Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Why undermining evolutionary debunkers is not enough

  • Published:
Synthese Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Denying the conclusion of a valid argument is not generally permissible if one suspends on one premise of the argument and believes the other premise(s). This can happen when one’s only critique of an argument is to undermine one premise. There is incoherence there. Here I examine how this is relevant to the debate on evolutionary debunking of our moral knowledge. I argue that one significant line of response to the debunker is unsuccessful: merely undermining the debunker’s empirical claim. It is not rational to respond this way and believe one has moral knowledge. First I present evidence that prominent critics of the debunking argument merely undermine the debunker’s empirical claim. Then I argue for two premises: (1) merely undermining a premise can only justify a middling amount of doubt towards the premise and (2) we should have no more doubt about the conclusion of a valid argument than we do about the premises. Implications of the argument are explored.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. Morton (2018) gives a similar two premise—epistemological and empirical—regimentation. Here I use the non-accidentally truth-conducive condition, but as mentioned below (Sect. 5) my argument does not rest on formulating the debunker’s argument with this particular condition for knowledge.

  2. Berker (2014) argues that the constructivist is no better situated to respond to the argument than the moral realist.

  3. See also White (2010), Wielenberg (2010) and Schafer (2010). Each Moorean response is much more sophisticated and nuanced than I have indicated here, but they share the idea that we can appeal to some substantive moral judgments in our response to the debunker.

  4. Shafer-Landau (2012) does say that moral beliefs are “strongly presumptively warranted.” This suggests that Shafer-Landau may embrace a Moorean strategy.

  5. See also Vavova (forthcoming).

  6. Friedman (2013) Sect. 3.1 provides some exceptions.

  7. I am assuming here that the argument is minimal in that all of its premises are used to deduce the conclusion. If it has extra premises and you disbelieve one of those while accepting the rest, then that argument still provides reason for you to accept the conclusion.

  8. And the same would be true if I suspended judgment about (1) instead of (2) (imagine I see the coin flip is heads, but the rule of the game about which of heads/tails is the winner is sealed in an envelope).

  9. I am assuming closure of propositional justification across known entailment but I am not assuming transmission of propositional justification across known entailment. Though closure of justification is not without its critics (see Avnur (2012)), it is widely endorsed.

  10. Rosa (2020) explores and defends rational requirements like the Argument Rule for arguments where one suspends on a premise. McGrath (forthcoming) explicitly endorses an instance of the rule: “if I am agnostic about whether supernatural beings exist and I know that if God exists there are supernatural beings, then I cannot, without irrationality, believe that God exists.”

  11. Rosa (2019) argues that while we cannot affirm a general principle that it is irrational to suspend judgment about one premise, believe the rest of the premises (if any), and disbelieve the conclusion, we can affirm a general principle that one has a reason not to be in that state. I think one has a defeasible defeater for the set (or at least one) of those doxastic attitudes. A defeater is different than a reason, but I cannot develop this theory here.

  12. There are hard questions here about the relationship between belief/suspension and credence. For the purposes of this paper we can assume that belief, suspension, and disbelief are associated with high, middling, and low credence. Ultimately, however, I find that view unsatisfactory. I argue that there are no good credal accounts of belief, suspension, and disbelief in del Rio (manuscript).

  13. See also Adams (1998), 31–53. These premises need not be probabilistically independent.

  14. Another way of getting a similar result is to employ the Entailment Rule: (A ⊨ B) → P(A) ≤ P(B). Since the premises of a valid argument entail the conclusion, the conclusion cannot have a lower probability than the conjunction of the premises. This method can create a higher lower bound than the Uncertainty Rule, and so is more constraining. However it is less user friendly since the probability of the conjunction of the premises must be calculated, taking into account whether or not the premises are probabilistically independent. The Uncertainty Rule will always provide a lower bound that is equal to or less than the lower bound provided by the Entailment Rule. My argument is given using the weaker constraint.

  15. For the purposes of this paper I will assume that identified probabilistic incoherence is irrational. Details for a view like this are worked out in Dogramaci (2018).

  16. My purposes do not require me to go into these consideration here. See Joyce (2001, 2005), Mackie (1977), Street (2006) and Vavova (2015).

  17. See also Schafer (2014) and Setiya (2012) for defense of a non-accidentality condition.

  18. The same result looks like it comes from the knowledge norm of belief: one ought only believe p if one’s belief that p would amount to knowledge (Williamson, 2000). Since the Mere Underminer must believe m does not amount to knowledge, accepting the knowledge norm of belief means that she should not, by her own lights, believe m.

  19. Bergmann (2005, 426).

  20. See Hazlett (2012) and White (2010) for critique of these positions.

References

  • Adams, E. (1998). A primer of probability logic. . Csli Publications.

    Google Scholar 

  • Adams, E., & Levine, H. (1975). On the uncertainties transmitted from premises to conclusions in deductive inferences. Synthese, 30, 429–460.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Avnur, Y. (2012). Closure reconsidered. Philosophers’ Imprint, 12, 1–16.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bergmann, M. (2006). Justification without awareness: A defense of epistemic externalism. Oxford University Press.

