2/22/10

Moral Animals and Moral Relativism


Francis Beckwith argues in "Why I'm not a Moral Relativist" that there are only three sources of objective morality: illusion (i.e. there isn't objective morality), chance, and intelligence. I like this argument. However, what if our biological and social evolution plays a central role in our acquisition of moral principles? I'm not sure we can put evolution as a moral source in the "chance" category as under such an explanation morality would arise in response to social conditions and is the natural result of a social species.

Just to press this point, take a social species like wolf/dog. They have moral rules that have evolved through their social interaction and need to survive. As Bekoff and Pierce argue, there are dog "commandments" much like Moses' decalogue that help wolf/dog society to function. If wolf/dogs have moral principles (along with other social organisms) much like our own, then I'm further inclined to think that "chance" is a poor category for evolutionary explanations of morality.

Might intelligence have bestowed morality to wolf/dogs and us humans? I'm inclined to think that there are simpler ways to explain this: that the process which led to our biology also led to our morality. So, what category might evolutionary explanations of morality fit if not chance (and not intelligence)? Perhaps a category of "mechanistic process" might better describe such explanations, showing Beckwith's argument to be, at bottom, a false dilemma.


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