Street’s evolutionary debunking argument against realist theories of value recognizes Darwinian forces of natural selection as having had an instrumental role in shaping the bedrock of our normative systems, what she calls “proto-evaluative judgments”. These forces launched our bank of evaluative judgments with the aim of selecting for a capacity to survive rather than for an apprehension of attitude-independent moral truths. She thus argues that we have reason to doubt the epistemic validity of our moral systems (124). The realist is given two avenues, the first is to reject the relation between evolutionary forces and our evaluative truths, which leads to an implausible conclusion of unmitigated moral skepticism. The second is to acknowledge the relation and offer what Street calls a tracking account which would posit that evolutionary forces selected those most fit to grasp the evaluative judgements which are morally true (109). I will expand on Street’s arguments against both realist positions, and argue they were ultimately unsuccessful due to Katia Vavova’s third-factor account in response to Street, which if left unchallenged dooms debunkers to slip into rampant moral skepticism. 

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The first option for the realist is denying any relation between the Darwinian forces which aided in developing our moral systems, and the evaluative truths that we hold. The realist view understands evaluative truths as preceding and existing independently of our evaluative judgements (155). Let’s suppose actions that promote the interests of our social cluster are regarded as morally right. Street’s account argues that the reason we hold this to be morally right isn’t because the action holds intrinsic truthful value, but rather the moral tradition of acting in this way stood the test of time because it promoted the survival of the social cluster that was now more cohesive, more capable of fending off against external threats, as well as cable of passing on the tradition to the next generation. The realist can either give an account for how the survival of the social cluster was promoted by their ability to comprehend the moral truth that aiding one’s in-group is right, or they can deny the relation all together. If the realist denies a causal relation between the evolutionary forces and the moral truths we’ve acquired, then they must concede that our normative systems might very well be off-track. Instead of the winds of evolutionary adaptation blowing the ship of our normative systems towards the “destination in question, namely evaluative truth” they would have steered us towards whatever evaluative content allowed for reproductive success (122). Some philosophers such as Bernard Williams might attribute the overlap between the incidental moral judgements we’ve acquired and the reflective moral truths to what he describes as “moral luck” (Dworkin 125). Street on the other hand calls for a more stringent skepticism of the content of our evaluative bank of moral judgements given the improbability of such luck arising amongst a “universe of logically possible evaluative judgements and truths'' (122). Instead, the second option for the realist, the tracking account, seems more effective a strategy against the debunker’s claim. 

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Derek Parfit drives this strategy forward by arguing that evolution selected humans for their capacity to be aware of the “rational requirements” of a given circumstance and their ability to respond to it appropriately (Street 125). This meant that those capable of grasping natural evaluative truths were selected for this advantageous trait of superior reason. Rather than viewing evolutionary forces as disruptive to our normative systems, they were complementary in that they ensured our understanding of moral truths. On this realist account, a community that has sufficiently developed their cognitive capacities would be able to grasp the evaluative truth that caring for one’s offspring is morally and survivalistically advantageous, so long as we consider survival to hold intrinsic moral value. Yet, it is exactly these basic moral assumptions which Street contends with as being under question in the first place. Is survival to be considered a moral good because of some natural moral property that it holds prior to our formation of that moral judgement, or do we consider it good simply because it promoted itself as a moral good as it allowed for reproductive success? Street challenges the tracking account given that it would have the explanatory burden of determining what natural fact irreducibly supervenes on, or that we derive from, the evaluative judgement of caring for one’s offspring (131). Instead she promotes the more parsimonious view that such judgements were selected because they allow for their own subsistence through enhanced reproductive success, rather than on the basis of the truth value of that judgement (129), and might I add, on the basis of the moral value that Street unavoidably puts into question. 

