Evolutionary Debunking Arguments in Ethics

by

Diego E. Machuca

• LAST REVIEWED: 14 September 2022
• LAST MODIFIED: 22 February 2018
• DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780195396577-0366

Introduction

There are at least three different genealogical accounts of morality: the ontogenetic, the sociohistorical, and the evolutionary. One can thus construct, in principle, three distinct genealogical debunking arguments of morality, i.e., arguments that appeal to empirical data, or to an empirical hypothesis, about the origin of morality to undermine either its ontological foundation or the epistemic credentials of our moral beliefs. The genealogical account that has been, particularly since the early 2000s, the topic of a burgeoning line of inquiry in the metaethical literature is the one that explains the origin of moral thinking by appealing to Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution through natural selection. For this reason, when it comes to genealogical debunking arguments, it is various types of evolutionary debunking argument (EDA) that are the focus of the current debate between moral skeptics and moral realists. Evolutionary moral debunkers maintain that the capacity to make moral judgments is an evolved trait—a view accepted by most of their detractors. They maintain, in addition, that such a capacity is an adaptation—i.e., a trait selected for because it enhances reproduction and survival—and not merely either a by-product of an adaptation or an evolutionary accident—a view accepted by fewer of their detractors. Roughly put, the thrust of EDAs is that biological evolution is aimed, not at moral belief-forming processes that are reliable, but at moral belief-forming processes that are adaptive. In other words, the evolutionary function of those processes is not that of tracking the moral truth: their general success at matching or accurately representing allegedly objective or attitude-independent moral facts, properties, or truths explains neither their emergence nor their persistence. Humans are therefore disposed to make moral judgments regardless of the evidence to which they are exposed, regardless of whether there are or are not objective moral facts, properties, or truths. In the contemporary scene, the most important and influential EDAs are those advanced by Richard Joyce and Sharon Street. Although Joyce’s EDA is more elaborate than Street’s inasmuch as it is based on a detailed evolutionary account of morality, it is Street’s EDA that has received the most attention among those seeking to defend moral realism against EDAs. If an EDA can establish at most an epistemological conclusion, then it could be argued that Joyce’s argument (at least the version defended in his later works) is superior to Street’s given that the conclusion of the former is epistemological whereas that of the latter is ontological. Indeed, while Joyce’s EDA is taken to support epistemological moral skepticism, according to which our moral beliefs are epistemically unjustified, Street’s is taken to support moral anti-realism (moral constructivism in particular), according to which attitude-independent moral facts do not exist.

Overviews

Several accessible general presentations of the evolutionary account of morality, the distinct debunking arguments based thereon, and the various replies to these arguments are available. Schroeder 2001 and FitzPatrick 2008 are encyclopedia entries on evolutionary ethics in general, but only the latter offers a thorough, updated, and authoritative overview. Allhoff 2003 offers an outline of the history of evolutionary ethics from its beginnings to the second part of the 21st century. Machery and Mallon 2010 provides a clear presentation and a critical examination of the different versions of the claim that morality is a product of biological evolution. Vavova 2015 and especially Wielenberg 2016 provide fine overviews of the contemporary metaethical discussion of evolutionary debunking arguments (EDAs).

• Allhoff, Fritz. “Evolutionary Ethics from Darwin to Moore.” History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 25.1 (2003): 51–79.

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  After dividing the history of evolutionary ethics into three stages, namely, development, criticism and abandonment, and revival, Allhoff focuses on the first two stages on the grounds that they are those regarding which the philosophical merits have already been largely decided.

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• FitzPatrick, William. “Morality and Evolutionary Biology.” In Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Edited by Edward N. Zalta. Stanford, CA: Stanford University, 2008.

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  Updated in 2014, this entry provides (i) an overview of the basic issues and distinctions in evolutionary ethics, and offers a critical examination of (ii) descriptive evolutionary ethics, (iii) the connection between evolutionary biology and normative ethics, and (iv) evolutionary metaethics, taking into account the main EDAs advanced in the literature and the replies thereto.

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• Machery, Edouard, and Ron Mallon. “Evolution of Morality.” In The Moral Psychology Handbook. Edited by J. Doris and the Moral Psychology Research Group, 3–46. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.

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  Distinguishes three versions of the claim that morality is a product of biological evolution—what has evolved are some components of moral psychology, or normative cognition in general, or moral cognition in particular—and critically reviews the empirical evidence in support of each one of them.

