THE EVOLUTION

OF MORAL PROGRESS
 THE EVOLUTION
OF MORAL PROGRESS

a biocultural theory

ALLEN BUCHANAN
AND
RUSSELL POWELL

1
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 CONTENTS

PREFACE  vii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS  xiii

INTRODUCTION: WHY A THEORY OF MORAL

PROGRESS IS NEEDED  1

PART I: WHAT IS MORAL PROGRESS?

1. A TYPOLOGY OF MORAL PROGRESS  45

2.  CONTEMPORARY ACCOUNTS OF MORAL

PROGRESS  67

3.  A PLURALISTIC, DYNAMIC CONCEPTION

OF MORAL PROGRESS  92

PART II: EVOLUTION AND THE POSSIBILITY

OF MORAL PROGRESS

4.  IS EVOLVED HUMAN NATURE AN OBSTACLE

TO MORAL PROGRESS?  115

5.  THE INCLUSIVIST ANOMALY AND THE

LIMITS OF EVOLUTIONARY EXPLANATION  153

6.  TOWARD A NATURALISTIC THEORY OF

INCLUSIVIST MORAL PROGRESS  187

7.  NATURALIZING MORAL REGRESSION: A

BIOCULTURAL ACCOUNT  218

8.  DE-​MORALIZATION AND THE EVOLUTION

OF INVALID MORAL NORMS  239
vi Contents
PART III: THE PATH TRAVELED AND
THE WAY FORWARD

9.  IMPROVEMENTS IN MORAL CONCEPTS AND

THE HUMAN RIGHTS MOVEMENT  273

10.  HUMAN RIGHTS NATURALIZED  306

11.  BIOMEDICAL MORAL ENHANCEMENT

AND MORAL PROGRESS  343

CONCLUSION: THE FUTURE OF HUMAN

MORALITY  374

POSTSCRIPT: MORAL PROGRESS AND

CULTURAL EVOLUTION  396

Appendix: Topics for Future Research  403

Index  411
 PREFACE

Whether there has been moral progress and whether it can be

achieved now or in the future are surely among the most im-
portant questions human beings can ask. Yet in spite of a recent
bourgeoning of systematic philosophical inquiry in moral and
political philosophy across a remarkably wide range of topics,
these remain neglected questions. It was not always so. Until
the twentieth century, liberal political thought—​ which today
remains the most developed system of thinking about the mo-
rality of political institutions—​was centrally preoccupied with
the topic of moral progress. This volume is an attempt to begin
the task of making moral progress a respectable topic once again,
one worthy of the attention of philosophers and of thoughtful
people generally.
This is an unusual book, and not just because it navigates the
largely unfamiliar conceptual terrain of moral progress. It is
also unusually interdisciplinary, drawing on diverse literatures
in moral and political philosophy, evolutionary biology, evo-
lutionary psychology, anthropology, sociology, and history.
One of the authors, Allen Buchanan, was trained as an analytic
philosopher—​that is, as someone who was taught that tackling
philosophical problems requires only the ability to construct hy-
pothetical (and often outlandish) examples to prompt moral in-
tuitions, to make fine distinctions, and to reason logically from
premises designed to generalize from particular, firmly held, and
stable intuitions. Put less charitably, Buchanan, like everyone else
in his generation of analytic philosophers, was led to believe that
to solve philosophical problems one need not know anything
about the world and that indeed such knowledge is a dangerous
distraction from the proper task of the philosopher. The other
author, Russell Powell, is trained in law, biology, bioethics, and
viii Preface
the philosophy of science and is of a younger generation of phi-
losophers who tend to appreciate the need for interdisciplinary
work—​and for attention to facts and scientific theory—​more so
than most philosophers of Buchanan’s generation.
Both authors are thoroughly committed to interdisciplinary
work and recognize that for those philosophical problems that
require an interdisciplinary approach, co-​authorship is almost al-
ways a necessity. One person, even if she is committed to learning
from disciplines other than the one in which she was primarily
trained, often cannot know enough to engage with these topics
effectively. This is especially true for the philosophical problems
tackled in this book, which require integrating work in moral and
political philosophy with the conceptual and methodological re-
sources of biological, cultural, and social sciences.
The authors of this book are unabashedly committed to “nat-
uralism” in philosophy:  they believe that fruitful engagement
with at least some of the most significant philosophical problems
requires recourse to scientific knowledge, including the best
available theory and data. That is not to say, of course, that sci-
ence can replace philosophy in these matters. Instead, the idea is
that while traditional analytic philosophical skills of analysis and
reasoning are necessary for addressing challenging philosophical
problems, sometimes they are not sufficient. Whether naturalism
is the correct way to do philosophy—​or at least a correct way—​
can only be determined by ascertaining the quality of the best
examples of that approach. We believe that this book is one of the
most thoroughly developed, systematic attempts at naturalistic
moral and political philosophy currently available. At the same
time, it shows how contemporary work in ethics and political
philosophy can inform our best scientific theories of morality,
in part by drawing attention to theoretically important aspects
of human moral thought and behavior that moral scientists and
philosophers of science have tended to overlook. It also corrects
for other flaws that commonly arise in the course of attempts to
do naturalistic philosophy such as the tendency to go too lightly
 Preface  ix
on the analytic component of the enterprise, to overinterpret
purported scientific findings (and in particular to overestimate
their implications for traditional philosophical problems), and to
cherry-​pick scientific studies, attending only to those that sup-
port philosophical views one already holds.
We think this book may also do something to remedy what we
take to be a serious deficiency of contemporary philosophy and
more broadly of the culture of educated people today:  namely,
a failure to assimilate fully the Darwinian revolution in biology
and to appreciate its profound implications for how humanity
should think about itself. In our experience, educated people,
including professional philosophers, may use the language of
Darwinian theory and pay face time to its significance but none-
theless still cling, implicitly or explicitly, to pre-​Darwinian, tele-
ological views of nature (and human nature). That is one mistake
to be assiduously avoided. The flip side is a tendency among some
philosophers and scientists to fetishize Darwinian evolutionary
theory and to assume that the possibilities for human morality
are tightly constrained by the psychology that natural selection,
working on the genetic components of thought and behavior,
solidified in human beings many millennia ago. This mistaken
evolutionary “determinist” view fosters an equally erroneous
normative view that we characterize as “evoconservatism”:  an
unduly pessimistic understanding of the possibilities for moral
improvement based on a failure to appreciate how culture has not
only liberated us from but, more importantly, transformed our
evolved moral nature.
Every chapter of this book demonstrates both that an un-
derstanding of evolutionary processes is necessary for thinking
fruitfully about moral progress (and regression) and that it is not
sufficient because culture can stretch the evolutionary leash and
produce results that could not be anticipated if one made the mis-
take of thinking that morality as it first originated is essentially
the same as the morality we have, and struggle with, today. This
book is not, therefore, an attempt to replace moral philosophy
x Preface
with evolutionary science; rather, it draws on evolutionary sci-
ence and the philosophy thereof to help make moral philosophy
more fruitful and more practically relevant to the moral problems
that confront humanity in the twenty-​first century.
The theory of moral progress developed in these pages has
a dual aspect: it provides guidance not only for how to achieve
some especially important types of moral progress but also for
how to avoid moral regression. So even if one thinks that human
moral progress has approached its limit, one should still find this
book of use since it illuminates the question of how to preserve
the moral advances that humans have achieved thus far. In our
less optimistic moments, we are inclined to think that the first
order of business is to prevent regression. This feels especially
true now, given the recent wave of nativism, hypernationalism,
authoritarianism, and xenophobia that has swept the globe and
is straining progressive political institutions—​from human rights
and climate change agreements to the basic principles of consti-
tutional democracy and rule of law itself—​to the breaking point.
In Chapter 7 of this volume, we develop an account of moral
regression in which the exaggeration of “out-​group threat cues”
can trigger the development of tribal moral responses and hence
the dismantling of inclusivist institutions. This response was
likely adaptive in the prehistoric environments in which some
of the basic features of human moral psychology were formed;
but in the modern world, it is subject to deliberate demagogic
manipulation. Out-​group threat cues include anything that re-
liably provokes primal fears of physical violence by members
of other groups, the danger of parasitic diseases spread by out-​
group members, the expropriation of the fruits of cooperation
by “social parasites” in our midst (free-​riders on intragroup co-
operation) especially in the context of perceived resource scar-
city, “alien” ideas or values or challenges to in-​group identity that
could undermine norms of cooperation in one’s own group, and
the prospect that “we” are in a no-​holds-​barred competition for
vital resources with “them.”
 Preface  xi
While we were in the midst of writing this chapter on moral
regression, a U.S.  presidential candidate was employing all of
the techniques for fostering moral regression that we discuss. As
president of the United States, Trump has continued his assault on
inclusivist norms and institutions and the social-​epistemic foun-
dations on which those institutions rest, expertly employing the
very tactics that we discuss in this book. Trump’s demagoguery
is particularly effective because of the large number of out-​group
threat cues that it deploys and disseminates through social media
and because of its systematic manipulation of the social moral in-
formation space resulting in massive shifts of popular perception.
It is probably not hyperbolic to say that if all of Trump’s publicly
avowed commitments were realized, they would dismantle some
of the more important inclusivist achievements in the United
States of the last century and, indeed, since the founding of the
Republic. Similar tactics can be seen in other countries, with
proto-​fascist and extreme nationalist sentiments on the rise glob-
ally, as we have seen in Turkey and eastern Europe.
Whether our most progressive cultural moral innovations can
resist this pressure remains to be seen. A central aim of this book
is to better understand the biocultural conditions that give rise
to, and exacerbate, these troubling moral trends. One can always
hope, nonetheless, that conditions will eventually become more
favorable to progressive moralities, either spontaneously or by
design, and that, when they do, our goal once again should be to
strive for moral improvement.
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We are indebted to many people who provided generous com-

ments on earlier drafts of the manuscript, including Aaron
Ancell, Alex Rosenberg, Robert Brandon, Richmond Campbell,
Steve Clarke, Rainer Forst, Jeff Holzgrefe, Guy Kahane, Neil
Levy, Victor Kumar, David Schmitz, Kyle Stanford, and Julian
Savulescu. We also thank the participants in two workshops
where materials from the book manuscript were discussed, in-
cluding one sponsored by the University of Arizona Philosophy
Department and one by Duke University and Duke’s Humanities
Futures project, as well as audiences at Johann Wolfgang Goethe
University, Santa Clara University, Boston University, and the
American Philosophical Association Meeting in Seattle. Thanks
are also due to Rainer Forst, the Director of the Normative
Orders Cluster at the Goethe-​University in Frankfurt and to
Stephan Gospath, the Director of the Justicia Amplificata Center
at the Frei-​Universitat in Berlin for hosting colloquia at which
material from the book manuscript was presented and vigorously
and constructively discussed. We are also indebted to Peter Ohlin
of Oxford University Press for his support and encouragement
throughout all stages of this project. We also wish to express our
gratitude to the National Endowment for the Humanities for the
award of a Collaborative Grant for research on moral progress, and
Powell is also grateful to the Templeton Foundation for its sup-
port of research on evolutionary theory, as well as to the Cernese
Fund for Ethics and Emerging Sciences at Boston University. This
book grew out of a series of collaborative papers that served as
the conceptual foundation for the present project. These include
“Toward a Naturalistic Theory of Moral Progress,” 2016 and
xiv Acknowledgments
“The Limits of Evolutionary Explanations of Morality and Their
Implications for Moral Progress,” 2015, both in the journal Ethics;
“De-​Moralization as Emancipation,” 2017, in Social Philosophy
and Policy; and “The Evolution of Moral Enhancement” in The
Ethics of Human Enhancement: Understanding the Debate, 2016,
Oxford University Press.
 THE EVOLUTION
OF MORAL PROGRESS
 INTRODUCTION
Why a Theory of Moral Progress Is Needed

Martin Luther King, Jr., paraphrasing the words of nineteenth-​

century abolitionist Theodore Parker, famously proclaimed that
“the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward jus-
tice.” Yet if you ask people, even very knowledgeable people,
whether they think there is such a thing as moral progress, you
often get either a blank look or a skeptical response: technolog-
ical progress, obviously; scientific progress, of course; but moral
progress? Some even respond with indignation, saying that, on
the contrary, there has been moral regression—​that from a moral
point of view things have gotten worse, not better. Indeed, many
people think that the last century is perhaps the most violent
ever (given two world wars and the Holocaust), that people are
more selfish and less virtuous now than they used to be, that
public political debate is less civil, that government is more cor-
rupt, that countries are less stable, that warfare has become more
barbaric, that terrorism has increased, that inequality has grown,
and so on.
This sort of “Golden Age thinking” has deep roots in the
academy. Indeed, there is a feisty, iconoclastic philosophical tradi-
tion, running from Rousseau to Alastair MacIntyre, proclaiming
that modern societies are morally degenerate, not progressive—​
that, morally speaking, things have deteriorated rather than gotten
better. Similarly, many cultural anthropologists have insisted that
aggressive warfare and genocide are not prehistoric components
2 Introduction
of human nature but rather the result of pernicious cultural norms
that arose more recently in human history and that have lured us
away from our more cooperative, peaceful past.1
Yet with a little reflection, the denial of moral progress seems
absurd and skepticism about moral progress deeply misplaced,
puzzling, and, above all, ungrateful. For shining examples of
moral progress are not hard to come by: consider, for example,
the change from a world in which slavery was ubiquitous and ac-
cepted as natural to one in which it is universally condemned and
no longer the lot of the majority of humankind, the increasing
recognition of the equal rights of women in many societies, the
growing recognition in belief and practice that there are moral
limits on how we may treat (at least some) non-​human animals,
the abolition of cruel punishments in many countries and of the
cruellest punishments virtually everywhere, the notion that war
must be morally justified, and the acknowledgment and (admit-
tedly imperfect) institutionalization of the idea that the people
are ultimately sovereign or at least that government should serve
the people rather than the other way around. And this list is far
from exhaustive. It is hard to understand how these changes are
so often overlooked, given how transformational many of them
have been.
Consider British abolition. The outstanding historian of
slavery and emancipation Seymour Drescher eloquently captures
just how momentous this change was:

Emancipation was . . . an act without precedent in history. On a

single day in 1834, 800,000 slaves had been called from social death
to life. Neither at the announcement of coming freedom nor at the

1
  This view is evident, for example, in the Seville Statement of 1986 on the
biology of human aggression, adopted by UNESCO and endorsed by nu-
merous social scientific associations. See D. Adams and J. Buchanan (1990),
“The Seville Statement on Violence,” American Psychologist 45(10): 1167–​1168.
As we discuss in Chapter 5, in recent years there has been a shift toward a much
less rosy view of premodern societies.
 Introduction  3
moment of implementation had it produced “a single insurrec-
tion,” nor had it “cost the life of a single man.”2

