I am going to argue that evolutionary theory can explain morality in natural terms and this motivates the anti realist position. In particular I will be focusing on Richard Joyce’s argument from genealogical debunking. Russ Shafer-Landau has objected to Joyce and has put forth
contentions. I will address these and argue that Joyce’s overall argument looks healthy. Realism will be defined as the position that ethical sentences express propositions, some of these are true and they achieve this status by reference to the objective features of the world. Anti realism will be defined as the view that moral properties do not exist. Although these rather broad definitions won’t satisfy everyone they are sufficient for the purpose of this discussion.
Genealogical debunking
Suppose you lived most your life with the belief that your great grandfather fought in World War one. Your belief was not due to his war diaries, pictures or medals rather it was that your father who told you so, apart from that no one else mentioned this in your family. Your father is an honest man and so you have good reason to trust him. You then discover later on in life that your father suffers from a psychological condition in which he confuses dreams and reality. Your
mother informs you that your father knows nothing about your Great grandfather and that he saw a dream of him fighting in WW1 and hence he told you. Now where do you stand in terms of the epistemic status of your belief, do you still believe it? You can’t say the belief is false as it may be true, on the very least you are unjustified in holding that belief, so you should really be
agnostic about it. You can decide to get to the bottom of this belief by going through your family records speaking to extended family members, maybe even enlisting a private detective, until you find sufficient evidence to conclude that he did participate in the war. Or you may end up in a situation where you do not have definite proof either way but end with some probabilities. The upshot is that your belief is undermined until you can find independent data to test it against.
Such a genealogical critique can be applied to our moral beliefs too. Think of the dream/reality confusion as the process of evolution and the beliefs produced as our moral imperatives.
Suppose the genealogy of the belief ‘stealing from orphans is wrong’ is only explicated in terms of a fitness advantage that our ancestors gained in the Palaeolithic era. A purely natural
explanation will not include moral properties that are mind independent. Anti Realists contend that our minds did not evolve to track truths from a moral realm. Rather they are just a useful collective fiction. Joyce uses the example of a belief pill which causes one to believe that
Napoleon won the battle of waterloo. Once the subject knows that he has taken such a pill, his belief about the outcome of the battle should be considered unjustified. Joyce argues that this means that morality itself is undermined epistemically. Joyce’s argument does not disprove the ontological basis for Moral realism rather it just makes it inaccessible to us epistemically.
Although a non moral genealogy and the existence of moral truths both may explain a moral belief, Occam’s razor would shave off moral truths as a superfluous explanation. Evolutionary
forces have shaped our cognitive capabilities, however as such these capabilities are still reliable, they help us discover truths in logic, biology, history and so on. We have no reason to doubt the beliefs we hold in those fields but that is not the case with beliefs about morality. That is because if moral truths had been different our moral beliefs would have been the same. Although Joyce does not formalize his argument in the following way, I think this does capture what what he has in mind:
J1. Moral truths may explain our moral beliefs and faculties J2. Evolution can explain our moral beliefs and faculties
J3. Moral beliefs and faculties are explained in a simpler way by evolution than by reference to moral truths
J4. The process of evolution is blind to moral truths
J5. Our moral beliefs and faculties can be explained by a evolutionary process that is indifferent to moral truths
Therefore
J6 We are unjustified to hold moral beliefs J7 Moral Realism is unjustified
It looks like this is a insurmountable challenge for realists to address. There has been some replies to Joyce which he has addressed, however the more recent criticism of Shafer-Landau has not had a response so that’s what I am aiming to do below on Joyce’s behalf.
Skeptical Worries
Firstly Shafer-Landau thinks that there are two distinct types of debunking arguments,
Knowledge based debunking and agnostic genealogical critiques. The former is when you show some claim to be probably false by showing it originated in a way that would have a severe distorting effect, for instance, the belief that a partially deaf person is very unlikely to note an
hour long speech accurately is true, we do not need to compare this person’s notes with the actual speech to know that, of course we can do that if we so wished. Shafer-Landau thinks Joyce is not making this sort of argument as it is self defeating. This is because if such an argument would be deployed then it would have to show that evolutionary pressures have produced moral beliefs that we know to be false, if that is the case, then we would have used some base moral truths to make that judgment, thus we can use can use those base truths to judge any other moral belief that is produced under selection.
Shafer-Landau thinks the only possible argument that can be used is where there is no
assumption about where the truth lies. Suppose that someone makes the claim that yellow was the favorite colour of Genghis Khan when he was seven years old, when questioned how they know that they say that this is the colour of the last two cars that they saw. Even in our ignorance about the favourite colour of Genghis Khan when he was seven we can still comfortably say that this belief is unjustified as it was formed by a process which was not sensitive to the fact it purports to explain. Shafer-Landau thinks Joyce is using this type of agnostic genealogical
critique and that his argument consists of the following two conditions and only if these were true would it be sound. (1) to the extent that our moral beliefs are the product of evolutionary
forces, such beliefs are formed in ways that are insensitive to whatever moral truth there may be; and (2) our inability to exclude the possibility of insensitive doxastic origins for a set of beliefs S mandates suspension of judgment regarding all beliefs within that set.1
According to this Joyce is not trying to undermine morality by showing a high likelihood that our moral beliefs are insensitive to the truth, what he is doing is claiming the mere understanding that we cannot discount the possibility that our individual moral beliefs may have insensitive origins undermines our justification in them.
So we are unable to disprove the possibility that our parents are not actually our biological parents but foster carers who happened to look similar to us, does that mean we should we should be skeptical about our lineage? Ofcourse not. This type of thinking when applied to
history, science, geography or any other facet of human knowledge would render those beliefs unjustified too as there is always a possibility that there is a wicked neuroscientist that has our brains in a vat and is manipulating our thoughts and feelings. This is the worry of Shafer-Landau and if he is right then Joyce’s argument is on shaky ground, as no one would accept those
skeptical consequences.
So why does he think (2) is important? ‘I think that Joyce’s argument really does rest on (2), as he is appropriately modest about the nature and extent of evolutionary influences on our moral faculties.’2
I don’t see what he means by ‘modest’ but if has understood this to mean that Joyce thinks it’s evolution can’t be ruled out as a explanation of moral beliefs then he has misunderstood him.
Joyce spends considerable time in laying out the explanatory power of evolution and how even
morals beliefs that don’t seem at first pass to be products of natural selection are in fact explained by it.
I think Shafer-Landau has misunderstood Joyce here, he is right about (1) but not (2). It is not our inability to exclude the possibility of insensitive doxastic origins for a set of beliefs that renders them unjustified. Rather it is the fact that we have good grounds for preferring the
evolutionary explanation over one on which our moral belief forming mechanism is sensitive to moral reality.
To see this suppose Joyce and Shafer-Landau were having this discussion before Darwin was born, Joyce’s argument or any genealogical critique really might have to rest on (2). After
Darwin that is not the case, we have an understanding of a naturalistic process that is doxastically insensitive, we can’t discount that such an understanding may be wrong and a
sensitive doxastic origin may be correct, but it does not follow that we should be skeptical about the conclusions of the doxastically insensitive origin account, as that is what we have.
To tease out the problem with Shafer-Landau view, let’s accept his understanding of joyce’s argument and replace morality with religion:
- to the extent that our religious beliefs are the product of evolutionary forces, such beliefs are formed in ways that are insensitive to whatever religious truth there may be; and (2) our inability to exclude the possibility of insensitive doxastic origins for a set of beliefs S mandatessuspension of judgment regarding all beliefs within that set.If Shafer-Landau wants us to reject Joyce’s genealogical critique of morality then he should also expect us to reject the genealogical critique of religion. It would be inconsistent to not do so, here Shafer-Landau may respond that the argument above is incorrectly constructed as it’s not our inability to exclude the possibility of sensitive doxastic origins of religious truth that makes religious belief unjustified rather it is that the mere possibility of a religiously sensitive doxastic origin for a set of beliefs does not make them justified. Shafer-Landau skeptical worries would be legitimate if his understanding of Joyce was right, however he has misunderstood him and therefore his argument is misplaced.Now Shafer-Landau turns to the idea that even if Joyce’s argument or any other anti realist didn’t try and motivate moral skepticism by relying on the argument that is impossible to rule out an insensitive origin of our moral beliefs and instead tried the more ambitious claim that it is highly likely that our moral beliefs are the result of evolutionary pressures, this is what he thinks willwarrant moral skepticism. Shafer-Landau thinks he can undermine this claim too by using what he calls the ‘Natural Reply’
The Natural Reply
Shafer-Landau thinks for the anti realist argument to work there must be a means of discerning between ‘the real origins of our moral faculties from mere pretenders’3. He thinks such a means can help realists with a way of working out the boundaries of an evolutionary influence. Realists should be able to use this to locate moral beliefs that are immune from evolutionary pressures,such beliefs can then be used as benchmarks to help sift through moral beliefs that resulted from evolution.These moral beliefs should meet three conditions:- They are immune from evolutionary influence;
- We can know which beliefs those are, and
- Such beliefs are highly presumptively warranted.
Armed with these beliefs he then constructs a response called by what he calls the Natural Reply:
N1. If some of our highly presumptively warranted moral beliefs are not the product of
evolutionary influence, and we can know which ones are thus immune, then we can utilize such beliefs to ascertain the plausibility of those that are the product of evolutionary pressures.
N2. Some of our highly presumptively warranted moral beliefs are not the product of evolutionary influence.
N3. We can know which beliefs those are. Therefore,
N4. We can utilize such beliefs to ascertain the plausibility of those that are the product of evolutionary influences.
Shafer-Landau thinks the truth of N2 challenges J5. He contends that even if evolutionary forces are insensitive to moral truth it has not been shown even indirectly that most if not all of
warranted moral beliefs are the products of it, therefore we have no reason to doubt our
warranted moral beliefs. Once equipped with these influence free moral beliefs we can build up and test others, this can lead us in a situation where we are able to test if our moral faculty is reliable. This can be done by showing that moral beliefs were generated in which we can have warrant. So even if Joyce’s argument for moral skepticism relied on the likelihood that most if not all of our moral beliefs are not justified then the Natural Reply would address that.
So what are these epistemically untainted moral beliefs? Shafer-Landau does not give a definitive answer only an indication of what they could be and how we can arrive at them. We can summarise his views as the following.
S1 Moral Beliefs that have a fitness advantage can be explained via evolutionary pressures S2 There can be moral beliefs that do not have a fitness advantage
S2 Moral Beliefs that have do not have a fitness advantage are less likely due to evolutionary pressures
Therefore
S4 Moral Beliefs that have do not have a fitness advantage must have their origin elsewhere
Some of these paradigm moral beliefs that Shafer-Landau points to as potential contenders are ‘impartial benevolence, compassion for vulnerable strangers, kindness to small animals, concern for distant peoples and future generations, and speaking truth to power.4’ All this sounds rather tempting but there is an obvious problem with his argument namely what about indirect
evolutionary pressures building beliefs that are maladaptive. Joyce spends considerable time in showing how beliefs that are maladaptive may actually have originated from moral behaviour that is highly adaptive such as reciprocity and kin selection5. Shafer-Landau argues this is not a
good route of undermining his argument since it risks making the anti realist argument untestable. He thinks this is the case because the anti realist has to provide an indirect
explanation for every moral belief that is maladaptive not just the possibility that such an explanation is possible. Indirect explanations for every maladaptive moral belief is really a
daunting task, not least because it is difficult to sift out adaptive from non adaptive beliefsf1
. He argues that if the anti realist contends that there must be an indirect explanation without
explaining it then they would have undermined their own argument as the very ground that anti realists are using to undermine morality is that our moral beliefs are adaptive. Since anti realists are very far from explaining every warranted moral maladaptive belief in an indirect way this gives room to the Natural Reply. Such beliefs can be used as a foundation to build other moral beliefs and sort out the ones which are distorted by selection.
Shafer-Landau criteria for anti realists is too strict, it is impossible evolutionarily that every physical trait we posses is purely adaptive, maladaptive traits do exist and these are best
explained as byproducts of adaptive ones. However we don’t a complete story of how every maladaptive physical trait came about, does that mean that these traits are not explained by
evolution? Unlike the maladaptive physical traits we do have a plausible powerful hypothesis of how something like kin selection could have lead to maladaptive moral beliefs such as helping strangers. Even if we accept his view that moral beliefs that are maladaptive are insufficiently
explained as the indirect byproducts of adaptive traits, there is another force he doesn’t consider, genetic drift. Genetic drift has been observed and it is a direct and simple explanation for how maladaptive moral beliefs may have been fixed in the population.