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• Schroeder, Doris. “Evolutionary Ethics.” In Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Edited by J. Fieser. Martin: University of Tennessee, 2001.

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  Presents some of the key figures and concepts in evolutionary ethics, its contribution to the different areas of ethics, and some of the challenges it faces. The entry is excessively brief and has not been updated since its first publication in 2001, which means that it does not take account of the vast body of literature on the evolutionary debunking of morality published in the last fifteen years.

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• Vavova, Katia. “Evolutionary Debunking of Moral Realism.” Philosophy Compass 10.2 (2015): 104–116.

  DOI: 10.1111/phc3.12194Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  Distinguishes three different EDAs implicit in the literature and claims that only one of them appeals to evolution in a way that prevents the argument from collapsing into a more general skeptical argument. It also considers several objections to that evolutionary argument, which are found deficient, and proposes an allegedly promising rescue for moral realism.

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• Wielenberg, Erik. “Ethics and Evolutionary Theory.” Analysis 76.4 (2016): 502–515.

  DOI: 10.1093/analys/anw061Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  Presents the EDAs advanced by Richard Joyce and Sharon Street, examines the various ways in which these EDAs have been interpreted in the literature and the main responses that have been offered to them, and identifies some new issues for future research.

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The Evolution of Morality

Current discussion of arguments for and against the evolutionary debunking of morality rests at least to a considerable extent on studies on the (alleged) evolutionary origin of our capacity to experience moral emotions and make moral judgments. Darwin 2009 (originally published in 1871), Spencer 2012 (originally published in 1883), and Huxley 2009 (originally published in 1893) provide the first evolutionary accounts of morality. De Waal 1997 addresses the evolution of morality by comparing human behavior with that of other animals. From the viewpoint of metaethics, while Joyce 2001 and Joyce 2006 offer an evolutionary account of morality in connection with various forms of moral skepticism, Joyce 2014 discusses the evolutionary origin of morality in its own terms, emphasizing some of the difficulties in resolving certain current debates. Krebs 2005 offers a useful survey of the evidence in favor of the view that human morality is a biological adaptation. Mackie 1977 refers to evolution in connection with moral error theory as a possible explanation of the origins of our moral sentiments and dispositions. And Mackie 1982 claims that morality can be seen as an outgrowth from genetically determined retributive (particularly, hostile retributive) tendencies that were favored by evolutionary selection. The reason for including works by Mackie, a highly influential contemporary moral skeptic, is that this article is concerned with the appeal to evolution in the context of skepticism about morality.

• Darwin, Charles. The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex. 2 vols. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009.

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  This work is the first to provide a substantial evolutionary account of the origin of the moral sense. It argues that, given that our evolutionary history accounts for the moral beliefs we form, if it had been different, then we would believe different things to be right or wrong. Originally published in 1871 (London: John Murray).

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• de Waal, Frans. Good Natured: The Origins of Right and Wrong in Humans and Other Animals. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997.

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  This renowned primatologist argues that some aspects of human morality, such as cooperation, empathy, and observance of social rules, can be observed in other mammals, and hence that human moral behavior is to be explained as a result of biological evolution.

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• Huxley, Thomas H. Evolution and Ethics. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009.

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  Huxley claims that, although both moral and immoral sentiments are the product of natural selection, ethics is an autonomous domain inasmuch as evolution by itself provides no reason for preferring the former to the latter. Huxley also remarks that the moral progress of society depends on combating the negative tendencies rewarded by natural selection. Originally published in 1893 (London: Macmillan).

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• Joyce, Richard. The Myth of Morality. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

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  Chapter 6 of this book offers an evolutionary account of morality in the context of a defense of a moral error-theoretic position according to which all first-order moral judgments are neither true nor false.

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• Joyce, Richard. The Evolution of Morality. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2006.

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  Availing itself of results from psychology, neuroscience, biology, and anthropology, the first part of this work considers whether, in what sense, and to what extent our capacity to employ moral concepts and make moral judgments is innate. The second part examines the metaethical implications of the evolutionary hypothesis, namely, whether it vindicates or debunks morality.

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• Joyce, Richard. “The Origins of Moral Judgment.” Behaviour 151 (2014): 261–278.

