Richard Joyce

According to the moral error theorist, all moral judgments are mistaken. The world just doesn't contain the properties and relations necessary for these judgments to be true. But what should we actually do if we decided that we are in this radical and unsettling predicament--that morality is just a widespread and heartfelt illusion? One suggestion is to eliminate all talk and thought of morality. Another is to carry on believing it anyway. And yet another is to treat morality as a kind of convenient fiction. We tend to think of moral thinking as valuable and useful, but we can also recognize that it can be harmful and even disastrous. Would we be better off or worse off if we stopped basing decisions on moral considerations? This is a collection of twelve brand new chapters focused on a critical examination of the options available to the moral error theorist. After a general introduction outlining the topic, explaining key terminology, and offering suggestions for further reading, the chapters address questions like: * Is it true that the more that people are motivated by moral concerns, the more likely it is that society will be elitist, authoritarian, and dishonest? * Is an appeal to moral values a useful tool for helping resolve conflicts, or does it actually exacerbate conflicts? * Would it even be possible to abolish morality from our thinking? * If we were to accept a moral error theory, would it be feasible to carry on believing in morality in everyday contexts? * Might moral discourse be usefully modeled on familiar metaphorical language, where we can convey useful and important truths by uttering falsehoods? * Does moral thinking support or undermine a commitment to feminist goals? * What role do moral judgments play in addressing important decisions affecting climate change? The End of Morality: Taking Moral Abolitionism Seriouslyis the first book to thoroughly address these and other questions, systematically investigating the harms and benefits of moral thought, and considering what the world might be like without morality.

Moral skepticism is the denial that there is any such thing as moral knowledge. Since the publication of The Myth of Morality in 2001, Richard Joyce has explored the terrain of moral skepticism and has been willing to advocate versions of this radical view. Joyce's attitude toward morality is analogous to an atheist's attitude toward religion: he claims that in making moral judgments speakers attempt to state truths but that the world isn't furnished with the properties and relations necessary to render such judgments true. Moral thinking probably emerged as a human adaptation, but one whose usefulness derived from its capacity to bolster social cohesion rather than its ability to track truths about the world. Essays in Moral Skepticism gathers together a dozen of Joyce's most significant papers from the last decade, following the developments in his ideas, presenting responses to critics, and charting his exploration of the complex landscape of modern moral skepticism.

The first objective of this chapter is to clarify what might be meant by the claim that human morality is innate. The second is to argue that if human morality is indeed innate an explanation may be provided that does not resort to an appeal to group selection, but invokes only individual selection and so-called “reciprocal altruism” in particular. This second task is not motivated by any theoretical or methodological prejudice against group selection; I willingly concede that group selection is a legitimate evolutionary process, and that it may well have had the dominant hand in the evolution of human morality. There is a fact of the matter about which process, or which combination of processes, produced any given adaptation, and it is to be hoped that in time enough evidence might be brought into the light to settle such issues. At present, though, the evidence is insufficient regarding human morality. By preferring to focus on reciprocity rather than group selection I take myself simply to be outlining and advocating a coherent and uncomplicated hypothesis, which may then take its place alongside other hypotheses to face the tribunal of our best evidence.

Suppose there are two people having a moral disagreement about, say, abortion. They argue in a familiar way about whether fetuses have rights, whether a woman’s right to autonomy over her body overrides the fetus’s welfare, and so on. But then suppose one of the people says “Oh, it’s all just a matter of opinion; there’s no objective fact about whether fetuses have rights. When we say that something is morally forbidden, all we’re really doing is expressing our disapproval of it.” The other person protests: “No!—that’s totally wrong. Of course there are objective moral truths.” And suppose their dispute now settles on this new matter of whether there are objective moral facts, and the debate continues. They’ve now stopped discussing abortion, and are discussing the nature of any moral debate about abortion; they’ve stopped doing ethics, and started doing metaethics. If wondering about what one morally ought to do is to engage in ethical thought, then wondering about what one is doing when one wonders about what one morally ought to do is to engage in metaethical thought. When we make public moral judgments are we stating facts, or are we just expressing our opinions? And if there are moral facts, then what kind of fact are they? Can moral judgments be true or false? Can moral judgments be justified, and if so how? These kinds of questions are the domain of metaethics. (I’m not saying that there is a crisp and principled line to be drawn between meta-ethics and regular ethical discourse; but it is, if nothing else, a pedagogically useful division of labor.).