“Emancipation,” Drescher continues, “was a peaceful reform

generated from below and pursued for half a century. It was the
act of a nation and not of its rulers. English governments strug-
gled as long as they could against the adoption of every major
step toward emancipation, from the abolition of the slave trade
to the abolition of slavery.”3
The case of British abolition illustrates an ironic fact about
moral progress: once it occurs, we tend to take it for granted or
at least to underestimate its significance. Slavery has been called
“the peculiar institution.” But, in fact, across the long sweep of
human history, freedom is the peculiar institution.4 When we
think of freedom as the normal condition of most human beings
and slavery as the abnormal condition, we ignore the fact that
until very recently slavery in one form or another was ubiqui-
tous, and thus we undervalue and underestimate the great inno-
vation and dramatic reversal that was emancipation.
Similarly, if we think that democracy is the norm, we fail to ap-
preciate how rare, recent, and (perhaps) fragile the achievement of
democratic governance is. Or consider sorcery (witchcraft): most
human beings until very recently did not have the concept of a
fortuitous harm—​that is, they assumed that any harm that befell

2
 Seymour Drescher, Abolition—​ A History of Slavery and Antislavery
(Cambridge University Press, 2009, p. 264).
3
  British abolition was all the more impressive as an instance of moral prog-
ress, then, because it was democratic and peaceful, rather than top-​down and vio-
lent. In contrast, the abolition of American slavery was far from peaceful: about
700,000 human beings perished in the Civil War. It is a shameful fact that the
United States was the only country that required a bloody civil war to abolish
slavery. (This is not the sort of “American exceptionalism” that conservatives
like to talk about.) Further, the beginning of American emancipation was an
executive order, The Emancipation Proclamation, framed by President Lincoln
not as a democratic legislative act but as a wartime emergency provision.
4
 Drescher, Abolition, supra note 2, pp. ix–​x.
4 Introduction
them was the result of an intentional act, either by a god or by a
malicious human being who had put a spell on them. The ubiqui-
tous belief in sorcery was immensely destructive, often resulting
in what was widely regarded as proper retaliation to malevolent
magic but was in fact unjustified, often lethal aggression against
innocent people. The belief in sorcery also poisoned perfectly be-
nign relationships, fed paranoia, and undermined social solidarity.
Fortunately, human beings now take it for granted that there are
nonintentional harms and that many harms are not the result of
any kind of agency at all, whether benign or malicious. The belief
in sorcery still persists in some quarters—​and still does horrible
damage—​but, as with slavery, where it has been abandoned people
tend to be unaware of how progressive its abandonment really was.
Moral progress, then, is like oxygen: when it exists, we don’t tend
to notice it, even though our well-​being depends on it. Yet since
all of the changes listed above are undeniable—​and undeniably
good from a moral point of view—​why are many people skeptical,
uncertain, or silent about moral progress? The puzzlement only
deepens if we consider the fact that the idea of moral progress took
center stage in liberal political thought from the Enlightenment
through the nineteenth century but is now largely absent from
philosophical discourse or is addressed only indirectly, cursorily,
or ambiguously. What explains the veritable disappearance of sys-
tematic thinking about moral progress from liberal thought?

Explaining the Disappearance of the

Concept of Moral Progress
One must not overstate the case—​neglect of the concept of
moral progress has not been total. Very recently, several an-
alytic philosophers have had something valuable to say about
moral progress, and we shall engage with their views in the next
chapter. However, their discussions of moral progress fall well
short of a full-​fledged theory. What can account for the lack
of systematic theorizing about moral progress, as well as the
 Introduction  5
common skepticism about the existence of moral progress? We
can imagine several plausible, mutually non-​exclusive explana-
tions. Each of these explanations is credible as an explanation
but not as a justification—​that is to say, none is a good reason
for abandoning the idea of moral progress or forgoing attempts
to theorize it without further ado.
First, as we have already suggested, some think that the hor-
rors of the two world wars and the Holocaust, and perhaps the
more recent rise of Islamic State and its unprecedented genocidal
brutality in attempting to establish a caliphate in the Middle
East, show that belief in moral progress is a delusion. However,
the bloodbaths of the twentieth and early twenty-first century
do not rule out the possibility of moral progress, past or future;
acknowledging them only requires that one abandon linear con-
ceptions of moral progress—​conceptions that require continuous
progress or at least rule out major regressions. Some theories
of moral progress have postulated laws governing predictable
stages of development through which societies or civilizations
were supposed to pass, and these nomological assumptions have
prevented them from taking the possibility of regression seri-
ously. But the notion of an inexorable, continuous march of
moral advance is certainly not an essential feature of the idea
of moral progress, let  alone one that is empirically supported
given the staggered historical trajectory of moral progress.
Further, as historians of large-​scale armed conflict have shown,
even if the first half of the twentieth century featured extraordi-
narily violent mass conflicts, war in the second half has declined
significantly. More importantly, periods of moral regression—​
such as the cataclysmic events of the first half of the twentieth
century—​are compatible with moral progress in the long run.
The long-​term trend (at least since ~1450 C.E.) is one of re-
markable reductions in homicide rates in many regions of the
world, even if war deaths are included.5

5
  See Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature (Viking, 2011).
6 Introduction
Theodore Parker conceded that he was not in a position to di-
rectly observe or calculate the long-​term arc of the moral uni-
verse; instead, he had to “divine it by conscience.” Thanks to
rigorous empirical work on large-​scale trends in violence, slavery,
and other features of our evolving moral world, we are now in
a much better position to calculate some important dimensions
of the moral arc—​and we can now say with reasonable credence
that, at least in respect of these dimensions, Parker and King’s
optimism was justified.
A second source of skepticism about the possibility of a theory
of moral progress may be doubts about the possibility of making
global (all-​things-​considered) assessments of progress, as when
one society is said to be more morally progressive than another
or when the same society is said to be more morally progressive
at one time than at another. Local moral progress assessments, in
contrast, do not venture to make all-​things-​considered evalua-
tions. Instead, they assert, for example, that there has been prog-
ress in reducing racial or gender discrimination or in abolishing
slavery, without assuming that there is moral progress overall—​a
judgment that would necessarily take into account all other di-
mensions of morality. If global moral progress assessments are
problematic, Parker and King would only be justified in rend-
ering specific moral progress judgments about abolition or racial
discrimination and not about the arc of the moral universe itself.
It might turn out—​and it is too early in our investigation to
tell—​that global (all-​things-​considered) assessments of moral
progress cannot be justified for either of two reasons. First, it
might be that in any given case there are moral gains and moral
losses and that some of these are incommensurable, that it is
impossible to measure them on a common scale and determine
whether there has been net moral progress by subtracting the
losses from the gains. For example, the rise and dominance of
market economies have no doubt produced much good—​raising
standards of living for most people and, according to Norbert
Elias, Stephen Pinker, and others, contributing to a dramatic
 Introduction  7
reduction in homicide rates. But market economies also arguably
encouraged the growth of slavery and colonial domination and
produced considerable misery for the first generation of workers
in the Industrial Revolution. How are we to sum up, balance,
or compare these gains and losses? Even if all moral gains and
losses were commensurable and global (as opposed to merely
local) moral progress assessments were justified in principle, the
complexity of the calculation might be so great that reliable as-
sessments of net gain or loss are beyond our powers, at least at
present. Thus, if one assumes that any theory of moral progress
that warrants the title must include global progress assessments,
then one will have good reason to doubt the feasibility of the
proj­ect. Note, however, that these same difficulties afflict at-
tempts to make global moral regression judgments, such as those
of Rousseau and MacIntyre alluded to above.
While it is true that many previous attempts to theorize moral
progress have assumed, without good reason, that global assess-
ments could be made, one should not presume that any worth-
while theory of moral progress must include global, as opposed
to local, moral progress assessments. This book will focus on
identifying and understanding various types of moral improve-
ments, without venturing all-​things-​considered judgments about
moral progress. The Conclusion, however, will return to the
question of global moral progress assessments and argue that
whether they are justifiable will depend upon whether our best
normative moral theories allow us to strongly rank moral values
or principles. We will conclude that on any plausible ranking of
moral values and principles, the global degeneration thesis must
be rejected.
A third possible motivation for the neglect of or skepticism
about a theory of moral progress is the notion that a proper ac-
knowledgment of moral pluralism—​the view that there is a plu-
rality of valid or reasonable moralities—​renders the notion of
moral progress uninteresting by ruling out the possibility of
moral progress for humanity as a whole, as opposed to moral
8 Introduction
progress for particular moral traditions or cultures. However, ac-
knowledging some degree of moral pluralism does not rule out
the possibility of meaningful moral progress. Suppose that there
is a plurality of reasonable moralities, each matched, as it were, to
different ecological conditions in which human beings may find
themselves; but in addition, suppose that they all share some fun-
damental moral norms because every viable morality must address
certain universal features of the human predicament. Increased
commitment or conformity to these fundamental norms could
count as moral progress even if there remained great diversity in
other norms due to the peculiarities of history and local ecology.
So, even if it is highly unlikely that there will be complete agree-
ment on any one particular morality—​and even if there is no
reason to think that there should be—​this is compatible with
increasing convergence on some important moral norms (such
as basic human rights) and with moral progress being gauged in
terms of compliance with those norms.6
A fourth and related source of skepticism about attempts to
theorize moral progress stems from the perceived perils of using
the concept of moral progress, even if this is done with good
intentions. Reflecting on atrocities committed in the name of
moral progress by agents of colonialism and imperialism, some
people may conclude that the idea is simply too dangerous to

6
  For example, the idea of human rights apparently originated in the West
but now has become incorporated into the moral outlooks of people from
many different cultures. See Allen Buchanan, “Moral Progress and Human
Rights,” in Cindy Holder and David Reidy (eds.), Human Rights: The Hard
Questions (Cambridge University Press, 2013, pp. 399–​417). Likewise, more
widespread acknowledgment of the fact of reasonable pluralism, if it results in
greater tolerance of reasonable differences in moral belief, could also count as
moral progress. Even if there are no shared fundamental moral norms among
reasonable moralities, the question of whether there has been or can be moral
progress from the standpoint of some particular reasonable morality may still
be worth addressing. For example, it should matter for those whose moral out-
look is liberal whether there has been or is likely to be moral progress as judged
from that perspective.
 Introduction  9
be employed. Now it is undeniable that the concept of moral
progress is subject to abuse, but this is true of many other moral
concepts that are indispensable. Consider the concepts of the
right of self-​defense and of just war:  these concepts have been
used to rationalize morally unjustified aggression, and yet this
lamentable sociological fact does not warrant their abandonment.
Rather than leading us to jettison the idea of moral progress, the
fact that the concept has been misused should compel us to reflect
critically on our confidence in making judgments about moral
progress and to carefully scrutinize the political roles that the
idea of moral progress should or should not play.
Reluctance to acknowledge the existence of moral progress
may also reflect a concern that in doing so we run the risk of ob-
scuring the great moral failures of our time. Recognizing major
moral victories may be seen as objectionably self-​congratulatory
in ways that could impede further moral progress by enervating
current efforts at reform or by distracting us from what remains
to be done. Yet clearly there is no logical tension between our
willingness to recognize moral gains and our ability to identify
further areas for improvement; nor is it evident that there is a
psychological tension. Indeed, recognizing our moral achieve-
ments and that our progressive social movements can succeed
even in the face of overwhelming opposition can energize, rather
than enervate, further efforts at moral reform, as it arguably has
done in the case of the ever-​expanding civil rights movement.
However, even if the perils of employing the concept of moral
progress can be adequately mitigated, skepticism of the project
may remain due to the idea that a notion of moral progress that
is free of cultural bias is impossible to achieve. Given the fact
that virtually all earlier attempts to think seriously and systemat-
ically about moral progress have been marred by racial, gender,
class, or ethnonational bias, people who are acutely aware that
all human beings, now as before, are afflicted by prejudice may
simply conclude that constructing an unbiased theory is beyond
our capacities. While it is true that previous efforts to theorize
10 Introduction
moral progress have been compromised by prejudices of one sort
or another (often more than one), so too have attempts to the-
orize morality itself. Yet in both cases, there is good reason to
try to think in ways that avoid or mitigate such biases, rather
than to abandon the projects themselves. Further, for the first
time, human beings are developing scientific knowledge of how
biases work and how “de-​biasing” might in practice be achieved.
The proper conclusion to draw, then, is not that the problem of
bias is so hopeless as to make the development of a sound theory
of moral progress futile. The take-​home point, rather, is that
no theory of moral progress will be plausible unless it takes the
problem of bias seriously. The theory developed in this book sat-
isfies that requirement.
A final reason for the dearth of hard thinking about moral
progress in recent philosophical scholarship might be the
general lack of attention to “nonideal theory.”7 There are dif-
ferent understandings of the distinction between ideal theory
and nonideal theory in moral and political philosophy, but on
most accounts nonideal theory includes systematic thinking
about how to move toward a better moral condition—​in par-
ticular, the fuller realization of valid principles of justice.8 It
may also include a theory of how institutions should be, given
the assumption that they will not (for the foreseeable future)

7
  We are grateful to Aaron Ancell for this suggestion.
8
 Laura Valentini discusses several ways of drawing the nonideal/​ ideal
theory distinction: (1) full compliance versus partial compliance theory: ideal
theory assumes full compliance with the moral principles it identifies, whereas
nonideal theory provides an account of how to respond to noncompliance;
(2) realistic versus utopian theorizing: theories are more or less ideal depending
upon the extent to which they assume away various psychological (including
motivational), economic, or political limitations on achieving full compli-
ance with moral principles; and (3) end-​state versus transitional theory: ideal
theory specifies morally ideal end-​states, whereas nonideal theory provides an
account of the transition to or toward the end-​state. Laura Valentini (2012),
“Ideal and Nonideal Theory:  A Conceptual Map,” Philosophy Compass
7(9): 654–​664.
 Introduction  11
be fully just and that there will be imperfect compliance with
valid moral principles.9 Nonideal theory, so far as it includes
an empirically informed and principled account of the transi-
tion toward a morally better condition, must include a theory
of moral progress.
Some contemporary philosophers do think in nonideal terms,
attempting to apply philosophical analysis to problems in our far
from perfect world. But it would be a stretch to say that they have
developed nonideal theories; instead, they have offered useful but
undeniably ad hoc proposals, rather than a systematic account. So,
because anything meriting the title of nonideal theory is currently
lacking, it is perhaps not surprising that there has been little ex-
plicit attention to the topic of moral progress. Yet to the extent
that philosophers acknowledge that working out a nonideal theory
includes a systematic, principled account of how to make the tran-
sition from less to more just conditions, they ought to be thinking
about moral progress, at least with regard to justice. And if they
have a wider understanding of nonideal theory, one that encom-
passes other dimensions of morality in addition to justice, then
they ought to be developing a general theory of moral progress.

