Locked into Agency: Transcendental Arguments and Darwinian Skepticism

Abstract

Does our best knowledge of evolutionary theory have implications for moral truth? Moral realists generally argue that the existence of mind-independent moral facts is compatible with the evolutionary data. According to moral antirealists, this is not the case. In this thesis, I argue that antirealism is a more promising way to make sense of the metaphysics of moral truth. However, it will be demonstrated that the dominant antirealist position in the evolutionary debunking debate: Humean constructivism, is no less endangered by the evolutionary data than realism. I will argue that Kantian transcendental constructivism – the theory according to which a commitment to a moral principle is rationally inescapable from the perspective of agents – gives a more promising answer to the evolutionary challenge to morality. Therefore, Kantian constructivism ought to play a much more prominent part in the evolutionary debunking debate than it currently does.