Moral naturalism is the view that moral properties exist in a manner that fits with our scientific worldview. Might empirical discoveries about the genealogy of moral judgments (that, for example, they issue from an evolved psychological faculty) serve to undermine moral naturalism? One way of undermining moral naturalism is to show that moral properties do not exist at all. The possibility of genealogical considerations supporting this conclusion is examined and found to be weak. Alternatively, might empirical discoveries about the genealogy of moral judgments serve to vindicate some form of moral naturalism? This possibility is also explored and found to be unconvincing.

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.

The lead text of this book is based on primatologist Frans de Waal’s 2003 Tanner Lectures at Princeton University, to which he adds three short appendices. There are commentaries by Robert Wright, Christine Korsgaard, Philip Kitcher, and Peter Singer, followed by a 20-page response. Josiah Ober and Stephen Macedo provide a brief introduction. As befits a Tanner lecturer, de Waal’s scope is broad, his writing accessible, and the pace lively. He continues his crusade against the “veneer theory”—the idea that humans are naturally sociopaths and that empathy, altruism, and morality are the result of recent cultural forces. The extent to which de Waal dichotomizes this debate, however, masks much of interest. One can agree with the seemingly obvious fact that humans are obligatorily gregarious organisms—replete with various prosocial mechanisms—while still expressing reasonable doubt that our capacity to make moral judgments is the result of an innate mechanism dedicated to that task. De Waal is an unparalleled source of rich first-hand primatological data, arguing cogently that humans show continuity with other apes regarding empathy, consolation behavior, peacemaking, and reciprocal relations. Yet he admits these “building blocks” are “by no means sufficient” for morality, and in his Response discusses two further levels of morality: rule enforcement for the community’s good, and disinterested moral reasoning. He doesn’t address whether this third, uniquely human, level is a distinct innate adaptation, apparently not appreciating that if it isn’t, and yet is necessary for being literally accorded a “moral sense”, then moral nativism is false and at least some of human morality is “veneer.” In characteristic non-philosopher manner, de Waal ultimately rejects the question as “semantics” and thus “mostly a waste of time”. It seems a surprising blemish that the author of a book subtitled “How Morality Evolved” should grow impatient with those wondering what precisely is necessary and sufficient for morality, and what specifically has evolved.

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 concerns the relation between two metaethical theses: moral naturalism and moral skepticism. It is important that we distinguish both from a couple of methodological principles with which they might be confused. Let us give the label “Cartesian skepticism” to the method of subjecting to doubt everything for which it is possible to do so—usually by introducing alternative hypotheses that are consistent with all available evidence (e.g., brains in vats). Let us give the label “global naturalism” to the principle that requires of any item which we admit into our ontology that it “fits” (in some manner or cluster of manners to be specified) with our naturalistic scientific worldview. One might be both a Cartesian skeptic and a global naturalist, if the latter principle is something that has survived the former test procedure. Alternatively, one might have adopted global naturalism for some other reason, while having little patience for the Cartesian method of doubt. Moral naturalism is the metaethical view that moral entities (e.g., properties like goodness and evil) fit within the scientific image of the world. The moral naturalist will probably be a global naturalist, but need not be: It is consistent with allowing non-natural entities into one’s ontology that one happens to think that moral properties are of the natural variety. Moral skepticism denies that moral entities fit within our scientific worldview. One way of denying moral naturalism is to be a moral error theorist: to hold that our moral discourse attempts to make reference to moral properties, but these properties do not exist.1 Another way of denying moral naturalism is to be a noncognitivist: to hold that our moral discourse was never really in the business of referring to moral facts or properties in the first place, and ipso facto such facts or properties are not naturalistic. In this paper, the label “moral skepticism” denotes the disjunction of these two theses. Neither the error theorist nor the noncognitivist must be committed to global naturalism, but usually will be; indeed, this commitment will often be a motivating factor of their metaethical views..

