Review of Richard Joyce, The Evolution of Morality

Abstract

The human moral sense is an innate cognitive tendency shaped by natural selection to provide instrumental advantages, such as enhanced individual motivation and social coordination. This capacity is characterized by the attribution of “practical clout” to judgments, rendering them inescapable and authoritative regardless of an agent’s personal ends. Because these evolutionary benefits are independent of the truth of moral claims, the biological etiology of moralizing serves as a debunking explanation. Unlike mathematical beliefs, which require a truth-dependent explanation to account for their adaptive value, moral beliefs arise from a process that does not presuppose their veracity. Consequently, no moral beliefs possess epistemic justification, leading to a position of agnostic moral skepticism. While moral discourse may be retained as a useful fiction for its social and psychological utility, it lacks a foundation in evidence or objective truth. This skeptical conclusion rests on the premise that the instrumental value of a belief system is distinct from its epistemic warrant. However, the degree to which an evolutionary account of the capacity to moralize can explain the specific, diverse content of moral judgments remains a central problem in evaluating the potential autonomy of ethics from the natural sciences. – AI-generated abstract.