Philosophical Issues, 18, Interdisciplinary Core Philosophy, 2008

DARWINIAN SKEPTICISM ABOUT MORAL REALISM

David Copp University of Florida

1. Introduction There appear to be plausible Darwinian evolutionary explanations of a range of psychological phenomena with moral import, phenomena that are both conative and cognitive in nature. Call these the phenomena of moral psychology. These phenomena include the fact that humans have a tendency to develop and to become disposed to express a variety of conative states, including morally significant desires, sentiments, and emotions. There is, for example, a tendency to develop moral attitudes that favor cooperation, a tendency of parents to desire to care for their offspring, and a tendency of those who have received goods from others to desire to reciprocate. The phenomena I have in mind also include a variety of cognitive capacities, including those required to form moral beliefs, and they include a tendency to form such beliefs. And they include the capacity for what Allan Gibbard calls normative governance (1990, 6180), which arguably depends on a capacity to feel shame and guilt, a capacity to understand social norms, and a capacity for complex practical reasoning. I will say more about these phenomena in what follows. To simplify my task, I assume that the nature of these phenomena is not at issue. Drawing on the work of evolutionary biologists, a number of philosophers have argued that Darwinian forces have strongly influenced the phenomena of moral psychology with the result that the nature of the phenomena, including the content of our moral beliefs, can be explained, at least in part, on the basis of evolutionary theory.1 Call this the Darwinian hypothesis. I assume for the sake of argument that it is correct. The Darwinian hypothesis is compatible with a variety of specific proposals about the exact way in which evolutionary pressures influenced the phenomena. And it is

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compatible with different views about how strongly the Darwinian forces influenced the phenomena. The question I am interested in is whether, if the Darwinian hypothesis is correct, there is then, on this basis, a solid argument, albeit not a conclusive argument, against moral realism. I focus on an argument that I believe is especially helpful in clarifying the nature of the challenge Darwinism poses for moral realism. The argument is due to Sharon Street (2006). Elements of it are found in the work of Richard Joyce (2006), Philip Kitcher (2006), and others. Street argues that the truth of the Darwinian hypothesis would pose a dilemma for moral realism and also for realism about value in general.2 For if evolutionary forces played a tremendous role in shaping the content of human [moral] attitudes, realists must explain the relation between these forces and the moral facts. The key question is whether evolutionary forces did or did not cause our psychology to be such that our moral beliefs tend to track the facts. If realists answer this question in the negative, she argues, they face the skeptical result that our moral beliefs are unlikely to be true. But if they answer in the affirmative, they are committed to the specific Darwinian hypothesis that natural selection favored ancestors who were able to grasp those truths. This hypothesis, Street argues, is implausible. A more plausible account of the evolution of the phenomena of moral psychology, the adaptive link account, does not postulate the existence of moral truths. Hence, Street argues, the Darwinian hypothesis forces realists to choose between an implausible skeptical result and a scientifically implausible explanation of the phenomena of moral psychology. To avoid both horns of the dilemma, one must deny moral realism.3 I begin by explaining the basic idea behind the Darwinian hypothesis. I then explicate the Darwinian dilemma in more detail and argue that realists can escape it. Realists are not forced to choose between the skeptical result and the implausible hypothesis. The remaining challenge for realists who accept the Darwinian hypothesis is to support the plausibility of a view of human beings as having evolved and developed in such a way that their moral beliefs are responsive to facts that are moral facts. Toward the end of the paper, I illustrate how this picture can be supported. The upshot is that a successful argument against moral realism cannot rest on the Darwinian dilemma but must instead rest on philosophical objections of a more familiar kind. 2. Evolution and Moral Beliefs Street, Joyce, and Kitcher offer similar elaborations of the Darwinian hypothesis. The basic idea is that tendencies to have certain kinds of evaluative responses rather than others promoted reproductive success among our

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remote ancestors because they forged adaptive links between our ancestors circumstances and their responses to those circumstances, getting them to act, feel, and believe in ways that turned out to be reproductively advantageous (Street 2006, 127; Joyce 2006, 117; see Kitcher 2006, 175181). This is the adaptive link account. It seems clear, for example, that a tendency to cooperate with those who have a tendency to reciprocate would tend to promote reproductive success, as would a tendency to seek the good of ones kin, and a tendency to avoid those who would harm one (Street 2006, 129; Kitcher 2006, 166174). According to the adaptive link account, a tendency to have certain kinds of evaluative responses rather than others contributed to reproductive success in the ancestral environment and, as a result of this, human beings have a tendency to exhibit certain morally significant emotional and other conative tendencies (Joyce 2006, 13142). The Darwinian hypothesis also claims, importantly, that the content of our moral beliefs has been affected by Darwinian forces. This can seem puzzling. For one thing, as Street notes, our remote ancestors likely did not have the cognitive capacity to form moral beliefs (2006, 118119). Moreover, it is difficult to see how the content of moral beliefs we currently have could have been affected by the working of natural selection on the properties of such distant ancestors. Streets idea, however, is that the content of our moral beliefs might have been indirectly influenced by Darwinian forces as a result of its more direct influences on primitive pre-conceptual states of mind of our remote ancestors (2006, 118120). She seems to have in mind a process that we can factor into roughly three stages. First, natural selection led to the development of some basic psychological capacities and dispositions in our remote ancestors that led them to develop a tendency to have dispositions to form certain evaluative attitudes. There are certain kinds of behavior that we have reason to believe would have been adaptive among our ancestors. In this first stage, humans evolved to be disposed to form evaluative attitudes that tended to lead them to these kinds of behavior (Street 2006, 129; Joyce 2006, 1350; Kitcher 2006, 166174). Second, the capacities and dispositions that developed in the first stage affected to some extent the development of the conceptual repertoire of less remote ancestors in a way that affected the content of evaluative judgments they came to be disposed to make. Street holds that the adaptive link account can explain in this way why human beings evolved to be disposed to make judgments favoring behavior of the above kinds. For example, she holds it can explain why humans evolved to have a tendency to judge that the fact that someone has helped one is a reason to help that person in return (Street 2006, 127; Joyce 2006, 5057). Third, as a result of all of this, we have a non-reflective tendency to form certain basic moral beliefs. Kitcher adds to this picture an account of the evolutionary function of a capacity for normative governance along with an account of the impact of cultural evolution. He suggests that the evolutionary function of a capacity