Moral Skepticism and the Assumption

of Equal Basic Moral Status
None of the above reservations is a good reason for not trying
to think deeply and systematically about moral progress. Doing
so is not merely an “academic” exercise for moral and political
theorists. Whether there has been moral progress, and whether
we can reasonably hope there will be more, matters. As Stephen

9
  Although there is a good deal of nonideal thinking of both these sorts in
contemporary political philosophy, we think it is fair to say that it hasn’t yet
risen to the level of nonideal theorizing: instead, there are more or less ad hoc
suggestions for how to make some progress here or there, along with piecemeal
reflections on how to proceed in light of the fact that ideal principles will not
be fully realized in institutions and practice.
12 Introduction
Pinker eloquently writes, “What could be more fundamental to
our sense of meaning and purpose than a conception of whether
the strivings of the human race over long stretches of time have
made us better or worse off.”10 Put simply, if morality matters,
then so does moral progress:  if it matters whether we act mor-
ally and whether our social practices and institutions conform to
morality’s demands, then it matters whether we are doing better
in this regard. If it is important to understand what morality is and
what it requires of us, it is also important to know how to make
ourselves and our world morally better. Moral philosophers pro-
ceed on the reasonable assumption that, because morality matters
and matters a great deal, some people ought to think seriously and
systematically about it—​in other words, that some people ought to
try to construct a moral theory and to attempt to understand how
existing moral frameworks hang together. Similarly, there are pow-
erful reasons to think seriously and systematically about moral
progress; that is, to develop a theory of moral progress. This book
aims to take some of the first significant steps in this direction.
Of course, if you do not think there is such a thing as genuine
morality or normativity—​if you believe there is no such thing as
a non-​instrumental “ought”—​then you may reject the very pos-
sibility of moral progress out of hand. This book does not speak
to the moral nihilist. It assumes that one can sometimes make
true or justified moral judgments and have true or justified moral
beliefs. One of the book’s aims is to characterize the biosocial en-
vironments in which especially important true or justified moral
beliefs are likely (and unlikely) to occur and become widespread.
Among the most important moral beliefs, from the standpoint of
moral inclusivity, are those concerning moral standing and equal
basic moral status.
Further, although we do not offer a normative ethical theory,
we are committed to the truth of certain normative ethical claims.

10
 Pinker, Better Angels, supra note 5, p. 1.
 Introduction  13
For example, we assume that slavery and other forms of bondage,
as well as discrimination on grounds of gender, ethnicity, or re-
ligion, are morally wrong. More generally, we assume that social
arrangements are morally wrong if they relegate some persons
to an inferior moral status—​where this means they are excluded
from highly valued social activities and roles—​simply by virtue
of their perceived or self-​identified membership in some social
group such as an ethnicity, race, religion, or gender. It might be
thought that in doing so we are reposing on an undefended as-
sumption that all persons are entitled to recognition and protec-
tion of an equal basic status—​that we are assuming that moral
status-​egalitarianism is a moral truth. That is incorrect. Instead,
we think the shoe is on the other foot: those who endorse ine-
quality of basic status must provide a cogent justification for such
inequality—​and they have uniformly failed to do so.
Those who deny that members of certain groups are entitled
to equal basic status typically assert that everyone in their own
group is so entitled. But in that case the burden is on them to
show what it is about some individuals that qualifies them for
equal basic status and what it is about other individuals that
makes them unqualified. Invariably, when pressed to do so, the
advocates of inequality of basic status invoke false generaliza-
tions about the supposedly natural characteristics of members of
various groups—​for example, that women are less rational than
men, that blacks are intellectually and morally inferior, that low-​
caste people are essentially unclean, that non-​human animals
do not experience pain. Or they make implausible assumptions
about which supposedly natural characteristics qualify an in-
dividual for having equal basic status. For example, Nazis and
American eugenicists assumed that if one wasn’t a net contributor
to society—​if one was a “useless eater”—​then one lacked even
the most fundamental rights that constitute equal basic status. At
least in environments that are not so harsh that extinction of the
group is likely if “nonproductive” members are not abandoned,
it is implausible to think that simply by becoming disabled to the
14 Introduction
point of not being able to make a net contribution to the social
product, one suddenly is no longer worthy of equal respect and
lacks fundamental rights. After all, the features of human beings
that are plausibly invoked to explain their high moral status—​the
fact that they are agents with a life of their own to live, that they
are capable of being responsive to reasons in a practice of reason-​
giving with others, that they endow the world with meaning
through their recognition of value, etc.—​have nothing to do with
whether or not an individual happens to be capable of making
a net contribution to social production. Similarly, it would be
implausible to hold that what qualifies one for high equal basic
status is the possession of some trait like intelligence to a greater
degree than other persons possess it. Someone who held such a
view would almost certainly be guilty of inconsistency because
he would not admit that the discovery that some other individual
was more intelligent than he is would automatically deprive him
of equal status. In addition, a conception of equal basic status that
required a multitude of statuses tracking all the differences in in-
telligence in the human population, and which therefore required
revisions in an individual’s status every time new information
emerged about someone being more intelligent, could not per-
form the functions that a conception of equal status is reasonably
expected to perform.
The same burden of proof applies—​and in our opinion has not
been successfully borne—​in the case of views that assert that all
non-​human animals not only lack the same basic moral status as
humans but also have no moral standing at all. Given the im-
portance of avoiding the infliction of suffering in any reasonable
morality, it is simply not cogent to admit, as one must in the light
of scientific knowledge of comparative anatomy and functional
neuroscience, that many non-​ human animals experience pain
much as we do, while at the same time denying that they have no
moral standing whatsoever—​that there are no moral constraints
at all on how we may treat them. The key point is that assertions
of unequal basic status ought not to go unchallenged: if someone
 Introduction  15
asserts that only some human beings have a high moral status or
that no non-​human animals have any moral standing at all, she
owes a justification for these supposed differences. Justifications
that rely on false claims about natural differences or implausible
assumptions about which natural differences are relevant to moral
status fail. So do justifications that make sentience irrelevant to
moral standing or that pick out morally arbitrary biological cat-
egories as the basis for moral standing (such as being a member
of the designated species Homo sapiens). In our judgment, no co-
gent justifications have ever been given for the denials of equal
basic status that undergird systems of racial or gender discrim-
ination, caste systems, or any other practices that relegate some
human beings to a lesser moral status, nor for practices that treat
all non-​human animals as if were mere things with not even the
most basic moral standing. That is why we think it is appropriate
to begin our inquiry into moral progress with a presumption
that developments in inclusivity—​changes that involve extending
equal basic status or some kind of moral standing to classes of
individuals that had previously been excluded—​are relatively un-
controversial instances of progress.
We do not pretend to refute or even address the moral nihilist
who, qua nihilist, would presumably deny that anyone has moral
standing of any sort (whether equal or unequal). Having moral
standing of any sort implies that there are moral constraints on
how an individual who has moral standing ought to be treated,
but the moral nihilist denies that there are any moral constraints
whatsoever. Our foil, rather, is someone who says that some par-
ticular group of individuals has the high moral status that many
people now believe that all human persons have, while denying
that other people have that status. Our foil might hold that only
men have that high status or that only believers in a particular re-
ligion have it or that it only attaches to a particular racial group.
But if that is his or her view, then it is perfectly appropriate to de-
mand an explanation—​to ask why it is that some human individ-
uals have this high moral status while others lack it. The answer
16 Introduction
to this question typically, if not uniformly, is that those to whom
high status is accorded are said to have some natural property or
set of properties that those who are denied this high moral status
supposedly lack.
Consider, for example, moral belief systems that deny equal
status to women—​that exclude women from valued social prac-
tices and institutional roles simply because they are women. Those
who endorse these inequalities have tended to argue that women
lack the rationality and self-​control of men or that women are
subordinate to men in the scala naturae. There are two replies to
such equal status–​denying thinking. First, one can appeal to em-
pirical findings about the natural capacities of men and women
to show that if differences of the sort that the equal status–​denier
postulates exist at all, they are not essential features of the world
but rather artifacts of systematic discrimination. In later chapters
we elaborate this argument in detail, explaining how discrimina-
tory practices foster false beliefs about natural differences, which
in turn produce a distorted experience of what different groups
of human beings are like. Likewise, one could appeal to modern
scientific understandings of life and its evolution to reject anthro-
pocentric, racist, and sexist “scale of nature”–​type thinking about
evolution in general and human origins in particular. Second,
one can challenge the normative assumption that the supposed
differences—​ in the magnitudes that actually exist—​ are good
grounds for conferring equal basic status. For example, one can
point out that even if it were true that women or some “racial”
group were on average less rational or intelligent than some other
group, it is implausible to think that this would disqualify them
from equal basic status. In other words, even if some capacity
for rationality is a necessary condition for equal basic status,
any account of why that is so will make it clear that the required
threshold of rationality is one that all cognitively normal human
beings reach. One can also argue that even if there are measurable
differences in average rationality or intelligence between groups,
there are differences of equal or greater magnitude within the
 Introduction  17
supposedly superior group, which undermines the proffered ra-
tionale for group-​based discrimination.
So, if one contends that some persons have a high basic status
while others do not, then one owes a justification for the claim
that not only establishes that there are differences among groups
but also that these differences are of the sort and magnitude that
are relevant to making moral status judgments. As our investi-
gation unfolds, it will become clearer why we think that—​moral
nihilists aside—​it is the defender of basic status inequality, not
the proponent of it, who owes (and fails to bear) the burden
of argument. In any case, the point is that it would be a mis-
take to say that in our investigation of moral inclusivity we are
simply assuming, with no good reason, a status-​egalitarian view.
Nonetheless, if the reader remains unconvinced, our investiga-
tion of moral progress in the form of inclusivity can be read in a
more modest fashion—​namely, as being addressed to those who
are already committed to the proposition that all persons have an
equal (and equally high) basic moral status.
In our judgment, the belief that all persons have an equal basic
status is unproblematic, given the failure of equal status–​deniers
to provide a plausible defense of their view. The real problems are
specifying exactly what equal basic status amounts to in practice
and in determining the status of human beings who are relevantly
different from the paradigmatic cases of equal basic status—​for
example, individuals who from birth or due to injury or the rav-
ages of mind-​and personality-​destroying disorders may lack
the properties ordinarily associated with equal basic status.
Nonetheless, we think that the social practices we examine in this
volume—​in particular, slavery and race-​and gender-​based forms
of discrimination—​are clearly denials of equal basic status, even
if the full contours of the concept of equal basic status and the
boundaries of the class of beings to whom it is properly accorded
are unclear and disputed.
To begin our inquiry, we first need to have a clear initial, if
admittedly provisional, idea of what moral progress is (or, more
18 Introduction
cautiously, would be, were it to exist). For example, is everything
that earlier generations included under the rubric “civilization” a
matter of moral progress, or is some of it simply a matter of more
refined manners or aesthetic sensibilities? (Earlier writers often
didn’t make these distinctions, lumping all these putative im-
provements together under the heading of “progress” or “the ad-
vance of civilization.”) More importantly, are there distinct types
of moral progress and, if so, are some more basic than others (and
in what sense of “basic”)?
The focus of this book is on one especially important type of
moral progress: gains in what we will refer to as “moral inclusivity”
(“inclusivity” for short), what the Victorian historian of morals
William Lecky called “the expanding circle” of moral concern.11
In a future book, we will offer a more comprehensive theory, one
that covers other types of moral progress as well—​though much of
what we will have to say about the origins of moral inclusivity will
apply to the origins of other types of moral progress as well.

Ideal Theory and Moral Progress

One reader of a draft of this book stated that once you have a
theory of the just society, what counts as improvement or regress
should “just drop out as a simple corollary”; and thus, it isn’t
clear why a theory of moral progress is needed. That statement
is wrong. First, even if one limits moral assessment to societies
(rather than individuals or groups), morality cannot be reduced
to principles of justice, for even if justice is the first virtue of in-
stitutions (as Rawls thought), it is not the only one. Further, there
is no reason to assume that all the other virtues of societies can be
reduced to justice—​that there is at bottom only one virtue of insti-
tutions. The only way to make that claim at all plausible would be
to change the meaning of “the just society” to mean “the compre-
hensively morally good society.” Second, society is not the only

 William Edward Harpole Lecky, History of European Morals from

11

Augustus to Charlemagne, v. 1, 3rd edition (D. Appleton, 1921).

 Introduction  19
subject matter of morality. There are some moral principles or
concepts that apply directly to individuals, families, friendships,
etc. and that do not reduce to those that apply to society.
Nor will it do to acknowledge that morality is about more than
justice but then to assert that one doesn’t need a theory of moral
progress because what counts as progress or regress simply fol-
lows as a corollary of one’s theory of the morally good or morally
optimal society comprehensively characterized. There are two
problems with that claim. First, it is hubristic to think that an-
yone now possesses a valid comprehensive theory of morality—​
an adequate theory of morality in all its dimensions—​so it would
not be very illuminating to define moral progress as progress to-
ward a society that satisfies all the demands of a valid comprehen-
sive morality. Later, we argue that a theory of morality ought to
allow for the possibility of improvements in our understanding
of morality and hence of moral progress. Second, suppose (rather
fantastically) that we could now confidently say that we are in
possession of a characterization of the society that satisfies all the
demands of morality. To say that what counts as moral progress
and regress would “drop out as a simple corollary” from that
would be wrong. One needs an empirically well-​founded ac-
count of how progress toward or regression away from the real-
ization of the principles of the supposedly valid comprehensive
morality is likely to occur. Such an account does not “drop out”
as a “simple corollary” of one’s characterization of the compre-
hensively moral society or, more broadly, of the comprehensively
moral state of affairs. Our approach in this volume is to show
that there is much of interest to be said about moral progress in
the absence of the assumption that anyone possesses a valid com-
prehensive theory of morality (or even of justice), by focusing
on one especially important and relatively uncontroversial kind
of moral progress: improvements in the dimension of inclusivity.
Instead of resting content with the rather unhelpful idea that
moral progress in inclusivity is whatever moves us toward greater
inclusivity (of the right kind), we offer a theory of the conditions
under which that kind of moral progress is likely to occur, based
20 Introduction
on an analysis of the conditions under which it has occurred, in
the light of the best available evolutionary thinking about the or-
igins of human morality.
Now it might be that there is very little that can be said in-
formatively about what counts as moral progress in general or
in every case. There may be no specific moral or social theoret-
ical framework that unifies and explains all instances of moral
progress. If one thinks that anything short of that cannot count
as a theory of moral progress, then we freely admit that in this
book we do not offer a theory of moral progress in that ambi-
tious sense. As will soon become apparent, we think that there
are several kinds of moral progress, and we are skeptical that they
can all be reduced to one kind. Our chief aim is to offer the begin-
nings of a theory of moral progress for one especially important
kind of moral progress (namely progress in inclusivity), and we
withhold judgment about how far this framework can extend to
cover other cases.
If moral progress is possible, so far as one cares about morality,
one needs to know how to achieve it and how to avoid moral
regression. “Knowing how” includes knowing not just which ac-
tions or policies will bring some morally beneficial change about
but also which means of achieving progress are morally permis-
sible. That is why history, not fanciful philosophical thought
experiments, matters:  understanding how actual instances of
moral progress have occurred may be valuable both for getting
clearer about what moral progress is and for knowing how to
bring it about in the right way. Finally, if it turns out that more
moral progress can be achieved, this is both consoling and moti-
vating: consoling because it can help us, especially in dark times,
to nurture reasonable hope for a brighter future; motivating, be-
cause it can help us avoid acceptance of or complicity in injus-
tice or other wrongs. In his speech dedicating the Smithsonian
National Museum of African American History and Culture in
Washington, DC, U.S. President Barack Obama put the point
this way:
 Introduction  21
[W]‌hat this museum . . . shows us is that in even the face of oppres-
sion, even in the face of unimaginable difficulty, America has moved
forward. And so this museum provides context for the debates of
our times. It illuminates them and gives us some sense of how they
evolved, and perhaps keeps them in proportion. . . . It reminds us
that routine discrimination and Jim Crow aren’t ancient history,
it’s just a blink in the eye of history. It was just yesterday. And
so we should not be surprised that not all the healing is done. We
shouldn’t despair that it’s not all solved. And knowing the larger
story should instead remind us of just how remarkable the changes
that have taken place truly are―just in my lifetime―and thereby
inspire us to further progress.12

