Evolution and the status of morality

Suppose that the remote evolutionary account of morality is that morality increased intra-group leveling, thus diminishing the relative unfitness of strong reciprocators and therefore ultimately increasing the fitness of everyone in the group. So suppose also that a disposition D to think in moral terms and to be moved by moral judgment was a selected trait. An interesting issue arises:

What are the consequences for the status of morality?

There seem to be three possible views. The evolutionary origin of morality

I. Vindicates morality

II. Is largely irrelevant to the status of morality

III. Diminishes the status of morality

Evolutionary vindication of morality.

There seem to be three types of possible vindication:

1. epistemic (we know that moral claims are true).
2. developmental (evolution has made us in such a way that only following morality leads to flourishing, an Aristotelian view).
3. instrumental (we know that morality is useful)

Note that (1) would be satisfactory for non-cognitivism, including moral fictionalism, but not for for cognitivism, which would require (3).

Evolution does not provide epistemic vindication. Consider any instantiation of morality, one that forbids murder, for example. For "Don't murder" to be fitness enhancing, there is no need that murder be objectively wrong, only that this maxim lead, say, to group cohesion. In short, any instantiation of morality could be an evolutionarily useful fairy tale, much like religion might be taken to be by an atheist. Note that this view sits well with moral fictionalism. Contrast this with the reliability of our perceptual apparatus, also an evolutionary product. For it to be fitness enhancing, it must have at least some link to truth: you won't escape the tiger if your eyes tell you that there is none.

Evolution provides instrumental and developmental vindication only qualifiedly. For example, in the Bowles-Gintis models some individuals without prosocial tendencies are required for preventing drift from conditional to unconditional cooperators that would then be eliminated by selfish non-cooperators. Hence, the evolutionary success of prosocial tendencies (strong reciprocity) requires the continuous presence of defectors. So, morality may be useful, but so is selfish defection if we assume that what is necessary to what is useful is useful as well. The presence of innate prosocial tendencies in most humans and innate non-prosocial tendencies in some humans also casts doubt on the Aristotelian (being moral and acting accordingly as a form of human flourishing) attempt, as there isn't such as thing as a universal human nature here.

Debunking morality

Does evolution debunk morality? Here are a few arguments.

· Consider our sense of fairness. If it's just the product of evolution, then it has little to do with fairness, as it's just the result of something like the survival of the fittest, a probably unfair struggle for survival. The same can be said of all other moral tendencies or ideas we have.

Problem:

Aside from the fact that "survival of the fittest" is at best a metaphor (cooperation can be fitness enhancing), the argument commits the basic fallacy of confusing the origin of an idea or a mental state with its content. For example, there is little doubt that the mother/child affective bond is evolutionarily based, but this does not entail that mothers (human and otherwise) don't love their infant progeny. Evolutionarily produced love is still love.

· Morality exists because of its effects, not because its statements, “Murder is wrong” for example, are true. In other words, the genealogy of morality has nothing or little to do with its justification. It would be as if you discovered that your belief that “Obama is the President of the US” originated in hypnotic suggestion. The bad genealogy would not show that your belief is false, but it should render you very suspicious. Morality has a bad genealogy.

Problem:

Human judgment has an evolutionary genealogy but it is capable of true autonomy, the ability to follow standards of reasoning appropriate to the subject. Such ability is displayed, for example, in the sciences. When applied to morality it shows that certain moral statements, no matter their origin in our minds, are in fact true.

Possible reply: There’s a disanalogy:

o One can make the case that science would not work if it were not, at least approximately, true. The same cannot be done for morality

o The genealogy of science is not strictly evolutionary: quantum mechanics is not the product of evolution; morality is.

o There’s more agreement in the (hard) sciences than in morality