{"id":6193,"date":"2021-09-30T08:18:54","date_gmt":"2021-09-30T13:18:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/?p=6193"},"modified":"2021-09-30T08:20:07","modified_gmt":"2021-09-30T13:20:07","slug":"evolutionary-debunking-another-philosopher-chimes-in","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/2021\/09\/30\/morality\/evolutionary-debunking-another-philosopher-chimes-in\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cEvolutionary Debunking\u201d \u2013 Another Philosopher Chimes In"},"content":{"rendered":"

Suppose some analog of Commander Data<\/a> of Star Trek fame were sent out alone on an interstellar voyage of discovery and encountered our species for the first time. What would he conclude about the phenomenon of human morality? No doubt he would be aware that biological life forms exist by virtue of natural selection, and that characteristics of these life forms that significantly influence the odds of individual survival almost certainly exist by virtue of that natural phenomenon. Noting that the emotional traits responsible for the existence of morality in our species meet this criterion, he would conclude that they evolved in the same way as many of our other significant features. Lacking emotions himself, it would never occur to him that the moral beliefs spawned by these emotions have anything to do with \u201cobjective moral truth.\u201d He would not imagine that some things are \u201creally good\u201d and other things are \u201creally bad\u201d because he \u201cfelt it in his bones.\u201d Instead, he would correctly conclude that our morality exists as an artifact of emotional traits that exist because they promoted survival.<\/p>\n

Obviously, our species lacks the emotional detachment of Commander Data. Unlike him, we experience the powerful emotions responsible for portraying good and evil to us as real things, and most of us firmly believe in these illusions without further ado. The philosophers among us are hardly inclined to dispel the illusions. Jobs in the field are rare outside of the publish or perish world of academia, and the chances that papers stating something as obvious as the above would be accepted in the most prestigious journals are vanishingly small. No, to survive professionally, one must excel at obscuring the truth with an impenetrable fog of academic jargon. There are certainly many philosophers who accept the fact that natural selection has had a profound influence on morality, and some even accept the fact that nothing beyond this natural process is required to account for it. However, as far as I can tell without exception, they then go on to tell us what we \u201cought\u201d to do as if their personal preferences possessed some magical authority or legitimacy.<\/p>\n

In this whimsical atmosphere, philosophers on both sides of the issue have embraced the term \u201cevolutionary debunking\u201d to describe theories that marshal evolutionary arguments to attack systems that either dismiss or qualify the influence of natural selection on morality. It\u2019s an unfortunate choice of words, as it tends to reduce a natural fact of profound importance to the level of a toy that philosophers play with in their academic sandboxes. In fact, experts in evolutionary biology, evolutionary psychology, neuroscience, and related fields are far more likely to make useful contributions to our understanding of the subject than the tribe of professional philosophers. The philosophers’ attacks and counterattacks on each other, couched in the usual obscure jargon, have done more to obfuscate than illuminate the subject.<\/p>\n

When we reduce the academic word salad to more comprehensible terms, we often find that the arguments used in these philosophical jousts are surprisingly na\u00efve. Consider, for example, a paper by Katia Vavova entitled \u201cThe limits of rational belief revision: A dilemma for the Darwinian debunker,\u201d that appeared in a recent issue of the philosophical journal Nous<\/a>.<\/em> In the author\u2019s words,<\/p>\n

The dilemma, briefly, is this. Either moral assumptions are legitimate in response to the debunker or they are not. If they are, then learning about the evolutionary origins of our moral beliefs may give us good reason to think that our moral beliefs are mistaken. But if moral assumptions really are <\/em>legitimate, then there are moral claims wee can take for granted and therefore use to self-correct. In this way we may stagger, but needn\u2019t fall from the debunker\u2019s hit. On this horn, we can self-correct and thus alleviate the debunker\u2019s worries.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If, instead, moral assumptions are not legitimate, then we have no moral claims we can use to self-correct. But then, learning about the evolutionary origins of our moral beliefs cannot give us reason to think we are mistaken about morality. This is because we cannot get evidence to think that we are mistaken about something that we can make no assumptions about. Evidence is evidence only against a background of beliefs we take for granted, and if no moral assumptions are allowed, then we do not have enough such background. So, we cannot get evidence of our error.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A seemingly obvious weakness of this gambit is that it assumes the existence of that which is to be debunked. It could just as well be used against the debunkers of fairies, hobgoblins, and unicorns. Beliefs about these things can be neither mistaken nor not mistaken, for the simple reason that they don\u2019t exist. As Westermarck pointed out long ago, if Darwin was right about morality, then moral claims are based on an illusion. One can be mistaken or not mistaken about what an illusion looks like to the delusional, but not about what it actually is.<\/p>\n