Confronting the Moral Degeneration Thesis

The case we have begun to make for theorizing moral prog-
ress can be strengthened by pointing out some of the most
basic defects of the most prominent degeneration views. First,
as Stephen Holmes among others has shown, degeneration the-
orists, such as Rousseau, Montaigne, and MacIntyre, typically
find deterioration in modern societies by comparing them with
a highly idealized, historically inaccurate vision of the virtues of
premodern societies and people—​such as the myth of the harmo-
nious genuine community which, though hierarchical, was still
somehow nonexploitive and free or the fiction that premodern
societies were egalitarian tout court rather than egalitarian so
far as relationships among males were concerned.13 Second,
some degeneration theorists, and MacIntyre in particular, exag-
gerate the moral coherence of premodern societies, portraying
them as having less disagreement about values than they actually

12
 The transcript of Obama’s dedication speech can be found at
https:// ​ o bamawhitehouse.archives.gov/ ​ t he- ​ p ress- ​ o ffice/ ​ 2 016/ ​ 0 9/ ​ 2 4/​
remarks-​president-​dedication-​national-​museum-​african-​american-​history.
13
  Stephen Holmes, The Anatomy of Anti-​Liberalism (Harvard University
Press, 1994).
22 Introduction
exhibited.14 Third, they equally exaggerate the incoherence of
modern moral cultures. MacIntyre, for instance, believes that the
modern moral culture that succeeded the supposedly coherent
and admirable pre-​Enlightenment European Christian moral cul-
ture is like a shattered vase—​a scattered collection of fragments.
He somehow overlooks the fact that there seems to be rather
widespread consensus in modern moral culture on, for example,
the idea that democracy is the best form of government, that the
power of the state should be limited by a constitution, that gov-
ernment is to be a servant of the people and not its master, and so
on. MacIntyre also ignores the fact that the modern human rights
system, which encompasses elaborate bodies of regional and in-
ternational human rights laws and norms, is itself evidence of a
very broad moral consensus, especially among societies that are
the heirs of the very premodern Christian moral culture that he
extolls. Chapter 9 of this volume shows that the modern human
rights system exemplifies some of the most important advances in
moral progress in the form of increased inclusiveness.
Fourth, and more importantly, degeneration theorists overlook
a simple fact that is hard to reconcile with their views: most of
the paradigmatic examples of moral progress occurred precisely
during the period in which they say the formerly supposedly
healthy, coherent traditional moral culture was disintegrating
under the onslaught of the forces of modernity. Abolitionism, the
struggle for equal rights for women, the movement to end aggres-
sive war, the campaign to end cruel punishments, and the recog-
nition that at least some non-​human animals ought to be treated
more humanely all began in the latter half of the eighteenth cen-
tury, contemporaneously with the Enlightenment, the spread of
market relations, and the Industrial Revolution. So, either these
forces of modernity did not produce the disintegration of tra-
ditional moral culture, or they allowed for its replacement by a

14
  Ibid., ­chapter 4.
 Introduction  23
new coherent moral culture, or moral progress does not require a
coherent moral culture. None of these three alternatives is com-
patible with degeneration theses from Rousseau to MacIntyre.
Indeed, this book will argue that these forces of modernity not
only did not result in moral degeneration but in fact played a cru-
cial causal role in making paradigmatic cases of moral progress
possible.
Rousseau cannot be faulted for failing to see that what he
regarded as the period of degeneration was in fact the begin-
ning of some of the greatest moral advances that have ever oc-
curred. He lived late enough to see some of the negative effects
of modernity but not long enough to witness the monumental
moral advances that began in the late eighteenth century. That
excuse is not available to contemporary degeneration theorists
like MacIntyre:  there is no justification for blithely ignoring
the fact that momentous moral advances have occurred in post-​
traditional society—​ and that the traditional moral culture of
Europe that authors such as MacIntyre admire so much was re-
markably unprogressive, indeed stagnant from the standpoint of
some of the most important dimensions of moral improvement.
The traditional European Christian moral culture that MacIntyre
extols accepted slavery, accepted the subordination of women,
accepted horridly cruel punishments, and accepted the inflic-
tion of gratuitous suffering on animals. Indeed, the very same
moral culture supplied religious justifications for these shameful
behaviors. MacIntyre seems to be so preoccupied with the sup-
posed virtues of coherence in a moral culture—​and it is impor-
tant to understand that for him coherence includes unreflective
moral agreement—​that he overlooks the plausible possibility that
some incoherence, or some fragmentation, as well as a good deal
of disagreement, may be necessary for moral advancement.
Despite these profound flaws, degeneration theorists ad-
vance three extremely valuable points. First, they make vividly
clear a fact that hugely complicates the task of theorizing moral
progress—​namely, that moral advances often come with high
24 Introduction
costs, some of which may count as instances of moral dete-
rioration or regression. To return to an example used in our
discussion of global moral progress assessments, even though
the growth of market relations eventually lifted many people
out of poverty, reduced toilsome labor for many, and (if Elias
and Pinker are right) contributed to the development of a less
violent human moral psychology, it also fostered the growth of
the transatlantic slave trade and colonialism, resulted in ruth-
less and demeaning exploitation of workers by capitalists, and
may even have produced a (short-​term) decline in the health
of the average worker. Similarly, the Neolithic revolution—​the
invention and spread of agriculture and the domestication of
animals that began in the Fertile Crescent around ten thousand
years ago—​apparently worsened the health of most people
relative to their hunter–​gatherer ancestors and may also have
damaged some of the valuable social relations they enjoyed in
their previous, smaller groups. Second, and echoing our ear-
lier discussion by emphasizing that moral progress has a darker
side, degeneration theorists help bring to light the issue of
commensurability and thereby raise the question of whether it
is possible to make reliable global (as opposed to local) moral
progress assessments. They fail to realize, however, that the
conceptual and empirical difficulties confronting global moral
progress judgments apply equally to judgments of moral de-
generation. To say that things are worse nowadays than before
is to make a global assessment.
Third, degeneration theorists rightly urge us to appreciate the
virtues of some degree of coherence and moral agreement in a
moral culture and to take seriously the possibility that conditions
in modern societies may undermine adequate levels of both. And
this is true even if, as we have just suggested, some lack of coher-
ence actually facilitates moral progress, at least if full coherence
tends to require suppression of disagreement. For instance, citi-
zens of contemporary European democracies, such as France and
Germany, are right to be concerned about how the growing influx
 Introduction  25
of refugees from war-​torn countries and failed states, harboring
very different social, political, and religious values, might under-
mine the secular liberal foundations of their social democracies.
More specifically, the worry is that recent, hard-​won, and still in-
complete progress regarding the proper treatment of women and
the marginalization of anti-​Semitism could be eroded if there are
large numbers of immigrants from regions in which honor kill-
ings, gender discrimination, and anti-​Semitism are widespread.
How serious this risk is may be hard to judge, and there is reason
to believe that some reactions to the risk have been excessive
and inhumane. Yet it is clear that, under certain circumstances,
implementing a policy of “open borders” endorsed by the more
liberal strands of modern moral culture might lead to moral re-
gression. The magnitude of the risk depends chiefly on how resil-
ient liberal culture and institutions are—​that is, on their capacity
to persist in spite of the presence of illiberal groups within society.
In spite of these valuable insights, what degeneration theorists
ought to take seriously, but seem not to consider at all, is the
possibility that considerable moral disagreement and even some
degree of incoherence in a moral culture may be necessary con-
ditions for moral progress. Degeneration theorists may be right
that modern society is characterized by moral disagreement and
even by a degree of incoherence (at least relative to traditional
moral cultures). Yet it may nonetheless still be true that modern
moral culture is more morally progressive than traditional moral
cultures. Further, it may well be that modern society is more
morally progressive than traditional society precisely because it
includes more moral disagreement and less coherence. Here it is
important to remember that the coherence and agreement that
characterized traditional European culture, prior to the onset of
the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution, was largely
due to oppression wielded by church and government elites.
Degeneration theorists tend to overlook the tremendous human
costs of this forced coherence and agreement, as well as the fact
that it seemed to produce not just stability but moral stagnation.
26 Introduction
Our aim in this volume is not to provide a detailed refutation
of degeneration views. Instead, we hope to have said enough
about the problems such views face to show that they are not a
conversation-​stopper regarding the topic of moral progress. The
case against degeneration views will be considerably strengthened
in later chapters, when we explore the biological, social, and po-
litical conditions that either encourage or inhibit moral progress.
In so doing, we will show exactly why it is that modern liberal
societies, not traditional ones, offer the best prospects for moral
progress.

Naturalizing Moral Progress

The theory of moral progress begun in this book is naturalistic
in several senses. The first is that it is secular, rather than theo-
logical:  it appeals to natural rather than supernatural factors in
determining what counts as moral progress and how it can be
achieved—​unlike earlier accounts that viewed moral progress
as being defined and guided by divine providence. As a secular
theory, our account avoids the temptation to which theological
theorists of moral progress have often succumbed, namely, the-
odicy:  the attempt to reconcile the bad in history with the as-
sumption that there is an all-​powerful and all-​beneficent being.
Secular approaches to moral progress are of course not new.
One of the distinctive features of mainstream liberal thought
from the Enlightenment through the nineteenth century was
that it secularized the idea of moral progress.15 That is, it char-
acterized moral progress without reference to religious tenets,
insisted that moral progress could be achieved solely by human
effort and without divine assistance, and promised to ground its

15
  Spadafora shows that some British Enlightenment thinkers included a lim-
ited role for providence in their accounts of progress but that others held purely
secular views. David Spadafora, The Idea of Progress in Eighteenth-​Century
Britain (Yale University Press, 1990, pp. 88, 90, 91, 96, 97, 363–​365, 375, 390).
 Introduction  27
theories of progress in a “science of man.” Nevertheless, early
secular theories were insufficiently naturalistic because, like
their conservative detractors, liberal political theorists in that era
tended to rely upon under-​evidenced assumptions about human
psychology and society. Their factual assumptions were based on
folk psychology, flawed attempts to develop empirically based
psychological theories, a priori speculation, and reflections on
history hampered both by a lack of information and by inade-
quate methodology.16 Another defect of some secular concep-
tions of moral progress was that they claimed, without evidence,
that moral progress was inevitable, not merely feasible. Given a
near total lack of solid empirical grounding, the claim that moral
progress was inevitable was even shakier than the claim that it
was feasible.
At a minimum, a theory of moral progress ought to be compat-
ible with the relevant psychological and social facts about human
beings. A  more demanding desideratum is that it must provide
an account of how the path of moral progress can be traversed
that is compatible with those facts. In particular, the theory
must support the conclusion that moral progress is more than
logically possible, given an accurate view of the relevant facts. It
must show that moral progress is both feasible and permissible,
and it should also supply some specific guidance as to how moral
progress can be achieved. Feasibility has two components:  can

16
 Theorists of progress in the English and Scottish Enlightenment, in-
cluding Hartley, Hume, Smith, and Kames, based their views on psychological
assumptions (e.g., that “the association of ideas” was a fundamental feature
of the human mind); but their psychological views, like their views about so-
ciety, lacked rigorous empirical support. In addition, their psychological the-
ories were seriously incomplete because they lacked an understanding of the
full range of what are now called “normal cognitive biases” and how these
biases interact with culture to construct morally relevant beliefs—​which we
later show to be of crucial relevance for any empirically grounded theory of
moral progress. For a valuable discussion of the psychological assumptions of
these theorists and their bearing on the idea of progress, see Ibid., pp. 138–​148,
163–​166, 343–​346, 151–​152.
28 Introduction
we really get there from here, and will the destination be sus-
tainable?17 Permissibility concerns whether we get there by using
morally acceptable means. Secular theories of moral progress
that are premised on false presuppositions about human nature
and society will be misguided or utopian; those that are mistaken
about the permissibility of traversing moral valleys in order to
reach a higher peak in a “morality landscape” will be morally re-
gressive, perhaps disastrously so.
The theory proposed here is thus “naturalistic” in the contem-
porary philosophical sense that it proceeds on the assumption
that empirical knowledge, and especially scientific knowledge of
human nature and society, can be crucial for tackling important
philosophical topics—​in this case, that of moral progress. More
specifically, in developing a theory of moral progress, we exploit
the resources of evolutionary biology, moral psychology, cultural
evolutionary theory, and the psychology of normal cognitive
biases and errors, as well as our best current understandings in
economics, sociology, and history regarding the nature of social
practices and institutions and how and why they have changed
over time. We also draw on the developing resources of social
moral epistemology, the comparative study of how different in-
stitutions and social practices affect the beliefs normally needed
for the functioning of human beings’ moral capacities—​ their
abilities to make moral judgments, engage in moral reasoning,
employ moral concepts, and experience moral emotions such as
sympathy and indignation at injustice.
The fact that earlier liberal thinkers failed to achieve fully nat-
uralistic theories of moral progress is not surprising, of course,
given how meager genuine scientific knowledge about human
psychology and society was in the nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries. Our situation today is more hopeful. For the first time,

17
  To say that some type of moral improvement is “feasible” is not to say that
it can be perfectly realized. It is too much to ask that a theory of moral progress
specify a fully attainable ideal. See Chapter 1 for further discussion.
 Introduction  29
human beings are beginning to gain genuinely scientific knowl­
edge about human nature, especially through the development of
empirical psychological theories that take evolutionary biology
and cultural evolution seriously. In addition, the social sciences
now provide better information about what sorts of social ar-
rangements are feasible and sustainable and about how social
norms arise and change. Accordingly, there are now compelling
reasons to attempt to revisit the topic of moral progress by devel-
oping a more thoroughly naturalistic account of moral progress
in the light of what we are coming to know about ourselves.18
This book develops the philosophical and empirical founda-
tions needed for a more robustly naturalistic theory of moral
progress. Our modest naturalistic goal is to determine whether
and how certain types of putative moral progress are possible
and to assess their limits, within the strictures of our best scien-
tific theories of human moral psychology and culture. This ex-
planatory account of how moral progress comes about, and how
it can backslide, has significant normative implications for sus-
taining and expanding on humanity’s moral achievements. A fur-
ther aim of this book is to reconcile normative theorizing about
moral progress and the prevailing evolutionary understandings
of moral psychology and culture with which they appear to be in
tension. Doing so will demonstrate how philosophical reflections
on human morality and society can properly inform evolutionary
theorizing about human nature, and vice versa.
As a scientifically informed secular theory, our account
eschews teleological thinking about nature, human nature, and
the nature of society. In particular, it avoids the all-​too-​common
mistake of thinking of evolution—​ biological or cultural—​ as

18
  Needless to say, the effort to ground a theory of moral progress in science
must not lapse into overconfidence about what knowledge science has achieved
or about our ability, at any given time, to identify the best science available.
Any attempt to work out a naturalized theory of moral progress must take
the scientific hypotheses on which its rests as only provisionally plausible and
subject to revision.
30 Introduction
progress toward some predetermined end or some perfected
or morally desirable state of affairs. We also avoid the error of
hyper-​adaptationism, the mistake of thinking that natural selec-
tion is the only evolutionary mechanism, thereby overlooking
the roles of drift and byproducts in evolution. Nor do we rely in
any way on the problematic idea that a proper understanding of
human nature yields a substantive account of morality. It is true
that any plausible theory of moral progress (for human beings)
must take some features of human nature into account—​and, in-
deed, we will focus on several aspects of evolved human moral
psychology that we take to be particularly important in driving
moral progress and moral regression; but that is not to say that an
understanding of human nature by itself provides a roadmap for
what moral progress is or how it can be achieved.19
It bears further emphasis that our theory—​or, more accu-
rately, our proto-​theory—​is not naturalistic in the extreme sense
of trying to reduce evaluative discourse about moral progress
to purely factual, descriptive-​explanatory discourse. In other
words, we make no attempt to eliminate normative concepts
from a systematic consideration of moral progress. The reason
for this is simple: all attempts to eliminate the category of nor-
mativity have failed, whether with respect to morality or prac-
tical reasoning or epistemology, and we see no reason to think
the future holds the prospect of success. Nonetheless, for those
who are more sanguine than we are about the reductionist en-
deavor, much of what we say in this volume should still be of
interest. For it should help move the reductivist project some
way toward its ultimate objective by outlining an empirically
constrained account of how at least one important kind of moral
progress can occur and what further moral progress can be ex-
pected, given our developing scientific understandings of human
psychology and society.

