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  1. (1 other version)Justification and Explanation in Mathematics and Morality.Justin Clarke-Doane - 2006 - Oxford Studies in Metaethics 10.
    In his influential book, The Nature of Morality, Gilbert Harman writes: “In explaining the observations that support a physical theory, scientists typically appeal to mathematical principles. On the other hand, one never seems to need to appeal in this way to moral principles.” What is the epistemological relevance of this contrast, if genuine? This chapter argues that ethicists and philosophers of mathematics have misunderstood it. They have confused what the chapter calls the justificatory challenge for realism about an area, D—the (...)
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  • Access Problems and explanatory overkill.Silvia Jonas - 2017 - Philosophical Studies 174 (11):2731-2742.
    I argue that recent attempts to deflect Access Problems for realism about a priori domains such as mathematics, logic, morality, and modality using arguments from evolution result in two kinds of explanatory overkill: the Access Problem is eliminated for contentious domains, and realist belief becomes viciously immune to arguments from dispensability, and to non-rebutting counter-arguments more generally.
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  • Mathematics, Morality, and Self‐Effacement.Jack Woods - 2016 - Noûs 52 (1):47-68.
    I argue that certain species of belief, such as mathematical, logical, and normative beliefs, are insulated from a form of Harman-style debunking argument whereas moral beliefs, the primary target of such arguments, are not. Harman-style arguments have been misunderstood as attempts to directly undermine our moral beliefs. They are rather best given as burden-shifting arguments, concluding that we need additional reasons to maintain our moral beliefs. If we understand them this way, then we can see why moral beliefs are vulnerable (...)
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  • Evolutionary Debunking Arguments and the Moral Niche.Eleonora Severini - 2016 - Philosophia 44 (3):865-875.
    The so-called Evolutionary Debunking Arguments are arguments that appeal to the evolutionary genealogy of our beliefs to undermine their justification. When applied to morality, such arguments are intended to undermine moral realism. In this paper I will discuss Andreas Mogensen’s recent effort to secure moral realism against EDAs. Mogensen attempts to undermine the challenge provided by EDAs in metaethics through the distinction between proximate and ultimate causes in biology. The problem with this move is that the proximate/ultimate distinction is misconceived. (...)
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  • The Evolution of Morality.Richard Joyce - 2005 - Bradford.
    Moral thinking pervades our practical lives, but where did this way of thinking come from, and what purpose does it serve? Is it to be explained by environmental pressures on our ancestors a million years ago, or is it a cultural invention of more recent origin? In The Evolution of Morality, Richard Joyce takes up these controversial questions, finding that the evidence supports an innate basis to human morality. As a moral philosopher, Joyce is interested in whether any implications follow (...)
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  • Evolution and Epistemic Justification.Michael Vlerick & Alex Broadbent - 2015 - Dialectica 69 (2):185-203.
    According to the evolutionary sceptic, the fact that our cognitive faculties evolved radically undermines their reliability. A number of evolutionary epistemologists have sought to refute this kind of scepticism. This paper accepts the success of these attempts, yet argues that refuting the evolutionary sceptic is not enough to put any particular domain of beliefs – notably scientific beliefs, which include belief in Darwinian evolution – on a firm footing. The paper thus sets out to contribute to this positive justificatory project, (...)
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  • Only All Naturalists Should Worry About Only One Evolutionary Debunking Argument.Tomas Bogardus - 2016 - Ethics 126 (3):636-661.
    Do the facts of evolution generate an epistemic challenge to moral realism? Some think so, and many “evolutionary debunking arguments” have been discussed in the recent literature. But they are all murky right where it counts most: exactly which epistemic principle is meant to take us from evolutionary considerations to the skeptical conclusion? Here, I will identify several distinct species of evolutionary debunking argument in the literature, each one of which relies on a distinct epistemic principle. Drawing on recent work (...)
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  • Are Evolutionary Debunking Arguments Really Self-Defeating?Fabio Sterpetti - 2015 - Philosophia 43 (3):877-889.
    Evolutionary Debunking Arguments are defined as arguments that appeal to the evolutionary genealogy of our beliefs to undermine their justification. Recently, Helen De Cruz and her co-authors supported the view that EDAs are self-defeating: if EDAs claim that human arguments are not justified, because the evolutionary origin of the beliefs which figure in such arguments undermines those beliefs, and EDAs themselves are human arguments, then EDAs are not justified, and we should not accept their conclusions about the fact that human (...)
