Debunking Evolutionary Debunking

Abstract

e evolutionary challenge.Worries about the compatibility of evolution and morality are not new-even Darwin had them. A number of recent arguments revive these concerns. ese evolutionary debunking arguments take the following form: you just believe what you do because you evolved to, therefore you're not justi ed in believing what you do. ey typically target evaluative realism: the view that evaluative facts are attitude-independent-that what is valuable is valuable whether or not we happen to value it. 1 e worry is that just as evolutionary forces shaped our eyes and ears, so they shaped our evaluative attitudes. But, the debunker argues, we have no reason to think that these forces would track the attitude-independent evaluative truths that the realist posits. 2 Worse yet, we seem to have a good reason to think that they wouldn't: evolution selects for characteristics that increase genetic tness-not ones that correlate with the evaluative truth. Plausibly, the attitudes and judgments that increase a creature's tness come apart from the true evaluative beliefs. If this is so, then it seems that evolutionary forces have had a distorting effect on our evaluative attitudes. e debunker concludes, insofar as we are realists and insofar as the evolutionary facts are thusand-so, we are not justi ed in our evaluative beliefs.Evolutionary debunking arguments are sometimes meant to establish just this: evaluative skepticism. Other times the skeptical conclusion is in the service of the greater goal of undermining evaluative realism. In either case, the debunker must rst establish that learning about the evolutionary origin of our evaluative beliefs gives us, qua realists, good reason to worry about our evaluative beliefs. I will argue that the considerations she puts forth cannot give us such reason. I will conclude that there is little hope for distinctly evolutionary debunking arguments. is is bad news for the debunker who hoped that the cold, hard scienti c facts about our origins would undermine our evaluative beliefs. e Debunker's Argument.1 1 is understanding of realism follows the evolutionary debunking literature. Similar de nitions can be found in metaethics more generally (see Shafer-Landau [2005] 15 on 'stance-independence'). For present purposes, evaluative propositions are of the form: that X is a normative reason to Y, that one should or ought to X, that X is good, valuable or worthwhile, that X is morally right or wrong, and so on. Evaluative attitudes include (conscious or unconscious) beliefs in evaluative propositions, as well "as desires, attitudes of approval and disapproval, unre ective […] tendencies such as the tendency to experience X as counting in favor of or demanding Y, " etc. (Street [2006] 110).2 From here on I'll drop the 'attitude-independent' quali er on evaluative attitudes or truths.

Conceptual History, Conceptual Ethics, and the Aims of Inquiry: A Framework for Thinking about the Relevance of the History/Genealogy of Concepts to Normative Inquiry

“…For example, see Street (2006), enoch (2011), Setiya (2012), Clarke-Doane (2012), Vavova (2014), Locke (2014), Dworkin (2011), andSchafer (2010).…”

Explaining our Moral Reliability

“…4.2; Enoch, , p. 175; Shafer‐Landau, , pp. 18, 22 – 3; Setiya, , p. 79; Vavova, , sec. 3.1; Berker, , sect.…”

“…12). For evolutionary issues concerning perception, see Schafer, ; White, ; Vavova, . For evolutionary issues concerning mathematics, see Clarke‐Doane, ; Schechter, , p. 455; Field, .…”

Debunking Morality: Lessons from the EAAN Literature

“…But then EAAN will recommend that its own premises not be believed. Katia Vavova (, pp. 97–100; 2015, p. 112) has used a similar argument to show that many debunking arguments fail.…”

“…5 of Berker () for a helpful and illustrative explanation of third‐factor responses. For other objections to EMDAs, see Bogardus, ; Cuneo and Shafer‐Landau, ; FitzPatrick, ; Locke, ; and Vavova, .…”