In The Descent of Man (1879), Charles Darwin proposed a speculative
evolutionary explanation of e... more In The Descent of Man (1879), Charles Darwin proposed a speculative evolutionary explanation of extended benevolence—a human sympathetic capacity that extends to all nations, races, and even to all sentient beings. This essay draws on twenty-first century social science to show that Darwin’s explanation is correct in its broad outlines. Extended benevolence is manifested in institutions such as legal human rights and democracy, in behaviors such as social movements for human rights and the protection of nonhuman animals, and in normative attitudes such as emancipative values and a commitment to promote the rights or welfare of animals. These phenomena can be substantially explained by cultural evolutionary forces that trace back to three components of what Darwin called the human “moral sense”: (1) sympathy, (2) our disposition to follow community rules or norms, and (3) our capacity to make normative judgments. Extended benevolence likely emerged with “workarounds,” including political ideologies, that established an inclusive sympathetic concern for sentient life. It likely became as widespread as it is now due to recently arisen socio-economic conditions that have created more opportunities for people to have contact with and take the perspective of a broader cross-section of humanity, as well as other species.
Journal of the American Philosophical Association, 2019
Morally progressive social changes seem to have taken place with the onset of democratic governan... more Morally progressive social changes seem to have taken place with the onset of democratic governance, the abolition of slavery, the rise of gender equality, and other developments. This essay attempts to demonstrate that natural and objective moral facts are a plausible cause of some morally progressive social changes. Since this hypothesis is a version of naturalistic moral realism, I call it the Naturalist-Realist Hypothesis (NRH). To support the NRH, I argue that objective moral facts are natural facts pertaining to the impartial promotion of well-being within a population of agents facing a social dilemma. I then describe a mechanism to explain how natural and objective moral facts, so construed, may cause some morally progressive social changes. I suggest that the NRH is a credible hypothesis because it is compatible with empirical findings from research on the evolution of moral cognition and on the sociology of mass political movements.
People sometimes explain behavior by appealing to an essentialist concept of the self, often refe... more People sometimes explain behavior by appealing to an essentialist concept of the self, often referred to as the true self. Existing studies suggest that people tend to believe that the true self is morally virtuous; that is deep inside, every person is motivated to behave in morally good ways. Is this belief particular to individuals with optimistic beliefs or people from Western cultures, or does it reflect a widely held cognitive bias in how people understand the self? To address this question, we tested the good true self theory against two potential boundary conditions that are known to elicit different beliefs about the self as a whole. Study 1 tested whether individual differences in misanthropy-the tendency to view humans negatively-predict beliefs about the good true self in an American sample. The results indicate a consistent belief in a good true self, even among individuals who have an explicitly pessimistic view of others. Study 2 compared true self-attributions across ...
Practical Wisdom: A Virtue for Resolving Conflicts among Practical Reasons, 2017
Normative practical reasons sometimes conflict: one reason may favor doing something, while anoth... more Normative practical reasons sometimes conflict: one reason may favor doing something, while another may favor not doing it. These conflicts can be so radical that it seems difficult, if not impossible, to judge which reason should ultimately guide one’s actions. A theory of practical rationality known as reasons pluralism purports to explain such conflicts. According to reasons pluralism, normative practical reasons fall into a plurality of types that cannot be rationally compared with one another in terms of their relative “weight” or “strength.” An implication of reasons pluralism is that there can be radical conflicts among normative practical reasons where there is no fact of the matter about what one ought to do, all things considered. This would occur when reasons of different types conflict: since different types of reasons cannot be rationally compared, even a complete assessment of all the reasons relevant to the situation would not warrant a consistent set of verdicts about what one ought to do. However, a salient objection to reasons pluralism is that we can arrive at well-founded conclusions about what we ought to do, all things considered, even in those cases where normative practical reasons of different types conflict. In response, I will argue that this objection does not pose a genuine threat to reasons pluralism. For reasons pluralism is compatible with the idea that, under certain conditions, a normative practical reason of one type may override a normative practical reason of another type. This is so not because different types of normative practical reasons can be compared according to their relative strengths, but rather because the virtue of practical wisdom involves an ability to order diverse goods into a coherent system that facilitates a flourishing life. The argument will be discussed in light of conflicts between reasons to buy luxuries and cultivate meaningful personal relationships, on the one hand, and reasons to live frugally and make large charitable donations for the sake of reducing poverty-related suffering, on the other. By the end of the discussion, I will reach some tentative conclusions about how much one should be prepared to give up, in terms of benefits for oneself or for one’s loved ones, in order to promote the well-being of distant strangers.