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  Examines the challenges that arise for any attempt to settle the debate between those who hold that the capacity to make moral judgments is a discrete biological adaptation and those who maintain that it is a by-product of other evolved psychological traits. [Reprinted in Evolved Morality: The Biology and Philosophy of Human Conscience, edited by Frans de Waal, Patricia S. Churchland, Telmo Pievani, and Stefano Parmigiani (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2014), pp. 125–142.]

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• Krebs, Dennis. “The Evolution of Morality.” In The Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology. Edited by David M. Buss, 747–771. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 2005.

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  Explains how mechanisms that give rise to moral and immoral behaviors can evolve, and reviews evidence in favor of the view that those mechanisms have evolved through natural selection in both the human species and others.

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• Mackie, John Leslie. Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1977.

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  After making his case in favor of a moral error theory, Mackie briefly appeals to evolution as a possible explanation of the origin of our moral sentiments and dispositions.

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• Mackie, John Leslie. “Co-operation, Competition, and Moral Philosophy.” In Cooperation and Competition in Humans and Animals. Edited by Andrew M. Colman, 271–284. Wokingham, UK: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1982.

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  Argues that the pre-moral tendencies to care for one’s offspring and close relatives, to enjoy the company of fellow members of a small group, to exhibit reciprocal altruism, and to display kindly and hostile retribution are to be ascribed to biological evolution.

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• Spencer, Herbert. The Data of Ethics. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012.

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  Spencer maintains that, since natural selection, when it works without interference, improves the quality of the species by allowing the survival of the fittest, then the morally good behavior is the relatively more evolved and the morally bad behavior is the relatively less evolved. Originally published in 1883 (New York: Appleton).

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Radical Evolutionary Moral Debunkers

Among authors advancing EDAs, one can distinguish between radical and moderate evolutionary moral debunkers. The former target moral realism in general, of both a naturalist and a non-naturalist stripe. Ruse 1986 is an early attempt to undermine morality on the basis of an evolutionary account. The two most important recent evolutionary debunkers of morality are Richard Joyce and Sharon Street. Joyce 2001 and Joyce 2006 offer arguments for the hypothesis that the formation of beliefs about objective moral rightness and wrongness may have served to enhance our ancestors’ reproductive fitness independently of whether there existed any moral properties or facts. Our moral judgments are the product of a process whose function is not to track the truth. While Joyce 2001 uses an EDA mainly as a supplement to his arguments for a moral error theory and Joyce 2013 examines the prospects of an EDA that alone grounds such an error-theoretic view, Joyce 2006 and Joyce 2016 appeal to an EDA to establish an epistemological skepticism. Joyce 2013 and Joyce 2016 also claim that EDAs place the burden of proof on the moral realist defending the justification of our moral judgments inasmuch as EDAs present a new plausible hypothesis about the origin and epistemic status of those judgments. Street 2006 argues that evolutionary considerations pose a “Darwinian dilemma” for realist theories of value: the fact that the forces of natural selection have greatly shaped the content of our evaluative judgments raises the challenge to explain the relation between such evolutionary influences and the independent evaluative facts posited by the realist. Ruse 1986 and Street 2006 offer EDAs that purport to establish ontological conclusions: while Ruse takes his EDA to support moral error theory, Street takes her EDA to support value anti-realism, in particular moral constructivism. Gibbard 1990, written by a prominent moral expressivist, argues that normative judgments have evolved only for the sake of coordination, and also draws an ontological conclusion. Kitcher 2006 takes the evolutionary account of morality to support moral non-cognitivism. While Joyce 2001 seems to hesitate between an ontological and an epistemological conclusion, Joyce 2006, Joyce 2013, and Joyce 2016 are clear that the conclusion of an EDA can only be epistemological. Fraser 2014 maintains that those who deny that EDAs establish the unreliability of our moral faculty fail to engage with relevant empirical issues. In a similar vein, Braddock 2016 defends the evolutionary debunking of morality on the basis of empirical considerations. Both Fraser 2014 and Braddock 2016 are concerned with epistemological EDAs.

• Braddock, Matthew. “Evolutionary Debunking: Can Moral Realists Explain the Reliability of Our Moral Judgments?” Philosophical Psychology 29.6 (2016): 844–857.

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  Drawing from work in moral psychology and the evolutionary and social sciences, Braddock argues that there are empirical grounds for maintaining that moral realists have not met—and moreover cannot meet—the challenge to explain the reliability of our moral judgments given their evolutionary sources.