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for normative governance was to promote social cohesion by countering the pressures of selfish and antisocial desires with pressures that would reinforce the social fabric (2006, 172). He argues that hominids with the tendency to act on the altruistic [and cooperation inducing] dispositions would have fared better than those without since it would have given them easier access to advantageous coalitions (2006, 172; see also Gibbard 1990). He suggests, moreover, that an evolved capacity for normative governance would have enabled our ancestors to develop a proto-morality that would reinforce such dispositions and be passed down over generations. A process of cultural evolution could then develop, in which certain normative systems would be more successful than others in surviving into following generations. Certain kinds of norms would be expected to survive and to become more widely accepted. These would include, for example, norms designed to promote social stability, peacefulness, and cooperation (2006, 173). The adaptive link account therefore appears able to explain why humans would have developed a capacity for normative governance, involving a tendency to accept norms that have currency in the local culture and to govern their behavior in accord with such norms. It also seems to able to explain why there would be a robust tendency for norms with currency in a culture to favor prosocial behaviors, including behavior that favors ones offspring and relatives, that reciprocates benefits received, and that favors cooperation. On Kitchers proposal, then, there was a fourth stage in the process. In this stage, due to a process of cultural evolution, norms that promote social stability, peacefulness, and cooperation tended to become more widely accepted, thus tending to lead humans with a capacity for normative governance to form moral beliefs that favor these forms of behavior. For convenience, I will take the above account of the four-stage process to be part of the adaptive link account. The key point is that moral belief, together with the other phenomena of moral psychology, such as our emotions and desires, tends to motivate behavior. It is because of this that the phenomena of moral psychology could have evolved in order to provide motivation for adaptive behavior. Nothing here requires or implies that the capacity to form moral beliefs evolved in order to enable us to detect the moral facts (Joyce 2006, 131; Kitcher 2006, 176). Given this, and given a functionalist account of the distinction between belief and desire, the adaptive link account might seem to undermine moral realism by providing support for noncognitivism, the view that the state of mind of a person who accepts a (pure and basic) moral claim is not a belief, but is instead a kind of conative state. Kitcher argues that this is so (2006, 175176). His idea seems to be that, on the adaptive link account, the evolutionary function of the phenomena of moral psychology is to motivate adaptive behavior. Hence, even if it is plausible that we evolved to tend to have an adaptive repertoire of emotional and behavioral dispositions and

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attitudes, there is little plausibility to the idea that we would have evolved to form evaluative beliefs properly so called, in addition to this repertoire of noncognitive states. I cannot pursue this argument here. It seems to me that even if the evolutionary function of the phenomena of moral psychology is to motivate adaptive behavior, it is arguable that such motivation is brought about in a standard way by a combination of belief and conation. The adaptive link account does not force us to noncognitivism.4 The adaptive link account is obviously speculative. It is also speculative to hold, as Street does, that Darwinian forces strongly affected our moral psychology including the content of our moral beliefs (2006, 109; also 113, 121). We could agree that these forces had an effect without agreeing that the effect was especially strong. Nevertheless, for the sake of argument, I shall follow Street in assuming that the adaptive link account is at least approximately true and that Darwinian forces have had a significant impact on human moral psychology. I shall assume that something like the four-stage process did occur and that it explains to a significant degree the content of our moral beliefs. This is not to deny, of course, that our moral beliefs have been affected by a variety of factors in addition to Darwinian pressures, including culture as well as deliberation and reflection.5 3. The Darwinian Dilemma The distinctiveness of Streets argument can be brought out by contrasting it with a more direct Darwinian argument against moral realism. This argument rests on the premise that the most plausible Darwinian explanation of the phenomena of moral psychology does not require the assumption that any moral beliefs are true. The argument claims, in light of this, that considerations of ontological parsimony give us reason to suppose there are no moral truths.6 This argument does not successfully undermine moral realism, however, for at least two reasons. First, the most plausible Darwinian explanations of our capacities to have beliefs about the big bang and about string theory also do not postulate the existence of truths in these areas, but this does not give us reason to conclude there are no such truths. Indeed, we have independent reasons to suppose there are such truths. For all that the Darwinian story shows, we also might have independent reason to suppose there are moral facts (See Joyce 2006, 182184; Kitcher 2006, 176). Second, as Joyce points out (2006, 188189), if the moral facts are reducible to non-moral facts of the kind that are invoked in the Darwinian hypothesis, there is no loss of parsimony in supposing that there are moral facts. In this case, Occams Razor would have no work to do.7 Street herself accepts a version of naturalistic reductionism, a version that she describes as constructivist and antirealist, to contrast it with

