Groundwork for a Theory of Moral Normativity as Complementary to Adaptiveness

Abstract

This dissertation lays down the groundwork for a theory of moral normativity according to which true moral norms are conceived as complementary to adaptiveness. We open the first section by offering a problematisation of how morality evolved and conclude that although we have domain-general and social-domain-specific adaptations shaping our norm psychology, nothing seems to suggest that we have distinctively moral biological adaptations. Rather, morality culturally evolved. We then argue for hypotheses congruent with these considerations: (1) that normativity is an essential property of all autonomous systems; (2) that our norm psychology is an adaptively plastic response to an increasingly complex social environment marked by growing intensity of human fitness interdependence; and (3) that morality is a function of the cultural development of our norm psychology, in particular, that the cultural institutions that led to the development of so-called WEIRD psychologies are causes of morality as it is typically understood in the Western canon of moral philosophy. We then turn to the second section where we ground our naturalistic metanormative theory on these empirical building blocks. Its core thesis claims that true norms are systematically complementary to adaptiveness. Having expounded upon this thesis, we then turn to reflect on the meaningfulness of a metaethics that does not place morality first. Understanding that our concept of morality has a cultural etiology is highly consequential. To illustrate this, we advance an abductive argument based on the cultural etiology of our moral psychology in support of the mind-dependence of moral normativity. We then turn to how the complementarity thesis may be used to support a truth-tropic moral evolutionary epistemology, and then argue that we may plausibly track some moral truths robustly conceived as concerning facts about cooperation. We conclude by stitching together all these ideas and speculating as to their implications for future research.

Date of Award	1 Oct 2024
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Bristol
Sponsors	Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia
Supervisor	Samir Okasha (Supervisor) & Martin Sticker (Supervisor)