Evolutionary Ethics? Substantiators, Skeptics, and Moral Realism
Date
2013-04-30
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Abstract
Hardly a week passes without new findings emerging from evolutionary psychology regarding how our view of morality has been influenced by our biological evolution. Evolutionary ethics is a normative project built upon these scientific insights. Evolutionary ethicists fall into two groups: substantiators or skeptics. Substantiators believe moral ideas can now be scientifically proven. Skeptics believe there are no moral truths because morality is just a biological adaptation. I believe the project of evolutionary ethics is misconceived. I argue that both the substantiators and the skeptics fail to show the direct relevance of biology to ethics. Moral truths can be established. But biology cannot support nor undercut these truths. I present the doctrine of moral realism as embodying the proper process of ethical inquiry, and I defend moral realism from evolutionary psychology’s skeptical conclusions. I determine that biology can indirectly inform ethics, but never guide it. The ethical realm is independent.
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Citation
Jimenez, K. C. (2013). Evolutionary Ethics? Substantiators, Skeptics, and Moral Realism (Master's thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca. doi:10.11575/PRISM/26002