John Mackie’s moral error theory is so closely associated in people’s minds with his arguments from relativity and from queerness that one might overlook the fact that there may be numerous other, and possibly better, ways of establishing that metaethical position. Perhaps, indeed, there are even further resources for arguing for a moral error theory to be unearthed in Mackie’s own book. I have in mind Mackie’s thesis of moral objectification: that the “objective prescriptivity” with which our moral judgments are imbued is the result of our “tendency to read our feelings into their objects” (1977: 42). Mackie invokes Hume’s famous projectivist image of the human mind’s “great propensity to spread itself on external objects,” and, indeed, it is in his book-length analysis of Hume’s moral theory (Mackie 1980) that the topic receives a more careful discussion than in Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong. In both books he musters some considerations in favor of the thesis, and reveals to us that he thinks that “it is very largely correct” (1980: 72).

Competing Sovereignties provides a critique of the concept of sovereignty in modernity in light of claims to determine the content of law at the international, national and local levels. In an argument that is illustrated through an analysis of debates over the control of intellectual property law in India, Richard Joyce considers how economic globalization and the claims of indigenous communities do not just challenge national sovereignty - as if national sovereignty is the only kind of sovereignty - but in fact invite us to challenge our conception of what sovereignty 'is'. Combining theoretical research and reflection with an analysis of the legal, institutional and political context in which sovereignties 'compete', the book offers a reconception of modern sovereignty - and, with it, a new appreciation of the complex issues surrounding the relationship between international organisations, nation states and local and indigenous communities.

To reject a false theory on the basis of an unsound argument is, in my opinion, as much an intellectual sin as to embrace a false theory. Thus, although I am no fan of any particular form of moral rationalism—and, indeed, on occasion have gone out of my way to criticize it—when rationalism is assailed for faulty reasons I find myself in the curious position of leaping to its defense (which goes to show that in philosophy it isn’t the case that one’s enemy’s enemy is one’s friend). This puts me at something of a dialectical disadvantage, since my “defense” of moral rationalism has strict limits: I will defend it against specific kinds of criticism, but I have no interest in defending it simpliciter. It is important to bear in mind that what is in dispute between Shaun Nichols and myself is not the truth or falsity of moral rationalism, but rather what kind of evidence bears on the matter.

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.

The popular expedient of identifying noncognitivism with the claim that moral judgments are neither true nor false leaves open the question of what kind of thing a moral judgment is—an indeterminacy that has led to decades of confusion as to what the noncognitivist is more precisely committed to. Sometimes noncognitivism is presented as a claim about mental states (“Moral judgments are not beliefs”), sometimes as a claim about meaning (“X is morally good” means no more than “X: hurray!”), sometimes as a claim about speech acts (“Moral judgments are not assertions”). Focus on the last two possibilities. The former calls for a translation schema from a propositional surface grammar to a non-propositional deep structure. Such schemata from the noncognitivist are familiar to students of metaethics. (Cf. A.J. Ayer’s claim that in saying “You acted wrongly in stealing that money” one is “not saying anything more than … ‘You stole that money,’ [but] in a peculiar tone of horror.”) It is less widely realized that the noncognitivist is not obliged to offer any such translation schema, for she might instead plump for the last option, of formulating noncognitivism as a theory not of meaning but of use. Perhaps the moral cognitivist is correct about the meaning of moral sentences (there is a wide range of possibilities here) but wrong about the way people use moral sentences: perhaps people do not assert moral sentences, perhaps the nature of acceptance of a moral claim is not belief.

“Beer Gut Gene Discovered” announced the Sydney Morning Herald in 2003 (January 9)—yet another media declaration that scientists have uncovered the “gene for” such-and-such. Claims such as these are, in the popular consciousness, often conflated with proposals from sociobiologists and evolutionary psychologists regarding the innateness of certain human traits: infanticide, rape, or intelligence correlated with gender or race. When these traits are nasty or politically disconcerting (as are the three listed) then those pressing the claims are usually quick to point out that to identify any such tendency as the manifestation of an evolutionary adaptation is in no sense to exonerate the behaviour or to justify any political arrangement designed to accommodate it. Often, however, though we may not be quite able to articulate where this defence fails, we are left feeling uneasy.