Ethical Objectivity: The Challenge of Time

University of Utrecht, 17-4-2018 Ethical Objectivity: The Challenge of Time Carla Bagnoli Abstract Evolutionary explanations offer convincing accounts of the origin of ethics but seem to undermine the prospects of its objective foundation. On the basis of these explanations, Sharon Street and others have argued that the claim to objectivity is misplaced insofar as it commits to moral realism or it should be reinterpreted otherwise (e.g. contingent on shared values). By contrast, I argue that evolutionary explanations challenge any meta-ethics that is indifferent to the temporal dimension of normativity and, in particular, finitude as a dimension of contingency. While I share some of the premises of the anti-realist argument, I deny that they compel us to accept deflated conceptions of objectivity, e.g. in terms of intersubjective agreement or reflective endorsement. In fact, such deflationary strategies bear heavy epistemic costs and are vulnerable to the objection of bootstrapping. In contrast to debunking arguments, I suggest that evolutionary accounts of the origin of ethics provide support for a strong understanding of ethical objectivity, which requires (i) independence of practical subjects’ comprehensive views, interests, and preferences; (ii) rational validity, and (agreement in judgment); (iii) authority that does not rest on power position, or rational compliance. In the main part of the paper, I offer a constructivist account of rational justification, which meets these requirements. Finally, I attempt to show that the evolutionary concept of exaptation may be of help in characterizing the sort of adjustments available to constructivism, as an alternative to bootstrapping strategies. ::: Many have argued – quite plausibly, in my view – that evolution “may have played a tremendous role in shaping the content of human evaluative attitudes” (Street 2006: 109). This hypothesis has some significant epistemic purchase, as it might be the best explanation of some homogeneity in some moral practices, which seem ubiquitous, e.g. holding each other moral responsible, punishing for crimes against members a one’s own group or some variation of the golden rule. From an evolutionary perspective, these practices emerge from corresponding primitive/more basic evaluative tendencies of our evolutionary ancestors. Their resistance through time seem to show that they were adaptive, e.g. also more fitness-enhancing for humans than their opposites would have been. This is the broad and most common form of the evolutionary explanation of the fact that specific moral norms are considered to be objectively true in all human cultures. The question we are asked to address is whether and how this broad impact meta-ethical theories such as moral realism. Moral realism is the view that the standards of objectivity in ethics are robust, and concern claims that are independent of the mind of the evaluators. Are such standards also independent of the natural history of human culture, including its adaptive (e.g. non-intentional) strategies? Debunkers Bootstrapping The test of time Finite interdependent agents The argument from change 1