A Thermodynamic Argument for a Naturalized Moral Realism

Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy

This paper reconstructs what I take to be the central evolutionary debunking argument that underlies recent critiques of moral realism. The argument claims that given the extent of evolutionary influence on our moral faculties, and assuming the truth of moral realism, it would be a massive coincidence were our moral faculties reliable ones. Given this coincidence, any presumptive warrant enjoyed by our moral beliefs is defeated. So if moral realism is true, then we can have no warranted moral beliefs, and hence no moral knowledge. In response, I first develop what is perhaps the most natural reply on behalf of realism – namely, that many of our highly presumptively warranted moral beliefs are immune to evolutionary influence and so can be used to assess and eventually resuscitate the epistemic merits of those that have been subject to such influence. I then identify five distinct ways in which the charge of massive coincidence has been understood and defended. I argue that each inte...

Filosofia e História da Biologia (Fil. Hist. Biol. Vol16 no 1), 2021

This paper assesses some challenges posed by evolutionary debunking arguments in Joyce's function and Street's contingency versions to moral realism, understood as the metaethical theory according to which there are moral facts that are absolute, universal and context-independent. Some argue that Copp's society centred realism is untenable given that it cannot support counterfactuals. Shafer-Landau and Huemer's arguments are also subject to debunking because they cannot persuasively show that human morality is unaffected by evolutionary forces. In Huemer's view, moral progress is proof of moral facts. It requires moral realism due to progress being context-dependent. From an evolutionary point of view, there are no previous standards and ideals concerning the direction of progress. Finally, a possible answer to the function version of the evolutionary debunking arguments is the possibility that the nature of human language (including moral language) is such that, in essence, it cannot be convincingly divided in language about facts and language about value.

2020

In this chapter we will develop a way for moral realism to respond to evolutionary debunking arguments. In general terms, debunking arguments that appeal to evolutionary theory hold that natural selection and moral realism are incompatible. Our aims are threefold. First, we will describe some of the relevant arguments in the debate on this topic. We distinguish between a modal argument, a parsimony argument, and Sharon Street’s Darwinian dilemma. Second, we will focus on Street’s argument, which has ignited most of the recent interdisciplinary debate between philosophy of biology and metaethics. We will focus on the overlooked fundamental tenets of moral realism to open a route for defending it: its cognitivist character, its representational language nature, and the relationship between evaluative judgments and their truthmakers (which are facts). This will allow us to propose a response to the evolutionary debunking arguments. Finally, contra Street, we will argue that moral reali...

Perhaps the most familiar understanding of “naturalism” derives from Quine, understand- ing it as a continuity of empirical theories of the world as described through the scientific method. So, it might be surprising that one of the most important naturalistic moral realists, Philippa Foot, rejects standard evolutionary biology in her justly lauded Natural Goodness. One of her main reasons for this is the true claim that humans can flourish (eudaimonia) without reproducing, which she claims cannot be squared with evolutionary theory and biology more generally. The present argument concludes that Foot was wrong to reject evolutionary theory as the empirical foundation of natural- ized eudaimonist moral realism. This is based on contemporary discussion of biological function and evolutionary fitness, from which a definition of “eudaimonia” is constructed. This gives eudaimonist moral realism an empirically respectable foundation.

Syzetesis, 2022

The aim of the paper is to assess two alternative explanations of morality in metaethics: the realist explanation of morality and the one provided by evolutionary theory. According to a traditional argument for moral realism, moral facts are part of the fabric of the world to the extent that postulating such entities is required in our best explanatory picture of what people think and do. In other terms, if moral facts figure in the best explanatory account for human moral thinking and behavior, they earn ontological rights and moral realism is secured. It will be analyzed how this issue might be renewed by taking into account evolutionary considerations and assessing their consequences in metaethics. I will consider the realist explanation of morality and compare it with the evolutionary explanation of morality. Finally, I will show how the realist attempts to reconcile the realist explanation of morality and the evolutionary explanation of morality can be undermined by connecting this discussion to the one about moral disagreement

