Frederico Carvalho

Moral realism is the metaethical position that moral facts exist. Some philosophers have advanced arguments in opposition to this idea by appealing to the evolutionary formation of our moral capacities – these arguments have come to be known as “evolutionary debunking arguments”. Sharon Street’s famous ‘Darwinian dilemma’ is one of such arguments. The argument is this: since our moral capacities have an evolutionary past, the realist must clarify whether there is a relation between this background and the postulated moral facts or not. According to Street, both responses are untenable for the realist. We believe that this is not true. By accepting Street’s challenge, by exploring consequent replies available in the literature, and by looking at the nature of morality in light of the evolution of cooperation, we construct a conjecture for the moral realist to assert the existence of such a relation in a satisfactory way. Moral facts are facts about cooperation, which in turn are facts about evolutionary adaptation. We argue this naturalist route can overcome the Darwinian dilemma, undermining the strength of “evolutionary debunking arguments”, and bolstering moral realism. While we concede that cooperation-based moral realism still faces difficult challenges, it nevertheless escapes evolutionary debunking.