Meta‐normative Realism, Evolution, and Our Reasons to Survive

Behrends, Jeff

doi:10.1111/papq.12010

Cited by 12 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 24 publications

(37 reference statements)

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“…Such responses target the epistemological premise, claiming that even if evolution has influenced our moral faculties and there is no independent confirmation of them, we could still be justified in our moral beliefs. Third-factor responses generally start by assuming the truth of a substantive moral principle (though for a notable exception, see Behrends 2013). They then show how, on this assumption, evolution predictably brings us to have (at least some) true moral beliefs even though it doesn't select for the truth of those beliefs.…”

Section: Objections To the Standard Edamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…They then show how, on this assumption, evolution predictably brings us to have (at least some) true moral beliefs even though it doesn't select for the truth of those beliefs. Many third-factor responses have been proposed (Behrends 2013; Brosnan 2011; Enoch 2010 and 2011: ch. 7; Skarsaune 2011; Wielenberg 2010 and 2014: ch.…”

Section: Objections To the Standard Edamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…If any EDA is to stand against third-factor responses, it must be because those responses beg the question against the relevant EDA. Several philosophers have argued that this is indeed the case, with regard to the Standard EDA (Shafer-Landau 2012: 33–34; Behrends 2013: 7–8; Horn, forthcoming; Vavova 2014: 81; Vavova 2015: 111–12). It's easiest to see why when we look at Enoch's view, which assumes that survival is good.…”

Section: Revisiting the Objections To The Standard Edamentioning

confidence: 99%

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A New Evolutionary Debunking Argument Against Moral Realism

Morton¹

2016

J. of the Am. Philos. Assoc.

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ABSTRACT:Evolutionary debunking arguments (EDAs) claim that evolution has influenced our moral faculties in such a way that, if moral realism is true, then we have no positive moral knowledge. I present several popular objections to the standard version of this argument before offering a new EDA that has clear advantages in responding to these objections. Whereas the Standard EDA argues that evolution has selected for many moral beliefs with certain contents, this New EDA claims that evolution has selected for one belief: belief in the claim that categorical reasons exist. If moral realism is true, then this claim is entailed by all positive moral claims, and belief in it is defeated due to evolutionary influence. This entails that if realism is true, then we have no positive moral knowledge. While there may be objections against this New EDA, it is much stronger than the Standard EDA, and one realists ought to worry about.

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Section: Objections To the Standard Edamentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Objections To the Standard Edamentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Revisiting the Objections To The Standard Edamentioning

confidence: 99%

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A New Evolutionary Debunking Argument Against Moral Realism

Morton¹

2016

J. of the Am. Philos. Assoc.

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“…However, this sort of explanation raises serious questions of various kinds (cf. Behrends 2013;Braddock 2016;Enoch 2011;ch. 7, Sepielli 2012).…”

Section: Introduction: Realism the Problem Of Epistemic Access And Mmentioning

confidence: 99%

Irresolvable Disagreement, Objectivist Antirealism and Logical Revision

Harth

2020

Erkenn

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Meta-ethical realism faces the serious epistemological problem of how to explain our epistemic access to moral reality. In the face of this challenge many are sceptical about non-naturalist realism. Nonetheless, there is good reason to acknowledge moral objectivity: morality shows all the signs of a truth-apt discourse but doesn't exhibit the typical relativity inducing features. This suggests a middle-ground position, a theory that embraces the virtues of realism but does avoid its vices: objectivist antirealism. In this paper, I'll discuss, mainly following Crispin Wright's account of moral truth as superassertibility, a promising version of objectivist antirealism and show how to cope with notorious problems, notably those arising from the thought that moral disagreement might be possible in which nobody is guilty of a cognitive shortcoming, which contradicts the antirealist claim that moral truth is not beyond our epistemic reach. The solution is to deny the possibility of cognitively faultless moral disagreement by arguing that cognitively blameless thinkers either agree or stay agnostic and, therefore, never disagree about any moral proposition. Since assuming an agnostic stance on the part of such thinkers contradicts the antirealist's conception of truth-even within the limits of intuitionistic logic-I'll propose an alternative logical revision for the moral discourse: a three-valued logic with epistemically construed truth-values.

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“…In effect, the focal point of the current debunking debate, viewed from the perspective of the reliability view, is whether objectivists can adequately explain the reliability of objectivist moral beliefs (Vavova 2015: p. 111). It is widely assumed that so-called third-factor explanations are the most promising candidate explanations available to moral objectivists (Enoch 2010;Behrends 2013). Third-factor accounts appeal to "bridge principles" that "posit a relation between the facts in virtue of which our moral beliefs are true and the (non-moral) facts to which the evolutionary account 1 The structure and conclusion of both Street's and Joyce's argument are subject to much debate; cf.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Third factor explanations and disagreement in metaethics

Klenk

2018

Synthese

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Several moral objectivists try to explain the reliability of moral beliefs by appealing to a third factor, a substantive moral claim that explains, first, why we have the moral beliefs that we have and, second, why these beliefs are true. Folke Tersman has recently suggested that moral disagreement constrains the epistemic legitimacy of third-factor explanations. Apart from constraining third-factor explanations, Tersman's challenge could support the view that the epistemic significance of debunking explanations depends on the epistemic significance of disagreement. This paper aims to show that disagreement does not constrain the epistemic legitimacy of third-factor explanations in metaethics, and it suggests a way forward in addressing the view that debunking depends on disagreement. First, Tersman's constraints are impossible to violate, given the assumption that the justification relation exhibits monotonicity. Second, some disagreements are irrelevant, given that they cannot be about beliefs whose reliability the objectivist seeks to defend. Third, actual disagreement about moral beliefs is implausible, given recent ethnographic findings. In light of this discussion, the paper shows that the prospects of the disagreement view depend on which moral beliefs objectivists need to defend and the criteria we use to assess epistemically relevant moral disagreement. Keywords Evolutionary debunking arguments • Third-factor explanations • Disagreement • Higher-order evidence I am grateful for Folke Tersman's, Herman Philipse's, and Hein Duijf's constructive comments on earlier versions of this paper. Many thanks also to the audience at the St. Andrews CEPPA Graduate Conference 2018 and to two anonymous reviewers.

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Meta‐normative Realism, Evolution, and Our Reasons to Survive

Cited by 12 publications

References 24 publications

A New Evolutionary Debunking Argument Against Moral Realism

A New Evolutionary Debunking Argument Against Moral Realism

Irresolvable Disagreement, Objectivist Antirealism and Logical Revision

Third factor explanations and disagreement in metaethics

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