The Contingency of the Cultural Evolution of Morality, Debunking, and Theism vs. Naturalism

In Johan De Smedt & Helen De Cruz, Empirically Engaged Evolutionary Ethics. Synthese Library. Springer - Synthese Library. pp. 179-201 (2021)
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Abstract

Is the cultural evolution of morality fairly contingent? Could cultural evolution have easily led humans to moral norms and judgments that are mostly false by our present lights? If so, does it matter philosophically? Yes, or so we argue. We empirically motivate the contingency of cultural evolution and show that it makes two major philosophical contributions. First, it shows that moral objectivists cannot explain the reliability of our moral judgments and thus strengthens moral debunking arguments. Second, it shows that the reliability of our moral judgments is evidence for theism over metaphysical naturalism.

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Matthew Braddock
University of Tennessee, Martin

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Taking Morality Seriously: A Defense of Robust Realism.David Enoch - 2011 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press UK.
A Natural History of Human Morality.Michael Tomasello (ed.) - 2014 - Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.

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