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• Fraser, Benjamin. “Evolutionary Debunking Arguments and the Reliability of Moral Cognition.” Philosophical Studies 168.2 (2014): 457–473.

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  Fraser claims that there are four conditions that must be met by an evolved cognitive faculty for it to be reliable, and argues that so far no convincing case has been made that our evolved faculty for moral judgment meets those conditions, and that there is even some reason to think that it may not meet them.

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• Gibbard, Alan. Wise Choices, Apt Feelings: A Theory of Normative Judgment. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990.

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  Gibbard argues that it is gratuitous to suppose that there exist normative (and hence moral) facts because our making the normative (and hence moral) judgments we make is to be explained exclusively by the rewards of coordination.

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• Joyce, Richard. The Myth of Morality. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

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  In chapter 6, Joyce appeals to the evolutionary account of morality to complement his arguments for moral error theory, but he also makes the further stronger claim that the fact that moral thinking is a naturally evolved trait has error theoretical implications or provides evidence in favor of error theory.

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• Joyce, Richard. The Evolution of Morality. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2006.

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  Chapter 6 maintains that accepting the hypothesis that our tendency to make moral judgments is the product of biological natural selection leads to an epistemological skepticism: our moral beliefs are, not false, but epistemically unjustified.

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• Joyce, Richard. “Irrealism and the Genealogy of Morals.” Ratio 26.4 (2013): 351–372.

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  Joyce explores the prospects both for an EDA that establishes a moral error theory and for an evolutionary debunking argument against non-cognitivism.

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• Joyce, Richard. “Evolution, Truth-Tracking, and Moral Skepticism.” In Essays in Moral Skepticism. By Richard Joyce, 142–158. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016.

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  After examining the different EDAs advanced in the literature and some of the anti-skeptical replies to them, this article maintains that the evolutionary nativist hypothesis undermines the epistemic justification of our moral judgments inasmuch as they would be the output of a non-truth-tracking process.

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• Kitcher, Philip. “Biology and Ethics.” In The Oxford Handbook of Ethical Theory. Edited by David Copp, 163–185. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.

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  Conjectures that humans first evolved a capacity for normative guidance that served the function of promoting social cohesion via the extension of our psychological altruistic dispositions, and that a later process of cultural evolution led to the social norms with which we are familiar. Given that the notion of moral truth plays no role in such a conjectural account of the genealogy of morality, this account lends support to non-cognitivism.

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• Ruse, Michael. Taking Darwin Seriously. Oxford: Blackwell, 1986.

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  Objective moral facts are not needed to explain our beliefs about right and wrong inasmuch as we would form those beliefs irrespective of whether or not such facts existed. Morality is nothing but a collective adaptive illusion that has been foisted on us by our genes, and it has no ontological foundation out there in the world.

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• Street, Sharon. “A Darwinian Dilemma for Realist Theories of Value.” Philosophical Studies 127.1 (2006): 109–166.

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  The fact that the forces of natural selection have had a tremendous indirect influence on the content of our evaluative judgments raises the challenge to explain the relation between such evolutionary influences and the independent evaluative facts posited by the normative realist. The normative realist then faces a dilemma: either he is forced to embrace a far-fetched moral skepticism or he must propose a scientifically unacceptable tracking account.

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Moderate Evolutionary Moral Debunkers

While authors such as Joyce and Street advance EDAs whose conclusions are broad in scope, other authors (considerably) restrict the debunking extent of the evolutionary hypothesis. Parfit 1984 claims that evolutionary considerations call it into question merely those moral beliefs that are held because everyone accepts them. Greene 2008 and de Lazari-Radek and Singer 2012 maintain that such considerations undermine only non-utilitarian or non-consequentialist normative theories, a view heavily criticized in Kahane 2011, Kumar and Campbell 2012, and Kahane 2014. Bogardus 2016 constructs an EDA purported to undermine only naturalistic moral realism.

• Bogardus, Tomás. “Only All Naturalists Should Worry about Only One Evolutionary Debunking Argument.” Ethics 126.3 (2016): 636–661.

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  After concluding that most of the epistemic principles on which rely the various EDAs discussed in the literature are false, the article introduces an “argument from symmetry” that poses a real menace, but only for all versions of moral naturalism, leaving non-naturalists free and clear.