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While Street’s debunking claim doesn’t entail moral skepticism in itself, its implications dance the fine line between a targeted epistemological challenge specific to realism, and an unfettered moral skepticism that burdens anti-realists just the same. Street identifies a valid epistemological concern, namely that Darwinian influences have “contaminated with illegitimate influence” our pools of evaluative judgments (124). Given that evolutionary forces are aimed at survival rather than attitude independent moral truths, the assumption is that these beliefs erred from the moral truths, calling for some degree of moral skepticism. Vavova posits on the other hand, that if our fitness enhancing beliefs “correlate with the moral truths” rather than strictly evolve from them, then we may challenge the claim that evolutionary forces distort our moral systems (115). This third-factor account aims to propose some basic moral principle that aligns evolutionary drivers with moral truths to a degree that is sufficient as to merit foothold in our current bank of evaluative judgements necessary to distinguish between the contaminated and uncontaminated judgments. One such moral principle Enoch argues is the assumption that survival is good (168). Thus the very act of being inclined towards survival also targets us towards the development of moral judgements that are in alignment with this initial moral truth. 

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On the other hand, Street argues that any such attempt at salvaging our normative systems for untarnished moral truths using reflective equilibrium will be trivial given that we would be judging the degree of contamination, so to speak, using other potentially contaminated evaluative judgements as a starting point (124). If we were to question whether the evaluative judgement of sacrificing one’s life for the collective is morally right or wrong relative to the assumption that survival holds intrinsic moral value, we would be missing the point. Given that our most basic moral assumptions are under examination, using them as moral axioms through which we judge other contaminated evaluative judgements ignores the possibility that that very assumption might deviate from attitude independent truths. Vavova thus reduces the threshold for minimal moral assumption to “pain is bad” but even this fails to evade a central assumption surrounding Street’s targeted epistemological challenge, that morality could be about anything (115). 

In Street’s “universe of logically possible evaluative judgements and truths” (122), perhaps uncharitably, humanity’s normative systems could have evolved to merit infanticide and racial supremecy. Our inability to accurately scrutinize these once prominent moral attitudes on the basis of some basic moral principle would lend to the trivialization of our understanding of morality. As Vavova points, if we allow morality to mean anything outside the confines of our most basic moral assumptions, then we would have no grounds to think that evolutionary forces have pushed us either away or towards this mysteriously hidden moral truth, given that we have no means of extrapolating a moral truth. She thus concludes that it is crucial to both the debunker and the moral realist, that we grant some assumptions validity in order to “recognize that we might be wrong about morality” (116). Consequently, if the debunker has to acknowledge some basic moral assumptions as being truthful, the realists may take the third-account route. This would allow for the proposition of a principle that works in conjunction with evolutionary forces, be it Enoch’s assumption that evolution is good, or Wielenberg’s account for evolution favoring cognitive capacities which entail the recognition of inherent rights (114). Not only would this insinuate that fitness enhancing beliefs aim towards the same direction as these basic moral truths that are inherent to the campaign of evolution, but it would also grant the realist the capacity to argue that reflective equilibrium acts a valid countermeasure to the distortionary effects of Darwinian forces.   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Citations:

Dworkin, Ronald. “Objectivity and Truth: You'd Better Believe It.” Philosophy and Public Affairs, vol. 25, no. 2, 1996, pp. 87–139., doi:10.1111/j.1088-4963.1996.tb00036.x.

Enoch, David. “The Epistemological Challenge to Metanormative Realism: How Best to Understand It, and How to Cope with It.” Philosophical Studies, vol. 148, no. 3, 2010, pp. 413–438., doi:10.1007/s11098-009-9333-6.

Street, Sharon. “A Darwinian Dilemma for Realist Theories of Value.” Philosophical Studies, vol. 127, no. 1, Jan. 2005, pp. 109–166., doi:10.1007/s11098-005-1726-6.

Vavova, Katia. “Evolutionary Debunking of Moral Realism.” Philosophy Compass, vol. 10, no. 2, 2014, pp. 104–116., doi:10.1111/phc3.12194.