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Nativism and the Evolutionary Debunking of Morality

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Abstract

Evolutionary debunking arguments purport to undercut the justification of our moral judgments by showing why a tendency to make moral judgments would evolve regardless of the truth of those judgments. (Machery and Mallon (2010). Evolution of morality. In J.M. Doris and The Moral Psychology Research Group (Eds.), The Moral Psychology Handbook (pp. 3–46). Oxford: Oxford University Press) have recently tried to disarm these arguments by showing that moral cognition – in the sense that is relevant to debunking – is not the product of natural selection. Specifically, they present a barrage of increasingly influential challenges against reciprocity-based approaches to moral nativism. In the present paper I defend the nativist account of moral cognition against these criticisms, thereby bolstering the skeptical conclusions of evolutionary debunking arguments. However, Machery and Mallon's critique does successfully highlight several vulnerabilities in Richard Joyce's approach to debunking, suggesting several ways in which it can be revised toward generating a more robust version of the argument.

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Notes

  1. This argument works most naturally with a cognitivist account of moral judgment, although Joyce (2006) endorses a hybrid position. Joyce (2013) has recently suggested that it can also be made to work on noncognitivist accounts.

  2. In what follows, all discussion of their work will be in reference to this chapter.

  3. Here I follow Joyce in interpreting the nativist claim to be that “the present-day existence of the trait is to be explained by reference to a genotype having granted ancestors reproductive advantage, rather than by reference to psychological processes of acquisition” (2008a, p. 213). I will also follow Joyce in taking the hypothesis to be primarily about the existence of our tendency to make moral judgments and experience moral motivation.

  4. It is important to also keep in mind that Joyce acknowledges (e.g. 2006 p. 140) the tremendous role culture plays in determining the content of a particular individual's moral judgments, and he does not rule out the relevance of group selection theories.

  5. Joyce opts for avoiding the label ‘reciprocal altruism’ due to its tendency to obscure debate (see West et al. 2007), and I will follow this convention.

  6. For comparison, consider that adults today might behave differently depending on whether or not they are using contraception. But the belief that a sexual act is unlikely to result in offspring does not eliminate its pleasure (or its capacity to arouse jealousy). This is because adaptive sexual behaviors are not driven by overt reasoning about their fitness consequences.

  7. Importantly, the force of these arguments relies only on direct reciprocity, and does not depend on any assumptions about reputation (see §5).

  8. This is not to deny that selection has operated between then and now. The point is just that the selection of cooperative tendencies is not hypothesized to have begun so recently in our evolution.

  9. Today the mere sense of being watched, even in the absence of an overt belief that someone is looking, is apparently enough to strengthen cooperative behavior in humans (Haley and Fessler 2005; Bateson, et al. 2006; cf. §4.1).

  10. Although there are various other ways to explain moral norms not governing social interaction (e.g. Kurzban et al. 2010), the important point to note is that Joyce is attempting to explain the existence of moral norms, not the content of all current moral norms. As he cautions (2006, p. 141): “…it might be protested that many present-day moral practices have little to do with reciprocation: our duties to children, to the severely disabled, to future generations, to animals, and (if you like) to the environment all are arguably maintained without expectation of payback. Yet this objection really misses the mark, for these considerations hardly undermine the hypothesis that it was for regulating reciprocal exchanges that morality evolved in the first place; it is not being claimed that reciprocity alone is what continues to sustain social relations.”

  11. See Baumard et al. (2013) and Baumard (2010) for helpful discussion of important differences between partner control and partner choice models of cooperation.

  12. I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for pointing this out to me.

  13. There are several problems with this study, however (Sousa 2009; Sousa et al. 2009; Rosas 2012; but see Stich et al. 2009), not least among which is the fact that some of the harmful actions included punishment of guilty persons and warfare training (cf. Nichols 2004, pp. 16–17). It is far from clear that Kelly et al.'s findings call for a rejection, rather than a revision, of the research program.

  14. Here's a soft analogy with linguistics: it is plausible that the mind comes prepared to treat some noises as verbs and some noises as nouns, but leaves open what noises fall into which category, allowing for wide cultural divergence. See Nichols (2004) for a view along these lines.

  15. This is a prerequisite for moral cognition, but is not specific to morality.

  16. Thanks to Edouard Machery for pressing me on this point.

  17. Mackie (1977, p. 15) writes: “The claim that values are not objective, are not part of the fabric of the world…also includes non-moral values, notably aesthetic ones, beauty and various kinds of artistic merit.” He continues: “clearly much the same considerations apply to aesthetic and to moral values, and there would be at least some initial implausibility in a view that gave the one a different status from the other.”

  18. Joyce (2013) is relatively open about this. See also Kahane (2011).

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Acknowledgments

For their valuable comments on earlier drafts of this paper, I am very grateful to James Beebe, Edouard Machery, and an anonymous reviewer for this journal. I am also grateful for helpful discussion with Ariane Nomikos, Timothy Schroeder, and audiences at the University at Buffalo and the University at Albany.

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    Brendan Cline

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Cline, B. Nativism and the Evolutionary Debunking of Morality. Rev.Phil.Psych. 6, 231–253 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-014-0207-2

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