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  • Natural Selection Does Care about Truth.Maarten Boudry & Michael Vlerick - 2014 - International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 28 (1):65-77.
    True beliefs are better guides to the world than false ones. This is the common-sense assumption that undergirds theorizing in evolutionary epistemology. According to Alvin Plantinga, however, evolution by natural selection does not care about truth: it cares only about fitness. If our cognitive faculties are the products of blind evolution, we have no reason to trust them, anytime or anywhere. Evolutionary naturalism, consequently, is a self-defeating position. Following up on earlier objections, we uncover three additional flaws in Plantinga's latest (...)
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  • Debunking Evolutionary Debunking.Katia Vavova - 2014 - Oxford Studies in Metaethics 9:76-101.
    Evolutionary debunking arguments start with a premise about the influence of evolutionary forces on our evaluative beliefs, and conclude that we are not justified in those beliefs. The value realist holds that there are attitude-independent evaluative truths. But the debunker argues that we have no reason to think that the evolutionary forces that shaped human evaluative attitudes would track those truths. Worse yet, we seem to have a good reason to think that they wouldn’t: evolution selects for characteristics that increase (...)
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  • (3 other versions)Moral Philosophy as Applied Science.Ruse Michael & O. Wilson Edward - 1986 - Philosophy 61 (236):173-192.
    (1) For much of this century, moral philosophy has been constrained by the supposed absolute gap between is andought, and the consequent belief that the facts of life cannot of themselves yield an ethical blueprint for future action. For this reason, ethics has sustained an eerie existence largely apart from science. Its most respected interpreters still believe that reasoning about right and wrong can be successful without a knowledge of the brain, the human organ where all the decisions about right (...)
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  • (1 other version)Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life.David L. Hull - 1997 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 48 (3):435-438.
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  • The evolution of misbelief.Ryan McKay & Daniel Dennett - 2009 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 32 (6):493–510; discussion 510–61.
    From an evolutionary standpoint, a default presumption is that true beliefs are adaptive and misbeliefs maladaptive. But if humans are biologically engineered to appraise the world accurately and to form true beliefs, how are we to explain the routine exceptions to this rule? How can we account for mistaken beliefs, bizarre delusions, and instances of self-deception? We explore this question in some detail. We begin by articulating a distinction between two general types of misbelief: those resulting from a breakdown in (...)
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  • (1 other version)The Epistemology of Modality.Anand Vaidya - 2007 - The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
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  • Medusa’s Gaze Reflected: A Darwinian Dilemma for Anti-Realist Theories of Value. [REVIEW]Abraham Graber - 2012 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 15 (5):589-601.
    Abstract Street has argued that the meta-ethical realist is faced with a dilemma. Either evolutionary forces have had a distorting influenced on our ability to track moral properties or evolutionary forces influenced our beliefs in the direction of tracking moral properties. Street argues that if the realist accepts the first horn of the dilemma, the realist must accept implausible skepticism regarding moral beliefs. If the realist accepts the second horn of the dilemma, the realist owes an explanation of the fitness (...)
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  • (1 other version)What is the Benacerraf Problem?Justin Clarke-Doane - 2017 - In Fabrice Pataut Jody Azzouni, Paul Benacerraf Justin Clarke-Doane, Jacques Dubucs Sébastien Gandon, Brice Halimi Jon Perez Laraudogoitia, Mary Leng Ana Leon-Mejia, Antonio Leon-Sanchez Marco Panza, Fabrice Pataut Philippe de Rouilhan & Andrea Sereni Stuart Shapiro (eds.), New Perspectives on the Philosophy of Paul Benacerraf: Truth, Objects, Infinity (Fabrice Pataut, Editor). Springer.
    In "Mathematical Truth", Paul Benacerraf articulated an epistemological problem for mathematical realism. His formulation of the problem relied on a causal theory of knowledge which is now widely rejected. But it is generally agreed that Benacerraf was onto a genuine problem for mathematical realism nevertheless. Hartry Field describes it as the problem of explaining the reliability of our mathematical beliefs, realistically construed. In this paper, I argue that the Benacerraf Problem cannot be made out. There simply is no intelligible problem (...)
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  • The Last Word.Thomas Nagel - 1997 - Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    In this important new book Nagel, one of the most distinguished philosophers writing in English today, presents a sustained defence of reason against the attacks of subjectivism. He offers systematic rebuttals of relativistic claims with respect to language, logic, science, and ethics.
