Bargaining and descriptive content: prospects for a teleosemantic ethics

Teleosemantics is the view that mental content depends on etiological function. Moral adaptationism is the view that human morality is an evolved adaptation. Jointly, these two views offer new venues for naturalist metaethics. Several authors have seen, in the conjunction of these views, the promise of assigning naturalistically respectable descriptive content to moral judgments. One such author is Neil Sinclair, who has offered a blueprint for how to conduct teleosemantic metaethics with the help of moral adaptationism. In this paper, I argue that the prospects for assigning descriptive content to moral judgments on the basis of teleosemantics are bad. I develop my argument in dialogue with Sinclair’s paper and argue that, although Sinclair’s account of the evolution of morality is plausible, the teleosemantic account of the descriptive content of moral judgments which he bases thereon suffers from crucial shortcomings. I argue further that, given some minimal plausible assumptions about the evolution of morality made by Sinclair, no assignment of descriptive content is possible. Contrary to prevailing assumptions, the combination of moral adaptationism and teleosemantics suggests that moral judgments lack descriptive content.

Protomoral Machines: The Evolution of Morality as a Guideline for Robot Ethics

There are two connected questions about moral agency and robots: How can we ensure that robots behave in accordance with relevant ethical considerations? Is it possible to have genuinely moral machines? I will approach these questions from an evolutionary perspective and argue for the importance of a middle-range perspective on the morality of machines: we should neither be restricted to the present-day perspective of current ethical concerns nor to the far future theoretical issues concerning the possibility of genuine morality. Instead, we should reflect on what it would mean to create protomoral machines. The evolution of human morality may help in this.

The Genesis of Ideas about Morality

В статье рассматриваются вопросы, связанные с теоретическим освещением представлений о нравственности от античного периода до наших дней. Дается анализ развития этих представлений в истории философско-психологической мысли и демонстрируется актуальность проблемы в контексте современного общества, обусловленная нравственным кризисом. Цель работы заключается в раскрытии сущности понятия нравственности в процессе исторического становления и с точки зрения современных исследователей. В качестве методов исследования выступают изучение архивных материалов, теоретический анализ историко-психологических и философских источников, связанных с нравственной проблематикой. На основе историко-ретроспективного метода анализируются психологические понятия о нравственности и ее компоненты в разные периоды времени и соотносятся с современными научными представлениями данной категории. В заключении делается вывод о том, что современный этап изучения нравственности и ее составляющих характеризуется комплексным, системно-интегративным подходом к содержательной разработке данной категории. Теоретическая и практическая значимость определяется тем, что результаты проведенного исследования позволяют создать более полную картину развития представлений о нравственности в истории психологической науки и способствуют более глубокому изучению процесса духовно-нравственного развития личности. The article treats issues associated with the evolution of morality-related theories from antiquity to modern times. The article analyzes the evolution of ideas about morality in philosophical and psychological thought and maintains that the relevance of the analyzed issues is accounted for by the moral crisis plaguing modern society. The aim of the work is to reveal the essence of the concept of morality through the process of its historical development and from the point of view of modern scholars. The author employs such methods of research as investigation of archival materials, theoretical analysis of historical, psychological and philosophical sources associated with the issue of morality. The historical-retrospective method is used to analyze psychological ideas about morality and its components in different periods of time. It is also used to compare historically-relevant ideas about morality with modern ones. The author concludes that the modern stage of the investigation of morality and its components is characterized by a complex, systemic-integrative approach to the content of the issue. The theoretical significance and the practical value of the research consist in the fact that its results enable a researcher to see the evolution of ideas about morality in history of psychology and promote a more profound investigation of the process of people’s moral and spiritual development.

Are moral norms rooted in instincts? The sibling incest taboo as a case study

According to Westermarck’s widely accepted explanation of the incest taboo, cultural prohibitions on sibling sex are rooted in an evolved biological disposition to feel sexual aversion toward our childhood coresidents. Bernard Williams posed the “representation problem” for Westermarck’s theory: the content of the hypothesized instinct (avoid sex with childhood coresidents) is different from the content of the incest taboo (avoid sex with siblings)—thus the former cannot be causally responsible for the latter. Arthur Wolf posed the related “moralization problem”: the instinct concerns personal behavior whereas the prohibition concerns everyone. This paper reviews possible ways of defending Westermarck’s theory from the representation and moralization problems, and concludes that the theory is untenable. A recent study purports to support Westermarck’s account by showing that unrelated children raised in the same peer groups on kibbutzim feel sexual aversion toward each other and morally oppose third-party intra-peer-group sex, but this study has been misinterpreted. I argue that the representation and moralization problems are general problems that could potentially undermine many popular evolutionary explanations of social/moral norms. The cultural evolution of morality is not tightly constrained by our biological endowment in the way some philosophers and evolutionary psychologists believe.