19
 Allen Buchanan (2008), “Human Nature and Enhancement,” Bioethics
23(3): 141–​150.
 Introduction  31
Several features of a successful theory of moral progress have
already been noted:  (1) it should be naturalistic (in the senses
specified above); (2)  it should include provisions for avoiding
or at least minimizing racial, gender, class, and ethnonational
prejudice and other forms of parochialism that afflicted earlier
theories, by drawing on the best available scientific studies of
bias and de-​biasing techniques, as well as on the best scientific
information about the morally relevant characteristics that all
human beings have in common; and (3)  it should not assume
that moral progress is necessary or inevitable or that there are
“iron laws of progress.” More positively, a theory of moral
progress should also (4)  identify at least the most important
types of moral progress; (5) determine whether there are inter-
esting conceptual, normative, or causal relations among them;
and (6)  provide significant practical guidance as to how these
types of moral progress can be achieved and how stalling or re-
gression can be avoided, in morally permissible ways. It should
also take a principled stand on (7) whether valid global, as op-
posed to merely local, moral progress assessments can be made
and on (8)  whether moral progress is possible (or even makes
sense) for humankind generally, as opposed to moral progress
relative to one or the other of a plurality of valid or defensible
moral worldviews.
These features are ideal desiderata. A theory that fails to de-
liver on some of them might still be worthwhile. In our judg-
ment, however, previous views about moral progress that warrant
the title “theory” have failed to realize most of these desiderata.
The ultimate value of a theory of moral progress will depend on
whether the errors and limitations of past theories can be over-
come. And there is only one way to find out if they can: to pro-
ceed with the project.
This book is a hybrid. We believe it exhibits hybrid vigor. It is
thoroughly interdisciplinary. Because genuinely interdisciplinary
work is rare, it may seem strange to some readers. The book is in-
tended for two primary academic audiences: moral and political
32 Introduction
philosophers, on the one hand, and various strains of evolutionary
theorists including biologists, anthropologists, psychologists, and
philosophers of science, on the other. We hope that it will be of
interest to a broader, educated, and inquisitive audience as well—​
the sorts of readers who enjoy books such as Stephen Pinker’s
The Better Angels of Our Nature:  How Humans Became Less
Violent and Joseph Henrich’s The Secret of Our Success.
We are aware that there may be a tendency for moral and po-
litical philosophers, most of whom are not well acquainted with
evolutionary theory, to feel discomfort when confronted with the
need to add evolutionary concepts and methods to their analytic
toolbox. When some outstanding political philosophers gener-
ously commented on a draft of this book, they asked, to our sur-
prise, “What does this have to do with evolution?” Even more
remarkably, only an hour after we carefully reiterated the role of
evolutionary thinking in every chapter of the manuscript, they
still said, “I don’t see what this has to do with evolution.” We sur-
mise that their discomfort with evolutionary thinking led them to
glide over the substantial uses of evolutionary theory in the book
and focus only on what was familiar to them: analytic moral phi-
losophy. Our hope is that this discomfort can be set aside and
that philosophical readers will accompany us on this intellec-
tual journey and evaluate the results on their merits. We under-
stand that for those of us who learned to do philosophy without
any serious engagement with the social and life sciences, it may
be natural to think that all important philosophical topics—​
especially normative ones—​can be successfully engaged by pure
analysis conducted from the armchair. But for some philosoph-
ical topics, including moral progress, that is false comfort. This
book will demonstrate that answering some of the most impor-
tant questions about moral progress requires expanding the tradi-
tional philosophical toolkit. It is vital to emphasize, however, that
expanding the toolkit means supplementing and enriching tradi-
tional analytic philosophical analysis, not in any way minimizing
it, much less eliminating it. So, our plea to mainstream analytic
 Introduction  33
philosophers is this: please give us the benefit of the doubt when
we say that for this topic at least the traditional philosophical
toolkit needs augmentation, and don’t let the understandable dis-
comfort that arises when one is asked to consider unfamiliar ap-
proaches impede your progress in thinking about moral progress.
To think about moral progress without taking evolution seriously
would be to assume that the moral progress that human beings
are capable of is unrelated to the kinds of beings they are. The
study of evolution does not tell us everything there is to know
about human beings, but it does tell us quite a lot.
For evolutionary biologists and psychologists, the discomfort
that this book produces will have a different source, though it
may be just as troubling. We believe that contemporary attempts
to bring evolutionary thinking to bear on morality have been
promising but incomplete. There has been a pronounced ten-
dency to view morality as a static social technology, assuming in
effect that the morality that first emerged in the Middle to Late
Pleistocene is in all or most important respects the morality that
human beings exhibit today. For example, Sharon Street in a
provocative and justly influential essay proclaims that the char-
acter of present morality is overwhelmingly determined by its
origins.20 That kind of thinking, we will show, blinds one to the
moral progress that has already occurred, leads one to dismiss the
possibility of future progress, and indeed discourages one from
taking moral progress seriously as a topic that can be illuminated
by evolutionary thinking. If morality is static, there can be no
moral progress (and no moral regression either).
Some evolutionary thinkers have recognized the importance
of cultural change, and some have attempted to develop cultural,
as opposed to biological, selectionist explanations of cultural
change. Yet we think it is fair to say, as a broad generalization,
that they have not had much to say about changes in morality as

20
 Sharon Street (2006), “A Darwinian Dilemma for Realist Theories of
Value,” Philosophical Studies 127: 109–​166, pp. 109, 114.
34 Introduction
a distinctive kind of cultural phenomenon and hence have been
largely silent on how an evolutionarily informed explanation of
moral change can contribute to a better understanding of moral
progress. (For example, the index of Henrich’s outstanding book
on how cultural innovations have changed humanity includes
no entries for “moral,” “moral norms,” “morality,” “ethics,” or
“ethical.”) So, our plea to those who approach the world from a
Darwinian perspective is this: don’t confuse the original or ances-
tral character of morality with morality; take seriously the pos-
sibility that culture has transformed morality and may change it
even further.
Finally, all readers should understand that using evolutionary
thinking to illuminate a key topic in moral philosophy does not
mean corrupting it, nor does it entail reducing normative claims
to biological facts. Everything we say in this book is consistent
with a clear-​headed acknowledgment that evolution is not moral
progress and with an unambiguous rejection of vulgarizations of
Darwinian theory that confuse evolutionary fitness with what
human beings ought to value.

Preview of Chapters
Part I (“What Is Moral Progress?”) lays the conceptual ground-
work on which much of the subsequent discussion will rest.
Chapter  1 (“A Typology of Moral Progress”) proceeds from
the “bottom up” by identifying strong prima facie examples
of moral progress and then consulting this list in order to con-
struct a provisional roster of types of moral progress. It explains
why one might think that changes that are improvements from
a moral point of view are not instances of moral progress prop-
erly conceived, if these changes do not involve improvements in
moral capacities or come about through the exercise of those ca-
pacities. This chapter also distinguishes three increasingly strong
senses of “moral progress.” Chapter 2 (“Contemporary Accounts
of Moral Progress”) then articulates several distinct conceptions
 Introduction  35
of moral progress found in the recent literature, focusing in par-
ticular on two main types of accounts: those that equate moral
progress with increased compliance with valid moral norms and
those that equate moral progress with increased performance of
morality’s social or biological function. On even the most chari-
table reading, both norm compliance and functionalist theories of
moral progress fail to accommodate the full range of moral prog-
ress types—​and, more fundamentally, they fail to appreciate the
fact that morality develops over time. Chapter 3 (“A Pluralistic,
Dynamic Conception of Moral Progress”) defends instead a con-
ception of moral progress that is both pluralistic, in that it does
not attempt to reduce all cases of moral progress to one type (e.g.,
to norm compliance or functional performance), and dynamic, in
that it is explicitly provisional and thus allows for improvements
in our understanding of what morality requires and in how moral
progress itself is conceived. This chapter also articulates a concept
of meta-​moral progress, by which we mean moral progress in the
means by which moral progress is achieved.
In Part II (“Evolution and the Possibility of Moral Progress”),
we develop the main contours of a theory of inclusivist moral
progress and regression. By emphasizing the interaction of bi-
ology and culture in the evolution of moralities, we show that it
is a mistake to claim, as many philosophers and scientists have
done, that human beings are evolutionarily “hard-​wired” for ex-
clusivist or tribalistic morality and thus that inclusivist progress
is illusory, short-​lived, or unlikely to increase.
Chapter 4 (“Is Evolved Human Nature an Obstacle to Moral
Progress?”) examines an important source of conservative skep-
ticism about the possibility of moral progress:  the hypothesis
that our evolved moral psychology imposes rather narrow and
inflexible constraints on our ability to construct and implement
“inclusivist” moralities—​moralities that reject group-​based re-
strictions on membership in the moral community, such as those
based on race, ethnicity, gender, species, or self-​serving cooperative
relationships between groups. This “evoconservative” challenge
36 Introduction
to the liberal cosmopolitan project appeals to contemporary ev-
olutionary theory to support the long-​standing but historically
under-​evidenced conservative assertion that human nature im-
poses powerful limitations on human other-​regard—​constraints
that make certain attempts at moral reform futile or prohibitively
costly. Chapter  5 (“The Inclusivist Anomaly and the Limits of
Evolutionary Explanation”) calls the evoconservative view into
question. It argues that no adequate evolutionary explanation has
been given for the inclusivist features of contemporary human
morality—​ most notably, the abolitionist, civil rights, human
rights, and animal welfare movements—​and it shows that these
explanatory limitations indicate that the strong evolutionary psy-
chological constraints thesis is mistaken.
Some readers might complain that we spend too much time
in criticizing various forms of the evoconservative view, perhaps
because they find such views implausible. Our suspicion is that
our criticisms of evoconservatism are, as it were, too persuasive—​
so persuasive that if one accepts these criticisms, one may find
it hard to take their target seriously. Be that as it may, we sus-
pect that even if the reader’s intuition, before reading our anal-
ysis, was that the evoconservative view is implausible, there is
added value in grounding that intuition in careful criticism and
giving the evoconservative viewpoint the strongest philosoph-
ical gloss possible. More importantly, despite its general focus on
prosocial aspects of morality, we think that much of the writing
and theorizing about the evolutionary origins of human morality
implies that selective pressures in the ancestral environment in
which morality was forged tilted human moral psychology to-
ward tribalistic, exclusivist moral responses toward out-​group
members. If that is so, then it is natural to think that there are
significant limitations on progress in the direction of inclusivity.
The evoconservative view should therefore not be so readily
dismissed.
We go on to show that even if human morality was originally
quite tribalistic, it does not follow that we are stuck with tribalism
 Introduction  37
or that there is a clear limit to how far we can move away from it,
given the “built-​in” plasticity of human moral capacities. There
is another reason why we spend so much time laying out and
criticizing evoconservative views:  doing so is a convenient and
effective way to clarify our own thinking about inclusivist moral
progress and the conceptual and empirical challenges it faces.
Chapter  6 (“Toward a Naturalistic Theory of Inclusivist
Moral Progress”) presents the evolutionary core of a naturalistic
theory that can account for the “inclusivist anomaly” discussed
in the previous chapter. It draws upon a wide range of evidence
suggesting that evolution has produced “adaptively plastic”
moral psychological mechanisms that are configured to prevent
inclusivist moral norms and dispositions from developing in cer-
tain environments, while allowing them to flourish in others. This
evolutionary model of moral psychological development unifies
a wide range of observations in disciplines as diverse as anthro-
pology, psychology, sociology, history, and economics. Crucially,
the specific environmental cues that we hypothesize guide human
moral psychological development—​in particular, cues that are in-
dicative of out-​group threat—​are within the powers of human
beings to modify.
Drawing on the evolutionary model of moral psycholog-
ical development sketched in the previous chapter, Chapter  7
(“Naturalizing Moral Regression: A Biocultural Account”) pro-
poses a theory of moral regression. It argues that inclusivist gains
can be eroded not only if certain harsh biological and social con-
ditions indicative of out-​group threat actually reappear but also
if significant numbers of people come to believe that such harsh
conditions exist even when they do not. It argues that normal
cognitive biases in conjunction with defective social-​epistemic
practices can cause people wrongly to believe that such harsh
conditions exist, thus triggering the development and evolu-
tion of exclusivist moralities and the dismantling of inclusivist
ones. Armed with detailed knowledge of the biological and so-
cial environments in which progressive moralities emerge and are
38 Introduction
sustained, as well as the conditions under which they are likely
to be dismantled, human beings can take significant steps toward
transforming the classic liberal faith in moral progress into a
practical, empirically grounded hope.
This biocultural theory of moral progress and regression, as the
name suggests, steers between two implausible extremes. On the
one hand, it avoids biological reductionism, which understands
the shape of human morality, and hence the possibilities for
moral progress, solely or at least primarily in terms of a paro-
chial moral psychology that was selected for in the middle to late
Pleistocene; on the other hand, it avoids “culture-​centric” views
that portray morality as a set of cultural developments whose pri-
mary function is to counteract supposedly natural propensities to
act selfishly or immorally. In contrast, the view we propose em-
phasizes that human beings’ evolved moral nature both enables
morality in the form of inclusiveness and thwarts it, depending
upon environmental factors broadly conceived, including cultural
and institutional conditions. Our theory thus holds that biology
and culture both matter—​that it is mistaken to think of one as
more fundamental than the other. Further, our view allows for
extending evolutionary explanations beyond genetics, to encom-
pass cultural selectionist explanations.
In Chapter 8 (“De-​Moralization and the Evolution of Invalid
Moral Norms”), the focus shifts from moral progress in the
form of inclusion to moral progress in the dimension of “de-​
moralization”—​ when behavior once thought to be morally
impermissible comes to be seen as morally neutral or even laud-
able. It shows that evolutionary processes act as both constraints
and enablers in this important dimension of moral progress,
too—​and then draws upon this analysis to rebut a different set
of evoconservative arguments that view de-​ moralization as a
hubristic endeavor that is bound to have unintended bad con-
sequences. We show that these evoconservative arguments are
premised on overly simplified conceptions of evolutionary
theory and that as a result they underestimate the extent to which
 Introduction  39
cultural evolution permits the origin, proliferation, and preser-
vation of invalid moral norms. Although the conservative worry
that de-​moralization (or other forms of moral reform, for that
matter) could result in unintended bad consequences is a valid
concern, contained and limited experiments in de-​moralization
can manage this risk without forgoing the benefits of emancipa-
tion from invalid moral constraints. While the main focus of our
book is on moral progress as inclusion, this chapter’s exploration
of moral progress as de-​moralization demonstrates that the basic
toolkit we develop is more broadly useful.
Part III (“The Path Traveled and the Way Forward”) further
demonstrates the explanatory power of our naturalistic theory
by considering moral progress in the form of inclusion and
how it fits into our biocultural model of moral development.
Chapter 9 (“Improvements in Moral Concepts and the Human
Rights Movement”) examines several momentous improvements
in moral understanding, all of which represent impressive gains
in inclusiveness. These changes—​all of which are embodied in the
modern human rights movement—​include expansions in under-
standings of the domain of justice (the class of beings to whom
justice is owed) and the territory of justice (the kinds of actions
and states of affairs that can be just or unjust), a redrawing of the
distinction between justice and charity, the extension of a broad
set of rights to all human beings, the recognition that some basic
rights cannot be forfeited, and a profound change in how morality
itself is conceived. Chapter  10 (“Human Rights Naturalized”)
helps to confirm the explanatory power of our naturalistic theory
of moral progress by making two main points: first, it shows that
the theory helps to explain how and why the modern human
rights movement arose when it did; second, it shows that the
advances in inclusiveness achieved by the modern human rights
movement depended upon the fortunate coincidence of a constel-
lation of contingent cultural and economic conditions—​and that
it is therefore a dangerous mistake to assume that continued prog-
ress must occur or even that the status quo will not substantially
40 Introduction
deteriorate. This chapter also helps to explain a disturbing period
of regression regarding inclusiveness as recognition of equal basic
status that occurred between the success of British abolitionism
and the founding of the modern human rights movement at the
end of World War II.
Chapter  11 (“Biomedical Moral Enhancement and Moral
Progress”) critically examines a different and highly provoca-
tive response to the thesis that evolved human moral psychology
poses severe and inflexible limitations on moral progress:  the
“evoliberal” proposal to re-​ engineer human moral psy-
chology through the use of biomedical technologies in order
to solve some of our most pressing moral problems, such as
war, terrorism, genocide, and climate change. It shows that the
evoliberal position is premised on the very same problematic
evolutionary assumptions that underpin the evoconservative
view. Once our world’s great moral problems are recast in terms
of failures of moral inclusivity, it becomes clear that biomedical
moral enhancement technology is unlikely to be either neces-
sary or effective in addressing them. To the contrary, the evolu-
tionary model of moral psychological development sketched in
Part II suggests that cultural moral innovations that make use
of our best understanding of the evolutionary development of
human morality stand the best chance of driving moral prog-
ress and preventing moral regression. Further, we argue that
for biomedical interventions to make a significant contribution
to the solution of the most pressing problems, massive cultural
innovations would be required in order to promote the use of
these interventions on a sufficiently large scale and that there-
fore the evoliberals’ skepticism about the possibility of cultural
innovations is inconsistent with the practical requirements of
their own proposal.
The Conclusion ties the various threads of argument devel-
oped in the preceding chapters together, and the Appendix on
topics for further research identifies a number of important issues
that are not dealt with in this volume and which will be explored
 Introduction  41
in a more comprehensive follow-​on work. Finally, a second ap-
pendix explores the fruitfulness and limitations of attempts to in-
voke cultural evolutionary explanations in a naturalistic theory
of moral progress.
A book about moral progress will, in a sense, always be timely.
But we are writing at what might turn out to be a particularly
critical moment in human history—​a time when some of the
monumental moral gains of the previous century appear to many
to be under serious threat. The recent rise of extreme nativist
nationalism, the rejection of multiculturalist tolerance, and the
growing hostility to supranational institutions put humanity at
a critical juncture, where major progressive moral innovations of
the previous centuries hang in the balance. Despite some recent
inclusivist victories, and perhaps in part in reaction to them, so-
cial and cultural environments that threaten to erode moral gains
and precipitate moral regression are rapidly being constructed
before our eyes, both at home and abroad. Understanding the
biocultural foundations of human moral plasticity is crucial not
only for expanding upon some of humanity’s greatest moral
achievements but also for sustaining them against forces that
threaten to cause moral regression. There will be much more to
say about these threats to moral progress in the pages to come.
For now, we merely hope that readers will join us in acknowl-
edging the immense importance—​and urgency—​of the task that
lies before us.
 PART I
What Is Moral Progress?
 CHAPTER 1