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  • Morality and Mathematics: The Evolutionary Challenge.Justin Clarke-Doane - 2012 - Ethics 122 (2):313-340.
    It is commonly suggested that evolutionary considerations generate an epistemological challenge for moral realism. At first approximation, the challenge for the moral realist is to explain our having many true moral beliefs, given that those beliefs are the products of evolutionary forces that would be indifferent to the moral truth. An important question surrounding this challenge is the extent to which it generalizes. In particular, it is of interest whether the Evolutionary Challenge for moral realism is equally a challenge for (...)
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  • Moral Skepticism and Justification.Walter Sinnott-Armstrong - 1996 - In Walter Sinnott-Armstrong & Mark Timmons (eds.), Moral knowledge?: new readings in moral epistemology. New York: Oxford University Press.
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  • Darwin and moral realism: Survival of the iffiest.Knut Olav Skarsaune - 2011 - Philosophical Studies 152 (2):229-243.
    This paper defends moral realism against Sharon Street’s “Darwinian Dilemma for Realist Theories of Value” (this journal, 2006). I argue by separation of cases: From the assumption that a certain normative claim is true, I argue that the first horn of the dilemma is tenable for realists. Then, from the assumption that the same normative claim is false, I argue that the second horn is tenable. Either way, then, the Darwinian dilemma does not add anything to realists’ epistemic worries.
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  • Realism, Mathematics & Modality.Hartry H. Field - 1989 - New York, NY, USA: Blackwell.
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  • Evolutionary Debunking Arguments.Guy Kahane - 2010 - Noûs 45 (1):103-125.
    Evolutionary debunking arguments are arguments that appeal to the evolutionary origins of evaluative beliefs to undermine their justification. This paper aims to clarify the premises and presuppositions of EDAs—a form of argument that is increasingly put to use in normative ethics. I argue that such arguments face serious obstacles. It is often overlooked, for example, that they presuppose the truth of metaethical objectivism. More importantly, even if objectivism is assumed, the use of EDAs in normative ethics is incompatible with a (...)
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  • Moral skepticisms.Walter Sinnott-Armstrong - 2006 - New York: Oxford University Press.
    All contentious moral issues--from gay marriage to abortion and affirmative action--raise difficult questions about the justification of moral beliefs. How can we be justified in holding on to our own moral beliefs while recognizing that other intelligent people feel quite differently and that many moral beliefs are distorted by self-interest and by corrupt cultures? Even when almost everyone agrees--e.g. that experimental surgery without consent is immoral--can we know that such beliefs are true? If so, how? These profound questions lead to (...)
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  • Moral realism: a defence.Russ Shafer-Landau - 2003 - New York: Oxford University Press.
    Moral Realism is a systematic defence of the idea that there are objective moral standards. Russ Shafer-Landau argues that there are moral principles that are true independently of what anyone, anywhere, happens to think of them. His central thesis, as well as the many novel supporting arguments used to defend it, will spark much controversy among those concerned with the foundations of ethics.
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  • The epistemological challenge to metanormative realism: how best to understand it, and how to cope with it.David Enoch - 2009 - Philosophical Studies 148 (3):413-438.
    Metaethical—or, more generally, metanormative— realism faces a serious epistemological challenge. Realists owe us—very roughly speaking—an account of how it is that we can have epistemic access to the normative truths about which they are realists. This much is, it seems, uncontroversial among metaethicists, myself included. But this is as far as the agreement goes, for it is not clear—nor uncontroversial—how best to understand the challenge, what the best realist way of coping with it is, and how successful this attempt is. (...)
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  • (1 other version)Realism, Mathematics, and Modality.Hartry Field - 1988 - Philosophical Topics 16 (1):57-107.
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  • Naturalism.Davidn D. Papineau - 2007 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    The term ‘naturalism’ has no very precise meaning in contemporary philosophy. Its current usage derives from debates in America in the first half of the last century. The self-proclaimed ‘naturalists’ from that period included John Dewey, Ernest Nagel, Sidney Hook and Roy Wood Sellars. These philosophers aimed to ally philosophy more closely with science. They urged that reality is exhausted by nature, containing nothing ‘supernatural’, and that the scientific method should be used to investigate all areas of reality, including the (...)
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  • A Darwinian dilemma for realist theories of value.Sharon Street - 2006 - Philosophical Studies 127 (1):109-166.
