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2 March 2023 Social evolution as moral truth tracking in natural law
Filipe Nobre Faria, André Santos Campos
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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.

Filipe Nobre Faria and André Santos Campos "Social evolution as moral truth tracking in natural law," Politics and the Life Sciences 41(1), 76-89, (2 March 2023). https://doi.org/10.1017/pls.2021.12
Published: 2 March 2023
JOURNAL ARTICLE
14 PAGES

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KEYWORDS
Biopolitics
cultural group selection
evolutionary ethics
Natural law
social evolution
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