The Darwinian Dilemma And Moral Realism

In the last decade,so-called "evolutionary debunking arguments" have become popular among moral philosophers.The proponents of this view argue that if our evaluative judgments are products of natural selection,then robust moral realism is doomed because of some metaphysical and epistemological reasons.The goal of this essay is to figure out what the best solution is for the realist to cope with one of the most famous evolutionary debunking arguments-Sharon Street’s Darwinian dilemma.This aim will be achieved by taking three steps.First,articulating the Darwinian dilemma and identifying its central challenge.Second,looking for realist solutions that are available and(seemingly)credible;assessing the plausibility of these solutions by analyses and arguments.Finally,deciding the best realist solution by pondering the results of those assessments.The ultimate goal of the Darwinian dilemma is to shed doubts on robust moral realism which posits stance-independent moral truths.Street argues that if the realist agrees that evolutionary forces have had tremendous influences on the content of our evaluative judgments,on the one hand,and that there are stance-independent evaluative truths,on the other hand,then he must either deny or assert a relation between them.According to Street’s argument,one should either admit that most of our evaluative judgments are "off-track" if he denies a relation,or hold a scientifically implausible account of evaluative truths if he asserts a relation.Nonetheless,neither option appears acceptable to the realist.The central challenge of this argument is asking the realist to explain a striking and unexplained relation between evaluative beliefs that are shaped by non-truth-tracking causal forces,on the one hand,and their corresponding evaluative truths,on the other hand.Three popular and prominent solutions to the Darwinian dilemma are scrutinised in Chapter 4-6.1 argue that none of them has succeeded in refuting Street’s evolutionary debunking argument due to some substantive defects."The foundationalist solution"fails since its proponents are not justified in establishing infallible:basic beliefs" within their theoretical framework."The third-factor solution" loses its credit because it cannot explain the "counterfactual coincidence" away.The collapse of "the companion-in-guilt solution" is caused by a couple of fatal flaws in its argument.Give this result,the realist needs a new way out.I suggest to adopt a "species relevant" strategy to fix the problems in the third-factor account,and in the meanwhile,to save the correspondence theory of truth in meta-ethics by "taking evaluative judgments as pushmi-pullyu representations," so that a weaker robust moral realist view can be preserved.