That was one thought that came to mind as I read this NYT article: "Scientists Square Off on Evolutionary Value of Helping Relatives."   When I saw the headline my Confucian senses started tingling.  Helping relatives is obviously a Confucian idea and, from that point of view, there would be an evolutionary value to it, of sorts.  But I was frustrated by the article itself.  It focused mainly on studies of behavior among ants and other non-human animals:

Why are worker ants sterile? Why do birds sometimes help their parents raise more chicks, instead of having chicks of their own? Why do bacteria explode with toxins to kill rival colonies? In 1964, the British biologist William Hamilton published a landmark paper to answer these kinds of questions. Sometimes, he argued, helping your relatives can spread your genes faster than having children of your own.

For a Confucian, helping relatives is not about genetic propagation; it is a moral practice and obligation.  Indeed, genetics matters not at all to Confucianism.  Yes, we should rasie children in order to extend Humanity to future generations, but that does not require each person to have his or her own biological children.  Adoption is fine for the moral purposes of Humanity. 

And that is when I realized the key distinction.  Most moral theories, Confucianism included, place humans in a different category than animals.  Yes, I am aware of Peter Singer and other animal rights activists.  Those are interesting and important arguments.  But the actual ethical practice of most human communities have long been predicated on a moral distinction between humans and animals.  Most societies condemn cannibalism while accepting the consumption of animal meat. 

That much is fairly obvious.  But it is important to keep in mind when reading evolutionary biologists.  They sometimes come up with statements like this:

Each organism faces a trade-off between putting effort into raising its own offspring or helping its relatives. If the benefits of helping a relative outweigh the costs, Dr. Hamilton argued, altruism can evolve.

"Altruism" is the key term.  Obviously, it is meant here in a biological sense.  But it has a moral connotation.  And the two should not be confused.  In human terms, altruism can certainly evolve.  But that process is not simply a strategy for genetic propagation.  It is a self-conscious process of striving to live a morally good life.  It is guided by ideas and images and symbols.  It is fired by a will to good.  And those very human qualities (which may indeed be shared by some animals in some rudimentary fashion) are not included in the models of the evolutinoary biologists.