stranger Fears, 1985
▪ Can'tWe Make MoralJudgements?, 1989
▪ Wisdom, Information andWonder:What Is
Knowledge For?, 1989
▪ Science As Salvation: A Modern Myth and
Its Meaning, 1992
▪ The Ethical Primate: Humans, Freedom and
Morality, 1994
▪ Utopias, Dolphins and Computers:
Problems of Philosophical Plumbing, 1996
▪ Science and Poetry, 2001
▪ MythsWe Live By, 2003
▪ The Owl of Minerva: A Memoir, 2005
▪ Earthy Realism:The Meaning of Gaia, 2007
▪ The SolitarySelf: Darwin and the Selfish
Gene, 2010

5. A key to reading Midgley:
Midgley is an expert in pointing out the flaws in others’ thinking.
You will notice this throughout her writings.

6. Midgley’s major influences:
Greek philosophy
Charles Darwin (naturalism)

7. Midgley reacts against:
Reductionism (more on this later)
Scientism (more on this later)
Richard Dawkins -The Selfish Gene (more on this later)

8. Premises of Midgley’s philosophy:
1. She advocates for moral responsibility, as well as the validity of taking
subjective feelings seriously within ethics.
2. The perceived separation between humans and other animals is largely a
human construct and overlooks deep biological connections.

9. Premises of Midgley’s philosophy:
3. Earth itself is a living organism (Gaia theory)
Gaia = goddess of Earth in Greek mythology
Gaia theory proposes that the Earth is a self-regulating, complex system that
maintains the conditions for life on the planet. First proposed by James
Lovelock in the 1970s. Gaia theory is especially invoked when discussing
climate change, species extinction, ocean salinity and temperatures,
deforestation, etc.

10. Premises of Midgley’s philosophy:
4. Philosophers can learn a great deal from nature, particularly animals
Ethology can contribute to our understanding of ethics.
Ethos = character or behavior (Greek)
Notice its relation to the word ethics.
Ethology is the scientific and objective study of animal behavior, usually with
a focus on behavior under natural conditions. Ethologists are typically
interested in a behavioral process rather than in a particular animal group, and
often study one type of behavior, such as aggression, in a number of unrelated
animals.

11. Goals of Midgley’s work:
1. Demonstrate that reductionism is wholly inadequate for constructing a moral
philosophy
Reductionism: a philosophical position which holds that a complex system is
nothing but the sum of its parts, and that an account of it can be reduced to
accounts of individual constituents
Reductionism is the attempt to impose any one approach to understanding the
world.
The opposite of reductionism is holism: Holism is the idea that things can have
properties, (emergent properties), as a whole that are not explainable from the
sum of their parts.The principle of holism was concisely summarized by Aristotle
in the book Metaphysics: "The whole is more than the sum of its parts".

12. Goals of Midgley’s work:
1. Demonstrate that reductionism is wholly inadequate for constructing a moral
philosophy
Reductionism: a philosophical position which holds that a complex system is
nothing but the sum of its parts, and that an account of it can be reduced to
accounts of individual constituents
Reductionism is the attempt to impose any one approach to understanding the
world.
The opposite of reductionism is holism: Holism is the idea that things can have
properties, (emergent properties), as a whole that are not explainable from the
sum of their parts.The principle of holism was concisely summarized by Aristotle
in the book Metaphysics: "The whole is more than the sum of its parts".

13. Goals of Midgley’s work:
2. Asserts that GaiaTheory carries with it an implicit moral imperative – the need
to act in the interests of this living system of Earth on which we all depend.

14. Goals of Midgley’s work:
3. She argues that human beings are more
similar to animals than many social scientists
acknowledge, while animals are in many
ways more sophisticated than we tend to
believe.
Animals and earth processes are not to
be viewed in an objectified way, but
rather seen as complex parts of a
multifaceted living system

15. Goals of Midgley’s work:
4. Midgley argues that we "must learn how to value various aspects of our
environment, how to structure social relationships and institutions so that we
value social and spiritual life, as well as the natural world, alongside commercial
and economic aspects.”

16. Midgley’s Critique of scientism:
Midgley’s animated critique of scientism—science become religion—has been taken by some,
especially scientists, as an attack on science itself.This may partly be because Midgley seems
much more adept at demolishing others’ positions than in stating her own clearly. In fact,
Midgley’s critique of science should be seen against her own metaphor of the philosopher as
plumber: the philosopher, like the plumber, engages in an activity that civilisation depends
on, but it is an activity which people only notice and require when certain rather essential
workings have gone wrong. At her best, Midgley is a ‘science critic’ (using the word ‘critic’ in
the way it is used in ‘literary critic’), seeking dialogue with the important activity called science
to enable it to do more good and less harm in the modern world. Midgley’s contribution to this
project is perhaps largely that of negative criticism. However, her friendship with and support
forJames Lovelock, the scientist who developed the Gaia hypothesis (that the planet earth as
a whole is a living system), tells us a lot about her positive beliefs. Presumably, in Lovelock,
she finds a scientific approach that is more congenial and conducive to human flourishing.
-- Gifford Lecture Series, brief biography of Mary Midgley http://www.giffordlectures.org/Author.asp?AuthorID=223

17. Video snippets of interview with Midgley:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/video/2010/dec/27/mary-midgley-myths-selfish-gene