  • Bergmann, M. (2005). Defeaters and higher-level requirements. Philosophical Quarterly, 55, 419–436.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Berker, S. (2014). Does evolutionary psychology show that normativity is mind-dependent? In J. D’Arms & D. Jacobson (Eds.), Moral psychology and human agency: Philosophical essays on the science of ethics. Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Copp, D. (2007). Morality in a natural world: Selected essays in metaethics. . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Copp, D. (2008). Darwinian skepticism about moral realism. Philosophical Issues, 18, 186–206.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • del Rio, A. (manuscript). Suspending belief in credal accounts.

  • Dogramaci, S. (2017). Explaining our moral reliability. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 98, 71–86.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dogramaci, S. (2018). Rational credence through reasoning. Philosophers’ Imprint, 18, 1–25.

    Google Scholar 

  • Enoch, D. (2011). Taking morality seriously: A defense of robust realism. . Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • FitzPatrick, W. (2014). Why there is no Darwinian dilemma for ethical realism. In Michael Bergmann & Patrick Kain (Eds.), Challenges to moral and religious belief: disagreement and evolution. Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • FitzPatrick, W. (2015). Debunking evolutionary debunking of ethical realism. Philosophical Studies, 172, 883–904.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Friedman, J. (2013). Suspended judgment. Philosophical Studies, 162, 165–181.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hazlett, A. (2012). Higher-order epistemic attitudes and intellectual humility. Episteme, 9, 205–223.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Huemer, M. (2007). Moore’s paradox and the norm of belief. In S. Nuccetelli & G. Seay (Eds.), Themes from G.E. moore: New essays in epistemology and ethics. Clarendon Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Huemer, M. (2011). The puzzle of metacoherence. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 82, 1–21.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Joyce, R. (2001). The myth of morality. . Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Joyce, R. (2005). The Evolution of Morality. Bradford.

  • Kelly, T. (2008). Common sense as evidence: Against revisionary ontology and skepticism. Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 32, 53–78.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kyburg, H. (1961). Probability and the logic of rational belief. Wesleyan University Press.

  • Mackie, J. L. (1977). Ethics: Inventing right and wrong. Penguin Books.

  • Makinson, D. C. (1965). The paradox of the preface. Analysis, 25, 205–207.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • McGrath, M. (forthcoming). Being neutral: suspension of judgement, agnosticism and inquiry. Noûs.

  • Moore, G. E. (1939). Proof of an external world. Proceedings of the British Academy, 25, 273–300.

    Google Scholar 

  • Morton, J. (2018). When do replies to the evolutionary debunking argument beg the question? Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 97, 265–280.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rosa, L. (2019). Logical principles of agnosticism. Erkenntnis, 84, 1263–1283.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rosa, L. (2020). Rational requirements for suspended judgment. Philosophical Studies, pp. 1–22.

  • Schafer, K. (2010). Evolution and normative scepticism. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 88, 471–488.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schafer, K. (2014). Knowledge and two forms of non-accidental truth. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 89, 373–393.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Setiya, K. (2012). Knowing right from wrong. . Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Shafer-Landau, R. (2012). Evolutionary debunking, moral realism and moral knowledge. Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy, 7, 1–38.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Street, S. (2006). A Darwinian dilemma for realist theories of value. Philosophical Studies, 127, 109–166.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Street, S. (2008). Constructivism about reasons. Oxford Studies in Metaethics, 3, 207–246.

    Google Scholar 

  • Street, S. (2014). If everything happens for a reason, then we don’t know what reasons are: Why the price of theism is normative skepticism. In M. Bergmann, & P. Kain, (eds.), Challenges to moral and religious belief: Disagreement and evolution. Oxford University Press.

  • Sturgeon, S. (2014). Pollock on defeasible reasons. Philosophical Studies, 169, 105–118.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Vavova, K. (2014). Debunking evolutionary Debunking. Oxford Studies in Metaethics, 9, 76–101.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Vavova, K. (2015). Evolutionary Debunking of moral realism. Philosophy Compass, 10, 104–116.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Vavova, K. (forthcoming). The limits of rational belief revision: A dilemma for the darwinian debunker. Noûs.

  • White, R. (2010). You just believe that because. Philosophical Perspectives, 24, 573–615.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wielenberg, E. (2010). On the evolutionary debunking of morality. Ethics, 120, 441–464.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Williamson, T. (2000). Knowledge and its Limits. Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Yamada, M. (2011). Getting It Right By Accident. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 83, 72–105.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

Thanks to the audience at the World Congress of Philosophy in Beijing, China for discussion of my argument. I’m grateful for many conversations about evolutionary debunking with Daniel Eaton, Steven Gubka, Derek Haderlie, Amelia Kahn, and Justin Morton. Thanks to Nevin Climenhaga, Jonathan Dancy, Josh Dever, Liz Jackson, Cory Juhl, Miriam Schoenfield, Katia Vavova and two anonymous referees for critical discussions. Special thanks are due to Sinan Dogramaci and David Sosa for feedback on every stage of this paper’s development.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. The University of Texas, Austin, TX, USA

    Andrew del Rio

Authors
  1. Andrew del Rio
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Andrew del Rio.

Additional information

Publisher's Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

del Rio, A. Why undermining evolutionary debunkers is not enough. Synthese 199, 7437–7452 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-021-03123-6

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-021-03123-6

Keywords

Search

Navigation