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• de Lazari-Radek, Katarzyna, and Peter Singer. “The Objectivity of Ethics and the Unity of Practical Reason.” Ethics 123.1 (2012): 9–31.

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  The authors maintain that showing that Sidgwick’s response to genealogical arguments against the objectivity of ethics is also effective against Street’s recent EDA allows us to resolve the dualism of practical reason in favor of utilitarianism. For Sidgwick would remark that, whereas evolutionary considerations can undermine the moral views that give weight to rational egoism, they cannot undermine the principle of universal benevolence because its truth is intuitively grasped by reason.

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• Greene, Joshua. “The Secret Joke of Kant’s Soul.” In Moral Psychology. Volume 3, The Neuroscience of Morality. Edited by Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, 35–79. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2008.

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  On the basis of an analysis of a number of moral dilemmas involving personal and impersonal harm, Greene claims that deontological judgments tend to be driven by emotional responses that were evolutionarily adaptive, and hence that deontological philosophy is primarily an exercise in rationalization. Given that deontological judgments reflect the influence of morally irrelevant factors, they are unlikely to track independent moral truths.

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• Kahane, Guy. “Evolutionary Debunking Arguments.” Noûs 45.1 (2011): 103–125.

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  Kahame remarks that the use of EDAs in normative ethics to undermine certain moral theories and vindicate others is incompatible with their more sweeping use in metaethics, and that even if one could resist metaethical EDAs, this would not rehabilitate their targeted or piecemeal use in normative ethics because this use considerably underestimates the extent to which evaluative belief is infected by evolutionary influences.

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• Kahane, Guy. “Evolution and Impartiality.” Ethics 124.2 (2014): 327–341.

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  Kahane argues that even if one grants de Lazari-Radek and Singer’s claims that evolutionary considerations can explain our self-centered tendencies but that they cannot account for our belief in the principle of universal benevolence, their appeal to evolutionary debunking is ultimately self-defeating, so that utilitarians should resist the temptation to make use of EDAs to vindicate their view.

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• Kumar, Victor, and Richmond Campbell. “On the Normative Significance of Experimental Moral Psychology.” Philosophical Psychology 25.3 (2012): 311–330.

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  The authors hold that whereas Greene’s empirical research undermines attempts to reconcile opposing judgments about trolley cases, his arguments based on that research (including the one that appeals to biological evolution) fail to debunk deontology either because they rest on implausible and undefended normative assumptions or because they confuse these assumptions with others that are plausible but that render the arguments invalid.

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• Parfit, Derek. Reasons and Persons. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984.

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  Parfit contends that the discovery that a moral belief can be explained by natural selection undermines the belief in question only if the person holding it does so solely because everyone accepts it. For, given that the fact that everyone accepts the moral belief can be explained by natural selection without reference to its truth or falsity, its widespread acceptance provides no evidence that it is true.

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Debate On Street’s Darwinian Dilemma

Several authors have engaged specifically with Street’s EDA. Critics of her Darwinian dilemma typically accept that biological evolution is one important influence on our moral beliefs, but they claim that it is compatible with moral realism: we can track moral truths even if our moral faculty was not selected for to do so. Copp 2008 (to which Street 2008 is a reply) holds that a version of naturalistic moral realism (society-centered moral theory) can meet the Darwinian dilemma. FitzPatrick 2014 contends that science does not actually support Street’s claims about the origin of our moral beliefs. Artiga 2015 defends the plausibility of the tracking account. Graber 2012 argues that Street’s dilemma actually poses a challenge to the moral anti-realist that he cannot meet, and that only the realist can explain the role of moral beliefs in our evolutionary history. While Berker 2014 claims that the two lines of argument found in Street’s EDA are ineffective against moral realism, Locke 2014 maintains that the two main responses to her EDA advanced in the literature fail. Though most authors are not disposed to give up evolutionary theory if it turns out to be incompatible with moral realism, Nagel 2012 is willing to do so. While most responses to the Darwinian dilemma engage with its epistemological elements, Deem 2016 focuses on the scientific methodological criteria that Street claims are satisfied by her adaptive link account of evaluative judgment, but not by the realist’s tracking account.

• Artiga, Marc. “Rescuing Tracking Theories of Morality.” Philosophical Studies 172.1 (2015): 3357–3374.

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  Artiga argues that the three main objections Street levels against the tracking account of the relation between moral beliefs and moral facts are flawed, and hence that moral realism can resist the Darwinian dilemma.

