Evolution and Moral Realism

Datos Bibliográficos

ID8399129
AutoresKim Sterelny (0000-0003-3159-6698, Australian National University), Ben Fraser (Australian National University)
Año2017
Volumen68
Número4
Páginas981-1006
Fecha de publicación2017-12-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaThe British Journal for the Philosophy of Science (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0007-0882 • E-ISSN: 1464-3537
EditorialOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/bjps/axv060
OpenAlexW2338394657
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas28
Referencias citadas39

We are moral apes, a difference between humans and our relatives that has received significant recent attention in the evolutionary literature. Evolutionary accounts of morality have often been recruited in support of error theory: moral language is truth-apt, but substantive moral claims are never true (or never warranted). In this article, we: (i) locate evolutionary error theory within the broader framework of the relationship between folk conceptions of a domain and our best scientific conception of that same domain; (ii) within that broader framework, argue that error theory and vindication are two ends of a continuum, and that in the light of our best science, many folk conceptual structures are neither hopelessly wrong nor fully vindicated; and (iii) argue that while there is no full vindication of morality, no seamless reduction of normative facts to natural facts, nevertheless one important strand in the evolutionary history of moral thinking does support reductive naturalism—moral facts are facts about cooperation, and the conditions and practices that support or undermine it. In making our case for (iii), we first respond to the important error theoretic argument that the appeal to moral facts is explanatorily redundant, and second, we make a positive case that true moral beliefs are a ‘fuel for success’, a map by which we steer, flexibly, in a variety of social interactions. The vindication, we stress, is at most partial: moral cognition is a complex mosaic, with a complex genealogy, and selection for truth-tracking is only one thread in that genealogy. 1. Realism about Scientific and Normative Thought2. The Folk and Science3. Reduction, Vindication, and Error4. Moral Facts and Moral Opinions5. Is Moral Knowledge a Fuel for Success?

Epistemology · Moral psychology · Moral realism · Realism · Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation · Philosophical Ethics and Theory · Philosophy · Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment