Adaptation and moral realism
Biology and Philosophy 15 (5) (2000)
| Abstract | Conventional wisdom has it that evolution makes a sham of morality, even if morality is an adaptation. I disagree. I argue that our best current adaptationist theory of meaning offers objective truth conditionsfor signaling systems of all sorts. The objectivity is, however, relative to species – specifically to the adaptive history of the signaling system in question. While evolution may not provide the kind of species independent objective standards that (e.g.) Kantians desire, this should be enough for the practical work of justifying our confidence in the objectivity of moral standards. If you believe morality is an adaptation, you should be a moral realist. | |||||||||
| Keywords | No keywords specified (fix it) | |||||||||
| Categories | ||||||||||
| Options |
|
|||||||||
Download options| PhilPapers Archive |
Upload a copy of this paper Check publisher's policy on self-archival Papers currently archived: 5,701 |
| External links |
  Try with proxy. |
| Through your library | Configure |
Similar books and articlesTimothy Shanahan (2004). The Evolution of Darwinism: Selection, Adaptation, and Progress in Evolutionary Biology. Cambridge University Press.
James Weber (1991). Adapting Kohlberg to Enhance the Assessment of Manager's Moral Reasoning. Business Ethics Quarterly 1 (3):293-318.
J. T. Wiebes (1982). L'adaptation Evolutive. Acta Biotheoretica 31 (4).
Brian Edward Zamulinski (2007). Evolutionary Intuitionism: A Theory of the Origin and Nature of Moral Facts. Mcgill-Queen's University Press.
Leigh Van Valen (2009). How Ubiquitous is Adaptation? A Critique of the Epiphenomenist Program. Biology and Philosophy 24 (2):267-280.
Hugo Viciana & Pierrick Bourrat (2011). Is God an Adaptation? Philosophia 39 (2):397-408.
Richard Joyce (2002). Moral Realism and Teleosemantics. Biology and Philosophy 16 (5):723-31.
Ben Fraser (2010). Adaptation, Exaptation, By-Products and Spandrels in Evolutionary Explanations of Morality. Biological Theory 5 (3):223-227.
Analytics
Monthly downloads |
Added to index2009-01-28Total downloads44 ( #25,360 of 549,108 )Recent downloads (6 months)6 ( #12,390 of 549,108 )How can I increase my downloads? |
My notes
Discussion