Potency of Pills
Another objection that Shafer-Landau raises is the disanalogy of the belief pills example. He asks us to consider carefully what it means when it is claimed that evolution ‘produced’ moral beliefs. This production is not a direct creation of a product, it’s not like a factory in which on one end there is plastics, metals and glass that go in and fully functioning mobile phones come out of the other end. Shafer-Landau thinks the ‘production’ of moral beliefs is a misleading notion, because evolutionary pressures only indirectly influence our moral beliefs. A belief pill would work 100% of the time and it’s influence would be total and complete, so it is not a good analogy as
evolutionary pressures do not operate like that rather they just incline us in certain distorting directions. He assumes that since not all of our moral beliefs are influenced by selection we can use those beliefs as base to correct the other belief (which are distorted by evolutionary pressures) in a similar way that historical misinformation can be corrected by discovery of new facts. Shafer-Landau goes further and says that even if he grants Joyce’s hypothesis that without selection we would not have moral concepts at all this wouldn’t be a problem. After all without selection we would not have mathematical and perceptual concepts, but that fact does not cause us to doubt perceptual or mathematical beliefs that we hold. Likewise he thinks we have no reason to doubt moral truths.
Shafer-Landau is right that moral beliefs are not generated like a belief pill, it’s not a matter of a implanted belief without a causal history, but I’m afraid he is hasn’t fully grasped the intent behind the belief pill metaphor. Joyce didn’t want us to imagine that moral beliefs literally
appear out of nowhere, it was a metaphor for the whole system of belief generation including the
faculties that generate it and the concepts that flow out of that. So Shafer-Landau criticism is misdirected. Shafer-Landau does not give us a detailed argument for why mathematics is like morality. There is some ways that mathematics and morality may be similar, they are both
causally inert. Moral beliefs and mathematics are both adaptive. Suppose an ancient man was looking for shelter and saw a cave at a distance, three bears enter it and after a while two leave and he makes the false conclusion that the cave is empty. Such a person would not survive, knowing basic mathematics increases your fitness in a similar way that a moral person is more likely to survive in a tit for tat society. Knowledge of the adaptive advantage of mathematics does not take undermine our confidence that it is objectively true (assuming that we do believe that it is true). So why not treat morality in the same way? In this sense Shafer-Landau could push that morality and mathematics is similar in the respects relevant to the evolutionary
argument, on this view that J1 and J2 may co-exist after all.
This line of reasoning is undermined when we contrast the way that discussions about mathematics and morality differs. Mathematicians have a method of ascertaining mathematical truths hence we see mathematicians in different countries do not have differences of opinion on mathematical conclusions, morality ofcourse differs across the world. Although there is talk of a so called ‘ethical consensus’ that humans may reach if they sat down and talked it through, history has shown the opposite. The more that people had sat down and discussed morality the more differences have appeared. Consensus may have been achieved to some degree about what certain ethical systems may entail the fact-value distinction and so on, but there is no set method by which two people of opposing moral views can settle their disagreement by arriving at a
moral truth through a set procedure. This is a relevant difference which diminishes any
similarities between mathematics and morality that Shafer-Landau may want to point out. Hence his argument to salvage moral truths from the wreckage of evolution is not fruitful.
Conclusion
I have argued that evolutionary theory can explain morality in natural terms and this motivates the anti realist position. Joyce’s argument from genealogical debunking I have shown is unscathed by the criticisms of Shafer-Landau. Realists are in a difficult position, they may try to change the definition of realism to something related to facts about evolution in order to revive it, this strategy could work but that would be a really watered down version of realism that most people won’t even bother accepting as a worthwhile pursuit. I believe an argument for realism worthy of its name is unattainable in light of evolution.
References
- Shafer-landau, Russ. ‘‘Evolutionary Debunking, Moral Realism, and Moral Knowledge.’’ Journal of Ethics & Social Philosophy Vol. 7, NO. 1 (2012) p.17
- Ibid p.18
- Ibid p.18
- Ibid p.7
- Joyce, Richard. The Evolution of Morality, Cambridge, Massachusetts MIT Press, 2006 2006, p.19
Bibliography
Gould, Stephen J and Lewontin, Richard C. ‘‘The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm: A Critique of the Adaptationist Programme.’’ Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences, Vol. 205, No. 1161 (1979)
Joyce, Richard. The Evolution of Morality, Cambridge, Massachusetts MIT Press, 2006
Shafer-landau, Russ. ‘‘Evolutionary Debunking, Moral Realism, and Moral Knowledge.’’ Journal of Ethics & Social Philosophy Vol. 7, NO. 1 (2012)