Abstract
The causal premise of the evolutionary debunking argument contends that human moral beliefs are explained by the process of natural selection. While it is universally acknowledged that such a premise is fundamental to the debunker’s case, the vast majority of philosophers focus instead on the epistemic premise that natural selection does not track moral truth and the resulting skeptical conclusion(s). Recently, however, some have begun to concentrate on the causal premise. So far, the upshot of this small but growing literature has been that the causal premise is likely false due to the seemingly persuasive evidence that our moral beliefs are in fact not the result of natural selection. In this paper, I argue that this view is mistaken. Specifically, I advocate the Innate Biases Model, which contends that there is not only compelling evidence for an evolved cognitive capacity for acquiring norms but also for the existence of an evolutionarily instilled set of cognitive biases that make it either more or less likely that we adopt certain moral beliefs.
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Notes
Natural selection is the process whereby organisms with phenotypes better adapted to their environment tend to pass on more genes to succeeding generations than organisms with phenotypes that are less well adapted. Fitness is the quantitative representation of this process.
A moral realist can be understood as someone who believes that there are moral truths that hold independently of our moral beliefs and attitudes.
In the case of this particular belief, the tendencies that shaped it probably came about as a result of kin selection.
For a version of the EDA that leans more towards outright error theory, see Ruse (1998).
Some quotes: “[I]t must suffice to emphasize the hypothetical nature of my arguments, and to say that while I am skeptical of the details of the evolutionary picture I offer, I think its outlines are certain enough to make it well worth exploring the philosophical implications” (Street, 2006, § 3). “[T]he evolutionary explanations in the above examples, as plausible as they may sound, are a long way from even beginning to fill out the empirical details needed to fully secure this premise” (Kahane, 2011, p. 111). “Reconstructing the actual history of [our moral past], from its beginning to the present, is plainly beyond the evidence available…[The] data are too sparse to screen out rival hypotheses about the sequence of events” (Kitcher, 2011, p. 11). “No one, not even the debunker, thinks [the empirical claim] is conclusive” (Vavova, 2014, p. 79).
Of course, I won’t be arguing that the evidence is conclusive, but I do believe that the evidence is at the very least suggestive.
For an updated defense of the Westermarck hypothesis, see Wilson (2019).
Such a labeling process makes sense in the context of natural selection, for it would be extremely difficult (and costly) to instill a mechanism that can in some way sense or pick up on who is actually a genetic relation.
While this interpretation is fairly well supported, it isn’t entirely uncontroversial. For an alternative interpretation, see Cofnas (2020).
Some are skeptical of using universality as evidence of an evolutionarily instilled mechanism, and such skepticism isn’t entirely unfounded. Indeed, all known cultures control and use fire, but this does not mean that we have evolutionarily instilled mechanisms for fire use. Nevertheless, universality is still accepted as a fairly good indicator of the existence of an evolutionarily instilled mechanism, especially when it comes to mechanisms related to moral norms (including biases and beliefs). For a full defense of why this is the case, see Machery and Mallon (2010) and Pölzler (2018).
This view is very close to the one advocated by Street (2006). More on this in the next section.
Except, perhaps, something along the lines of “don’t have sexual intercourse with anyone that is at the very least a member of your nuclear family.” Though even this possibility comes off as more of a bias than a specific belief.
And, just as it did in the Israeli kibbutzim, it would make sense that such a bias sometimes “misfires.” That is, it sometimes leads to incest norms that aren’t necessarily optimal in the evolutionary sense, such as when it leads to norms that target non-genetically connected relationships. Of course, an important question to ask here is: how many “misfirings” is too many? That is, when exploring the anthropological evidence of incest norms, at what point can it be said that the IBM can no longer account for the data and a more culturally focused explanation is needed? Indeed, if it were the case that most or even a significant number of incest norms “misfired” insofar as they prohibited sexual relationships between non-genetically related individuals, then I would be willing to admit that the IBM is perhaps less compelling than alternative cultural explanations. However, as far as I know, while there are certainly a handful of examples of such “misfirings” found in the literature (e.g. Henrich, 2015; Cofnas, 2020) the overwhelming consensus supports the idea that most incest taboos do indeed target genetically connected relationships.