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the realist positions her argument is intended to attack.8 We might instead categorize her constructivism as a kind of realism, but nothing depends on our choice of terminology. The key point is that Street does not intend to argue against constructivist theories, according to which the moral facts are reducible to, or are a function of, facts about our evaluative attitudeswhere our evaluative attitudes include all the phenomena of moral psychology, both conative and cognitive, including consciously and unconsciously held evaluative judgements (2006, 111). The defining claim of evaluative realism, she says, is that there are at least some evaluative facts or truths that hold independently of all our evaluative attitudes, including evaluative attitudes that we might have, upon reflection, as well as attitudes that we do have (2006, 110111). A moral realist holds, then, that there are some moral truths that hold independently of our evaluative attitudes. The relevant kind of independence, Street explains, is what Russ Shafer-Landau has called stance-independence (2006, 111; Shafer-Landau 2003, 14). As Shafer-Landau explains, moral facts or truths are stance-independent if and only if it is not the case that they are constituted by facts about the stances of persons. For Street, these are facts about the phenomena of moral psychology. Let me turn now to Streets Darwinian dilemma argument. The arguments basic structure is captured by Joyce, who suggests that, given the Darwinian hypothesis, unless natural selection is likely to have produced true [moral] beliefs, there is reason to think our positive moral beliefs are unjustified (2006, 179182). Streets central claim is then that the moral realist, unlike the constructivist, cannot make good on the proposition that natural selection is likely to have produced true moral beliefsexcept by taking up an implausible account of the way in which natural selection affected our moral psychology, an account that conflicts with the adaptive link account. This is a much more complex argument than the direct argument from ontological parsimony with which we began. It helps to formulate it as posing a dilemma. Realists must either affirm or deny a thesis I will call the tracking thesis, the thesis that natural selection so affected our psychology that our moral beliefs tend to track the moral facts.9 On one horn of the dilemma, the tracking horn, realists affirm the tracking thesis. But, Street contends, the tracking thesis is untenable because affirming it commits realists to denying the adaptive link account. On the other horn of the dilemma, the non-tracking horn, realists deny the tracking thesis. But, Street contends, given the Darwinian hypothesis, if realists deny the tracking thesis they are committed to an implausible skeptical result. If Street is correct, realists are in difficulty whether or not they affirm the tracking thesis. It is interesting to consider why constructivism might be immune to the argument. Constructivism maintains that the moral facts are reducible to the phenomena of moral psychology that, according to the Darwinian

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hypothesis, can be explained, in part, as resulting from Darwinian influences. We need to ask whether constructivism can make good on the proposition that Darwinian forces are likely to have produced true moral beliefs and whether it can do so without adopting a version of the Darwinian hypothesis that conflicts with the adaptive link account. The answer seems to be that it can. The moral facts are facts of a kind that would make our moral beliefs true. According to constructivism, such facts are constituted by the phenomena of moral psychology. Hence, according to constructivism, the Darwinian forces that influenced the phenomena of moral psychology also thereby influenced which moral facts obtain, and whether the moral facts that obtain are such as to make our moral beliefs true. Given this, it seems there should be a way to formulate a constructivist theory such that the moral facts that it postulates, given the nature of the psychological phenomena predicted by the adaptive link, are such as to make true the moral beliefs that the adaptive link account predicts we will tend to have.10 I leave aside the question of how plausible such a theory would be. If this argument about constructivism is correct, then an appropriately formulated constructivist theory can combine its account of the truth conditions of moral beliefs with the adaptive link account to explain why the tracking thesis holds. It is moral realists who, Street argues, cannot use the adaptive link account to explain why the tracking thesis holds. I will argue, however, that this is a mistake. Given an appropriate account of the truth conditions of moral beliefs, a realist theory can accept the adaptive link account and use it to underwrite the tracking thesis. 4. The Non-Tracking Horn of the Dilemma On the non-tracking horn of the dilemma, realists deny that natural selection affected our moral psychology in such a way that our moral beliefs tend to track the moral facts. Street contends that, on this position, the forces of natural selection must be viewed as a purely distorting influence on our evaluative judgements, having pushed us in evaluative directions that have nothing whatsoever to do with the evaluative truth (2006, 121). We have been evolving towards having moral beliefs with whatever content tended to promote reproductive success. We have been guided by the wrong sort of influence. But then, barring a fluke of luck, it is very likely that many or most of our evaluative judgments are off track. Hence, a realist who accepts the Darwinian hypothesis and takes the non-tracking horn of the dilemma is committed to the far-fetched skeptical result that it would be purely a matter of chance if any of our moral beliefs were true (2006, 121122). To avoid this skeptical result, Street argues, while also accepting the Darwinian hypothesis, realists must accept the tracking thesis (2006, 134135).

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Joyce offers a similar argument but reaches a different conclusion. Street thinks that realists who accept the Darwinian hypothesis but deny the tracking thesis are committed to the position that our moral beliefs are unlikely to be true. Joyce argues that such realists are committed to the position that our positive moral beliefs may be unjustified. He points out that if we know our beliefs on a given topic have been influenced by factors that do not tend to track the truth, then we ought rationally to be less confident in those beliefs. For example, if I know my beliefs about someones job qualifications have been influenced by my anger with him, then I ought rationally to be less confident than I otherwise would be. The stronger that I think such influences have been, the less confident I ought to be (2006, 179182; see Street 2006, 155; Sober 1993, 107). Hence, realists who accept that Darwinian forces have had a significant effect on the content of our moral beliefs, and who deny the tracking thesis, ought to have a significantly reduced level of confidence in their moral beliefs. On their position, there is reason to think that our positive moral beliefs are unjustified. One might object that rational reflection can correct for the potentially distorting influence of natural selection on our moral beliefs. Street responds that unless the evolutionary forces that affected the content of our moral beliefs in some way tracked the truth, the moral views with which reflection would begin are likely off track. Hence, if rational reflection in moral matters consists in seeking a reflective equilibrium among our moral views, rational reflection is unlikely to get us closer to the truth (2006, 124). Many realists would object that rational reflection can lead to significant change in our moral views and take us beyond merely seeking a reflective equilibrium among antecedently given views. Nevertheless, it would be difficult to deny that the results of rational reflection would be strongly influenced by our starting points as well as by our evolved intellectual and conceptual capacities. If we reject the tracking thesis, it is not clear what reason we have to think that the exercise of these capacities in reflecting on our initial moral beliefs would enable us to get closer to the truth. One might respond that even if Darwinian forces have influenced the content of our moral beliefs, there have been a variety of other influences on their content, including cultural influences, and these other influences might have tended to push our moral beliefs in the direction of the truth (see Sinnott-Armstrong 2006, 4045). For example, even if natural selection caused men to have a tendency to think unreflectively that there is nothing wrong with rape, their cultures might have led many of them to think otherwise. Empathy for the victim might also have led them to think otherwise. The trouble with this response is that, on the adaptive link account, the nature of our moral emotions has also been affected by natural selection, and our cultures also have been affected by Darwinian forces. So if we reject the tracking thesis, it is not clear what reason we have to think that our

