scholarly journals Debunking Arguments in Metaethics and Metaphysics

2019 ◽  
pp. 337-363 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Z. Korman
Keyword(s):  
Evolutionary Debunking Arguments ◽  
Moral Beliefs ◽  
Debunking Arguments ◽  
Adaptive Value ◽  
Evolutionary Debunking

Evolutionary debunking arguments abound, but it is widely assumed that they do not arise for our perceptual beliefs about midsized objects, insofar as the adaptive value of our object beliefs cannot be explained without reference to the objects themselves. This chapter argues that this is a mistake. Just as with moral beliefs, the adaptive value of our object beliefs can be explained without assuming that the beliefs are accurate. The chapter then explores the prospects for another sort of vindication of our object beliefs—which involves “bootstrapping” from our experiences of midsized objects—and defends bootstrapping maneuvers against a variety of objections. Finally, an explanatory constraint on bootstrapping is articulated and defended, and a variety of attempts to respond to debunking arguments are shown to run afoul of the constraint.

scholarly journals A New Evolutionary Debunking Argument Against Moral Realism

2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 233-253 ◽  
Author(s):  
JUSTIN MORTON
Keyword(s):  
Moral Realism ◽  
Moral Knowledge ◽  
Evolutionary Debunking Arguments ◽  
Moral Beliefs ◽  
Standard Version ◽  
Debunking Arguments ◽  
Moral Claims ◽  
Evolutionary Debunking ◽  
Categorical Reasons

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.

Theism & Evolutionary Debunking Arguments Against Moral Realism

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 41
Author(s):  
Paul Rezkalla
Keyword(s):  
Moral Realism ◽  
Evolutionary History ◽  
Michael Ruse ◽  
Evolutionary Debunking Arguments ◽  
Moral Beliefs ◽  
Specific Target ◽  
Debunking Arguments ◽  
Sharon Street ◽  
Evolutionary Debunking

Evolutionary debunking arguments against morality come in a variety of forms that differ both in how they take evolution to be problematic for morality and in their specific target of morality i.e. objectivity, realism, justification for moral beliefs, etc.  For the purpose of this paper, I will first articulate several recent debunking approaches and highlight what they take to be problematic features of evolutionary history for morality. In doing so I will be forced to abstract from some of the specific arguments offered, although I will provide replies to particular aspects of the arguments offered by Michael Ruse, Sharon Street and Richard Joyce. Then, I will show that theists have independent reasons for rejecting certain, core assumptions of these debunking approaches, thus deflating the major thrust of debunking worries for morality. While there may be good responses available to the non-theist realist with respect to several of the worries raised below, this paper will simply show why the theist need not be troubled by contemporary debunking approaches against morality.

scholarly journals Human altruism, evolution and moral philosophy

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (8) ◽  
pp. 170441 ◽  
Author(s):  
William J. FitzPatrick
Keyword(s):  
Moral Realism ◽  
Ethical Theory ◽  
Evolutionary Debunking Arguments ◽  
Moral Beliefs ◽  
Evolutionary Origins ◽  
Debunking Arguments ◽  
Important Challenge ◽  
Evolutionary Debunking ◽  
Philosophical Questions ◽  
Moral Scepticism

This paper has two central aims. The first is to explore philosophical complications that arise when we move from (i) explaining the evolutionary origins of genetically influenced traits associated with human cooperation and altruism, to (ii) explaining present manifestations of human thought, feeling and behaviour involving cooperation and altruism. While the former need only appeal to causal factors accessible to scientific inquiry, the latter must engage also with a distinctive form of explanation, i.e. reason-giving explanation, which in turn raises important philosophical questions, the answers to which will affect the nature of the ultimate explanations of our moral beliefs and related actions. On one possibility I will explore, this explanatory project cannot avoid engaging with first-order ethical theory. The second aim is to apply lessons from these explanatory complications to the critique of ‘evolutionary debunking arguments’, which seek to debunk morality, or at least objective construals of it (i.e. moral realism), by appeal to allegedly scientific debunking explanations of our moral beliefs that would defeat our justification for them. The explanatory complications brought out in the first half raise difficulties for such debunking arguments. If we avoid begging central philosophical questions then such debunking arguments pose little threat of saddling us with moral scepticism or subjectivism, though they do pose an important challenge for those developing a moral realist view.

scholarly journals Evolutionary anti-realism in ethics

2017 ◽  
Vol 60 (2) ◽  
pp. 46-67
Author(s):  
Igor Zivancevic
Keyword(s):  
Error Theory ◽  
The Other ◽  
Evolutionary Debunking Arguments ◽  
Moral Concepts ◽  
Moral Beliefs ◽  
Moral Error Theory ◽  
Debunking Arguments ◽  
Selection For ◽  
Evolutionary Debunking ◽  
Moral Capacity

In this paper I discuss two forms of evolutionary debunking arguments. These arguments have precursors in Mackie?s Moral error theory and Harman?s challenge, i.e. the explanatory irrelevance of moral facts. The first argument is metaphysical, and I call it the argument of phylogenetic contingency. To put it simple, this argument claims that if our evolutionary past had been different, then our moral capacity, moral concepts and moral beliefs, would have been different as well. The other argument is epistemological. It is based on the Nozickean conceptions of sensitivity and truth tracking. This argument claims that, when it comes to moral capacity, in the evolutionary past there was no selection for tracking moral truths. As a result, moral beliefs are insensitive to truth. Finally, I show how conception of self-deception, which is by definition insensitive to truth, could augment these arguments and help their better articulation.

scholarly journals Belief Pills and the Possibility of Moral Epistemology

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Neil Sinclair
Keyword(s):  
Moral Epistemology ◽  
Moral Truth ◽  
Recent Attempt ◽  
Evolutionary Debunking Arguments ◽  
Debunking Arguments ◽  
Moral Judgements ◽  
Evolutionary Debunking ◽  
Evolutionary Explanations ◽  
Moral Facts

This chapter argues that evolutionary debunking arguments are dialectically ineffective. Such arguments rely on the premise that moral judgements can be given evolutionary explanations which do not invoke their truth. The challenge for the debunker is to bridge the gap between this premise and the conclusion that moral judgements are unjustified. After discussing older attempts to bridge this gap, this chapter focuses on Joyce’s recent attempt, which claims that ‘we do not have a believable account of how moral facts could explain the mechanisms…which give rise to moral judgements’. It argues that whether there is such an account depends on what it is permissible to assume about moral truth and that it is reasonable to make assumptions which allow for the possibility of at least partial moral epistemologies. The challenge for the debunker is to show that these assumptions are unreasonable in a way which does not render their debunking argument superfluous.

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