20 April: Edouard Machery University of Pittsburgh Department of History and Philosophy of Science

Did Morality Really Evolve?

That morality evolved is a commonplace among evolutionary biologists, psychologists, and anthropologists.  In this talk, I will however argue that biologists, psychologists, and anthropologists have failed to pay enough attention to the differences between three distinct interpretations of the hypothesis that morality evolved: (1) some components of moral cognition (e.g., some particular emotions, concepts, or norms) evolved, (2) a capacity to grasp and be motivated by norms in general evolved, and (3) a capacity to grasp and be motivated by a distinctive type of norms evolved.  Under the first two interpretations, it is fairly uncontroversial that morality evolved, while under the third and most interesting interpretation, the hypothesis that morality evolved is empirically unsupported.  Philosophical implications in ethics will be incidentally considered.