Biology & Philosophy, 2018

The aim of this article is to identify the strongest evolutionary debunking argument (EDA) against moral realism and to assess on which empirical assumptions it relies. In the recent metaethical literature, several authors have de-emphasized the evolutionary component of EDAs against moral realism: presumably, the success or failure of these arguments is largely orthogonal to empirical issues. I argue that this claim is mistaken. First, I point out that Sharon Street's and Michael Ruse's EDAs both involve substantive claims about the evolution of our moral judgments. Next, I argue that combining their respective evolutionary claims can help debunk-ers to make the best empirical case against moral realism. Some realists have argued that the very attempt to explain the contents of our endorsed moral judgments in evolutionary terms is misguided, and have sought to escape EDAs by denying their evolutionary premise. But realists who pursue this reply can still be challenged on empirical grounds: debunkers may argue that the best, scientifically informed historical explanations of our moral endorsements do not involve an appeal to mind-independent truths. I conclude, therefore, that the empirical considerations relevant for the strongest empirically driven argument against moral realism go beyond the strictly evolutionary realm; debunkers are best advised to draw upon other sources of genealogical knowledge as well.

Croatian Journal of Philosophy, 2018

This paper is concerned with the reconstruction of a core argument that can be extracted from Street's 'Darwinian Dilemma' and that is intended to 'debunk' moral realism by appeal to evolution. The argument, which is best taken to have the form of an undermining defeater argument, fails, I argue. A simple, fi rst formulation is rejected as a non sequitur, due to not distinguishing between the evolutionary process that infl uences moral attitudes and the cognitive system generating moral attitudes. Reformulations that respect the distinction and that could make the argument valid, however, bring in an implausible premise about an implication from evolutionary infl uence to unreliability. Crucially, perception provides a counterexample, and the fi tness contribution of reliably accurate representation has to be taken into account. Then the moral realist can explain why and how evolution indirectly cares for the truth of moral attitudes. The one and only condition that has to be satisfi ed in order for this explanation to work is the suffi cient epistemic accessibility of moral facts. As long as the moral facts are suffi ciently reliably representable, one can see how evolution could favor getting it right about the moral facts. Interestingly, apart from this epistemic constraint no further constraint and, in particular, no objectivity constraint on what the moral facts have to be like can be derived. Thus, the only problem for the moral realist is to make good on epistemic access to moral facts-an old problem, not a new one.

We are moral apes, a difference between humans and our relatives that has received significant recent attention in the evolutionary literature. Evolutionary accounts of morality have often been recruited in support of error theory: moral language is truth-apt, but substantive moral claims are never true (or never warranted). In this paper, we: (i) locate evolutionary error theory within the broader framework of the relationship between folk conceptions of a domain and our best scientific conception of that same domain; (ii) within that broader framework, argue that error theory and vindication are two ends of a continuum, and that in the light of our best science many folk conceptual structures are neither hopelessly wrong nor fully vindicated, and; (iii) argue that while there is no full vindication of morality, no seamless reduction of normative facts to natural facts, nevertheless one important strand in the evolutionary history of moral thinking does support reductive naturalism -moral facts are facts about cooperation, and the conditions and practices that support or undermine it. In making our case for (iii), we first respond to the important error theoretic argument that the appeal to moral facts is explanatorily redundant, and second, we make a positive case that true moral beliefs are a 'fuel for success', a map by which we steer, flexibly, in a variety of social interactions. The vindication, we stress, is at most partial: moral cognition is a complex mosaic, with a complex genealogy, and selection for truth-tracking is only one thread in that genealogy.

Biological Theory (forthcoming 2013)

Evolutionary moral realism is the view that there are moral values with roots in evolution that are both specifically moral and exist independently of human belief systems. In beginning to sketch the outlines of such a view, we examine moral goods like fairness and empathetic caring as valuable and real aspects of the environments of species that are intelligent and social, or at least developing along an evolutionary trajectory that could lead to a level of intelligence that would enable individual members of the species to recognize and respond to such things as the moral goods they in fact are. We suggest that what is most morally interesting and important from a biological perspective is the existence and development of such trajectories, rather than the position of one particular species, such as our own, on one particular trajectory.

The University of Edinburgh, 2021

This paper examines whether evolutionary debunking arguments (or EDAs) present a challenge to moral realism. The contingency argument raises skepticism about the justification of human moral beliefs, according to which moral truths are contingent on the sort of species one is, the parameters of the environment, and other factors that may benefit that species's survival. Sharon Street (2006) employed EDAs to argue that our moral beliefs are guided by evolutionary processes known to the sciences, and our moral dispositions are not necessarily based on independent truths outside of the evolutionary framework as some moral realists contend. Further, Street contends that the moral realist is presented with an unpleasant dilemma: either reject the notion that there is a connection between our moral dispositions and moral truths or provide a suitable explanatory model between the two. For moral realism to be viable, it must defend itself from these skeptical arguments.