Some versions of moral naturalism are faulted for implausibly denying that moral obligations and ... more Some versions of moral naturalism are faulted for implausibly denying that moral obligations and prescriptions entail categorical reasons for action. Categorical reasons are normative reasons for action that exist and apply to agents independently of whatever desires they have. I argue that several defenses of moral naturalism against this charge are unsuccessful. To be a tenable meta-ethical theory, moral naturalism must accommodate the proposition that, necessarily, if anyone morally ought to do something, then s/he has a categorical reason to do it. Versions of moral naturalism that deny this claim would, if widely believed, disable some crucial practical uses of moral concepts. In particular, if the existence of normative reasons for action is taken to be dependent on agents’ desires, it would breed profound skepticism about the legitimacy of evaluating others’ actions from a moral point of view. Also, it would raise doubts about whether people ought to correct their own behavior in light of moral considerations. Following Richard Joyce, I take these consequences to indicate that the concept of a categorical reason is a “non-negotiable” part of moral concepts.
This essay proposes and defends a descriptive definition of morality. Under this definition, a mo... more This essay proposes and defends a descriptive definition of morality. Under this definition, a moral system is a system of rules, psychological states, and modes of character development which performs the function of enabling mutually beneficial social cooperation. I shall argue that the methodologies employed by two prominent moral psychologists rely upon to establish a descriptive definition of morality only serve to track patterns in people's uses of moral terms.
This article defends a claim about the conditions under which agents possess normative reasons fo... more This article defends a claim about the conditions under which agents possess normative reasons for action. According to this claim, an agent has a normative reason to φ only if it's psychologically possible for that reason to motivate the agent to φ. The claim is called 'Williams's explanatory constraint,' since it's drawn from Bernard Williams's work on the topic of practical reason. A two-premise 'master argument' for Williams's explanatory constraint is put forward. First, an agent has a normative reason to φ only if that agent has the ability to φ for that reason. The second premise states that an agent has the ability to φ for a normative reason only if it's psychologically possible for that reason to motivate the agent to φ. It is suggested that the ability to act for a normative reason involves the ability to act from a consequencesensitive process of practical reasoning. Furthermore, normative reasons for action can motivate agents by being the objects of psychological states-particularly beliefs, desires, and intentions. In reply to the objection that normative reasons can never be objects of psychological states, I contend that all normative reasons are capable of being represented as the objects of psychological states.
In his recent book The Moral Arc (2015), Michael Shermer makes an admirable case for the occurren... more In his recent book The Moral Arc (2015), Michael Shermer makes an admirable case for the occurrence of moral progress at the social level. Society-level moral progress occurs when a change in the norms, practices, and institutions of a society constitutes a moral improvement, relative to the way that the norms, practices, and institutions were before. Shermer argues compellingly that society-level moral progress has taken place with the decline of witch executions, the pacification of international affairs, the rise of democracy, the abolition of slavery, the extension of equal rights to women and homosexuals, and increasing support for animal rights. However, the huge body of historical and sociological information that Shermer draws on will likely fail to convince a proponent of what Philip Kitcher calls the mere-change view (Kitcher 2011: 138 – 140, 210). This is the view that changes in norms, practices, and institutions can never be moral progress, because there is no objective standard by which such changes may be evaluated as resulting in a state of affairs that is morally better than a previous state (Kitcher 2011: 210). As Kitcher aptly quips, the mere change view amounts to the thought that social changes are “simply one damned thing after another” (Kitcher 2011: 7).
Against the mere-change view, I shall argue that moral progress does indeed occur, and moreover that it can be understood as increased success in achieving the end of a moral enterprise. The end of a moral enterprise is a state of affairs favored by selection pressures which govern the historical evolution of moral norms. Such an end can be identified through sociological inquiry of the kind that Shermer and others pursue.
