Richard Joyce

Atheism is a familiar kind of skepticism about religion. Moral error theory is an analogous kind of skepticism about morality, though less well known outside academic circles. Both kinds of skeptic face a "what next?" question: If we have decided that the subject matter (religion/morality) is mistaken, then what should we do with this way of talking and thinking? The natural assumption is that we should abolish the mistaken topic, just as we previously eliminated talk of, say, bodily humors and unicorns. The fictionalist, however, offers a less obvious recommendation. According to the fictionalist, engaging in the topic in question provides pragmatic benefits that do not depend on its truth-in a way roughly analogous to engaging with a novel or a movie. The religious fictionalist maintains that even if we were atheists, we should carry on talking, thinking, and acting as if religion were true. The moral fictionalist maintains a similar view regarding moral talk, thought, and action. Both forms of fictionalism face serious challenges. Some challenges can be levelled at either form of fictionalism (or at any form of fictionalism), whereas others are problems unique to moral fictionalism or to religious fictionalism. There are important questions to be asked about the relationship between these two kinds of fictionalism. Could moral fictionalism be plausible even if religious fictionalism is not (or vice versa)? This is a volume of thirteen previously unpublished papers on the topics of religious fictionalism, moral fictionalism, and the relation between these views.

This paper explores the landscape of moral skepticism by delineating three principal forms. First, noncognitivism denies that moral judgments express beliefs at all, rejecting their status as propositions. Second, error theory accepts that moral judgments are truth-apt but contends they are uniformly false. Third, justification skepticism allows moral beliefs may be true but holds that agents are never epistemically justified in believing them. These positions are systematically clarified and contrasted.

For centuries, certain moral philosophers have maintained that morality is an illusion, comparable to talking of ghosts or unicorns. These moral skeptics claim that the world simply doesn’t contain the sort of properties (such as moral badness, moral obligation, etc.) necessary to render moral statements true. Even seemingly obvious moral claims, such as" killing innocents is morally wrong" fail to be true. What would lead someone to adopt such a radical viewpoint? Are the arguments in its favor defensible or plausible? What impact would embracing such a view have on one’s practical life? Taking as its point of departure the work of moral philosopher John Mackie (1917-1981), "A World Without Values" is a collection of essays on moral skepticism by leading contemporary philosophers, some of whom are sympathetic to Mackie’s views, some of whom are opposed. Rather than treating moral skepticism as something to dismiss as quickly as possible, this anthology is a comprehensive exploration of the topic, and as such will be a valuable resource for students of moral philosophy at all levels, as well as professionals in the field of meta-ethics. "A World Without Values" presents state-of-the-art arguments that advance the ongoing philosophical debate on several fronts, and will enjoy an important place on any meta-ethicist’s bookshelf for some years to come.

Facts about the evolutionary origins of morality may have some kind of undermining effect on morality, yet the arguments that advocate this view are varied not only in their strategies but in their conclusions. The most promising such argument is modest: it attempts to shift the burden of proof in the service of an epistemological conclusion. This paper principally focuses on two other debunking arguments. First, I outline the prospects of trying to establish an error theory on genealogical grounds. Second, I discuss how a debunking strategy can work even under the assumption that non‐cognitivism is true.

This paper examines the viability of adopting a fictionalist stance toward folk psychological entities such as beliefs and desires. Psychological fictionalism claims that, while these entities do not literally exist, it is pragmatically beneficial to continue employing them as if they do, akin to characters in a fictional narrative. I identify a significant challenge to this position, termed “fictionalist suicide”: the very viability of adopting a fictionalist attitude toward folk psychological entities presupposes that they exist, thereby undermining the fictionalist's own stance. This paradoxical situation raises concerns about the coherence and sustainability of psychological fictionalism. To address this issue, I explore various strategies that might allow psychological fictionalism to maintain its integrity.

Suppose that the human tendency to think of certain actions and omissions as morally required – a notion that surely lies at the heart of moral discourse – is a trait that has been naturally selected for. Many have thought that from this premise we can justify or vindicate moral concepts. I argue that this is mistaken, and defend Michael Ruse's view that the more plausible implication is an error theory – the idea that morality is an illusion foisted upon us by evolution. The naturalistic fallacy is a red herring in this debate, since there is really nothing that counts as a 'fallacy' at all. If morality is an illusion, it appears to follow that we should, upon discovering this, abolish moral discourse on pain of irrationality. I argue that this conclusion is too hasty, and that we may be able usefully to employ a moral discourse, warts and all, without believing in it.