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emotions or our cultures will tend to push our moral beliefs in the direction of the truth. The most important objection to Streets argument is that realists who accept the Darwinian hypothesis do not need to accept the tracking thesis in order to avoid being committed to Streets or Joyces skeptical result. Realists do not need to hold that Darwinian forces tended to cause our moral beliefs to track the truth. It would be enough if the following complex relation were to obtain: the indirect effect of Darwinian forces on the content of our moral beliefs has been such that, given the cumulative effect of all influences on their content, our beliefs tend to do well enough in tracking the moral truth that rational refection can in principle correct sufficiently for any distorting influence so as to undermine the skeptical worry. That is, it would be enough if Darwinian forces so influenced the content of our moral beliefs that, given all influences on their content, they track the truth to an epistemically sufficient degree.11 For brevity, I will speak of quasi-tracking when I have in mind tracking to an epistemically sufficient degree. The quasi-tracking thesis is the thesis, basically, that Darwinian forces so affected our psychology that our moral beliefs tend to quasi-track the moral facts. I have argued that realists who accept the Darwinian hypothesis do not need to accept the tracking thesis to avoid a skeptical result. It should be clear, however, that these realists must accept the quasi-tracking thesis to avoid a skeptical result. We can therefore reformulate the dilemma so that it presents realists with a choice between accepting and denying the quasi-tracking thesis. I am willing to concede that realists who accept the Darwinian hypothesis must accept the quasi-tracking thesis. 5. The Tracking Horn of the Dilemma On the tracking horn of the dilemma, as I originally formulated the argument, realists accept the tracking thesis. Street argues that realists who accept the tracking thesis must explain why this thesis holds. To explain this, she argues, realists must accept the tracking account, which is the hypothesis that our moral beliefs tend to track the truth because the capacity to detect moral truths promoted reproductive success among our ancestors (2006, 125126). There is no other way to go, she says, if realism is to avoid the non-tracking horn of the dilemma (135). She contends, however, that the tracking account is unacceptable because it is not compatible with the empirically more plausible adaptive link account (128135). There is a problem here. The tracking thesis is the thesis that, basically, Darwinian forces caused our moral beliefs to track the moral facts. The tracking account is the hypothesis that, in effect, Darwinian forces caused our moral beliefs to track the moral facts because the capacity to detect moral truths promoted reproductive success. It appears that one can reject

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this explanation without denying the tracking thesis. Instead, it seems, realists should be able to invoke the adaptive link account to explain why we came to have the tendency to form moral beliefs that track the facts. Street herself thinks that constructivism can employ the adaptive link account to explain why we came to have this tendency. We have, however, reformulated the dilemma. On the tracking horn of the reformulated dilemma, realists accept the quasi-tracking thesis. Again, the important point is that the quasi-tracking thesis is the thesis that Darwinian forces caused our moral beliefs to quasi-track the moral facts. The quasitracking account is the hypothesis that Darwinian forces caused our moral beliefs to quasi-track the moral facts because the capacity to detect moral truths promoted reproductive success among our ancestors. It appears that realists can reject this explanation without denying the quasi-tracking thesis. As I will argue, they can invoke the adaptive link account to explain why the quasi-tracking thesis holds. It appears, moreover, that the tracking account, or at least a close relative of the tracking account, is actually compatible with the adaptive link account. Realists therefore can combine these accounts in order to explain why the quasi-tracking thesis holds. An analogy might help. We presumably evolved to be able to track facts about predators. This can be explained on the basis that the capacity to detect predators was part of a system that enabled us to avoid predators, where of course the ability to avoid predators was adaptive (Street 2006, 135136). Realists can take an analogous position regarding the capacity to detect moral truths. They can say that our moral beliefs tend to quasi-track the moral facts because the capacity to detect moral truths was part of a system of evaluative responses that was adaptive among our ancestors. This is the close relative of the quasi-tracking account that I mentioned. Realists can then use the adaptive link account to explain that the system of evaluative responses in question was adaptive because it motivated behavior that enhanced reproductive success. The basic idea, then, is that the capacity to quasi-track the moral truth was part of a system of evaluative responses that was adaptive because it motivated behavior that enhanced reproductive success, as explained by the adaptive link account. As I understand it, the adaptive link account postulates a four-stage process whereby Darwinian forces affected the content of our moral beliefs. At one stage in this process, our ancestors came to be disposed to make moral judgments and to have moral beliefs with a content that tended to motivate them to respond to their circumstances in ways that were reproductively advantageous. This story is compatible with the realist claim that there are moral facts. And it is compatible with the claim that the four-stage process led to our having a tendency to have moral beliefs that quasi-track the truth. Realists therefore can add these claims to the story. They can argue that the disposition to have evaluative responses that tended to lead our ancestors to respond to their circumstances in ways that were