This problem seems so obvious that we are inclined to give Prof. Vavova the benefit of the doubt, and consider the possibility that we are being obtuse, and have missed the point. With that in mind, let us read on to a more precise statement of what she imagines the debunker\u2019s argument to be. Again, in her words,<\/p>\n

This, then, is the debunker\u2019s argument:<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

1. Influence<\/em>. Evolutionary forces have influenced our moral beliefs.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

2. Off-track<\/em>. Evolutionary forces aim at fitness, not moral truth.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

3. Off-track influence<\/em>. A process that aims at fitness, not moral truth, influenced our moral beliefs.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

4. Gap<\/em>. The true moral beliefs and the adaptive moral beliefs come apart.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

5. Bad influence<\/em>. Our moral beliefs reflect the influence of an epistemically bad process.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

6. Plausible Principle<\/em>. If a belief reflects the influence of an epistemically bad process, then that belief is likely to be mistaken.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

7. Mistaken<\/em>. Our moral beliefs are likely to be mistaken.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Again, this \u201cdebunker\u2019s argument\u201d appears to assume the existence of moral truth. However, to the extent that they make any useful point at all, \u201cevolutionary debunking\u201d arguments deny the existence of moral truth. It is not possible to be mistaken or not mistaken about the nature of things that don\u2019t exist. But wait! Following these seven points we find the remarkable passage:<\/p>\n

Notice that this formulation doesn\u2019t assume moral realism: the view that the moral facts are attitude-independent. This is unusual and important. It\u2019s unusual because evolutionary debunking arguments are often run as reductios<\/em> of realism. It\u2019s important because it shows that one needn\u2019t be a moral realist to be vulnerable to this attack.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Here I can but scratch my head. Again, it is not possible to be mistaken or not mistaken about nothing. If, on the other hand, Vavova\u2019s formulation doesn\u2019t assume moral realism, then it cannot possibly be an accurate statement of \u201cevolutionary debunking\u201d arguments. If one is not a moral realist, then one is not only not vulnerable to this attack, for all practical purposes one is on the side of the debunkers. What on earth is it the debunkers are trying to debunk if not moral realism? To the extent that \u201cevolutionary debunkers\u201d are trying to debunk something other than that it\u2019s a matter of complete indifference to me whether they succeed or not.<\/p>\n

So much for Prof. Vavova\u2019s \u201cdebunking of the debunkers.\u201d As I\u2019ve pointed out before, philosophers could make themselves a great deal more useful to the rest of us if, just for the sake of argument, they accepted the fact that morality is a manifestation of evolved behavioral traits in creatures with large brains. Starting from that axiom, they could then go on to formulate possible courses of action our species might take assuming the axiom were true. That\u2019s basically what E. O. Wilson suggested to the philosophers long ago, and they\u2019ve hated him for it ever since. It would seem that we must leave them in their academic redoubts, writing thick tomes about obsolete moral philosophies, befogging the subject with their jargon, and ornamenting the pages of philosophical journals with papers such as the one described above.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\tTweet<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Suppose some analog of Commander Data of Star Trek fame were sent out alone on an interstellar voyage of discovery and encountered our species for the first time. What would he conclude about the phenomenon of human morality? No doubt he would be aware that biological life forms exist by virtue of natural selection, and … Continue reading “\u201cEvolutionary Debunking\u201d \u2013 Another Philosopher Chimes In”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[411,110,6,28,5,440,416],"tags":[132,120],"class_list":["post-6193","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-darwin","category-ethics","category-good-and-evil","category-human-nature","category-morality","category-objective-morality","category-subjective-morality","tag-evolution-2","tag-morality-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pwEq0-1BT","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6193","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6193"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6193\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6196,"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6193\/revisions\/6196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}