    Contemporary realist theories of value claim to be compatible with natural science. In this paper, I call this claim into question by arguing that Darwinian considerations pose a dilemma for these theories. The main thrust of my argument is this. Evolutionary forces have played a tremendous role in shaping the content of human evaluative attitudes. The challenge for realist theories of value is to explain the relation between these evolutionary influences on our evaluative attitudes, on the one hand, and the (...)
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  • Moral realism.Peter Railton - 1986 - Philosophical Review 95 (2):163-207.
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  • (2 other versions)Mathematical truth.Paul Benacerraf - 1973 - Journal of Philosophy 70 (19):661-679.
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  • Naturalism without Scientism.P. Kyle Stanford - 2015 - In Kelly James Clark (ed.), The Blackwell Companion to Naturalism. Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 91–108.
    It might seem incoherent or a contradiction in terms to suggest that we can be philosophical naturalists while nonetheless resisting the scientific realist's view that that the claims of our best scientific theories concerning otherwise inaccessible domains of nature are at least probably and/or approximately true. I suggest, however, that this conclusion follows only from a dogmatic and unappealingly scientistic conception of naturalism itself. I go on to argue not only that a more attractive form of philosophical naturalism can indeed (...)
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  • Naturalism and its Discontents.Kelly James Clark - 2015 - In The Blackwell Companion to Naturalism. Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 1–15.
    Naturalism admits of no single, simple definition (usually depending on the naturalist's commitment to science). After distinguishing ontological or metaphysic naturalism from methodological naturalism, I discuss the historical development of ontological naturalism, as well as arguments for or against naturalism. I then take moral goodness and badness as a case study of the problems and prospects for ontological naturalism.
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  • .Peter Railton - 1985 - Rowman & Littlefield.
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  • Are Evolutionary Debunking Arguments Self-Debunking?Christos Kyriacou - 2016 - Philosophia 44 (4):1351-1366.
    I argue that, at least on the assumption that if there are epistemic facts they are irreducible, the evolutionary debunking maneuver is prima facie self-debunking because it seems to debunk a certain class of facts, namely, epistemic facts that prima facie it needs to rely on in order to launch its debunking arguments. I then appeal to two recent reconstructions of the evolutionary debunking maneuver (Kahane (2011), Griffiths and Wilkins (2015)) and find them wanting. Along the way I set aside (...)
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  • On What Matters: Volume Three.Derek Parfit - 2011 - Oxford University Press UK.
    Derek Parfit presents the third volume of On What Matters, his landmark work of moral philosophy. Parfit develops further his influential treatment of reasons, normativity, the meaning of moral discourse, and the status of morality. He engages with his critics, and shows the way to resolution of their differences.
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  • (1 other version)Mathematical Explanation and Epistemology: Please Mind the Gap.Sam Baron - 2015 - Ratio 29 (2):149-167.
    This paper draws together two strands in the debate over the existence of mathematical objects. The first strand concerns the notion of extra-mathematical explanation: the explanation of physical facts, in part, by facts about mathematical objects. The second strand concerns the access problem for platonism: the problem of how to account for knowledge of mathematical objects. I argue for the following conditional: if there are extra-mathematical explanations, then the core thesis of the access problem is false. This has implications for (...)
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  • Rescuing tracking theories of morality.Marc Artiga - 2015 - Philosophical Studies 172 (12):3357-3374.
    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 (...)
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  • Darwin's Dangerous Idea.Daniel Dennett - 1994 - Behavior and Philosophy 24 (2):169-174.
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  • The Mathematical Universe.Max Tegmark - 2007 - Foundations of Physics 38 (2):101-150.
    I explore physics implications of the External Reality Hypothesis (ERH) that there exists an external physical reality completely independent of us humans. I argue that with a sufficiently broad definition of mathematics, it implies the Mathematical Universe Hypothesis (MUH) that our physical world is an abstract mathematical structure. I discuss various implications of the ERH and MUH, ranging from standard physics topics like symmetries, irreducible representations, units, free parameters, randomness and initial conditions to broader issues like consciousness, parallel universes and (...)
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  • Moral Epistemology: The Mathematics Analogy.Justin Clarke-Doane - 2012 - Noûs 48 (2):238-255.
    There is a long tradition comparing moral knowledge to mathematical knowledge. In this paper, I discuss apparent similarities and differences between knowledge in the two areas, realistically conceived. I argue that many of these are only apparent, while others are less philosophically significant than might be thought. The picture that emerges is surprising. There are definitely differences between epistemological arguments in the two areas. However, these differences, if anything, increase the plausibility of moral realism as compared to mathematical realism. It (...)