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adaptive led, in turn, through the four-stage process, to a tendency in our more recent ancestors to have moral beliefs that approximated to the truth. And they can argue that this tendency was part of a system of responses that was adaptive. If all of this is correct, realists can combine the adaptive link account with a near relative of the quasi-tracking account to explain why the quasitracking thesis holds. This means that, for all Street has shown, realists can safely grasp the tracking horn of the Darwinian Dilemma. 6. The Remaining Challenge Even if realists can use the adaptive link account in the way I have suggested to explain why the quasi-tracking thesis holds, there remains the question whether the explanation is plausible. Indeed, there appears to be a gap in the explanation, for it is unclear what it is about the moral truth such that, if the adaptive link account is correct, the capacity to quasi-track the moral truth would be part of a system of evaluative responses that was adaptive. The key question remains, then, whether realists who accept the Darwinian hypothesis can underwrite the plausibility of the quasi-tracking thesis. If they cannot, then, as Street would argue, if we assume the truth of the Darwinian hypothesis, realism faces the skeptical worry that threatened on the non-tracking horn of the dilemma. This should be easy to see, given how I defined quasi-tracking. The quasi-tracking thesis is basically the thesis that the effect of all influences on the content of our moral beliefs, including Darwinian influences, has been such that rational refection can in principle correct sufficiently for any distorting influences so as to undermine the skeptical worry. If realists are unable to support this thesis, they are unable to support the claim that moral realism can avoid the skeptical worry. The skeptical worry in question is the worry that Street raised in her discussion of the non-tracking horn of the dilemma. It might be useful to review this discussion. Recall that I am assuming in this context that the Darwinian hypothesis and the adaptive link account are at least roughly true. On these assumptions, the content of our moral beliefs has been strongly influenced, first by the fact that a certain complex set of moral attitudes and dispositions was adaptive in the ancestral environment, and second by the fact that certain kinds of normative systems, once they achieved currency in a society, were more likely than others to be successfully transmitted from one generation to the next. If we assume that some form of moral realism is correct, influences of these kinds will surely appear to be independent of the moral facts (Sober 1993, 107). Hence, it seems, the realist faces a skeptical conclusion. To be sure, it is not clear how best to formulate this conclusion. Street suggests that realists may be forced to conclude that it is

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unlikely that our moral beliefs are true (2006, 121122). Joyce suggests more cautiously that realists may be forced to conclude that their moral beliefs are unjustified or to significantly reduce their degree of confidence in those beliefs (2006, 179182). The challenge to the realist is to avoid or to defang any such conclusion. In response, realists could argue that Darwinian influences are not relevantly independent of the moral facts. Call this the aggressive strategy. On this approach, one would aim to provide a showing that, in effect, Darwinian forces do tend to track the moral facts. Or realists could reject the argument from the independence claim to any interesting skeptical conclusion. Call this the defensive strategy. On this less ambitious approach, one would aim to show that the skeptical argument is unsound or unpersuasive. Given how I defined quasi-tracking, both strategies can be described conveniently as aiming to support the quasi-tracking thesis. A fully adequate account would perhaps combine both strategies, but I will focus on the aggressive strategy since it seems to me to be potentially the more satisfying of the two. The defensive strategy is of course familiar. Realists need to respond to a variety of skeptical challenges because our moral beliefs are subject to a variety of potentially distorting influences, including self-interest, ideology, superstition, and culture (Sturgeon 1992). One might think that the influence of Darwinian forces is simply an additional potentially distorting factor and that nothing in the Darwinian challenge warrants taking up the aggressive strategy. This thought misses the fact that, on the Darwinian hypothesis and the adaptive link account, Darwinian forces have had a strong and pervasive effect on the phenomena of moral psychology as a whole. Included among these phenomena are not only our moral emotions and reactive dispositions, but also the content of our moral beliefs and the nature of the psychological capacities and processes, including reasoning processes, that are involved in the formation and evaluation of moral beliefs. If we assume the truth of this picture, as I am doing, then, it seems to me, realists need to show that Darwinian influences can enter into an explanation of our ability to discern the moral truth. The aggressive strategy aims to show this. In carrying out the aggressive strategy, it is not enough to argue that the basic moral beliefs that natural selection primed us to have, according to the adaptive link account, seem intuitively to be at least approximately true. This claim is completely uninteresting if the adaptive link account is correct. For if the account is correct, the moral propositions it predicts we will tend to believe must of course be propositions we tend to find plausible. In order to carry out the aggressive strategy, realists need to explain why, if the adaptive link account is correct, the ability to quasi-track the truth would have been part of a system of responses that was adaptive. Moreover, the explanation needs to be counter-factually robust. That is, it should support the idea that, even if natural selection had led our moral

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psychology to be somewhat different from what it is, and even we had had somewhat different moral beliefs as a result, it is likely that our moral beliefs still would have tended to approximate to the truth.12 Otherwise there would be a sense in which it would simply be a fortunate accident that there is a tendency for our moral beliefs to approximate to the truth. The basic challenge, however, is to explain what it is about the moral truth such that, if the adaptive link account is correct, it is likely that our moral beliefs tend to approximate the truth. To meet this challenge in a fully satisfying way, I think a realist would need to propose a theory of the truth conditions of moral judgments. The realist could then use this theory to explain why beliefs influenced by Darwinian forces in accord with the adaptive link account would tend to quasi-track facts that, by the lights of the theory, are moral facts. Some realist theories may be in a position to meet the challenge, as I will now attempt to show. 7. Society-Centered Moral Theory To pursue the aggressive strategy, realists who accept the Darwinian hypothesis need to do three things. First, they need to accept the quasitracking thesis. Second, I assume, they need to accept the adaptive link account. Third, they need to explain why, if our moral psychology was formed in accord with the adaptive link account, it is likely that our moral beliefs tend to quasi-track the truth. They need to explain why a tendency to form moral beliefs that is explained on the basis of the adaptive link account would be a tendency to form moral beliefs that are by and large approximately true. I now want to sketch a version of naturalistic moral realism that I have defended elsewhere, and to argue that it can meet the Darwinian challenge. I call it the society-centered theory.13 It is beyond the scope of this paper to consider whether other forms of moral realism can successfully pursue the aggressive strategy.14 The society-centered theory is a kind of moral functionalism. We live in societies and we need to live in societies, but because we have different talents and somewhat conflicting interests, our societies need to motivate us to live together peacefully, cooperatively and productively. To be successful in doing this, a society needs to be governed by shared norms or standards, which we can think of as constituting a social moral code. In this sense, morality has the function of enabling a society to meet its needs. It does this by providing rules governing our lives that, when internalized widely enough in a society, would motivate the needed cooperation and peaceful and productive behavior among its members. Different moral codes would differ in how well their currency in society would serve this function. Given this, as I will now explain, the theory says that a basic moral proposition,

