A New Evolutionary Debunking Argument Against Moral Realism

Morton, Justin

doi:10.1017/apa.2016.14

Cited by 7 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 33 publications

(38 reference statements)

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“…But that means it would be an incredible coincidence if our moral-belief-forming capacities evolved in a way that enabled us to reliably discern moral truths. Since such a coincidence probably has not occurred, we lack justification for all of our moral beliefs (Cofnas 2022;Joyce 2006Joyce , 2016Kahane 2011;McKay 2023;Morton 2016;Ruse 1986Ruse , 2006Street 2006Street , 2008.…”

Section: Evolutionary Debunking Argumentsmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…More precisely, moral reflection depends on our pre-reflective dispositions to form moral conceptslike <good>, <bad>, <worthy>, <guilty>, etc. (Joyce 2006(Joyce , 2016Morton 2016)and to apply those concepts to certain actions and agents (Dale 2022;Street 2006). Together, these dispositions constitute what I will call our "pre-reflective grasp of moral properties," or, more concisely (if slightly less appropriately 6 ), our "moral intuitions."…”

Section: Autonomous Rational Reflectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In fact, I think this is the right way to handle the problem, but I cannot argue for that here (see Baggett and Walls 2016;Braddock 2021;Crummett and Swenson 2020;Linville 2009;McKay 2023). 14 Some EDAs challenge the veracity of our moral concepts (Joyce 2006;Morton 2016), but they do not challenge our ability to form, understand, or manipulate moral concepts.…”

Section: Establishing Autonomous Foundationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Can Rational Reflection Save Moral Knowledge from Debunking?

McKay

2023

Episteme

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In this essay, I reply to an influential objection to evolutionary debunking arguments against moral realism. According to this objection, our capacity for autonomous rational reflection allows us to grasp moral truths independently of distorting evolutionary influences, so those influences do not prevent us from having moral knowledge. I argue that rational moral reflection is not, in fact, autonomous from evolutionary influences, since it depends on our evolved, pre-reflective grasp of moral properties. I then consider and reject the suggestion that realists can supply an autonomous foundation for rational moral reflection or do without any such foundation. Next, I address the allegation that my arguments have skeptical implications for rational reflection in non-moral domains. Finally, I conclude with a gesture toward a more promising route for realists who oppose debunking arguments.

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Section: Evolutionary Debunking Argumentsmentioning

confidence: 98%

Section: Autonomous Rational Reflectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Establishing Autonomous Foundationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Can Rational Reflection Save Moral Knowledge from Debunking?

McKay

2023

Episteme

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“…Perhaps selection endowed the Transarcturians with a domain-specific forbiddenness faculty, or perhaps only with a general faculty for normative cognition together with some basic forbiddenness 31 Compare Morton (2016) on this point.…”

Section: Debunking Without a Moral Sensementioning

confidence: 99%

The epistemology of evolutionary debunking

Koon

2021

Synthese

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The Epistemology of Evolutionary Debunking Justis Koon IntroductionMoral realism, as I will understand it here, is the conjunction of four theses: that moral language should be interpreted literally, that moral claims express beliefs, that there are at least some moral truths, and that these truths are mind-and language-independent. 1 Sharon Street (2006; and Richard Joyce (2006; have both advanced evolutionary debunking arguments which purport to show that, if moral realism is true, our moral beliefs are systematically unjustified. 2 These arguments are motivated by recent empirical work on the evolution of morality, work which suggests that the human moral sense was selected chiefly to promote cooperation among small tribes of huntergatherers in our distant evolutionary past. 3 If, however, our moral sense evolved due to the positive contribution that cooperation made to our ancestors' reproductive fitness, it becomes something of a mystery how it could also succeed in tapping into a well of mind-independent moral truths. It seems like it would be an extraordinary coincidence -in Street's words, nothing short of a miracle -if 1 For comparison, Ayer-style emotivists will reject all four theses, error theorists will reject the third, and moral relativists and constructivists will reject the fourth. There are a few meta-ethical views -I am thinking especially of thin forms of reductive naturalism, like those defended by Copp (2008) and Sterelny and Fraser (2017) -where it is unclear whether we should categorize them as realist or anti-realist. I will not be addressing these sorts of views here. 2 See Horn (2017) and Lutz (2018) for more recent presentations of evolutionary debunking arguments, and Korman ( 2019) for a review of the evolutionary debunking literature. 3 See Section 3.5 and the references therein. 2 evolutionary forces indifferent to the moral truth somehow shaped our faculties to be appropriately sensitive to it.Contrast the situation for vision. Any plausible account of the evolution of our visual faculties will make it clear that they were selected to capture information about the color, shape, texture, brightness, and relative distance of objects in our visual field, and to produce beliefs that accurately reflect these features of our surroundings. 4 We should not expect natural selection to have made our vision perfectly reliable, of course, both because selection is not all-powerful and must work within existing physical and biological constraints, and because visual illusions may, in rare circumstances, be adaptive. But, generally speaking, it will be an enormous boon to an organism's fitness for it to have an accurate picture of its environment, rather than being left in the dark about what goes on around it, blind not only to the presence of food, water, and potential mates, but also to the threats posed by predators and other hazards. So evolutionary theory gives us every reason to think that our visual faculties were selected primarily to produce true beliefs about the sources of the lig...

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“… "We have greater obligations to help our own children than we do to help complete strangers" (Street, 2006, p. 115)  Cooperation is morally good (Brosnan, 2011, p. 53)  It is morally permissible to redirect the trolley in the Switch, Footbridge, and Loop cases (Liao et al, 2012;Machery, 2017, Chapter 2)  Categorical moral reasons exist -these apply to everyone regardless of what their desires are, and have inescapable force (Joyce, 2006;Morton, 2016) I want the later analysis to apply to these different possibilities, so I'll work with a generic moral hypothesis, h. What about the evidence? Here, too, there is variation.…”

Section: Debunking In Bayesian Termsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Bayesian analysis of debunking arguments in ethics

Yeo

2021

Philos Stud

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A New Evolutionary Debunking Argument Against Moral Realism

Cited by 7 publications

References 33 publications

Can Rational Reflection Save Moral Knowledge from Debunking?

Can Rational Reflection Save Moral Knowledge from Debunking?

The epistemology of evolutionary debunking

A Bayesian analysis of debunking arguments in ethics

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