Evolution, or evolutionary ethics, as in Ruse and Wilson

Sources

• “Evolutionary Ethics” (Wikipedia) (opens in a new tab)

  Michael Ruse and E. O. Wilson, “The Evolution of Ethics,” New Scientist, 17 October 1985, page 50

Objections & responses

The is-ought gap cuts both ways. “God commands X” is also an “is”; you can’t get “I ought to do X” from it without a bridging premise. If Hume defeats evolutionary ethics, doesn’t he defeat divine command ethics too?

A sharp objection. The theistic reply is that the bridging premise is different in kind. A perfectly good being who made you, and to whom you owe your existence, wills X is not merely a natural fact, since goodness and obligation are already built into the description, whereas your ancestors who did X had more offspring contains no normative content at all. Whether that reply succeeds is the Euthyphro question again, which is treated under the transcendent-source exhibit. The honest framing is that both sides face a grounding problem and the argument is about which grounding is more plausible.

The “illusion fobbed off on us by our genes” line is quoted by every apologist, but many evolutionary ethicists reject the illusion framing and argue that evolution explains how we track real moral facts.

The quotation is accurate but represents one wing. Evolutionary ethics includes realist versions in which evolution equipped us to perceive moral truths, roughly as it equipped us to perceive physical ones. The reply to those versions is that tracking moral facts requires there to be moral facts to track, which is the point at issue; evolution explains the perceiving, not the existence of what is perceived. That is a friendlier exchange than the illusion quote suggests, and it lands at the same place: what are moral facts, and what makes them binding?

Appears under 1 claim in this case

• If objective moral duties are real, the best explanation is a moral source beyond human beings rather than personal taste, cultural agreement, or evolution.