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such as the proposition that torture is wrong, would be true only if the moral code that would best serve the function of enabling society to meet its needs included or entailed a relevantly corresponding norm, such as a prohibition on torture. The theory has two parts. One is an account of the truth conditions of normative propositions that I call the standard-based account. The other is the society-centered account of the truth grounding status of moral standards. The standard-based account rests on a distinction between moral propositions, such as the proposition that torture is wrong, and moral standards, such as the standard prohibiting torture that could be expressed by the imperative, Do not torture anyone! The account proposes a schema that can be used to explicate the truth conditions of moral propositions in terms of the status of relevantly corresponding standards. The schema says that a (pure and basic) moral proposition is true if and only if a corresponding moral standard has the relevant truth-grounding status.15 For example, it is true that torture is wrong if and only if a corresponding standardpresumably the standard that prohibits torturehas the relevant truth-grounding status. The idea is that if there are any moral truths, there is some status that a standard can have such that if a standard enjoys that status, a corresponding (pure and basic) moral proposition is true. There must be some property that distinguishes the standard that prohibits torture from standards that have no moral standing, such as the standard that prohibits men from wearing hats indoors. We may call the truth-grounding status of moral standards the status of being morally authoritative. The standard-based account then says that if torture is wrong, it is prohibited by a morally authoritative standard. Now consider the intuition that a society needs a social moral code; that is, a society needs it to be the case that there is, among its members, a system of moral standards that is generally subscribed to and that is socially enforced and culturally transmitted and that calls for prosocial behaviors of various kinds. Other things being equal, a society with such a moral code would experience less conflict among its members, and less harmful conflict, than it would if it lacked such a code. Other things being equal, there would be more cooperation among its members than would be the case if it lacked such a code, and its members would be more successful at meeting their own needs and pursuing their values. A society with such a code does better, other things being equal, than it otherwise would, at meeting its need for there to be cooperation among its members, and its need to avoid harmful internal conflict. Obviously some social moral codes would better enable a society to meet its basic needs than others. According to society-centered theory, the code that would best serve the basic needs of a society, if it were to serve as the societal moral code in that society, is the code that is morally authoritative with respect to that society. It has the relevant truth-grounding

200 David Copp

status. Standards that are included in or implied by the code underwrite the truth of corresponding basic moral propositions. Accordingly, the theory says, a basic moral proposition is true only if a corresponding moral standard is included in or implied by the moral code the currency of which in the relevant society would enable the society better to serve its basic needs than would the currency of other sets of norms and better than would be the case if no set of norms had currency in the society.16 Wrongness thus turns out to be relational. The theory in effect says that the term wrong expresses a relation, wrongness in relation to society S, where, roughly, this is the property of being prohibited by the moral code the currency of which in S would be best for society S, and where the identity of society S is fixed by the context. This basic account needs to be amended in various ways.17 For example, it needs to be amended to allow for ties between distinct moral codes, the currency of which in a society would serve the societys needs equally well. I ignore this and other complications in what follows. What are the basic needs of a society? This is an important and difficult question, but certain things seem obvious. A society needs to ensure that its population continues to exist. It needs to ensure that there is and continues to be a system of cooperation among its members. It needs to ensure internal social harmony. It needs peaceful and cooperative relationships with neighboring societies. The question of how to promote these needs is empirical, and the moral implications of the theory are contingent and somewhat speculative. However I think it is likely that the theory yields a deontological moral code of a familiar kind (Copp 1995, 201209). Since societies have the same basic needs, moral codes that are authoritative relative to different societies will tend to be similar in content. Yet societies can be in different circumstances, so the best moral codes for different societies are unlikely to be exactly the same. This account raises a number of questions. What are societies? Which is the relevant society? Can the theory be defended against familiar objections to moral relativism? Does the theory provide a plausible account of the normativity of moral propositions? I cannot address these issues here (see Copp 1995, Copp 2007a). The important question for present purposes is whether the theory can illustrate a strategy that would allow moral realists to escape the Darwinian challenge. As we saw, the key to escaping the challenge is to explain why, granting the Darwinian hypothesis, and assuming the adaptive link account, our moral beliefs might tend to quasi-track the moral truth. The question is whether the society-centered theory can explain this. I will argue that if a population begins by having moral beliefs with a content predicted more or less by the adaptive link account, its initial beliefs approximate sufficiently to the moral truth, by the lights of the societycentered theory, that, given appropriate deliberation and reflection, other