This collection reports on the latest research on an increasingly pivotal issue for evolutionary biology: cooperation. The chapters are written from a variety of disciplinary perspectives and utilize research tools that range from empirical survey to conceptual modeling, reflecting the rich diversity of work in the field. They explore a wide taxonomic range, concentrating on bacteria, social insects, and, especially, humans. Part I (“Agents and Environments”) investigates the connections of social cooperation in social organizations to the conditions that make cooperation profitable and stable, focusing on the interactions of agent, population, and environment. Part II (“Agents and Mechanisms”) focuses on how proximate mechanisms emerge and operate in the evolutionary process and how they shape evolutionary trajectories. Throughout the book, certain themes emerge that demonstrate the ubiquity of questions regarding cooperation in evolutionary biology: the generation and division of the profits of cooperation; transitions in individuality; levels of selection, from gene to organism; and the “human cooperation explosion” that makes our own social behavior particularly puzzling from an evolutionary perspective.

This paper critically evaluates the capacity, and limits, of neuroscience to inform metaethical debates. I zero in on two main issues: whether empirical findings may bolster moral emotivism, and whether they might undermine various forms of moral rationalism. Regarding moral emotivism, I highlight a key limitation: neuroscience can reveal that emotions cause or accompany moral decisions, but it cannot show that moral statements express emotions in a linguistic or conceptual sense. As such, neural evidence may speak to psychological processes, but not to the truth-conditions of emotivist claims. On moral rationalism, I distinguish three forms: (i) Psychological rationalism, which holds that moral judgments derive from a rational faculty; (ii) Conceptual rationalism, suggesting that moral norms are conceptually tied to practical rationality; (iii) Justificatory rationalism, where moral wrongdoing is seen as rationally unjustifiable. I conclude that while neuroscience may illuminate the underpinnings of moral cognition, its reach into metaethics is narrowly confined: empirical data may inform psychological aspects, but cannot settle conceptual or justificatory questions.

In recent years, the relation between contemporary academic philosophy and evolutionary theory has become ever more active, multifaceted, and productive. The connection is an active two-way street. In one direction, philosophers of biology make significant contributions to theoretical discussions about the nature of evolution. In the other direction, a broader group of philosophers appeal to Darwinian selection in an attempt to illuminate traditional philosophical puzzles. In grappling with these questions, this interdisciplinary collection includes cutting-edge examples from both directions of traffic. The 30 contributions, written exclusively for this volume, are divided into six sections: "The Nature of Selection," "Evolution and Information," "Human Nature," "Evolution and Mind," "Evolution and Ethics," and "Evolution, Aesthetics, and Art." Many of the contributing philosophers and psychologists are international leaders in their fields.

This paper addresses conceptual imprecision in debates over moral nativism by examining three critical nodes: the nature of innateness, the distinction between moral concepts and complete moral judgments, and the nature of moral judgment. I critique nativist positions that rely on general-purpose cognitive and emotional mechanisms. While sufficient for less demanding conceptions of what a moral judgment is, these accounts leave unaddressed cognitively rich elements, such as desert, transgression, and practical authority. The chapter concludes that moral nativism and anti-nativism may both remain defensible, depending on how these various kinds of indeterminacy are precisified, underscoring the importance of clarifying theoretical targets.

In The Myth of Morality, Richard Joyce argues that moral discourse is hopelessly flawed. At the heart of ordinary moral judgements is a notion of moral inescapability, or practical authority, which, upon investigation, cannot be reasonably defended. Joyce argues that natural selection is to blame, in that it has provided us with a tendency to invest the world with values that it does not contain, and demands that it does not make. Should we therefore do away with morality, as we did away with other faulty notions such as witches? Possibly not. We may be able to carry on with morality as a 'useful fiction' - allowing it to have a regulative influence on our lives and decisions, perhaps even playing a central role - while not committing ourselves to believing or asserting falsehoods, and thus not being subject to accusations of 'error'.