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• Berker, Selim. “Does Evolutionary Psychology Show that Normativity Is Mind-Dependent?” In Moral Psychology and Human Agency: Philosophical Essays on the Science of Ethics. Edited by Justin D’Arms and Daniel Jacobson, 215–252. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.

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  Berker claims that there are two independent lines of argument in Street’s Darwinian dilemma. While the first appeals to evolutionary considerations, the second raises the old problem of how to justify our reliance on our most basic cognitive faculties without non-question beggingly relying on them. Neither line of argument shows that normative realism is to be rejected.

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• Copp, David. “Darwinian Skepticism about Moral Realism.” Philosophical Issues 18.1 (2008): 186–206.

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  Objectively right actions are those that conform to a society’s authoritative moral codes, which are those that best enable it to meet its needs, such as needs for social stability, peacefulness, and cooperation. Given that such actions are among those that were adaptive for our ancestors, it is not sheer luck that many adaptive behaviors are morally right.

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• Deem, Michael. “Dehorning the Darwinian Dilemma for Normative Realism.” Biology & Philosophy 31.5 (2016): 727–746.

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  Deem maintains that Street’s adaptive link account of evaluative judgment fails to satisfy the scientific criteria of clarity and illumination of the explanandum, and that the criterion of ontological parsimony does not weigh against a conjunction of normative realism and a by-product account according to which the capacity for evaluative judgment was not an adaptation, but rather an incidental effect of cognitive mechanisms that were fashioned by natural selection.

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• FitzPatrick, William. “Why There Is No Darwinian Dilemma for Ethical Realism.” In Challenges to Moral and Religious Belief: Disagreement and Evolution. Edited by Michael Bergmann and Patrick Kain, 237–255. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.

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  FitzPatrick claims that, even though the moral debunker presents his explanatory claims about the etiology of our moral beliefs as if they were scientific results, they are not supported by actual science unless it is supplemented with philosophical claims that are question-begging against moral realism.

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• Graber, Abraham. “Medusa’s Gaze Reflected: A Darwinian Dilemma for Anti-realist Theories of Value.” Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 15.5 (2012): 589–601.

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  Our disposition to make evaluative judgments will be fitness enhancing only if they track an appropriate set of properties. Whereas given the current state of empirical research the anti-realist is unable to identify a set of non-normative properties as the relevant set, the realist offers an explanation of such a disposition: we have been selected to make true evaluative judgments because, by so doing, we are responsive to a set of supervenient normative properties.

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• Locke, Dustin. “Darwinian Normative Skepticism.” In Challenges to Moral and Religious Belief: Disagreement and Evolution. Edited by Michael Bergmann and Patrick Kain, 220–236. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.

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  Locke considers two responses to Street’s evolutionary argument—the naturalist response and what he calls the “minimalist” response but is commonly known as the “third-factor” response—and concludes that neither succeeds.

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• Nagel, Thomas. Mind and Cosmos. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.

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  Nagel maintains that whereas Street concludes that moral realism is false because the evolutionary account of moral judgment is supported by science, one should follow the opposite direction: given that moral realism is true, one must conclude that the evolutionary account is false despite the scientific consensus in its favor.

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• Street, Sharon. “Reply to Copp: Naturalism, Normativity, and the Varieties of Realism Worth Worrying about.” Philosophical Issues 18.1 (2008): 207–228.

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  Maintains that Copp’s society-centered moral theory, and naturalistic versions of moral realism in general, face a problem: either they fall victim to the Darwinian dilemma by making normative claims or else they escape it, but only at the expense of failing to vindicate the objective bindingness of morality.

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Debate On Joyce’s EDA

As noted in the Introduction, it is Sharon Street’s Darwinian dilemma that has been the main focus of discussion in the metaethical literature. However, some discussion specifically of Joyce’s EDA has also taken place. Carruthers and James 2008 argues that a certain type of moral constructivism can successfully provide an answer to that argument inasmuch it is fully consistent with an evolutionary account of the origins of morality. Toner 2011 maintains that certain moralities can co-opt our evolved moral sense so as to make possible moral judgments that track the moral truth. Braddock 2017 raises some epistemological objections to Joyce’s EDA.

• Braddock, Matthew. “Debunking Arguments from Insensitivity.” International Journal for the Study of Skepticism 7.2 (2017): 91–113.

