ABSTRACT
Official scientific thought doesn’t try to distinguish between different forms of purpose; indeed, it hardly recognizes the concept of purpose at all. Subjective purposes – motives – were outlawed from science-speak by the behaviourists, along with the rest of our inner life. Although their effects are obviously real, these purposes were blotted out so successfully from the perception of the learned that many conscientious thinkers still don’t dare to look at them. Sociobiology’s preference for supposed occult dynastic motives over obvious social ones is not a parsimonious way of thinking and neither, as it happens, is it Darwinian. In The Descent of Man, Darwin argued strongly that people are not just a sociable species but are naturally more sociable – more cooperative, affectionate and interdependent – than any of our relatives. So the idea of deriving all our motivation from the single stem of selfishness, or enlightened self-interest, is radically mistaken.