See also Sripada and Stich (2006).
For example, people have a fairly easy time figuring out who the norm violators are when they are told to enforce such norms as (the more familiar) “If you are under twenty-one years of age, you cannot drink beer in the bar” or (the less familiar) “If you eat mongogo nut, then you must have a tattoo on your chest” (Cosmides & Tooby, 2005).
Indeed, people have a much more difficult time with conditionals not related to norms, such as determining when an indicative conditional is false under the following rule: “If there is a red bird in the drawing on top, then there is an orange on the drawing below” (Cosmides, 1989; Sugiyama et al., 2002).
Of course, it should be acknowledged that this evidence isn’t uncontroversial. See, for example, Sperber and Girotto (2002) for an alternative explanation.
See Machery and Mallon (2010, pp. 16–19) for a such a discussion.
Indeed, we will see evidence in support of this in the next section.
Of course, Joyce and Street would not claim that our moral beliefs are completely shaped by natural selection either, but they would claim that they are significantly shaped by natural selection at their most fundamental level. The IBM can’t go quite that far, as other biases might be shaping our beliefs even at the most fundamental level.
For example, there still could be an innate moral capacity, but perhaps it is more general and open to environmental influence.
With that said, there may in fact be evidence for a more general innate bias concerning deference and respect for elders and/or authority figures. To explore such evidence (with the IBM in mind) would be to look for near universality in norms that advocate respecting elders and/or authority figures, but a diversity in the particular way these norms are manifested (e.g. in one culture, there might be a strong norm about respecting grandparents, while in another culture, there might be a more general respect norm, along the lines of, “if the person is older than you, you must respect them”). If it turned out either (a) that there wasn’t a near universality of such respect norms across cultures, or (b) that there was a near universality in both the existence of such norms and their particular contents, then we would have reason to doubt that an innate bias is at work.
And just because there is slightly more blood flow to a certain region doesn’t mean that many other regions aren’t also experiencing activity, which may or may not be fundamental to the particular function in question (Jasanoff, 2018, pp. 71–90).
Indeed, there is evidence of reciprocal altruism among apes (De Waal, 1996), and because it is less likely that apes understand a situation as “calling out for” a certain response, the more basic positive-feelings-towards-someone-who-helps-me hypothesis is more parsimonious and promising.
Street herself does not discuss incest.
Of course, what counts as a harm probably varies between cultures. For example, cultures with ceremonial cannibalism and scarification probably don’t view such actions as harms. But, again, this is supportive of the IBM. If harm situations “called out” for a particular normative response, we probably wouldn’t see so much variation between cultures in what counts as a harm. Indeed, such variation implies the existence of a less content-laden mechanism.
For a discussion of this possibility, see Dwyer (2006).
The Levys (p. 13) mention that harm norms might best be understood as a culturally explained “good trick” (Dennett, 1995) in response to a common human problem, much like covering one’s head in the sun. However, these two examples are not analogous, as harming others can often be in a person’s short-term interest. Thus, letting people figure out for themselves that (at least some types of) harm is bad in the long run would likely not be an evolutionarily stable strategy.
Interestingly, many nonhuman animals also develop aversions to meat (Fessler & Navarette, 2003).
The nerves and blood vessels of the primate eye are in front of the retina, which makes little sense from a design standpoint. See the cephalopod eye for a superior design.
This of course results in a significant portion of women dying during childbirth, a risk which most other female animals do not suffer from.
A bauplan is commonly understood as the overall body plan or blue print of an organism. See Gould and Lewontin (1979) for a complete explanation.
True, for the IBM to be correct, a normative capacity also had to evolve, but such a capacity is probably necessary for Joyce’s and Street’s accounts, as well. Indeed, both accounts would need to explain why we have non-moral, normative beliefs, and the kind of normative capacity posited by the IBM would do that well.
Effective because having a broader, less restrictive mechanism would allow for more variation, which has likely always been an important aspect of human and hominin life.
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Dale, M.T. The evolution of moral belief: support for the debunker’s causal premise. HPLS 44, 23 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40656-022-00505-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40656-022-00505-y