A Typology of Moral Progress

The Introduction considered a number of reasons why the con-

cept of moral progress has all but disappeared from liberal phil-
osophical theorizing and showed that none of them, whether
singly or taken together, offers a sound justification for neglecting
this important concept. The task of Part I is analytical: it aims to
achieve sufficient clarity about what moral progress is to allow
for a fruitful inquiry in subsequent chapters as to whether, and if
so how, moral progress can be theorized and how in practice it
can be achieved.
It is tempting to approach this analytical task from the “top
down”—​that is, by identifying and arguing for substantive moral
concepts or principles and then defining moral progress as im-
provement in their realization through the exercise of human
moral capacities. Such an elegant foundationalist approach to
morality and moral progress is deeply problematic, however, for
reasons we will explain shortly. Our approach to the question
of moral progress is from the “bottom up”—​that is, it begins by
identifying paradigmatic instances of moral progress and classi-
fying them into types. This will then prepare the way for the next
two chapters in which we evaluate several contemporary views
about moral progress by determining how well they can accom-
modate the diversity of types that we have identified.
The first section lists a number of developments that are prima
facie instances of moral progress and then explains why not every
46  What Is Moral Progress?
change that is an improvement from a moral point of view is a
case of moral progress strictly speaking. In our judgment, only
changes that either involve improvements in moral capacities or
come about through the exercise of those capacities are instances
of moral progress in the most full-​bodied sense. The second sec-
tion uses this list of instances of moral progress to construct a
provisional taxonomy of ten types of moral progress, which we
then employ in the next chapter to evaluate recent contemporary
accounts of moral progress.
Before we proceed further, it is important to stress that the
subject matter of this book is moral progress writ large, moral
progress on a social scale. In other words, we are concerned
chiefly with morally progressive changes in social practices and
institutions, and we are interested in moral improvements in in-
dividual human beings primarily insofar as they figure in these
larger changes. This clarification is important because the term
“moral progress” might be used to refer to instances of individual
moral improvement considered in themselves, apart from any
larger social changes in which they are embedded or to which
they contribute.
Sometimes progress is understood to be movement toward
some desirable terminus, and accordingly moral progress is un-
derstood as movement toward some morally desirable condition
or state of affairs. It may be that most writers in the past who
have pondered moral progress have thought of it, either implic-
itly or explicitly, in terms of movement with respect to some
morally desirable endpoint, regardless of whether this endpoint
can be known in advance. For reasons that will become clearer as
we proceed, especially in Chapter 3 when we argue for an open-​
ended, dynamic conception of moral progress, we believe it is a
mistake to think of moral progress in this way. Instead, it is better
to think of it as moral improvement, as moral betterment relative
to the status quo, where this does not entail that there is some
endpoint against which improvement is to be gauged.
 A Typology of Moral Progress  47
This book treats both morality and moral progress as inher-
ently social phenomena. In particular, it focuses on the evolved
social functions of morality and the institutional environments
that make large-​scale moral progress possible notwithstanding
these evolutionary functional constraints. However, much of
what we have to say will have interesting implications for in-
dividual moral progress. From now on, however, when we use
the term “moral progress” the reference will usually be to moral
progress as a social, and not merely individual, phenomenon. We
will characterize changes in the beliefs and moral responses of
individuals but only insofar as these occur in sufficiently large
numbers of people to effect social change. In future work we in-
tend to develop more explicitly the connections between indi-
vidual moral progress and moral progress that involves changes
in social institutions and practices.

Instances of Moral Progress

All of the following are prima facie instances of moral progress,
many of them paradigmatic:
• the large reduction, beginning with British abolition, of the
incidence of the most extreme forms of slavery among human
populations
• reductions in the incidence of the most serious forms of racial
and ethnic discrimination in many countries
• the extension, in an increasing number of countries, of political
participation rights to all adult citizens, along with other
institutional changes resulting in more effective recognition
of interests that hitherto had been discounted or disregarded
altogether
• the increasing recognition and institutionalization of the
equal rights of women in most countries
• better treatment of some non-​human animals
• the abolition of at least the cruellest punishments
48  What Is Moral Progress?
• the spread of the rule of law
• the dramatic reduction of homicide rates since the Middle
Ages in many countries
• the emergence of international norms prohibiting aggressive
war, apartheid, and colonialism, norms which have been shown
to affect the behavior of states
• increased freedom from religious persecution and greater
freedom of expression
In each of these cases, a change has occurred that appears to be a
transition to a state of affairs that is an improvement from a moral
point of view, in this sense: the new state of affairs conforms better
to valid moral norms or better realizes sound moral values. The
claim that the item is an improvement from a moral point of view
includes two elements: first, an assertion that the change in question
has occurred (the descriptive element) and, second, an assertion that
the change is progressive, a transition to a morally better state of
affairs, other things being equal (the normative element). There is
ample evidence that the changes listed above have occurred—​not
universally but quite widely—​so the descriptive element is unprob-
lematic. The normative element, in contrast, stands in need of elab-
oration. In particular, it is important to distinguish between changes
that are improvements from a moral point of view and changes that
are instances of moral progress strictly speaking.
Consider two changes that, according to a broad range of plau-
sible moralities, are improvements from a moral point of view: the
remarkable reduction in homicide rates in Europe from 1450
C.E. to the present and the great decline in the burden of deadly
infectious diseases in many parts of the world over the last cen-
tury. Both of these changes are improvements from a moral point
of view in the sense that the new state of affairs, in both cases,
would be regarded as an improvement from the perspective of
widely held moral norms and values that there is good reason to
believe are valid. For a third, much earlier example, consider the
Roman Emperor Caracalla’s edict of 212 C.E. extending Roman
citizenship rights, with all the benefits this entailed, to all free
 A Typology of Moral Progress  49
adult males living within territories controlled by Rome.1 At least
from the standpoint of any morality that affirms the basic equal
status of all persons or that values increases in the welfare of large
numbers of people, the emperor’s edict was a clear improvement
over the status quo (although it stopped short of extending citi-
zenship to slaves, women, and foreigners).
Yet how such changes came about is arguably relevant to
whether they are instances of moral progress properly described.
Suppose that the great decline in the incidence of deadly infec-
tious diseases had not come about, even in part, by deliberate
efforts undertaken in the recognition that it is morally good or
mandatory to reduce preventable human suffering and death.
Suppose further, that this decline did not involve the exercise of
any human motivational capacities, moral or otherwise. Suppose
instead that the reduction occurred as a result of events utterly
beyond human control—​such as a naturally occurring environ-
mental change that wiped out many infectious agents. Under
these conditions, the reduction in the incidence of deadly infec-
tious diseases would have undoubtedly been an improvement
from a moral point of view, but it would be strange to call it an
instance of moral progress.
Similarly, consider the approximately fiftyfold reduction in
homicide rates in Europe over the last five and a half centuries.
Suppose, as Norbert Elias, Stephen Pinker, and others have
suggested, that the chief causes of this change were the rise of the
modern state with its more or less successful attempt to achieve a
monopoly on violence, along with the growth of market relations
that gave people incentives to act peacefully and cooperatively to-
ward strangers.2 This was surely a change that is an improvement

1
  Richard Lim, “Late Antiquity,” in Edward Bispham, Thomas Harrison,
and Brian Sparkes (eds.), The Edinburgh Companion to Ancient Greece and
Rome: Late Antiquity (Edinburgh University Press, 2010, p. 114).
2
 Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature:  Why Violence Has
Declined (Viking, 2011). Norbert Elias, The Civilizing Process:  Sociogenetic
and Psychogenetic Investigations, 2nd edition, revised, illustrated (Wiley, 2000).
50  What Is Moral Progress?
from a moral point of view. But is it an instance of moral prog-
ress? That depends on whether to qualify as moral progress a
change must come about through the exercise of human moral
powers—​their capacities for having moral concepts, making and
appreciating moral arguments, being committed to moral con-
sistency, and having moral motivations. If the rise of the state
and the growth of market relations are sufficient to explain the
reduction of homicide rates, at least in the initial periods of their
decline, then it appears that this change, which is undoubtedly
an improvement from a moral point of view, was not an instance
of moral progress—​assuming, of course, that morally progres-
sive change must involve the exercise of human moral powers.
For the great change that Elias and Pinker document appears to
have occurred without improvements in or through the exer-
cise of human moral capacities—​that is, improvements in moral
concepts, motivations, or virtues; in moral reasoning; in moral
emotions; or in the ability to discern valid moral norms. Instead,
it resulted from the introduction of institutionalized incentives
that aligned self-​ interested action with valid moral norms—​
institutional changes that do not appear to have been morally
motivated. This characterization would be true if, for example,
the king’s peace was imposed by the monarch strictly in pur-
suit of his self-​interest or if it emerged non-​intentionally out of
aggregate self-​interested interactions, rather than from the de-
sire to create a more peaceful, stable, and just society. Similarly,
refraining from murdering one’s fellows solely out of fear of pun-
ishment or anticipation of economic reward does not implicate
moral capacities properly understood.
If the causal story told by Elias and Pinker is correct, then, it
would be at the very least misleading, if not outright mistaken,
to say that the initial reduction in homicide rates was the re-
sult of better compliance with a moral norm prohibiting killing,
if the notion of compliance implies that people refrained from
killing because they came to believe killing was morally wrong
in a wider range of circumstances than they previously assumed.
 A Typology of Moral Progress  51
If the reduction in homicide rates was progressive from a moral
point of view, but not a case of moral progress, then it should be
removed from the list of cases of moral progress. Similarly, if,
as some historians surmise, Caracalla’s extension of Roman cit-
izenship was a purely strategic ploy to quell unrest, especially
in the form of ethnonational independence movements, to in-
crease taxes, or to make more men eligible to serve in the Roman
army, it would be misleading to call it an instance of moral prog-
ress, without further qualification, as opposed to progress from
a moral point of view. As we will see in Part II, however, even
if improvements from a moral point of view are not proper in-
stances of moral progress, they may be crucial for seeding the
conditions in which genuine moral progress can occur.
At this point it is worth distinguishing three distinct under-
standings of moral progress. The first, most demanding sense is
the one just suggested:  moral progress in the most full-​bodied
sense is not simply change that is desirable from a moral point
of view but also must involve the exercise of or improvements
in the moral powers. The second and weaker understanding al-
lows changes that are improvements from a moral point of view
to count as moral progress even if they came about through
self-​interested, prudential, or other nonmoral motivations (i.e.,
without the exercise of the moral powers or improvements of
them). On the second understanding, Emperor Caracalla’s ex-
tension of rights to a larger class of individuals would count as
moral progress, but the reduction of disease due to a naturally
mediated decline in parasites would not. The third and weakest
understanding of moral progress would equate it with changes
that are desirable from a moral point of view, without requiring
that any human motivational capacities be involved. On the third
understanding, the reduction of disease due to factors completely
independent of human motivation and action would count as
moral progress.
We think that the third, weakest understanding of moral prog-
ress ought to be rejected because we believe it is important to
52  What Is Moral Progress?
distinguish between changes that are merely desirable from a
moral point of view and changes that are morally progressive in
some stronger sense (or senses). Choosing between the first and
second understandings is more difficult. It will turn out, however,
that opting for the first, strongest understanding, as opposed to the
second, weaker one, matters very little for most of what we have
to say in this volume. So, to avoid the arbitrary stipulation that
one or the other of them is uniquely correct, let us say that both
the first and second understandings of moral progress are quite
appropriate and that for clarity we will call the former “moral
progress” and the latter “moral progress in the robust sense.”
Are any or all of the changes in the list above plausible
candidates for moral progress or for moral progress in the ro-
bust sense? It is plausible to say that they are all improvements
from a moral point of view—​but did they come about, at least
in significant part, through the exercise of or improvement in
human moral capacities? The qualifier “in significant part” is im-
portant, for presumably each of the changes listed was the result
of multiple causes, not all of which implicated human moral ca-
pacities. For example, some have argued that economic factors,
and hence self-​interest, played a role in motivating British and
American abolition movements. It seems reasonable to conclude,
however, that in each case identified above, at some point in the
process of change, moral capacities played a significant (if not
sufficient) role. For example, abolitionists, advocates for ending
cruel punishments, and those who agitated for better treatment
of non-​human animals all typically made moral appeals in the
face of great self-​interested opposition; and there is reason to be-
lieve that their success was due in part to engaging moral capac-
ities (i.e., moral reasoning, moral emotions, and what Jonathan
Glover calls “moral identities”—​individuals’ conceptions of the
sorts of persons they ought morally to be).3 In other words, it