A classic question in moral philosophy asks "Why be moral?" In other words, what reason or motive... more A classic question in moral philosophy asks "Why be moral?" In other words, what reason or motive do people have to act in accordance with the requirements of morality? In the tradition of Thomas Hobbes and David Hume, this project defends the thesis that nearly all people have reason to be moral nearly all of the time, because moral conduct generally serves individuals' desires and needs. It's argued, first, that a reason for action must be capable of motivating an agent to act, and second, that reasons for action motivate through the desires of the agent. This view is defended against the objection that reasons for action are not contingent on any particular agent's desires. Turning to morality, the case is made that the desires of an individual can be consonant with the demands of morality in any of three possible ways: (1) moral action serves one's other-regarding desires to help others; (2) moral action serves one's moral desires, which are formed when one internalizes the moral norms of his or her community; and (3) moral action serves one's self-regarding desires to avoid punishments that one incurs by violating moral norms. In the final chapter, it is acknowledged that the moral norms which happen to prevail in a society sometimes conflict with the moral convictions of individuals. Under certain conditions, however, it can be rational for nearly all members of a society to collectively change existing moral norms. Furthermore, it is within the power of individuals to foment the conditions for collective transitions to alternative moral norms.
In The Descent of Man (1879), Charles Darwin proposed a speculative
evolutionary explanation of e... more In The Descent of Man (1879), Charles Darwin proposed a speculative evolutionary explanation of extended benevolence—a human sympathetic capacity that extends to all nations, races, and even to all sentient beings. This essay draws on twenty-first century social science to show that Darwin’s explanation is correct in its broad outlines. Extended benevolence is manifested in institutions such as legal human rights and democracy, in behaviors such as social movements for human rights and the protection of nonhuman animals, and in normative attitudes such as emancipative values and a commitment to promote the rights or welfare of animals. These phenomena can be substantially explained by cultural evolutionary forces that trace back to three components of what Darwin called the human “moral sense”: (1) sympathy, (2) our disposition to follow community rules or norms, and (3) our capacity to make normative judgments. Extended benevolence likely emerged with “workarounds,” including political ideologies, that established an inclusive sympathetic concern for sentient life. It likely became as widespread as it is now due to recently arisen socio-economic conditions that have created more opportunities for people to have contact with and take the perspective of a broader cross-section of humanity, as well as other species.
Journal of the American Philosophical Association, 2019
Morally progressive social changes seem to have taken place with the onset of democratic governan... more Morally progressive social changes seem to have taken place with the onset of democratic governance, the abolition of slavery, the rise of gender equality, and other developments. This essay attempts to demonstrate that natural and objective moral facts are a plausible cause of some morally progressive social changes. Since this hypothesis is a version of naturalistic moral realism, I call it the Naturalist-Realist Hypothesis (NRH). To support the NRH, I argue that objective moral facts are natural facts pertaining to the impartial promotion of well-being within a population of agents facing a social dilemma. I then describe a mechanism to explain how natural and objective moral facts, so construed, may cause some morally progressive social changes. I suggest that the NRH is a credible hypothesis because it is compatible with empirical findings from research on the evolution of moral cognition and on the sociology of mass political movements.
People sometimes explain behavior by appealing to an essentialist concept of the self, often refe... more People sometimes explain behavior by appealing to an essentialist concept of the self, often referred to as the true self. Existing studies suggest that people tend to believe that the true self is morally virtuous; that is deep inside, every person is motivated to behave in morally good ways. Is this belief particular to individuals with optimistic beliefs or people from Western cultures, or does it reflect a widely held cognitive bias in how people understand the self? To address this question, we tested the good true self theory against two potential boundary conditions that are known to elicit different beliefs about the self as a whole. Study 1 tested whether individual differences in misanthropy-the tendency to view humans negatively-predict beliefs about the good true self in an American sample. The results indicate a consistent belief in a good true self, even among individuals who have an explicitly pessimistic view of others. Study 2 compared true self-attributions across ...
