The Evolutionary Debunking of Quasi-Realism

Abstract

The authors present a novel answer that quasi-realists can provide to a version of the reliability challenge in ethics—which asks for an explanation of why our moral beliefs are generally true—and, in so doing, they examine whether evolutionary arguments can debunk quasi-realism. Although reliability challenges differ from evolutionary debunking arguments (EDAs) in several respects, there may well be a connection between them. For the explanatory premise of an EDA may state that a particular theory of beliefs of a certain kind does not, or cannot, provide a plausible account of why those beliefs might be generally true, and its epistemic premise may state that, if that is the case, then the beliefs in question have a negative epistemic status or the theory is false inasmuch as, if it were true, it would lead to those beliefs having such a negative epistemic status. The quasi-realist can answer the reliability challenge by claiming that, when one forms our moral beliefs through a process of well-informed impartial reflection, one forms them in response to the non-moral features of things on which depend the moral features they have. Hence, when one forms beliefs by means of such a process, one is most likely forming true moral beliefs.