Questions: Moral Foundations and Intuitions

Question 1

An evolutionary psychologist argues: 'Our intuition to protect our children evolved for inclusive fitness, not to track moral truth. Therefore it has no authority in ethical reasoning.' This argument commits which error?

• A. It ignores the role of cultural transmission in forming moral intuitions
• B. It assumes evolutionary explanations are incompatible with moral realism
• C. It conflates the causal origin of an intuition with its justificatory status
• D. It wrongly claims that all moral intuitions have purely evolutionary explanations

Answer: (C)

This is the genetic fallacy applied to ethics — inferring that because we can explain the causal origin of a belief (evolutionary fitness pressures), the belief lacks epistemic authority. But causal origin does not determine justification. Our mathematical intuitions also have evolutionary and educational origins; we don't take that to undermine arithmetic. An intuition's origin is relevant to assessing its reliability (e.g., intuitions tracking in-group bias deserve scrutiny), but merely having a non-moral causal explanation doesn't automatically debunk it.

Question 2

Haidt's moral foundations theory identifies several evolved moral modules — care/harm, fairness, loyalty, authority, sanctity. Its primary explanatory contribution to moral disagreement is:

• A. Showing that all genuine moral intuitions reduce to care and harm for others
• B. Proving that moral intuitions are unreliable because they evolved for fitness rather than truth
• C. Explaining how systematic disagreements can arise from different weightings of shared foundations
• D. Demonstrating that cross-cultural moral variation proves moral relativism is correct

Answer: (C)

Moral foundations theory explains systematic moral disagreements without concluding that one side is simply misinformed. If different individuals and cultures weight the same evolved foundations differently — some prioritizing care/harm, others additionally weighting loyalty, authority, or sanctity — predictable and stable disagreements follow. This is a descriptive and explanatory contribution, not a normative verdict. It explains why reasonably intelligent people reliably disagree across these dimensions rather than dismissing any side as irrational.

Question 3

Because moral intuitions evolved for adaptive fitness rather than moral truth, they are unreliable guides to what is ethically right.

• T. True
• F. False

Answer: False

This doesn't follow. Natural selection could have produced intuitions that happen to track moral facts, or reliable-enough heuristics for cooperative living. Moreover, our logical and mathematical intuitions also have evolutionary origins, yet we don't consider that to undermine logic or mathematics. The productive stance treats intuitions as evidence — fallible, not infallible — whose reliability depends on whether they are widely shared, robust to reflection, and consistent with other confident intuitions, rather than solely on whether they have non-moral causal origins.

Question 4

In reflective equilibrium, moral intuitions about specific cases and general moral principles are both treated as evidence that can be revised in light of each other.

• T. True
• F. False

Answer: True

Rawls's reflective equilibrium works back and forth between intuitive judgments about specific cases and general principles until they cohere. Neither is treated as absolutely fixed: if a principle implies a conclusion that seems clearly monstrous, we revise the principle; if a principle is compelling and our intuition about a case seems to stem from bias or parochialism, we revise the intuition. Both are data; neither has unconditional priority. This balanced treatment distinguishes reflective equilibrium from pure rationalism (principles override intuitions) and pure intuitionism (intuitions are final).

Question 5

What is the 'debunking argument' against moral intuitions, and why do many philosophers think it fails to show that evolutionary origins automatically undermine their authority?

Model answer: The debunking argument holds that if we can fully explain why we have a moral intuition from non-moral causes (evolution, cultural conditioning), this undermines its status as evidence for moral truth — because the explanation makes no reference to the intuition being accurate. Philosophers typically respond that this proves too much: our logical, mathematical, and perceptual faculties also have evolutionary origins, yet we don't take that to undermine logic or perception. Having a causal explanation doesn't eliminate epistemic authority unless we have specific reason to think the causal process is unreliable or systematically distorting.

The key distinction is between explaining *why we have* an intuition and showing *that the intuition is false or unreliable*. Evolution might have selected for intuitions that track moral reality (because cooperative societies thrive), or reliable heuristics, or in-group-biased responses. The origin story alone doesn't settle which. The productive approach is to use origin stories to flag which intuitions deserve scrutiny — those tracking bias, self-interest, or parochialism — while retaining widely-shared, reflection-robust intuitions as genuine evidence, and using reflective equilibrium to adjudicate.