Morality: Fact or Evolution?

Moral realists contend that moral judgements are ‘stance independent’ – that is, their truth is determined solely by objective moral facts – and are arrived at by mechanisms of truth alone (2006:111). Evolutionary Debunking Arguments (EDAs), by contrast, seek to undermine these claims by noting the pervasive influence of evolution – which selects for survival, rather than objective truth. With Sharon Street (2006), I argue that realist ‘byproduct’ accounts do not survive the evolutionary challenge, specifically by failing to provide a plausible account of the independence of the human capacity for rationality from evolution.

Note that realist ‘tracking’ accounts of evolutionary influence are not discussed, for both a concise analysis, and because their proposed relationship between true judgements and reproductive success remains overly vague. As a result, the extent to which realism survives rests on its ability to plausibly reject the conclusion that our moral judgements are shaped by evolutionary forces, rather than objective moral facts.

First, Street argues that there is significant evolutionary influence on our basic moral judgements. Without discounting cultural and historical factors, many “basic evaluative judgements” – such as praise for altruism, treating each other with respect, protecting our offspring, and seeking punishment for deliberate harm – “have been tremendously shaped” by Darwinian influence (2006:122). In the natural world, these attitudes provided our ancestors with a competitive advantage, propagating across the species over time. For instance, chimpanzees – whose basic behaviours “overlap significantly” with ours – share food and protect their offspring, which help promote their survival (2006:114). These practices, according to Street, are experienced at a basic motivational level as ‘called for’, establishing a sense of morality in us over time. This is convincing, since these basic moral judgements would clearly benefit the reproduction of early humans; in the same vein, Street persuasively highlights how “to judge…[endangering] one’s survival [as] a reason to [act]” would be fatal for reproduction (2006:117).

Furthermore, Street argues that our current, more advanced moral judgements are influenced by evolutionary forces. Street notes that we are “by no means…automatons”; we are capable of rational reflection, with “endless amounts” of debate in history shaping our later moral judgements. Yet, Street argues that rational reflection fundamentally relies on “assessing some…judgements in terms of others”, and as such, later judgements do not stand apart from the “starting fund”. In this way, ‘contaminated’ basic judgements are used to generate further judgements; inevitably, rational reflection leads our later judgements to also bear the influence of evolutionary forces (2006:123-24). This argument is largely convincing, as the wrongness of the death penalty, for instance, intuitively relies on a set of foundational judgements to which it is compared – the wrongness of murder, the rightness of punishing those who intentionally harm, etc. If we did not use these basic judgements in determining later judgements, then rational reflection would likely lead to moral scepticism. As such, Street mounts a compelling case against the realist’s claim that moral judgements are selected by mechanisms of truth alone.

By contrast, William FitzPatrick (2008) aims to circumvent this conclusion by providing an alternative account. Whilst noting the evolutionary basis of basic judgements, FitzPatrick argues that rational reflection is simply the autonomous application of intelligence: the capacity to grasp the truth of moral judgements using objective moral facts only. This capacity is understood in much the same way as mathematics, where abstract rules and logic – which maintain truth objectively – are applied to algebraic problems. As a result, our contaminated judgements can be adjusted, removing the influence of natural selection via a mechanism of truth (2008:1). For example, FitzPatrick takes the case of a hypothetical rational bee colony; prior to developing rational autonomy, bees would “speak of ‘sacred duties’ to kill brothers or fertile daughters” – their basic judgements resulting from natural selection. However, these bees may eventually question their reasons “to do everything their evolution…disposed them to do”. Engaging in philosophical debate, FitzPatrick suggests that these bees would overcome their basic judgements and develop “autonomous moral norms” – dependent only on their objective truth, and in spite of their reproductive success – much like humans have (2000:355-56). FitzPatrick’s argument seems compelling; by changing fundamental judgements, rational autonomy effectively deals with Street’s argument about deriving judgements from contaminated sources. Furthermore, other fields as mathematics seem intuitively ‘stance-independent’; once rational, humans select mathematical judgements irrespective of natural selection, such that potentially beneficial expressions like ‘1+1=3’ would never be selected.

However, even if our basic moral judgements can be changed using rational reflection, Street’s concern about the contamination of this tool remains. Specifically, if the development (and form) of our rational reflection was itself influenced by natural selection, then later judgements – even with FitzPatrick’s method – will likewise be influenced. The ‘byproduct thesis’ anticipates this critique; here, rational reflection developed as an “outgrowth of some other capacity” which was selected by evolution (2006:142). This seems to deal with the concern; there are many human capacities, including doing philosophy, which were surely themselves not directly selected for.

Despite this, Street rightly identifies that the fact that evolutionary influence is indirect, is far from a compelling reason to discount it entirely. Indeed, such a complex capacity as rational reflection would likely require the contribution of many different primary capacities, each being developed within an evolutionary context. Furthermore, only by arguing that this outgrowth was unrelated to the original capacity, can realists maintain independence from this indirect influence. In conceding this, however, realists ask us to believe that the “highly specialized, sophisticated capacity” of rational reflection emerged as little more than a coincidence; Street argues that this akin to “[suggesting] that the human eye…emerged as the purely incidental byproduct” of an unrelated capacity (2006:143).

Indeed, whilst the realist account of the capacity of rational reflection remains vague and implausible, the complexity of this capacity unsurprisingly lends itself more to an evolutionary mechanism – of multiple developments, over a long timespan, and for the purpose of survival. Therefore, unlike with mathematics, realists cannot convincingly reject the EDA of how the capacity for rational reflection in humans arose – and neither how the moral judgements following from this mechanism remain free from evolutionary influence.

In conclusion, the moral realist account partially escapes Street’s evolutionary challenge – yet falls short of a compelling case. Certainly, FitzPatrick’s presentation of rational autonomy eases some concerns of contamination from Street’s basic moral judgements, by reassessing our stock of judgements independently. However, this relies on rationality itself remaining free from evolutionary influence – an account provided by realists which is neither clear nor convincing. Ultimately, with the possibility of moral ‘rationality’ (unlike mathematical laws) being shaped by natural selection left open, realists are unable to persuasively conclude that our moral judgements are shaped by objective moral facts alone.

Bibliography:

• FitzPatrick, W. (2000), “Teleology and the Norms of Nature”. Garland.
• FitzPatrick, W. (2008), “Morality and Evolutionary Biology”. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Spring 2021 Edition. URL: https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2021/entries/morality-biology
• Street, S. (2006), “A Darwinian Dilemma for Realist Theories of Value”. Philosophical Studies: An International Journal for Philosophy in the Analytic Tradition, Vol. 127, No. 1, pp. 109-166.