"Evolution and moral naturalism" (original) (raw)
Evolutionary Naturalism and the Objectivity of Morality
We propose an objective and justifiable ethics that is contingent on the truth of evolutionary theory. We do not argue for the truth of this position, which depends on the empirical question of whether moral functions form a natural class, but for its cogency and possibility. The position we propose combines the advantages of Kantian objectivity with the explanatory and motivational advantages of moral naturalism. It avoids problems with the epistemological inaccessibility of transcendent values, while avoiding the relativism or subjectivism often associated with moral naturalism. Our position emerges out of criticisms of the contemporary sociobiological views of morality found in the writings of Richard Alexander, Michael Ruse, and Robert Richards.
An Evolutionary Vindication of Moral Facts
This paper addresses two general questions. First: is it possible to give an explanation in evolutionary terms for the behaviors, language, and sentiments that have been considered distinctly moral? Second: if such an evolutionary account is possible, what can its existence tell us about what morality is? I engage with a view typified by Richard Joyce in The Evolution of Morality (2006). This view answers the first question in the affirmative and the second by arguing that the existence of an evolutionary explanation of moral behavior, language, and sentiments should in fact lead us to agnosticism about the existence of morality, at least in the sense in which it has been commonly understood. I push back against Joyce’s arguments for moral agnosticism, instead arguing that the evolutionary account itself gives a foundation for a new kind of moral naturalism.
The naturalistic fallacy and Hume's 'law' are frequently appealed to for the purpose of drawing limits around the scope of scientific inquiry into ethics and morality. These two objections are shown to be without force. Thus two highly influential obstacles are removed from naturalizing ethics. The relative merits of moral skepticism and moral realism are compared. Moral skepticism and some forms of moral realism are shown to make similar recommendations for developing a science of moral psychology.
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.
Do the evolutionary origins of our moral beliefs undermine moral knowledge?
Biology & Philosophy, 2010
According to some recent arguments, (Joyce in The evolution of morality, MIT Press, Cambridge, 2006; Ruse and Wilson in Conceptual issues in evolutionary biology, MIT Press, Cambridge, 1995; Street in Philos Studies 127: 109-166, 2006) if our moral beliefs are products of natural selection, then we do not have moral knowledge. In defense of this inference, its proponents argue that natural selection is a process that fails to track moral facts. In this paper, I argue that our having moral knowledge is consistent with, (a) the hypothesis that our moral beliefs are products of natural selection, and (b) the claim (or a certain interpretation of the claim) that natural selection fails to track moral facts. I also argue that natural selection is a process that could track moral facts, albeit imperfectly. I do not argue that we do have moral knowledge. I argue instead that Darwinian considerations provide us with no reason to doubt that we do, and with some reasons to suppose that we might. Keywords Evolutionary ethics Á Moral realism Á Moral epistemology In what follows, I will not question the plausibility of the hypothesis that our moral beliefs are products of natural selection. My interest is rather to investigate the implications that are drawn from this claim. Since these implications are said to affect moral realism, let me state briefly state how I will understand this view. There are different varieties of moral realism and my interest here is not to settle which of them is the most plausible (Boyd 1988; Brink 1989; Railton 1986; Sturgeon 1985; Shafer-Landau 2003). It is enough for present purposes to characterize it as the view that what makes any moral proposition true is independent of what anyone believes
Evolutionary Debunking, Moral Realism and Moral Knowledge
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...
Moral Explanation and Evolutionary Explanation of Morality
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
"Evolutionary Ethics 2.0"? New Findings about the Nature of Morality
From: Stimmen der Zeit, 4/2012, P. 253-264 webmaster's own, not authorized translation The evolutionary sciences are a challenge to the traditional moral theology. Rupert M. Scheule, professor of moral theology and Christian social sciences at the Faculty of Theology Fulda examines newer concepts of evolutionary anthropology and ethics.
Biological Theory, 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.
Reflections on the evolutionary basis of morality
Metascience, 2017
is a distinguished primatologist who has worked for decades studying the behavior of primates, especially chimpanzees. This book presents De Waal's 2003 Tanner Lectures on Human Values, in which he argues that ''the building blocks of morality are evolutionarily ancient'' (7). The book also includes responses to De Waal's argument by the evolutionary psychologist, Robert Wright, and by three philosophers, Christine Korsgaard, Philip Kitcher, and Peter Singer. De Waal replies to his commentators in an afterword, and there is a useful introduction by Stephen Macedo and Josiah Ober. De Waal argues that the behavior of primates, including especially chimpanzee behavior, provides evidence that the emotional and motivational building blocks of morality are present in these animals. Further, given that human beings evolved from primates and that our closest primate relatives are chimpanzees, De Waal argues, we have reason to believe that these emotional and motivational building blocks are evolved characteristics of human beings as well. The emotional and motivational characteristics in question are empathy, prosocial tendencies, including a willingness to cooperate as well as a willingness to look out for the well-being of conspecifics who are not kin, and a tendency to seek fairness of treatment and to reciprocate. De Waal concedes of course that morality is ''more than this,'' but he holds that morality as we know it in humans would be ''impossible'' without these building blocks. He holds, then, that morality as we know it in humans is a product of evolution in that it rests on evolved emotional and motivational features that are ''continuous'' with what is found in other primates (7). Morality is not solely a product of culture or other environmental influences. Instead of simply and straightforwardly arguing for the views I have outlined, however, De Waal structures his discussion as an argument against something he