3
  Jonathan Glover, Humanity:  A Moral History of the Twentieth Century
(Yale University Press, 2001).
 A Typology of Moral Progress  53
would be dubious to say that they all involved only nonmoral
motivations.
Without claiming to have conclusively settled the question,
let us assume, for now, that the rest of the changes listed above
are all instances of moral progress either in the first or second
sense (not merely changes that are progressive from a moral
point of view). To say that the changes listed above are plau-
sible instances of moral progress, other things being equal,
is to make local moral progress judgments, not global judg-
ments about the moral condition of the world as a whole. The
judgments are local because, taken individually or together,
they do not imply that the world today at time T is morally
better than the world as it was before these developments oc-
curred at T minus 1, given the possibility of moral regressions
elsewhere in the world or even in the societies in which the
putatively progressive changes occurred. Further, some forms
of moral change may be incommensurable with one another.
An improvement in one area may come at the price of re-
gression in another, and there may be no way of determining
whether the former outweighed the latter or vice versa. In
such cases, it may be impossible to make a well-​grounded all-​
things-​considered judgment concerning moral progress. The
Introduction began to explore some of the difficulties with
making well-​grounded global moral progress assessments. We
return to this topic again in the Conclusion, where we elab-
orate on the complications that the distinction between local
and global moral progress judgments entails for the episte-
mology of moral progress.

Types of Moral Progress

Our list of candidate instances of moral progress suggests that
there are several distinct types of moral progress, listed below.
If a theory of moral progress cannot accommodate some types
of moral progress on the list, that is a strike against it; by the
54  What Is Moral Progress?
same token, it counts in favor of a theory if it can accommodate
all types.
(1) Better compliance with valid moral norms, where this means
either increases in the number of people who comply to
some extent (or in some circumstances) or a higher degree
of compliance among those who are already complying,
or both. As we have seen, “compliance” is not to be un-
derstood in a purely behavioral sense—​that is to say, con-
formity to the norms in question cannot result solely from
external forces that incentivize behavior. It must, rather, in-
volve some exercise of or improvement in the moral capac-
ities if it is to count as moral progress in the robust sense.
Consider again, the case of great reductions in homicide
rates. This seems to be a case of moral progress, not merely
progress from a moral point of view, because many people
apparently have now internalized a moral norm against
killing innocent human beings—​they do not refrain from
doing so simply out of fear of punishment. Further, they
seem to have internalized a more encompassing norm, one
that extends the prohibition more broadly than was initially
the case to cover strangers or members of other groups.
(2) Better moral concepts, as when concepts of moral or legal
responsibility that assign responsibility on the basis of mere
causality are replaced by those that emphasize voluntari-
ness and the epistemic state (mens rea) of the wrongdoer.
This type also encompasses people coming to have entirely
new moral concepts, rather than simply refinements of ex-
isting ones: an example is the concept of sexual harassment,
which allows victims to articulate the nature of the wrong
done to them and thus enhances the capacity to mobilize
forces for combatting the wrong.4 Another example of a

4
  This is Miranda Fricker’s example of what she calls “hermeneutical injus-
tice.” Amanda Fricker, Epistemic Injustice (Oxford University Press, 2007).
 A Typology of Moral Progress  55
momentous new concept, whose complex development
will be addressed in Chapter 8, is that of “natural rights”—​
moral entitlements whose existence does not depend upon
legal or other institutionalized recognition.
(3) Better understandings of the virtues, as when an under-
standing of honor that is largely limited to chastity and
submissiveness in the case of women and the readiness to
respond with violence to perceived insults in the case of
men, gives way to a more complex notion that emphasizes
autonomy, integrity, and dignity, where dignity is under-
stood to include a reluctance to resort to violence.5
(4) Better moral motivation, where this includes both (a) more
discerning expressions of various moral emotions, as when
sympathy is felt not just toward members of one’s own
family or group but toward suffering beings generally, and
(b) a greater contribution of moral motivation to the deter-
mination of behavior.
(5) Better moral reasoning, including making relevant distinc-
tions and achieving greater consistency among moral judg-
ments.6 Included here are cases of “expanding the circle” of
moral regard that amount to eliminating inconsistencies in
reasoning or removing arbitrary restrictions on the scope
of moral concepts and norms. Examples include extending
the prohibition on the gratuitous infliction of suffering to
encompass non-​human animals and extending the ascrip-
tion of basic rights to women and people of color. Another

5
  Kwame Anthony Appiah provides a valuable discussion of how concerns
about honor have contributed to several “moral revolutions” that are important
instances of moral progress. Although he does not offer a general characteriza-
tion of moral progress or explore the question of the standards by which moral
progress is to be gauged, he nonetheless supplies an important element of a
more comprehensive theory. Kwame Anthony Appiah, The Honor Code: How
Moral Revolutions Occur (W.W. Norton & Company, 2010).
6
  Richmond Campbell and Victor Kumar (2012), “Moral Reasoning on the
Ground,” Ethics 122(2): 273–​312.
56  What Is Moral Progress?
example is the recent development of more rigorous and
nuanced reasoning about the justification of war in con-
temporary just war theory, including the distinction be-
tween preemptive and preventive war and the development
of arguments to show that the justification of the latter is
much more problematic. Yet another is better reasoning in
the discourse of medical ethics, especially in relation to the
morality of physician-​patient relations. A striking example
of the latter improvement is the transition from a crude
medical paternalism to a more nuanced view of the profes-
sional obligations of physicians that recognizes the impor-
tance not only of avoiding harm and bestowing benefits
on patients but also of respecting their autonomy. In each
of these cases, better reasoning produces more consistent
application of moral concepts and norms; in some cases, it
might also lead to improvements in the moral concepts and
norms themselves, as well as in moral motivations, by en-
couraging the appropriate expression of moral emotions.
(6) Proper demoralization, including cases in which people
rightly come to regard behaviors they previously thought
were morally wrong as morally permissible.7 Examples in-
clude profit-​seeking, lending money at interest, masturba-
tion, premarital sex, same-​sex sexual relations, interracial
marriage, and (some instances of) civil disobedience. This
kind of moral progress was emphasized by Enlightenment
thinkers who sought to liberate human beings from irra-
tional and in some cases highly destructive norms.
(7) Proper moralization, including cases in which people rightly
come to regard as morally impermissible behaviors they

7
  For an analysis of the phenomenon of de-​moralization and the difficulty of
distinguishing proper from improper de-​moralization in some cases, see Allen
Buchanan and Russell Powell, “De-​Moralization as Emancipation:  Liberty,
Progress, and the Evolution of Invalid Moral Norms” (2017), Social Philosophy
& Policy, 34(2): 108–​135.
 A Typology of Moral Progress  57
previously thought were permissible. Examples include
footbinding, dueling, female genital cutting, unwanted
sexual advances in the workplace, nonconsensual sex with
one’s spouse, extremely cruel punishments, torture, de-
liberate infliction of pain on non-​ human animals (e.g.,
cat burning as public entertainment in sixteenth-​century
Paris), and animal blood “sports” (such as bear-​baiting,
cockfighting, and head-​butting to death immobilized cats
in parts of thirteenth-​century Europe).
(8) Better understandings of moral standing and moral sta-
tuses.8 Examples include the increasing recognition of the
basic equal moral status of Africans during the abolitionist
movement and of the interests of non-​human animals (in-
cluding acknowledgment of the higher moral statuses of
great apes, cetaceans, etc., relative to other animals). This
type might be characterized as an instance of improved
moral concepts, but the notions of moral standing and sta-
tuses are so basic and so wide-​ranging in their implications
for the deployment of other moral concepts and moral
motivations that we think they deserve a place of their own
in the typology.
(9) Improvements in understandings of the nature of morality.
An example is the transition from a “strategic” concep-
tion of morality to a “subject-​centered” one. A  strategic
conception of morality is one according to which mo-
rality is in effect a rational bargain among those who can
either harm or benefit one another:  morality simply as a
matter of self-​interested reciprocal restraints. This concep-
tion of morality as a strategic bargain implies that moral

8
  A being has moral standing if it is a proper object of moral regard in its own
right. Various beings that all have moral standing may have different moral sta-
tuses, some “higher” and some “lower,” where this means that the interests of
the former are morally weightier or that those of higher status have rights that
those of lower status do not have. See Allen Buchanan (2009), “Moral Status
and Human Enhancement,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 37(4): 346–​381.
58  What Is Moral Progress?
standing depends on an individual’s strategic capacities and
relativizes moral standing to particular actual or potential
mutually beneficial cooperative schemes. This strategic
conception of morality finds expression at various points
in the history of western philosophy: in the surviving writ-
ings of Epicurus, in the voice of Glaucon in a Platonic di-
alogue, in Hobbes’s Leviathan, in a famous assertion by
Hume, and most recently in the work of the contemporary
analytic philosopher David Gauthier.9 The strategic con-
ception of morality has been rejected by many people in
favor of a subject-​centered conception according to which
moral status does not depend on the capacity to harm or
benefit others or on potential participation in any cooper-
ative scheme.10
One might think that theoretical conceptions of morality are so
cerebral that changes in these conceptions have no practical ef-
fect on human well-​being—​but this is not so. Indeed, the popu-
larity of the idea of human rights and its instantiation in domestic
and international law can be seen as evidence of the widespread
rejection of strategic conceptions of morality and its attendant
notion of the basis of moral status. Human rights are conceived
of as rights an individual has simply by virtue of her humanity,
independently of whether she has the capacity to harm or ben-
efit others and independently of her potential contribution to any
cooperative scheme. Similarly, Kantian conceptions that ground
moral status in the capacity for practical rationality and utili-
tarian conceptions that ground it in sentience both implicitly re-
ject the idea that morality is a rational bargain among those who
can harm or benefit each other—​and both have had a significant
impact on public policy, law, and behavior.

  David Gauthier, Morals by Agreement (Oxford University Press, 1986).

9

 See Allen Buchanan (1990), “Justice as Reciprocity versus Subject-​

10

Centered Justice,” Philosophy & Public Affairs 19(3): 227–​252.

 A Typology of Moral Progress  59
It is crucial to understand that justice as reciprocity is a thesis
about who has standing to be an object of justice, that is, to
whom obligations of justice are owed; it is compatible with the
recognition that reciprocity is also often an important consid-
eration in determining what obligations of justice there are.
Similarly, the rival “subject-​centered” conception of justice is
also compatible with the recognition that considerations of rec-
iprocity loom large in the moral life—​but it rejects the notion
that strategic relations determine who is a proper object of jus-
tice in the most basic sense, the sort of being to whom justice
can be owed.
The recognition that morality involves giving reasons is an-
other striking instance of an improvement in understanding what
morality is. A  person who recognizes that morality involves
offering and responding to reasons understands that it is insuf-
ficient to say that X is wrong simply because God commands
that X is wrong or because we have always refrained from doing
X.11 To say that morality involves reason-​giving does not imply,
of course, that actual moral responses are always rationally
grounded, nor does it deny the crucial role of emotions in moral
judgment and behavior. The point is that many people now ac-
knowledge that moral norms require justifications and that ade-
quate justifications must be accessible to people from a diverse
range of cultural backgrounds. Such human beings reject the no-
tion that moral norms are simply the commands of some pow-
erful being, whether divine or human.
Better understandings of justice. Included here are expan-
(10) 
sions in the domain of justice, the class of beings who are