Darwinian Skepticism About Moral Realism 201

things being equal, its beliefs are likely to get closer to the truth. That is, I will argue that the moral propositions that the society-centered theory claims to be true turn out to be [near enough] the same judgements that forge adaptive links between circumstances and response (Street 2006, 132). Given this, the society-centered theory can avoid Streets skeptical conclusion. 8. The Society-Centered Theory and the Darwinian Challenge In order to make the case, I need to connect the adaptive link accounts explanation of the development of our moral psychology with the societycentered theorys account of moral truth. According to the adaptive link account, Darwinian forces affected the content of our moral beliefs through a four-stage process of the kind I outlined before. In an initial stage, our remote ancestors developed a tendency to have altruistic and cooperation inducing dispositions because such dispositions were adaptive in the ancestral environment. A capacity for normative governance also would have been adaptive. In a subsequent stage of the process, ancestors with this capacity would have come to share a system of norms that would reinforce prosocial dispositions. In a later stage, as a result of a process of cultural evolution, certain kinds of norms would have become more widely accepted, including especially norms designed to promote social stability, peacefulness, and cooperation (Kitcher 2006, 173). Finally, as a result of all of this, humans developed a tendency to form moral beliefs that favor importantly prosocial kinds of behavior, including behaviors that promote social stability, peacefulness, and cooperation. The account does not depend on the truth of the moral judgments that it predicts Darwinian forces would have led human beings to be disposed to accept. Yet it is compatible with their truth or approximate truth. And, as I will explain, the society-centered theory implies that these judgments would likely be approximately true. The important point is that, on this picture of the four-stage process, the process of cultural evolution likely would have led to the currency of moral codes favoring behavior that would enhance the ability of societies to meet their needs. Societies need there to be social stability, cooperation among their members, and peaceful relations with their neighbors. The currency of norms that promote social stability, peacefulness, and cooperation would promote behavior that tends to meet these needs. Moreover, on our picture of the fourstage process, cultural evolution would tend to lead to the currency of moral codes that include norms of this kind, norms that call for kinds of behavior that promote social stability, peacefulness, and cooperation. A person who subscribed to such a code would tend to form corresponding beliefs.18 For example, if the code calls for her to be cooperative, she would tend to form

202 David Copp

the belief that such behavior is right or good. And she would tend to act accordingly, given that she has a capacity for normative governance. Her behavior would then tend to enhance the ability of the society to meet the needs I sketched earlier. On the adaptive link account and the account of the four-stage process, then, cultural evolution plausibly would favor moral codes the currency of which in a society would enhance the societys ability to meet its needs (see Copp 2007a, 85). According to the society-centered theory, given the adaptive link account, as the process of social evolution proceeds, other things being equal, peoples moral beliefs would tend more and more to approximate to the moral truth. That is, beliefs that correspond to the social moral code that emerged in this way from a process of cultural evolution would increasingly tend to approximate to the truth. For the theory implies that moral beliefs that correspond to a moral code, the currency of which in a society would tend to promote the societys ability to meet its needs, are by and large approximately true. And it is reasonable to think that appropriate deliberation and reflection might bring these beliefs closer to the truth. Accordingly, I claim that the society-centered theory can explain why, other things being equal, given the adaptive link account and the account of the four-stage process, it is likely that our moral beliefs tend to quasi-track the moral truth. The theory can explain why a tendency to form moral beliefs with a content that has been influenced by the four-stage process would be a tendency to form beliefs that would be sufficiently close to the moral truth that, given appropriate deliberation and reflection, our moral beliefs would tend to get closer to the truth. The account implies that our moral beliefs can be expected other things being equal to be sufficiently close to the truth that deliberation and reflection would tend to get us closer to the truth, but there is no guarantee that this is so.19 Many contingencies might have interfered, including superstition and ideology. Moreover, if our initial moral beliefs were too far off track, moral deliberation might simply have led us further into error. Richard Boyd pointed out similarly that the reliability of scientific methodology depends on the extent to which currently accepted theories are relevantly approximately true.20 It seems likely, however, that the moral beliefs we would tend to have (given the influence of the four-stage process) would tend to be close enough to the truth (according to the society-centered theory) that there is a realistic chance that human beings who began with such beliefs, and who reflected on them in an effort to achieve a reflective equilibrium, would tend over time to get closer to the truth, other things being equalgiven that human beings have the kind of moral psychology that the adaptive link account suggests that they have. I believe the argument has shown at least that, if our moral beliefs are true or approximately true, this is not a matter of chance. On the society-centered theory, it is due to the nature of morality and the truth conditions of moral propositions.

Darwinian Skepticism About Moral Realism 203

9. Objection: A Second-Order Darwinian Dilemma The society-centered theory is a realist theory according to which the moral facts are identical to certain ordinary natural facts having to do with the needs of societies. Street holds that any genuinely realist version of moral naturalism runs afoul of a second-order Darwinian dilemma (2006, 139-141). This is because, she thinks, a naturalist must rely largely on moral intuitions in devising a theory as to which natural facts are identical to the moral facts, and, on the Darwinian hypothesis, the content of these intuitions has been heavily influenced by natural selection. The naturalist then faces the choice between holding or denying, roughly, that natural selection caused our moral intuitions to quasi-track the moral facts.21 For the reasons I have given, the naturalist clearly should take the tracking option. As I argued, the naturalist can combine the claim that Darwinian forces caused our intuitions to quasi-track the moral facts with the adaptive link account. The second-order dilemma can be avoided in the same way that the first-order dilemma can be avoided. My argument for the society-centered theory rests largely, moreover, on second-order philosophical intuitions, including the idea that morality has the function of making society possible, and on the standard-based account of the semantics of normative judgment. To be sure, we would not find the society-centered view to be plausible if its implications conflicted dramatically with our moral views, especially if we thought there would still be conflict after appropriate deliberation. Yet my argument does not rest on our moral intuitions. Indeed, I think we can imagine a Martian philosopher, with different substantive moral intuitions than we have, nevertheless coming to accept the society-centered theory for the very reasons that led me to the society-centered view.22 It therefore appears that my argument for the societycentered view is not vulnerable to a Darwinian challenge of the kind that Street has in mind. Perhaps, however, it is vulnerable in a different way.23 Perhaps the secondorder intuitions that I rely on have been influenced by evolutionary forces in a way that makes my argument open to a new Darwinian dilemma. Perhaps I face a choice between a skeptical result, if I deny that Darwinian forces caused the second-order intuitions to track the facts, such as facts about the function of morality, and an implausible Darwinian hypothesis, if I claim that Darwinian forces did cause the second-order intuitions to track these facts. It is implausible, however, that the content of the second-order intuitions that I invoked has been strongly influenced by evolutionary forces. It is plausible that the phenomena of moral psychology have been influenced by evolutionary pressures because our moral psychology prompts behavior that can be either adaptive or maladaptive. But second-order views about morality and about the truth conditions of normative judgments do not

