[lit-ideas] Morality and Evolutionary Biology
- From: "" <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> (Redacted sender "Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx" for DMARC)
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 24 May 2014 12:57:51 -0400 (EDT)
There is a good entry on the subject line at the Stanford Encyclopedia:
FitzPatrick, William, "Morality and Evolutionary Biology", The Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2012 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL =
http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2012/entries/morality-biology/.
with interesting references worth having a look.
The author concludes in an analytic vein:
"Thus, although the evolutionary story fits naturally with a merely
non-cognitivist metaethical view, it may fit equally well with a cognitivist
view. If one rejects the existence of moral truths, the latter would then lead
to an error theory (Mackie 1977). But as discussed in section 4.1, it is far
from clear how much support evolutionary biology itself lends to moral
anti-realism or irrealism. It is consistent with plausible evolutionary
stories that although our capacities for normative guidance originally evolved
for reasons that had nothing to do with moral truths as such, we now
regularly employ them to deliberate about and to communicate moral truths. So
all
three metaethical views discussed here—expressivism, error theory and moral
realism—remain on the table."
Worth checking out.
Cheers,
Speranza
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