Countering the Evolutionary Debunking Argument with David Enoch

David Enoch counters Sharon Street’s evolutionary debunking argument (EDA), also known as the “Darwinian Dilemma,” challenges moral realism – the view that objective moral truths exist independently of human attitudes. The argument posits that natural selection has significantly shaped our moral beliefs for survival advantage, not for their accuracy in tracking independent moral facts, leading to the conclusion that our moral knowledge is likely an illusion if realism is true.

David responds to the evolutionary debunking argument by employing a “third-factor” explanation and an argument from deliberative indispensability. He argues that the debunker fails to show that a correlation between moral facts and beliefs is impossible or improbable for the realist.

Enoch accepts the premise that evolution has strongly influenced our moral beliefs in ways that promote survival, but he denies that this influence means our beliefs are unreliable regarding objective moral facts. He proposes a “third-factor” (or “pre-established harmony”) explanation:

• 1. Survival as the Common Factor: Certain objective moral facts (e.g., that survival is good, that pain is bad) are true independently of human attitudes.
• 2. Evolutionary Alignment: Evolution selected for creatures who were disposed to believe and act in accordance with these basic facts because doing so enhanced their survival and reproductive success.
• 3. Resulting Correlation: The correlation between our moral beliefs and the objective moral facts is not a mere coincidence, but rather a result of both being influenced by this common, objective factor of survival.

This response essentially says that evolution did not track the moral facts directly, but rather tracked survival benefits, which in turn align with some fundamental moral truths.

David Enoch is a prominent defender of robust moral realism. He wrote the book ‘Taking Morality Seriously: A Defense of Robust Realism‘. He also wrote ‘The Epistemological Challenge to Metanormative Realism: How Best to Understand It, and How to Cope with It‘.