  DOI: 10.1163/22105700-20171195Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  Braddock argues that Joyce’s EDA faces a number of epistemological difficulties that determine that the type of insensitivity to which the argument appeals is not a sufficient condition for the defeat of justification. The author also develops and defends a new debunking argument from insensitivity.

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• Carruthers, Peter, and Scott James. “Evolution and the Possibility of Moral Realism.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 77.1 (2008): 237–244.

  DOI: 10.1111/j.1933-1592.2008.00185.xSave Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  Joyce’s EDA undermines the warrant for our moral beliefs only temporarily, since, if we accept an independently motivated account of moral truth, then the warrant for some of them can be restored by showing that they are entailed by that account. The correct account of moral truth will be provided by a realist and naturalistic form of moral constructivism, for there seems to be an innate disposition to engage in constructivist reasoning.

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• Toner, Christopher. “Evolution, Naturalism, and the Worthwhile: A Critique of Richard Joyce’s Evolutionary Debunking of Morality.” Metaphilosophy 42.4 (2011): 520–546.

  DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9973.2011.01710.xSave Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  Toner maintains that, even if the moral sense is an innate biological adaptation, certain developed moralities, such as Aristotelian eudaimonism, can reflectively co-opt it into new functions so that the resulting modified and enriched moral judgments can transcend the evolutionary process and non-accidentally track moral facts. Hence, a non-moral genealogy does not account for all the ways the moral sense may function or for all our moral judgments.

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Responses to EDAs

The various responses to EDAs against moral realism can be divided into at least five categories. Of course, most of the works cited in the previous two sections are responses to EDAs, but those to be mentioned in what follows fall more clearly under one of the five categories in question. In addition, this layout makes it possible to take account of as many relevant works as possible, given that each (sub)section may include up to ten citations. This also explains why some of the works bearing on the debate on Street’s EDA cited below have not been included in the section devoted to that debate. It should finally be noted that, together with the works that offer responses to EDAs, this section will also consider those that critically engage with such responses.

Morality, Religion, Common Sense, and Mathematics

EDAs against morality have been compared to EDAs used in other areas or have been taken to pose similar challenges in other areas. Clarke-Doane 2012 claims that the evolutionary debunking challenge posed in ethics can be posed in mathematics as well. Wilkins and Griffiths 2012 and Wielenberg 2016 compare EDAs against moral beliefs with EDAs against religious beliefs or against commonsense and scientific beliefs. Crow 2016 compares Sharon Street’s Darwinian dilemma for value realism with Alvin Plantinga’s evolutionary argument against atheism.

• Clarke-Doane, Justin. “Morality and Mathematics: The Evolutionary Challenge.” Ethics 122.2 (2012): 313–340.

  DOI: 10.1086/663231Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  Opposing a widespread view, this article argues that the evolutionary challenge for moral realism is equally a challenge for mathematical realism, given that it is intelligible to imagine the mathematical truths being very different while our mathematical beliefs remain the same.

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• Crow, Daniel. “A Plantingian Pickle for a Darwinian Dilemma: The Evolutionary Debunking of Atheism and Morality.” Ratio 29.2 (2016): 130–148.

  DOI: 10.1111/rati.12092Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  Given that in her Darwinian dilemma for value realism Street makes epistemological commitments that ultimately support Plantinga’s EDA against atheism, and given that atheism is a suppressed premise of the Darwinian dilemma, then this dilemma is internally incoherent.

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• Wielenberg, Erik. “Evolutionary Debunking Arguments in Religion and Morality.” In Explanation in Ethics and Mathematics: Debunking and Dispensability. Edited by Uri D. Lebowitz and Neil Sinclair, 83–102. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016.

  DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198778592.003.0005Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  Examines together the most challenging EDAs against moral and religious beliefs on the grounds that those arguments share the same basic structure, and exposes their alleged weaknesses.

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• Wilkins, John, and Paul Griffiths. “Evolutionary Debunking Arguments in Three Domains: Fact, Value, and Religion.” In A New Science of Religion. Edited by James Maclaurin and Gregory W. Dawes, 133–146. New York: Routledge, 2012.

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  The authors argue that, whereas it is possible to offer successful responses to EDAs against moral, commonsense, and scientific beliefs, it does not seem possible to do the same in the case of EDAs against religious beliefs.

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