Volume 11, Number 1
December 2016
DISCUSSION

The Debunking Challenge to Moral Realism: How Evolution (Ultimately) Matters

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Volume 11, Number 1, December 2016, Pages 1–8
https://doi.org/10.26556/jesp.v11i1.188
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Abstract

Evolutionary debunking arguments (edas) have attracted extensive attention in metaethics, as they pose an important challenge to moral realism. Mogensen suggests that edas contain a fallacy, by confusing two distinct forms of biological explanation—ultimate and proximate. If correct, the point is of considerable importance: evolutionary genealogies of human morality are simply irrelevant for debunking. But we argue that the actual situation is subtler: while ultimate claims do not strictly entail proximate ones, there are important evidential connections between the two. Attending to these connections clears ground for a new and improved eda. However, it also brings into view some possible problems with edas that have been largely neglected so far.
Copyright © 2016 Arnon Levy and Yair Levy
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license.
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