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    Carmelics

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    LoyalLoyalJusticeJustice
    Made withinDC&Austin
    Statements
    321,452
    Perspectives
    108,905
    Topics
    42
    Home/Original/inverse
    See Original
    Inverse View

    It is not the case that Joyce's debunking argument begs the question against moral realism.

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    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
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    • 1.Joyce's argument requires accepting that there is a complete non-moral genealogy of moral judgment.
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    • 2.Whether the non-moral genealogy is complete is precisely what is disputed between realists and anti-realists in metaethics.
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    • 3.A realist can reasonably hold that the correct explanation of at least some moral beliefs appeals to moral truths or facts that have been grasped.
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
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    • 1.Joyce's argument proceeds from an evolutionary debunking structure that is methodologically neutral: it identifies a causal-historical gap between moral belief formation and any putative moral facts.
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    • 2.Sharon Street's Darwinian dilemma demonstrates that evolutionary pressures track reproductive fitness, not moral truth, creating an explanatory burden the realist cannot discharge without circularity.
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    • 3.Demanding that a genealogical argument first presuppose the falsity of its target conclusion conflates the dialectical burden of proof: debunking arguments are defeasible, not question-begging, unless the realist provides positive evidence of tracking.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
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    • 1.Richard Joyce explicitly structures his argument as an inference to the best explanation: the complete non-moral genealogy is advanced as the more parsimonious hypothesis, placing the evidential burden on the realist to show moral facts played a causal role.
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    • 2.Enoch's 'just-so story' response—that moral realists can posit pre-established harmony between evolutionary fitness and moral truth—introduces an unexplained coincidence that is itself epistemically costly and methodologically ad hoc.
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    • 3.A charge of question-begging requires that the conclusion be smuggled into a premise, but Joyce's completeness claim is an empirical-explanatory thesis about causal history, not a logical assumption of anti-realism.
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