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HomeUpcoming EventsJessica Isserow (ANU): Evolutionary Hypotheses and Moral Skepticism
Jessica Isserow (ANU): Evolutionary Hypotheses and Moral Skepticism

Evolutionary debunking arguments that target morality comprise three premises: the first puts forward a particular account of moral evolution, the second embraces a non-naturalist moral metaphysics, and the third claims that there is no appropriate explanatory connection between the evolutionary process that has given rise to our moral beliefs and the moral facts. Evolutionary debunkers of morality argue that, taken together, these considerations imply that our moral beliefs lack epistemic justification. Accordingly, we must suspend judgment regarding whether any of our moral beliefs correspond to the moral facts—that is, regarding whether any of them are in fact true. Philosophers typically resist evolutionary debunking arguments by attacking one of the latter two premises. In this paper, I pursue a different tactic by putting pressure on the empirical component of evolutionary debunking arguments. By drawing attention to many alternative evolutionary explanations for our moral beliefs currently on offer, I aim to show that debunkers must assume the truth of a particular kind of evolutionary hypothesis in order to undermine our claim to moral knowledge. This is because there are a number of empirically plausible evolutionary accounts of morality currently on offer and not all cast our moral evolution as a process that bears no appropriate explanatory connection to moral truth. The consideration of these alternative moral genealogies gives rise to a new epistemic scenario; given that we currently lack good reason to favour any one hypothesis over the others, we cannot yet know whether we find ourselves in a world in which our moral beliefs lack epistemic justification. Ultimately, moral skepticism, if established by way of evolutionary debunking, remains uncomfortably hostage to empirical fortune.

Date & time

  • Tue 23 Jun 2015, 4:00 pm - 6:00 pm

Location

Coombs Seminar Room B

Event Series

Philsoc seminars