Evolutionary Debunking of Moral Realism

Vavova, Katia

doi:10.1111/phc3.12194

Cited by 63 publications

(58 citation statements)

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“…Beyond work that's explicitly focused on the etiology of belief, there is also a large literature on the evolutionary debunking of morality; seminal works include Joyce (2006) and Street (2006). For an overview of this literature see Vavova (2015). the epistemic significance of this type of challenge as being entirely parasitic upon other kinds of generic epistemic demands, and we present some reasons to resist this analysis.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 95%

Indoctrination anxiety and the etiology of belief

DiPaolo¹,

Simpson

2015

Synthese

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People sometimes try to call others' beliefs into question by pointing out the contingent causal origins of those beliefs. The significance of such 'Etiological Challenges' is a topic that has started attracting attention in epistemology. Current work on this topic aims to show that Etiological Challenges are, at most, only indirectly epistemically significant, insofar as they bring other generic epistemic considerations to the agent's attention (e.g. disagreement, consistency with one's own epistemic standards, evidence of one's fallibility). Against this approach, we argue that Etiological Challenges are epistemically significant in a more direct and more distinctive way. An Etiological Challenge prompts the agent to assess whether her beliefs result from practices of indoctrination, and whether she should reduce confidence in those beliefs, given the anti-reliability of indoctrination as a method of belief-acquisition. Our analysis also draws attention to some of the ways in which epistemic concerns interact with political issues-e.g. relating to epistemic injustice, identity-based discrimination, and segregation-when we're thinking about the contingent causal origins of our beliefs.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 95%

Indoctrination anxiety and the etiology of belief

DiPaolo¹,

Simpson

2015

Synthese

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“…8 The epistemic principle behind the DEBUNKING CONDITIONAL is controversial and a crucial point of the debunking debate (cf. Bedke 2014;Bogardus 2016;Vavova 2015). I assess two interpretations in Section 3.3, to support my point about the irrelevance of genealogical claims, but I do not address the debate about the correct epistemic principle in this paper.…”

Section: Street's Edamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It is worth repeating that I am solely concerned with Street's EDA as it applies to robust moral realism, which entails that moral properties are causally inert. 12 Vavova (2015) suggests that the empirical premises alone suffice to rule out CORRECT, if they provide evidence of error. I show that this route fails in Section 4.…”

Section: An Escape Route For Realistsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Almost all discussions of her argument (e.g. Copp 2008;Vavova 2015;Artiga 2015) follow Street in interpreting her first factual premise as stating that natural selection, and other evolutionary factors, have had a 'tremendous,' albeit indirect, influence on the content of human evaluative attitudes (Street 2006: 113). However, a careful reading shows that Street is, somewhat in tension with the tenor of her piece, not committed exclusively to evolutionary factors: she also mentions that 'other causal influences can shape our evaluative judgements' (Street 2006: 120), and as long as there is 'some sort of causal explanation' (Street 2006: 153) of our evaluative beliefs, 'whether Darwinian or otherwise' (Street 2006: 155), this fact seems sufficient 'for the purposes of the argument' (Street 2006: 158).…”

Section: Street's Edamentioning

confidence: 99%

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Old Wine in New Bottles

Klenk

2017

Ethic Theory Moral Prac

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Evolutionary debunking arguments (EDAs) purport to show that robust moral realism, the metaethical view that there are non-natural and mind-independent moral properties and facts that we can know about, is incompatible with evolutionary explanations of morality. One of the most prominent evolutionary debunking arguments is advanced by Sharon Street, who argues that if moral realism were true, then objective moral knowledge is unlikely because realist moral properties are evolutionary irrelevant and moral beliefs about those properties would not be selected for. However, no evolutionary, causal explanation plays an essential role in reaching the argument's epistemological conclusion. Street's argument depends on the BenacerrafField challenge, which is the challenge to explain the reliability of our moral beliefs about causally inert moral properties. The Benacerraf-Field challenge relies on metaphysically necessary facts about realist moral properties, rather than on contingent Darwinian facts about the origin of our moral beliefs. Attempting to include an essential causal empirical premise yet avoiding recourse to the Benacerraf-Field problem yields an argument that is either self-defeating or of limited scope. Ultimately, evolutionary, causal explanations of our moral beliefs and their consequences do not present the strongest case against robust moral realism. Rather, the question is whether knowledge of casually-inert, mind-intendent properties is plausible at all.

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“…EDAs "move from a premise about the influence of evolutionary forces on our moral beliefs to a skeptical conclusion about those beliefs" (Vavova (2015)). In a recent paper, Andreas Mogensen (2015) suggests that such a move is in fact illicit: explanations of the kind that evolution supplies -so-called ultimate explanations -have no debunking potential.…”

Section: The Debunking Challenge To Realism: How Evolution (Ultimatelmentioning

confidence: 99%