Thinking About God: First Steps in Philosophy by Gregory E. Ganssle

Author:Gregory E. Ganssle
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
Published: 2011-01-31T22:51:00+00:00

Some people do think that if we explain the moral feeling, we explain away the moral fact. In other words, they think that moral facts reduce to moral feelings. There are no moral facts. There is nothing to morality beyond our feelings. As we said earlier, it is a legitimate philosophical move to defend an error theory. The evolutionary theory of morality, however, does not itself defend the claim that moral feelings are the entire story of morality. It does not even attempt to do so. It simply assumes it.

I suppose if you thought, for some reason, that everything in the world must be explained with some kind of evolutionary theory, then this account might appeal to you. But why would anyone think that morality must be explained by a biological theory? Some of the people who hold this theory do so because they are committed to explaining morality by evolution. If you are simply trying to explain morality-by whatever means-you have better explanations from which to choose.

So my first reason to reject the evolutionary theory of morality is that it does not explain morality. That an explanation fails to explain is generally a good reason to look elsewhere. The second reason I reject this theory is that there is no evidence that it is true. We may have evidence that prehistoric people did travel and hunt in groups, but we do not have (and we cannot have) any evidence that our sense of moral obligation comes from the feelings of loyalty and guilt and so forth. This claim is not the sort of claim that lends itself to physical evidence.

The third problem with this theory is related to the first one. Evolutionary theory, as far as biology is concerned, is an explanation about how species vary and develop through random variation and natural selection. The key is natural selection. Individuals that are not well suited do not, for the most part, survive. The species survives because the better-adapted individuals have the most surviving off spring. They pass on their better traits to their offspring and so the species survives. If our moral sense originated because it had survival value, how should we think now about these moral feelings? We should think that they were biologically useful. What we should not think is that they tell us anything that is true. Although we may continue to feel as though we have a real obligation to act in a certain way, if this theory is true, we know that we do not have any real obligations. These moral feelings, though they had survival value in the past, now are like one's appendix. They are leftovers that have outlived their purpose. It is hard to see what the purpose for moral feelings would be now.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.