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  • On What Matters: Two-Volume Set.Derek Parfit - 2011 - New York: Oxford University Press.
    This is a major work in moral philosophy, the long-awaited follow-up to Parfit's 1984 classic Reasons and Persons, a landmark of twentieth-century philosophy. Parfit now presents a powerful new treatment of reasons and a critical examination of the most prominent systematic moral theories, leading to his own ground-breaking conclusion.
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  • The Applicability of Mathematics as a Philosophical Problem.Mark Steiner - 1998 - Harvard University Press.
    This book analyzes the different ways mathematics is applicable in the physical sciences, and presents a startling thesis--the success of mathematical physics ...
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  • Naturalism and Realism in the Philosophy Science.Matteo Morganti - 2015 - In Kelly James Clark (ed.), The Blackwell Companion to Naturalism. Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 75–90.
    I discuss naturalism in the philosophy of science, with a special focus on the issue of scientific realism. After introducing the theme of naturalism in more general terms, I critically assess whether and how the debate over scientific realism lends itself to a naturalistic approach. I then carry out an analogous inquiry with respect to the relationship between metaphysics and science – a careful analysis of which appears to be particularly important from the point of view of the scientific realist. (...)
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  • The Number Sense: How the Mind Creates Mathematics.Stanislas Dehaene - 1999 - British Journal of Educational Studies 47 (2):201-203.
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  • (1 other version)Justification and Explanation in Mathematics and Morality.Justin Clarke-Doane - 2006 - In Russ Shafer-Landau (ed.), Oxford Studies in Metaethics: Volume 1. Oxford University Press.
    In an influential book, Gilbert Harman writes, "In explaining the observations that support a physical theory, scientists typically appeal to mathematical principles. On the other hand, one never seems to need to appeal in this way to moral principles [1977, 9 – 10]." What is the epistemological relevance of this contrast, if genuine? In this article, I argue that ethicists and philosophers of mathematics have misunderstood it. They have confused what I will call the justificatory challenge for realism about an (...)
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  • Evolutionary Approaches to Epistemic Justification.Helen de Cruz, Maarten Boudry, Johan de Smedt & Stefaan Blancke - 2011 - Dialectica 65 (4):517-535.
    What are the consequences of evolutionary theory for the epistemic standing of our beliefs? Evolutionary considerations can be used to either justify or debunk a variety of beliefs. This paper argues that evolutionary approaches to human cognition must at least allow for approximately reliable cognitive capacities. Approaches that portray human cognition as so deeply biased and deficient that no knowledge is possible are internally incoherent and self-defeating. As evolutionary theory offers the current best hope for a naturalistic epistemology, evolutionary approaches (...)
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  • A Field Guide to Recent Species of Naturalism.Alex Rosenberg - 1996 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 47 (1):1-29.
    This review of recent work in the philosophy of science motivated by a commitment to 'naturalism' begins by identifying three key axioms and one theorem shared by philosophers thus self-styled. Owing much to Quine and Ernest Nagel, these philosophers of science share a common agenda with naturalists elsewhere in philosophy. But they have disagreed among themselves about how the axioms and the theorems they share settle long-standing disputes in the philosophy of science. After expounding these disagreements in the work of (...)
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  • Moral Realism and the Foundations of Ethics.Robert Shaver - 1992 - Philosophical Review 101 (2):458.
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  • (3 other versions)Moral Philosophy as Applied Science.Michael Ruse & Edward O. Wilson - 1986 - Philosophy 61 (236):173-192.
    (1) For much of this century, moral philosophy has been constrained by the supposed absolute gap between is andought, and the consequent belief that the facts of life cannot of themselves yield an ethical blueprint for future action. For this reason, ethics has sustained an eerie existence largely apart from science. Its most respected interpreters still believe that reasoning about right and wrong can be successful without a knowledge of the brain, the human organ where all the decisions about right (...)
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  • What Scientific Theories Could Not Be.Hans Halvorson - 2012 - Philosophy of Science 79 (2):183-206.
    According to the semantic view of scientific theories, theories are classes of models. I show that this view -- if taken seriously as a formal explication -- leads to absurdities. In particular, this view equates theories that are truly distinct, and it distinguishes theories that are truly equivalent. Furthermore, the semantic view lacks the resources to explicate interesting theoretical relations, such as embeddability of one theory into another. The untenability of the semantic view -- as currently formulated -- threatens to (...)
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