204 David Copp

have the direct connection to behavior that first-order moral beliefs have. They are philosophical views rather than normative moral views that speak to how to behave. Hence, although we did evolve to be capable of having philosophical thoughts, it is implausible that the content of these thoughts has been shaped by evolutionary forces. There is therefore no plausibility to the idea that a person who thinks that there are facts about philosophical matters faces a Darwinian dilemma. 10. Conclusion On the Darwinian hypothesis, the phenomena of moral psychology, including the content of our moral beliefs, have been strongly affected by Darwinian forces. Street argues that, on this account, moral realists face a dilemma. On the tracking horn, they are committed to denying the adaptive link account, the most plausible account of the working of Darwinian forces on our moral psychology. On the non-tracking horn, they must concede that it is sheer chance if our moral beliefs tend to be true. In response, I argued that realists can grasp the tracking horn of the dilemma, and they can use the adaptive link account in explaining why the quasi-tracking thesis holds. I introduced the society-centered moral theory, which is a kind of naturalistic moral realism. I argued that it can explain why our moral beliefs would tend to quasi-track the moral truth if their content has been affected by Darwinian forces as suggested by the adaptive link account. On the societycentered theory, other things being equal, a tendency to form moral beliefs with a content that has been influenced in the way suggested by the adaptive link account would be a tendency to form moral beliefs that approximate to the truth. The society-centered theory shows, then, that the Darwinian challenge carries no risk for moral realism. The argument against moral realism must rest on more familiar philosophical objections to the societycentered theory and other forms of realism rather than on the Darwinian dilemma. Notes

I presented earlier versions of this paper at the University of Utrecht in February 2007, at the Humboldt University in June 2007, and at the Fourth Workshop in Metaethics, at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in September 2007. I would like to thank the audiences on these occasions for very useful discussion. I am especially grateful to several people for insightful and helpful specific comments, including Richmond Campbell, William FitzPatrick, Martin Gunderson, Richard Kraut, Mark Schroeder, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Sharon Street, Nicholas Sturgeon, and Jon Tresan. An early draft is forthcoming, in Italian translation, in La Contingenza dei Fatti e lOggettivita dei Valori, ed. Giancarlo Marchetti (Roma: Editrice Armando Armando s.r.l., 2008).

Darwinian Skepticism About Moral Realism 205 1. See for example Blackburn 2000, Gibbard 1982 and 1990, Joyce 2006, Kitcher 1993 and 2006, Ruse 1986, Sober and Wilson 1998, Street 2006. 2. Streets target is evaluative realism, but I focus on moral realism. This change does not affect the force of her argument. 3. Street 2006, 109 and throughout. For the quoted remarks, see p. 109. 4. Gibbard also thinks evolutionary considerations support noncognitivism (1982, 43). For discussion, see Sturgeon 1992. 5. For useful discussion, see Sober 1994, 9599. See also Joyce 2006, 3340, 140, 180181. 6. See Ruse 1986, 253254. For criticisms, see Campbell 1996. 7. Joyce argues that no reduction of moral facts to natural facts can be successful because morality has an inescapable practical authority that no version of moral naturalism can explain (2006, 199209). I have replied to this argument elsewhere (Copp 2007b). 8. See Street 2006, note 37; also Street, 2008. 9. Street says realists must choose between supposing there is no relation between the evaluative facts and natural selection and supposing there is such a relation (2006, 125). This is not what she ought to say. She argues that if, on the first horn of the dilemma, there is no relation between the evaluative facts and natural selection, then natural selection must be viewed as a purely distorting influence on our evaluative beliefs (121). But if natural selection had a distorting influence on our beliefs, it stands to the moral facts in the relation of causing our evaluative beliefs to misrepresent them. Hence, if natural selection stands in no relation to the evaluative facts, then it did not distort our evaluative beliefs. Fortunately, this problem is superficial. The central issue is whether natural selection stood in an epistemically significant tracking relation to the moral facts (2006, 125). I therefore reformulate the dilemma as offering realists a choice between asserting and denying the tracking thesis. 10. Street offers a different argument (2006, 153154). 11. For a similar point, see Boyd 1988, 190, 208209. 12. I thank Mark Schroeder and Jon Tresan for help formulating this idea. 13. Copp 1995 and 2007a. I have presented somewhat different versions of the theory in different places. For more about this, see the introduction to Copp 2007a. 14. For suggestive remarks, see Boyd 1988, 208209. 15. A pure moral proposition has no non-moral entailments or presuppositions (other than those given by the standard-based theory itself). A basic moral proposition ascribes a moral property to something. 16. See Copp 1996, 25253. 17. Copp 1995, 198200; Copp 1996, 25758. See also the introduction to Copp 2007a. 18. A belief that p corresponds to a moral code C just when (1) C includes or implies a moral standard s and (2), according to the society-centered theory, p is true just in case s is included in or implied by the best moral code for the relevant society. 19. For helpful discussion, see Sober 1994, 9599. 20. Boyd 1988, 190. The passage is italicized in the original. 21. Presumably a constructivist would also face this second-order dilemma. But see Street 2006, note 57.

206 David Copp 22. See Street 1996, note 57. 23. Jon Tresan pressed me on this point.

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