Journal of Social Philosophy, Volume 53, Issue 2, Page 255-272, Summer 2022.

Debunking arguments—also known as etiological arguments, genealogical arguments, access problems, isolation objec- tions, and reliability challenges—arise in philosophical debates about a diverse range of topics, including causation, chance, color, consciousness, epistemic reasons, free will, grounding, laws of nature, logic, mathematics, modality, morality, natural kinds, ordinary objects, religion, and time. What unifies the arguments is the transition from a premise about what does or doesn't explain why we have certain mental states to a negative assessment of their epistemic status. I examine (...) the common, underlying structure of the arguments and the different strategies for motivating and resisting the premises of debunking arguments. (shrink)

What are the consequences, for human moral practice, of an evolutionary understanding of that practice? By ‘moral practice’ we mean the way in which human beings think, talk and debate in moral terms. We suggest that the proper upshot of such considerations is moderate support for anti-realism in ethics.

Debunking arguments typically attempt to show that a set of beliefs or other intensional mental states bear no appropriate explanatory connection to the facts they purport to be about. That is, a debunking argument will attempt to show that beliefs about p are not held because of the facts about p. Such beliefs, if true, would then only be accidentally so. Thus, their causal origins constitute an undermining defeater. Debunking arguments arise in various philosophical domains, targeting beliefs about morality, the (...) existence of God, logic, and others. They have also arisen in material-object metaphysics, often aimed at debunking common-sense ontology. And while most of these arguments feature appeals to ‘biological and cultural contingencies’ that are ostensibly responsible for our beliefs about which kinds of objects exist, few of them take a serious look at what those contingencies might actually be. The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, to remedy this by providing empirical substantiation for a key premise in these debunking arguments by examining data from cognitive science, evolutionary biology, and developmental psychology that support a ‘debunking explanation’ of our common-sense beliefs and intuitions about which objects exist. Second, to argue that such data also undermines a particular kind of rationalist defense of common-sense ontology, sometimes employed as a response to the debunking threat. (shrink)

Street’s (Philos Stud 127(1):109–166, 2006) Darwinian Dilemma purports to show that evolutionary considerations are in tension with realist theories of value, which include moral realism. According to this argument, moral realism can only be defended by assuming an implausible tracking relation between moral attitudes and moral facts. In this essay, I argue that this tracking relation is not as implausible as most people have assumed by showing that the three main objections against it are flawed. Since this is a key (...) premise in the reasoning, I conclude that the Darwinian Dilemma against moral realism can be resisted. (shrink)

When do the folk think that mereological composition occurs? Many metaphysicians have wanted a view of composition that fits with folk intuitions, and yet there has been little agreement about what the folk intuit. We aim to put the tools of experimental philosophy to constructive use. Our studies suggest that folk mereology is teleological: people tend to intuit that composition occurs when the result serves a purpose. We thus conclude that metaphysicians should dismiss folk intuitions, as tied into a benighted (...) teleological view of nature. (shrink)

Recent debate in metaethics over evolutionary debunking arguments against morality has shown a tendency to abstract away from relevant empirical detail. Here, I engage the debate about Darwinian debunking of morality with relevant empirical issues. I present four conditions that must be met in order for it to be reasonable to expect an evolved cognitive faculty to be reliable: the environment, information, error, and tracking conditions. I then argue that these conditions are not met in the case of our evolved (...) faculty for moral judgement. (shrink)

In this paper, I distinguish between two error theories of morality: one couched in terms of truth ; the other in terms of justification. I then present two arguments: the Poisoned Presupposition Argument for ET1; and the Evolutionary Debunking Argument for ET2. I go on to show how assessing these arguments requires paying attention to empirical moral psychology, in particular, work on folk metaethics. After criticizing extant work, I suggest avenues for future research.

Heterodox ideas face an uphill battle. This is not least the case for heterodox conspiracy theories. As an empirical observation, this is hardly controversial. What is controversial is whether and to what extent this should be the case. Some authors have gone so far as to argue that heterodox conspiracy theories should be generally dismissed, and that it is precisely their heterodox status that justifies such dismissal. Most particularists are likely to object strongly to such an assessment, arguing that conspiracy (...) theories – whether heterodox or orthodox – should not be dismissed before careful examination of the relevant evidence. But even particularists will probably concede that proponents of heterodox conspiracy theories have to bear a special epistemic burden. The main aim of this paper is to take a closer look at this particular epistemic burden. Drawing on the literature about peer disagreement, genealogical debunking arguments, and related philosophical debates, I focus in particular on the question of whether and under what conditions it can be rational to defend heterodox conspiracy theories, and argue that what I will call theories of error play a crucial role in this context. (shrink)

Debunking arguments are arguments that seek to undermine a belief or doctrine by exposing its causal origins. Two prominent proponents of such arguments are the utilitarians Joshua Greene and Peter Singer. They draw on evidence from moral psychology, neuroscience, and evolutionary theory in an effort to show that there is something wrong with how deontological judgments are typically formed and with where our deontological intuitions come from. They offer debunking explanations of our emotion-driven deontological intuitions and dismiss complex deontological theories (...) as products of confabulatory post hoc rationalization. Through my discussion of Greene and Singer’s empirically informed debunking of deontology, I introduce the distinction between two different types of debunking arguments. The first type of debunking argument operates through regular undercutting defeat, whereas the second type relies on higher-order evidence. I argue that the latter type of debunking argument, of which the argument from confabulation is an example, is objectionably sloppy and therefore inadmissible in academic discussion. (shrink)

The fact that debunkers can turn to the argument from disagreement for help is ofcourse not a surprise. After all, both types of challenge basically pursue the same,skeptical conclusion. What I have tried to show, however, is that they are related in amore intimate way.

I consider whether evolutionary explanations can debunk our moral beliefs. Most contemporary discussion in this area is centred on the question of whether debunking implications follow from our ability to explain elements of human morality in terms of natural selection, given that there has been no selection for true moral beliefs. By considering the most prominent arguments in the literature today, I offer reasons to think that debunking arguments of this kind fail. However, I argue that a successful evolutionary debunking (...) argument can be constructed by appeal to the suggestion that our moral outlook reflects arbitrary contingencies of our phylogeny, much as the horizontal orientation of the whale’s tail reflects its descent from terrestrial quadrupeds. An introductory chapter unpacks the question of whether evolutionary explanations can debunk our moral beliefs, offers a brief historical guide to the philosophical discussion surrounding it, and explains what I mean to contribute to this discussion. Thereafter follow six chapters and a conclusion. The six chapters are divided into three pairs. The first two chapters consider what contemporary scientific evidence can tell us about the evolutionary origins of morality and, in particular, to what extent the evidence speaks in favour of the claims on which debunking arguments rely. The next two chapters offer a critique of popular debunking arguments that are centred on the irrelevance of moral facts in natural selection explanations. The final chapters develop a novel argument for the claim that evolutionary explanations can undermine our moral beliefs insofar as they show that our moral outlook reflects arbitrary contingencies of our phylogeny. A conclusion summarizes my argument and sets out the key questions that arise in its wake. (shrink)