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Social evolution as moral truth tracking in natural law

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 August 2021

Filipe Nobre Faria Open the ORCID record for Filipe Nobre Faria [Opens in a new window]  and
André Santos Campos
Filipe Nobre Faria*
Affiliation:
Nova University of Lisbon
André Santos Campos
Affiliation:
Nova University of Lisbon
*
Correspondence: Filipe Nobre Faria. Email: filipefaria@fcsh.unl.pt
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Abstract

Morality can be adaptive or maladaptive. From this fact come polarizing disputes on the meta-ethical status of moral adaptation. The realist tracking account of morality claims that it is possible to track objective moral truths and that these truths correspond to moral rules that are adaptive. In contrast, evolutionary anti-realism rejects the existence of moral objectivity and thus asserts that adaptive moral rules cannot represent objective moral truths, since those truths do not exist. This article develops a novel evolutionary view of natural law to defend the realist tracking account. It argues that we can identify objective moral truths through cultural group selection and that adaptive moral rules are likely to reflect such truths.

Keywords

Natural lawsocial evolutioncultural group selectionbiopoliticsevolutionary ethics
Type
Perspective Essays
Information
Politics and the Life Sciences , Volume 41 , Issue 1 , Spring 2022 , pp. 76 - 89
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Association for Politics and the Life Sciences

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