Moral imperatives are claimed to be inescapable. The moral felon who convinces us that he desired to commit his crimes, that he had no desires that the actions thwarted, does not incline us to withdraw our judgment that he did what he ought not to have done. We do not permit him to evade his moral culpability by citing unusual desires or interests. This thesis of moral inescapability seems familiar and yet is notoriously difficult to make sense of. Philippa Foot calls it “the fugitive thought,” and argues that there is no coherent thought to be brought into the light, but thinks that we could carry on moral discourse purged of claims of inescapability. Her pessimism about locating the fugitive is justified, but moral discourse may well not survive its elimination. Inescapability lies at the heart of our moral framework; indeed, we might well think that it is the whole point of having a moral language. For this reason our moral discourse is hopelessly flawed in the sense of there not being an acceptable explication of the central moral concepts, though it is not without practical merit. Participating in moral discourse may be warranted in pragmatic terms, despite its defects.

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 from this hypothesis. Might the fact that the human brain has been biologically prepared by natural selection to engage in moral judgment serve in some sense to vindicate this way of thinking--staving off the threat of moral skepticism, or even undergirding some version of moral realism? Or if morality has an adaptive explanation in genetic terms--if it is, as Joyce writes, "just something that helped our ancestors make more babies"--might such an explanation actually undermine morality's central role in our lives? He carefully examines both the evolutionary "vindication of morality" and the evolutionary "debunking of morality," considering the skeptical view more seriously than have others who have treated the subject. Interdisciplinary and combining the latest results from the empirical sciences with philosophical discussion, The Evolution of Morality is one of the few books in this area written from the perspective of moral philosophy. Concise and without technical jargon, the arguments are rigorous but accessible to readers from different academic backgrounds. Joyce discusses complex issues in plain language while advocating subtle and sometimes radical views. The Evolution of Morality lays the philosophical foundations for further research into the biological understanding of human morality

The moral error theorist faces many kinds of opposition. One kind of opponent offers an identity claim between moral properties and certain naturalistic properties (e.g., of the format “Goodness = N-ness”). Usually the error theorist will object to the plausibility of this identity claim, but sometimes another kind of defense of the error theory is possible: when there is uncertainty whether the description of the naturalistic property in question (“N-ness”) even succeeds in denoting anything. Perhaps the naturalistic description is incomplete, such that we can be confident that it fails to denote. Or perhaps the naturalistic description leaves it open whether it denotes anything; the advocate of the theory assumes that it does, but there are serious grounds for doubt. If we take such an identity claim seriously, but there exists doubt about whether the right-hand side of the equation denotes anything, then there is equal doubt about whether the left-hand side, the moral descriptor, denotes anything. Thus the would-be moral naturalist is, or may be, unwittingly advocating a moral error theory. Examples of this mistake are canvassed, including dispositional theories of moral value and virtue ethics.

This paper critically examines William Harms's argument that if human morality is a product of natural selection, moral realism follows. Harms claims that the evolutionary origins of moral beliefs support their status as objective truths. I contend that even if it is true that morality evolved through natural selection, this does not imply moral realism. I argue that moral beliefs could be adaptive without being true, since the utterance of mistaken moral statements might enhance reproductive fitness. Therefore, I conclude, Harms's teleosemantic approach fails to establish moral realism.

This paper develops and defends moral fictionalism as a response to moral error theory, which holds that all moral claims are false. The fictionalist argues that instead of discarding morality, error theorists should treat moral discourse as a motivating fiction that supports useful behavior. I argue that morality can function as a form of self-commitment, shaping behavior and strengthening resistance to temptation even without belief in moral truth. This is an article-length statement of the view presented in my 2001 book “The Myth of Morality.”

Different versions of moral projectivism are delineated: minimal, metaphysical, nihilistic, and noncognitivist. Minimal projectivism (the focus of this paper) is the conjunction of two subtheses: (1) that we experience morality as an objective aspect of the world and (2) that this experience has its origin in an affective attitude (e.g., an emotion) rather than in perceptual faculties. Both are empirical claims and must be tested as such. This paper does not offer ideas on any specific test procedures, but rather undertakes the important preliminary task of clarifying the content of these subtheses (e.g., what is meant by "objective"? what is meant by "experience"?). Finally, attention is given to the relation between (a) acknowledging that the projectivist account might be true of a token moral judgment, and (b) maintaining moral projectivism to be true as a general thesis.

Facts about the evolutionary origins of morality may have some kind of undermining effect on morality, yet the arguments that advocate this view are varied not only in their strategies but in their conclusions. The most promising such argument is modest: it attempts to shift the burden of proof in the service of an epistemological conclusion. This paper principally focuses on two other debunking arguments. First, I outline the prospects of trying to establish an error theory on genealogical grounds. Second, I discuss how a debunking strategy can work even under the assumption that noncognitivism is true.