Thesis title: “Debunking ethics”: una prospettiva evolutiva sull’antirealismo morale.
This dissertation examines the implications of Darwinian naturalism for contemporary metaethics, arguing that the evolutionary genealogy of the moral sense undermines the plausibility of robust moral realism while supporting a sentimentalist form of moral fictionalism. The central argumentative thread is developed through the framework of Evolutionary Debunking Arguments (EDAs), which maintain that if our moral judgments are the product of evolutionary pressures indifferent to moral truth, then the apparent objectivity and authority of moral claims cannot be epistemically vindicated. Drawing on the work of Richard Joyce and Sharon Street, it is argued that the realist must either posit an unlikely alignment between evolutionary processes and stance-independent moral facts or concede that the justificatory foundations of moral belief are systematically undermined.
The first part of the dissertation reconstructs the conceptual shift introduced by Darwin’s naturalistic account of the human moral sense. It examines how Darwin’s explanation of sympathy, social instincts and cooperative dispositions destabilizes traditional teleological and theological foundations of morality, and calls into question the assumption that moral normativity is anchored in a non-natural order. By showing that morality emerges from the same biological and psychological processes that shape other social behaviors, Darwinian naturalism invites a re-evaluation of the claimed uniqueness and transcendence of moral reason.
The second part provides a detailed analysis of EDAs, not merely as external criticisms of moral realism but as internal challenges to any realist view that seeks compatibility with a naturalistic understanding of human cognition. It argues that EDAs reveal a structural conflict between moral realism and evolutionary explanations: the evolutionary story accounts for the motivational and phenomenological force of moral judgments without requiring the existence of objective moral properties. This explanatory redundancy weakens the realist position and strengthens antirealist alternatives.
The third part develops a naturalized account of moral motivation grounded in sentimentalist traditions and supported by research in primatology, social cognition and the neurosciences. It emphasizes the continuity between affective dispositions, empathic engagement and norm-guided behavior, suggesting that moral judgment is best understood as an affectively mediated form of social regulation rather than as a response to independent moral truths.
The fourth part defends a form of moral fictionalism that preserves the practical and motivational force of morality without presupposing its truth. On this view, moral norms function as socially stabilizing and motivationally effective fictions: shared frameworks that sustain coordination, trust and mutual accountability. Morality remains indispensable not because it tracks objective moral facts, but because it enables forms of communal life in which cooperation, recognition and responsibility can be maintained. In this sense, morality is not true, yet it remains meaningful and useful.