Practical Wisdom: A Virtue for Resolving Conflicts among Practical Reasons, 2017
Normative practical reasons sometimes conflict: one reason may favor doing something, while anoth... more Normative practical reasons sometimes conflict: one reason may favor doing something, while another may favor not doing it. These conflicts can be so radical that it seems difficult, if not impossible, to judge which reason should ultimately guide one’s actions. A theory of practical rationality known as reasons pluralism purports to explain such conflicts. According to reasons pluralism, normative practical reasons fall into a plurality of types that cannot be rationally compared with one another in terms of their relative “weight” or “strength.” An implication of reasons pluralism is that there can be radical conflicts among normative practical reasons where there is no fact of the matter about what one ought to do, all things considered. This would occur when reasons of different types conflict: since different types of reasons cannot be rationally compared, even a complete assessment of all the reasons relevant to the situation would not warrant a consistent set of verdicts about what one ought to do. However, a salient objection to reasons pluralism is that we can arrive at well-founded conclusions about what we ought to do, all things considered, even in those cases where normative practical reasons of different types conflict. In response, I will argue that this objection does not pose a genuine threat to reasons pluralism. For reasons pluralism is compatible with the idea that, under certain conditions, a normative practical reason of one type may override a normative practical reason of another type. This is so not because different types of normative practical reasons can be compared according to their relative strengths, but rather because the virtue of practical wisdom involves an ability to order diverse goods into a coherent system that facilitates a flourishing life. The argument will be discussed in light of conflicts between reasons to buy luxuries and cultivate meaningful personal relationships, on the one hand, and reasons to live frugally and make large charitable donations for the sake of reducing poverty-related suffering, on the other. By the end of the discussion, I will reach some tentative conclusions about how much one should be prepared to give up, in terms of benefits for oneself or for one’s loved ones, in order to promote the well-being of distant strangers.
Some versions of moral naturalism are faulted for implausibly denying that moral obligations and ... more Some versions of moral naturalism are faulted for implausibly denying that moral obligations and prescriptions entail categorical reasons for action. Categorical reasons are normative reasons for action that exist and apply to agents independently of whatever desires they have. I argue that several defenses of moral naturalism against this charge are unsuccessful. To be a tenable meta-ethical theory, moral naturalism must accommodate the proposition that, necessarily, if anyone morally ought to do something, then s/he has a categorical reason to do it. Versions of moral naturalism that deny this claim would, if widely believed, disable some crucial practical uses of moral concepts. In particular, if the existence of normative reasons for action is taken to be dependent on agents’ desires, it would breed profound skepticism about the legitimacy of evaluating others’ actions from a moral point of view. Also, it would raise doubts about whether people ought to correct their own behavior in light of moral considerations. Following Richard Joyce, I take these consequences to indicate that the concept of a categorical reason is a “non-negotiable” part of moral concepts.
This essay proposes and defends a descriptive definition of morality. Under this definition, a mo... more This essay proposes and defends a descriptive definition of morality. Under this definition, a moral system is a system of rules, psychological states, and modes of character development which performs the function of enabling mutually beneficial social cooperation. I shall argue that the methodologies employed by two prominent moral psychologists rely upon to establish a descriptive definition of morality only serve to track patterns in people's uses of moral terms.
This article defends a claim about the conditions under which agents possess normative reasons fo... more This article defends a claim about the conditions under which agents possess normative reasons for action. According to this claim, an agent has a normative reason to φ only if it's psychologically possible for that reason to motivate the agent to φ. The claim is called 'Williams's explanatory constraint,' since it's drawn from Bernard Williams's work on the topic of practical reason. A two-premise 'master argument' for Williams's explanatory constraint is put forward. First, an agent has a normative reason to φ only if that agent has the ability to φ for that reason. The second premise states that an agent has the ability to φ for a normative reason only if it's psychologically possible for that reason to motivate the agent to φ. It is suggested that the ability to act for a normative reason involves the ability to act from a consequencesensitive process of practical reasoning. Furthermore, normative reasons for action can motivate agents by being the objects of psychological states-particularly beliefs, desires, and intentions. In reply to the objection that normative reasons can never be objects of psychological states, I contend that all normative reasons are capable of being represented as the objects of psychological states.
In his recent book The Moral Arc (2015), Michael Shermer makes an admirable case for the occurren... more In his recent book The Moral Arc (2015), Michael Shermer makes an admirable case for the occurrence of moral progress at the social level. Society-level moral progress occurs when a change in the norms, practices, and institutions of a society constitutes a moral improvement, relative to the way that the norms, practices, and institutions were before. Shermer argues compellingly that society-level moral progress has taken place with the decline of witch executions, the pacification of international affairs, the rise of democracy, the abolition of slavery, the extension of equal rights to women and homosexuals, and increasing support for animal rights. However, the huge body of historical and sociological information that Shermer draws on will likely fail to convince a proponent of what Philip Kitcher calls the mere-change view (Kitcher 2011: 138 – 140, 210). This is the view that changes in norms, practices, and institutions can never be moral progress, because there is no objective standard by which such changes may be evaluated as resulting in a state of affairs that is morally better than a previous state (Kitcher 2011: 210). As Kitcher aptly quips, the mere change view amounts to the thought that social changes are “simply one damned thing after another” (Kitcher 2011: 7).
