Morality and Mathematics: The Evolutionary Challenge

Abstract

The Evolutionary Challenge for moral realism is, roughly, the challenge 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. This challenge is widely thought not to apply to mathematical realism. In this article, I argue that it does. Along the way, I substantially clarify the Evolutionary Challenge, discuss its relation to more familiar epistemological challenges, and broach the problem of moral disagreement. I conclude that there may be no epistemological ground on which to be a moral antirealist and a mathematical realist.