Tom Swann Joyce A Skeptick
A skeptick’s tale 2008
“The term”bias” in this context should also make us think of evolutionary psychology…
The evolutionary psychologist argues that the human brain comes with various biases and heuristics’ways of thinking that helped our ancestors avoid threats and exploit opportunities in a prehistoric environment. According to the moral nativist, moral thinking itself is an inbuilt bias. But the fact that a psychological bias helped our ancestors make more babies than the competition does not magically vindicate it in epistemological terms. On the contrary, it may very well provide an explanation of where this way of thinking came from that does not imply or presuppose a reliable connection with reality. (In effect, this would be evidence that moral intuitions arise from an unreliable source, thus further supporting Sinnott-Armstrong’s case [2006].) And this genealogical hypothesis would not just be a wild flight of fancy, like the skeptic pondering whether she might be a brain in a vat. It would be a respectable scientific hypothesis, which may well receive empirical confirmation. …
The evolutionary hypothesis explains away those knee-jerk intuitions that stand against it, for it provides a plausible and potentially confirmable hypothesis about where those intuitions come from and why they should seem so strong and compelling to those creatures for whom they are a design feature.”
P 220 “And if trophies were awarded for who is the biggest pariah in the metaethical community, then at least two things would seem certain: (A) the error theorist would win the prize, and (B) nobody would watch the ceremony.”
Hehehe.
