Abstract
The evolutionist challenge to moral realism is the skeptical challenge that, if evolution is true, it would only be by chance, a “happy coincidence” as Sharon Street puts it, if human moral beliefs were true. The author formulates Street’s “happy coincidence” argument more precisely using a distinction between probabilistic sensitivity and insensitivity introduced by Elliott Sober. The author then considers whether it could be rational for us to believe that human moral judgments about particular cases are probabilistically sensitive to strongly universal fundamental moral standards of cooperation and fair division. The author provides an explanation of why there would be a benign correlation (though not a perfect one) between human moral judgments in particular cases and the requirements of strongly universal fundamental moral standards. The explanation of the benign correlation is based on group selection for groups of individuals with an egalitarian satisficing psychology and egalitarian norms, because of the ability of such groups to more efficiently solve gene-propagation collective action problems.
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Notes
A robust moral realist need hold only that the most fundamental moral standards are true in all possible worlds. This allows for variability in the actual principles and norms endorsed by different cultures. I limit my sensitivity claim to particular moral judgments, because I think that the moral generalizations (principles and norms) of all cultures typically have exceptions, and therefore are not strictly true. As a consequence, the relatively simple conception of sensitivity that I employ in this paper cannot be applied to them.
If the antecedent of a subjunctive conditional is false in all possible worlds, one might hold that the conditional is vacuously true. But the skeptical argument fails if the conditional is vacuously true, because if it is vacuously true then so is: If external ethical premises did not exist, we would not go on thinking about right and wrong in the way that we do. Thanks to Elliott Sober for pointing out to me the possibility of the tracking test’s being vacuously true.
The relevant expected relative frequencies can differ from actual relative frequencies—for example, the expected relative frequency of heads in tosses of a fair coin is typically ½, even if the coin is tossed only one time and then destroyed. In this case, I identify the relevant empirical conditional probability with the expected relative frequency of heads in a hypothetical series of fair tosses (½), not with the actual relative frequency, which in the case of the coin that is tossed only once is either 0 or 1, depending on how the coin landed the one time that it was tossed.
This formula is meant to capture a non-ideal standard of sensitivity, because it counts S’s moral judgment as true when S’s ranking of a > b matches the objectively true ranking, even if there is another alternative c that has not even occurred to S that the true moral standards would rank above both a and b.
Due to the work of Kripke (1980) and Putnam (1975), the idea of necessary truths (true in all possible worlds) discovered a posteriori is well-accepted, but the Kripke-Putnam idea cannot be extended to the status of moral principles that are true in all possible worlds, because the necessity is of a different kind. To see that it is of a different kind, note that while it is possible for you and your twin on Twin Earth to be in exactly the same narrow psychological states and for your identical words ‘water’ to pick out substances with different essences, the robust moral realist holds that when you and your twin are both in the same narrow psychological states and use the words ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ in a particular moral judgment, both of your judgments are subject to the same substantive moral standards, because those standards are the same in all possible worlds.
I believe that most ground-level moral practices are actually solutions to a special class of collective action problems—collective action problems viewed from an impartial perspective. For more on this topic, see Talbott (2010, 19–21, 84–87).
Sober and Wilson give many examples of phenomena that are the products of group selection, including the sex ratio in many species, the virulence of pathogens, and some symbiotic relations among species (1998, 40-46 and 118–123). For many more examples of the importance of group selection in evolution generally, see E. O. Wilson (2012). For a careful application of the theory of group selection to evidence from human evolution, see Bowles and Gintis (2011); also Henrich and Henrich (2007). The work on group selection challenges what had been an overwhelming consensus in evolutionary biology, so it is not surprising that it has met with resistance from many evolutionary biologists. For more on the dispute, see Lehrer (2012).
Kitcher does mention a view of this kind, which he describes as the view that those involved in progressive moral change are “sleepwalking” (204–205). The very label is an invitation not to take the view seriously.
Kitcher does not discuss genocide. He does discuss the strategy of expelling a subset of the in-group (2011, 228). This is a much easier case for him to address.
Of course, this will not be true of the judgments of every individual. Sociopaths are an exception. The moral realist only has to maintain that as a general rule people’s moral judgments are sensitive to the fundamental moral standards, not that everyone’s are. Also, I do not mean to imply that individuals always act in accordance with their moral judgments. It is enough for my purposes if their moral judgments are sensitive to the moral standards.
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I have benefited from the comments of Elliott Sober, Kim Sterelny and two anonymous referees on earlier versions of this paper.
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Talbott, W.J. How could a “blind” evolutionary process have made human moral beliefs sensitive to strongly universal, objective moral standards?. Biol Philos 30, 691–708 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-014-9452-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-014-9452-0