Against the mere-change view, I shall argue that moral progress does indeed occur, and moreover that it can be understood as increased success in achieving the end of a moral enterprise. The end of a moral enterprise is a state of affairs favored by selection pressures which govern the historical evolution of moral norms. Such an end can be identified through sociological inquiry of the kind that Shermer and others pursue.
A classic question in moral philosophy asks "Why be moral?" In other words, what reason or motive... more A classic question in moral philosophy asks "Why be moral?" In other words, what reason or motive do people have to act in accordance with the requirements of morality? In the tradition of Thomas Hobbes and David Hume, this project defends the thesis that nearly all people have reason to be moral nearly all of the time, because moral conduct generally serves individuals' desires and needs. It's argued, first, that a reason for action must be capable of motivating an agent to act, and second, that reasons for action motivate through the desires of the agent. This view is defended against the objection that reasons for action are not contingent on any particular agent's desires. Turning to morality, the case is made that the desires of an individual can be consonant with the demands of morality in any of three possible ways: (1) moral action serves one's other-regarding desires to help others; (2) moral action serves one's moral desires, which are formed when one internalizes the moral norms of his or her community; and (3) moral action serves one's self-regarding desires to avoid punishments that one incurs by violating moral norms. In the final chapter, it is acknowledged that the moral norms which happen to prevail in a society sometimes conflict with the moral convictions of individuals. Under certain conditions, however, it can be rational for nearly all members of a society to collectively change existing moral norms. Furthermore, it is within the power of individuals to foment the conditions for collective transitions to alternative moral norms.
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Papers by Andres Luco
evolutionary explanation of extended benevolence—a human sympathetic capacity
that extends to all nations, races, and even to all sentient beings. This essay draws
on twenty-first century social science to show that Darwin’s explanation is correct
in its broad outlines. Extended benevolence is manifested in institutions such as
legal human rights and democracy, in behaviors such as social movements for
human rights and the protection of nonhuman animals, and in normative attitudes
such as emancipative values and a commitment to promote the rights or welfare of
animals. These phenomena can be substantially explained by cultural evolutionary
forces that trace back to three components of what Darwin called the human “moral
sense”: (1) sympathy, (2) our disposition to follow community rules or norms, and
(3) our capacity to make normative judgments. Extended benevolence likely
emerged with “workarounds,” including political ideologies, that established an
inclusive sympathetic concern for sentient life. It likely became as widespread as it
is now due to recently arisen socio-economic conditions that have created more
opportunities for people to have contact with and take the perspective of a broader
cross-section of humanity, as well as other species.
Against the mere-change view, I shall argue that moral progress does indeed occur, and moreover that it can be understood as increased success in achieving the end of a moral enterprise. The end of a moral enterprise is a state of affairs favored by selection pressures which govern the historical evolution of moral norms. Such an end can be identified through sociological inquiry of the kind that Shermer and others pursue.
evolutionary explanation of extended benevolence—a human sympathetic capacity
that extends to all nations, races, and even to all sentient beings. This essay draws
on twenty-first century social science to show that Darwin’s explanation is correct
in its broad outlines. Extended benevolence is manifested in institutions such as
legal human rights and democracy, in behaviors such as social movements for
human rights and the protection of nonhuman animals, and in normative attitudes
such as emancipative values and a commitment to promote the rights or welfare of
animals. These phenomena can be substantially explained by cultural evolutionary
forces that trace back to three components of what Darwin called the human “moral
sense”: (1) sympathy, (2) our disposition to follow community rules or norms, and
(3) our capacity to make normative judgments. Extended benevolence likely
emerged with “workarounds,” including political ideologies, that established an
inclusive sympathetic concern for sentient life. It likely became as widespread as it
is now due to recently arisen socio-economic conditions that have created more
opportunities for people to have contact with and take the perspective of a broader
cross-section of humanity, as well as other species.
Against the mere-change view, I shall argue that moral progress does indeed occur, and moreover that it can be understood as increased success in achieving the end of a moral enterprise. The end of a moral enterprise is a state of affairs favored by selection pressures which govern the historical evolution of moral norms. Such an end can be identified through sociological inquiry of the kind that Shermer and others pursue.