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.

scholarly journals LUCK: EVOLUTIONARY AND EPISTEMIC

Episteme ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 441-461 ◽  
Author(s):  
Billy Dunaway
Keyword(s):  
True Belief ◽  
Epistemic Luck ◽  
Evolutionary Debunking Arguments ◽  
Evolutionary Mechanism ◽  
Debunking Arguments ◽  
Evolutionary Debunking ◽  
Evolutionary Explanations

AbstractThis paper advances two theses about evolutionary debunking arguments in ethics. The first is that, while such arguments are often motivated with the rhetoric of ‘luck', proponents of these arguments have not distinguished between the kinds of luck that might lead to the formation of a true belief. Once we make the needed distinctions, the relevance of the kind of luck which can be derived from broadly evolutionary explanations to the epistemological conclusions debunkers draw is suspect. The second thesis is that debunkers might successfully show that epistemic luck is relevant to their concerns. But they will need to include specific premises about the kind of evolutionary mechanism that explains the beliefs that the debunker targets. Proponents of debunking arguments, if they continue to insist on using luck-based considerations, are then hostage to empirical fortune in a way not previously recognized.

scholarly journals Two versions of the evolutionary debunking arguments and their challenges to moral realism

2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-112
Author(s):  
Víctor Emilio Parra Leal
Keyword(s):  
Moral Realism ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Moral Progress ◽  
Human Language ◽  
Evolutionary Debunking Arguments ◽  
Evolutionary Forces ◽  
Debunking Arguments ◽  
Evolutionary Debunking ◽  
Evolutionary Point ◽  
Moral Facts

This paper assesses some challenges posed by evolutionary debunking arguments in Joyce’s function and Street’s contingency versions to moral realism, understood as the metaethical theory according to which there are moral facts that are absolute, universal and context-independent. Some argue that Copp’s society centred realism is untenable given that it cannot support counterfactuals. Shafer-Landau and Huemer’s arguments are also subject to debunking because they cannot persuasively show that human morality is unaffected by evolutionary forces. In Huemer’s view, moral progress is proof of moral facts. It requires moral realism due to progress being context-dependent. From an evolutionary point of view, there are no previous standards and ideals concerning the direction of progress. Finally, a possible answer to the function version of the evolutionary debunking arguments is the possibility that the nature of human language (including moral language) is such that, in essence, it cannot be convincingly divided in language about facts and language about value.

scholarly journals Eliminativism and Evolutionary Debunking

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Bagwell
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Evolutionary Biology ◽  
Scientific Theory ◽  
Multiple Realizability ◽  
Ordinary Object ◽  
Evolutionary Debunking Arguments ◽  
Theory Of Evolution ◽  
Scientific Support ◽  
Debunking Arguments ◽  
Evolutionary Debunking

Eliminativists sometimes invoke evolutionary debunking arguments against ordinary object beliefs, either to help them establish object skepticism or to soften the appeal of commonsense ontology. I argue that object debunkers face a self-defeat problem: their conclusion undermines the scientific support for one of their premises, because evolutionary biology depends on our object beliefs. Using work on reductionism and multiple realizability from the philosophy of science, I argue that it will not suffice for an eliminativist debunker to simply appeal to some object-free surrogate theory of evolution that results from converting any scientific proposition about some object K into a proposition about simples arranged K-wise. In the process, I examine some hazards peculiar to eliminative reductions of scientific theories, and propose a trilemma for eliminativists who attempt to recoup generality for ontologically sparse reducing theories by appealing to pluralities of simples arranged K-wise. The paper is intended to define and develop the object debunker’s self-defeat problem for further study, and to clarify some of the ways sparse and abundant ontologies interact with scientific theory.

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