  Alternatively, the recognition that judgments regarding right and wrong

11

typically require reasons (and are subject to universalizability, and so on) might
be understood as the first emergence of the concept of morality itself, rather
than as a shift to a new conception of morality. In other words, one might
hold that those who do not understand that making moral judgments entails
engaging with a practice of reason-​giving are not operating with a concept of
morality at all. Either way, this change is arguably a type of moral progress.
60  What Is Moral Progress?
considered proper subjects of justice and the territory of
justice, the set of actions and states of affairs that can be just
or unjust. An example of the former is the growing recogni-
tion that the concept of justice applies intergenerationally—​
that is to say current people can have obligations of justice
regarding the sort of world they leave for those who come
after. An example of the latter is the realization that some
features of social life are human creations and hence po-
tentially subject to modification by human efforts, rather
than fixed features of the natural world. This change can
sometimes lead to the recognition and eradication or ame-
lioration of the unjust structural disadvantaging of individ-
uals or groups. Structural injustice occurs when important
institutions operate in such a way as to unfairly disregard
or discount the interests of some groups. It can occur even
if the disadvantaged are not explicitly relegated to an infe-
rior moral status, and remedying it may require more fun-
damental changes than the legal recognition of equal status.
Although improvements in our understanding of the do-
main and the territory of justice may involve improvements
in various moral concepts and may lead to increased com-
pliance with valid moral norms, they are sufficiently mo-
mentous as to merit being distinguished as a separate type
of moral improvement (see further discussion in Chapter 9).
It should be obvious that for many, if not all, of these types of
moral progress, the change has not been universal. Nonetheless,
the scope of the changes in all cases is sufficiently large to view
them as morally progressive developments—​as changes that came
about through the exercise of moral capacities or as involving im-
provements in moral capacities. It would be overly demanding to
insist, for example, that the trend toward better compliance with
norms against murder, as evidenced by dramatic historical declines
in homicides, is not moral progress because murders still occur.
The few accounts of moral progress in the contemporary phil-
osophical literature on the topic have typically focused on only
 A Typology of Moral Progress  61
one type of moral progress.12 For instance, Michele Moody-​
Adams holds that moral progress is mainly or exclusively a matter
of type (2):  developing better moral concepts.13 Although we
agree that improvement in moral concepts is one important kind
of moral progress, there are others as well, as our list indicates.
To say that all the other types listed are simply improvements in
moral concepts would be to stretch the notion of moral concepts
unacceptably.
Moody-​Adams’s paradigm case of moral progress is one where
people subject the arbitrary restriction of the scope of a concept,
such as equality, to critical scrutiny and thereby come to under-
stand that the concept is actually of broader application (for ex-
ample, that the concept of equality applies to relations between
men and women, not just among men). Some improvements in
our moral concepts fit this model, but many do not, including
improved understandings of virtues and of moral responsi-
bility. These changes in understanding are not simply a matter
of extending the domain in which the concept applies. Finally,
Moody-​Adams does not distinguish between improvements in
moral concepts and improvements in the concept of morality.
Arguably, as noted above, the shift from a divine commandment

12
 In her illuminating reflections on abolitionism, for example, Elizabeth
Anderson appears to define moral progress as moral learning, where this means
the acquisition of true (or at least justified) moral beliefs. Elizabeth Anderson
(2015), “Moral Bias and Corrective Practices:  A Pragmatist Perspective,”
Presidential address delivered at the one hundred twelfth Central Division
meeting of the American Philosophical Association in St. Louis Missouri, on
February 20, 2015, Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical
Association 89: 21–​47.
13
 See Michele Moody-​ Adams (1999), “The Idea of Moral Progress,”
Metaphilosophy 30(3): 168–​185. Moody-​Adams also advances the bold thesis
that moral progress never involves developing new moral concepts but instead
consists of gaining a deeper understanding of ones we already possess. To begin
to support the bold claim, one would have to do something that she does not
attempt: supply an account of the criteria of identity of moral concepts at some
adequate level of specificity, in order to distinguish between achieving a deeper
understanding of an existing concept and the emergence of a new concept.
62  What Is Moral Progress?
conception of morality to one in which valid moral norms are un-
derstood as subject to a practice of reason-​giving and conceived
in relation to human well-​being (rather than the will of God) is an
improvement in how morality itself is conceived.

Inclusivist Morality as an Important Type

of Moral Progress
We have argued there are many types of putative moral prog-
ress, ranging from better compliance with valid moral norms
to improvements in moral concepts (including understandings
of the virtues), moral motivations, moral reasoning, and even
conceptions of morality itself. This book focuses mainly on one
important type of moral progress:  namely what Peter Singer,
borrowing from William Lecky, calls the “expanding circle” of
moral concern,14 or what we have referred to as the emergence of
“inclusivist moralities.” These are moralities that extend moral
standing to all human beings and even to some non-​human ani-
mals regardless of their group membership or strategic capacities
(i.e., their ability to contribute to or disrupt cooperation).
Moral progress in the form of increasingly inclusive moralities
consists in two distinct expansions of the moral community be-
yond tribal boundaries and mutually self-​serving cooperative re-
lationships between groups: an expansion in our understanding
of the class of beings who have moral standing and an expansion
in the class of beings who are thought to have the highest moral
status. Fully inclusivist moralities reject restrictions on mem-
bership in the class of beings who have the highest moral status
that are based on gender, race, and ethnicity and deny that only
members of the human species have moral standing. Expansions

14
  Peter Singer, The Expanding Circle: Ethics, Evolution, and Moral Progress
(Princeton University Press, 2011); William Edward Harpole Lecky, History
of European Morals from Augustus to Charlemagne, v.  1, 3rd edition (D.
Appleton, 1921).
 A Typology of Moral Progress  63
of the moral circle may implicate other types of moral progress,
including improved moral concepts, improved moral reasoning
(such as the extension of valid moral norms to cover individuals
who had been arbitrarily excluded from their application), and
improved compliance with valid moral norms (such as behavior
that is in compliance with norms regarding the equal basic moral
worth of persons).
There are two reasons for this book’s focus on the movement
toward increasingly inclusive moralities. First, inclusivist moral
progress is a strong candidate for an important type of moral
progress—​possibly the most important type. Second, the pros-
pect of progress in the form of greater inclusiveness appears to be
in tension with prevailing evolutionary understandings of human
moral psychology (as discussed in Chapter 5). Since our goal is
to provide a naturalistic theory of moral progress, it is incumbent
on us to take the idea that human evolution may limit inclusivist
progress seriously. Part II aims to relax the tension between what
is known about the evolutionary origins of morality and the re-
ality and possibility of moral progress.
As the above typology shows, inclusivist shifts are only one
type of moral progress. Yet some moral theorists, such as Peter
Singer, can be read as holding that moral progress consists in such
expansions of the moral circle.15 This equation is mistaken, how-
ever, for several reasons. First, in certain circumstances moral
progress can take the form of exclusion, or contractions of the
moral circle. This is true, for example, in relation to the moral
reclassification of objects or entities that have no morally consid-
erable interests of their own, such as sacred artifacts, non-​sentient
organisms, or abiotic features of the environment like rivers or
mountains—​at least when according such entities moral standing

15
 A  more charitable interpretation is that Singer remains agnostic as to
whether there are other forms of moral progress. At any rate, he focuses only
on the “expanding circle,” or what we call inclusivist morality, and he does not
discuss other forms of moral progress.
64  What Is Moral Progress?
imposes unacceptable costs on beings that warrant moral regard.
Fetishism, understood as the mistaken attribution of human or
superhuman powers to nonconscious material objects, is an in-
stance of “expanding the circle,” but it is not moral progress; in
some cases, it is a costly moral error.
It may be true that the moral risk of faulty exclusions, which
result in “truncated” moralities, will often be greater than the
moral risk of faulty inclusions, which result in “promiscuous”
moralities—​since false negatives in relation to moral standing
(treating individuals as if they do not have moral standing when
in fact they do) will often be more harmful than false positives
(treating entities as if they have moral standing when in fact
they do not). Our point, however, is that both inclusions and
exclusions can amount to moral progress or moral regression,
depending on the circumstances. Thus, expansion of the moral
circle per se is not constitutive of moral progress.
Furthermore, greater inclusiveness is not always good, even
when it does not involve fetishism. Increases in the strength of
inclusivist moral commitments could under some circumstances
dilute commitments to fellow group members to the point that
the latter commitments were unacceptably weak from a moral
point of view. Indeed, the contemporary debate in political phi-
losophy between liberal cosmopolitans and liberal nationalists is
not about whether all people are of equal moral worth but about
what proper inclusiveness is—​in particular, about what equal
moral worth entails and what it does not.
In what follows we focus on examples of inclusiveness that
are morally uncontroversial within a broadly liberal perspective
and which therefore will be regarded as progressive by cosmo-
politans and liberal nationalists alike. Throughout this volume,
“inclusivist morality” will be used first and foremost to refer to
attitudes and behaviors that extend moral regard or equal basic
moral status beyond the narrowest confines of the group, without
prejudice to the question that divides cosmopolitans and liberal
nationalists.
 A Typology of Moral Progress  65
Even if we were to read Singer as holding that moral prog-
ress consists in the development of valid inclusivist moral-
ities, this view is still mistaken—​for as noted above there are
several other types of changes in human morality, quite apart
from expansions of the moral circle, that constitute prima facie
cases of moral progress. Consider, for example, “proper de-​
moralization,” the topic of Chapter 8—​which occurs when be-
havior that has wrongly been regarded as immoral comes to be
seen as inherently morally neutral. There are many examples
of proper de-​moralization, including premarital sex, mastur-
bation, interracial marriage, homosexuality, profit-​seeking, and
lending money at interest.16 Conversely, “proper moralization”
occurs when some types of acts, such as torture and other forms
of physical cruelty, are no longer viewed as generally permis-
sible forms of punishment or coercion—​or when behaviors
once regarded as morally neutral, such as sexual harassment
in the workplace, come to be regarded as morally impermis-
sible. Such instances of moral progress need not implicate ex-
pansions of the moral circle. Neither do some improvements
in how moral virtues are understood, as when a conception
of honor that focuses almost exclusively on taking violent ac-
tion against supposed slights gives way to one that stresses
integrity and honesty and a reluctance to resort to violence.
Likewise, there are many important moral concepts apart from
our notions of moral standing and moral statuses—​including
progressive understandings of justice—​and improvements in
these concepts are also putative examples of moral progress.
Chapter 9 explores in depth some remarkable improvements in
understandings of justice, most of which cannot be character-
ized as expanding the circle.

16
  For an in-​depth discussion of de-​moralization as a type of moral prog-
ress, see Allen Buchanan and Russell Powell (2017), “De-​ Moralization as
Emancipation: Liberty, Progress and the Evolution of Invalid Moral Norms,”
Social Philosophy and Policy 34(2): 108–​135.
66  What Is Moral Progress?
Given the heterogeneity in the above typology of moral prog-
ress, one may legitimately wonder whether there is any substan-
tive concept of moral progress that can encompass them all. Yet
some contemporary theorists have offered rather simple, reduc-
tionistic characterizations of moral progress without noticing
that such accounts are not capable of covering some important
types of moral progress. The next chapter examines several con-
temporary accounts of moral progress that differ significantly
from each other but all of which are committed to a reductionist
thesis of one sort or another. Appreciating the strengths and the
weaknesses of these accounts will pave the way for a better ap-
proach developed in Chapter 3.
 CHAPTER 2

Contemporary Accounts
of Moral Progress

The preceding chapter identified a number of paradigmatic cases

and types of moral progress. This chapter explains and critically
evaluates several contemporary attempts to articulate a concep-
tion of moral progress. None of them, we shall argue, can accom-
modate all the types of moral progress we have identified, and
each account is afflicted with other difficulties as well.

Moral Progress as Better Compliance with Valid

Moral Norms
Perhaps the most initially attractive contemporary account holds
that moral progress consists in and only in better compliance with
valid moral norms. This view may be labeled “reductionist” in
that it understands other apparent types of moral progress, such
as changes in moral concepts, moral reasoning, moral motivation,
and understandings of the virtues of morality itself as instances of
moral progress only insofar as they contribute to better compli-
ance with valid moral norms.
Chapter  1 explained why better conformity to valid moral
norms, while an improvement from a moral point of view, is not
a case of moral progress in the most robust sense if it does not
involve the exercise of moral capacities. To capture this point, we
68  What Is Moral Progress?
distinguished between mere conformity to norms and genuine
compliance with norms. One can read the reductionist account
of moral progress charitably, therefore, as holding that moral
progress consists in and only in increasing compliance with moral
norms where this means better conformity to valid moral norms
for the right reasons and/​or through the right sorts of motivation.
The reductionist view is embraced by Ruth Macklin, Peter
Singer, and most recently Michael Shermer.1 Although these
authors advance very different understandings of moral prog-
ress (see below), they all seem to agree that moral progress just
is better compliance with valid moral norms. None of the three
recognizes a plurality of types of moral progress, so they may be
fairly interpreted as holding the reductionist view that other ap-
parent forms of moral progress are in fact cases of moral progress
only insofar as they contribute to better compliance with valid
moral norms. In addition, all three thinkers are committed to a
further reductionist assumption: namely, that there is only a very
small set of basic valid norms. For Macklin the set of basic norms
has only two members; for Singer and Shermer it has only one.
Macklin proposes that we make comparative assessments
of moral progress across historical eras and different societies
according to how well two substantive moral principles are real-
ized: the principle of humaneness and the principle of humanity.
The former states that “One culture, society, or historical era ex-
hibits a higher degree of moral progress than another if the first
shows more sensitivity to (less tolerance of) the pain and suffering
of human beings than does the second as expressed in the laws,
customs, institutions, and practices of the respective societies or
eras.” The latter states that “One culture, society, or historical

1
  Ruth Macklin, Against Relativism: Cultural Diversity and the Search for
Ethical Universals (Oxford University Press, 1999, pp. 371–​372); Peter Singer,
The Expanding Circle:  Ethics, Evolution, and Moral Progress (Princeton
University Press, 2011); Michael Shermer, The Moral Arc: How Science Leads
Society Toward Truth, Justice and Freedom (Henry Holt and Co., 2015).
 Contemporary Accounts of Moral Progress  69
era exhibits a higher degree of moral progress than another if the
first shows more recognition of the inherent dignity, the basic
autonomy, or the intrinsic worth of human beings than does the
second, as expressed in the laws, customs, institutions, and prac-
tices of the respective societies or eras.”2
Singer, as we have seen, identifies moral progress with
“expanding the circle” of moral concern, where this means suc-
cessive enlargements in our conception of membership in the
moral community—​that is, the set of beings who have some
moral standing (i.e., who are proper objects of moral regard on
their own account).3 For Singer, as a utilitarian, the criterion of
membership in the circle of moral concern is sentience because
he thinks that all and only beings that are sentient have interests
and because he believes that all interests count, morally speaking.
For him, then, the claim that moral progress just is expanding
the circle is equivalent to the claim that moral progress consists
in the increasing implementation of the norm requiring that all
sentient beings are to be accorded moral standing and that any
differences in treatment must track differences in interests. The
ultimate basis of this norm is the principle that utility is to be
maximized, along with the assumption that utility consists in the
optimal realization of interests or the satisfaction of preferences.
In that sense, Singer believes that moral progress is a matter of
better compliance with one uniquely basic moral norm.
Shermer, like Singer, appropriates William Lecky’s phrase
“expanding the circle” to characterize moral progress
simpliciter—​not just one type of moral progress. Also like
Singer, he formulates one basic moral principle, the realization
of which constitutes moral progress:  moral progress is “im-
provement in the survival and flourishing of sentient beings.”4

2
 Macklin, Against Relativism, supra note 1.
3
 Singer, Expanding the Moral Circle, supra note 1; William Edward Harpole
Lecky, History of European Morals from Augustus to Charlemagne, v. 1, 3rd
edition (New York: D. Appleton, 1921).
4
 Shermer, The Moral Arc, supra note 1, p. 12.
70  What Is Moral Progress?
On the face of it, Shermer’s formulation has a serious problem: it
tells us nothing about moral priorities among the interests of
sentient beings when those interests conflict. Suppose that
improvements in the welfare of some sentient beings (for ex-
ample, humans) come at the expense of decreased welfare for
other beings—​or suppose that improvements in the interests
of a larger number of human beings come at the expense of the
interests of a smaller number of other human beings. How do
we know whether moral progress has occurred? Shermer’s for-
mulation cannot tell us. In contrast, Singer, as a utilitarian, says
that the overall welfare of all sentient beings is to be maximized
and that, consequently, moral progress consists of successively
better approximations of that goal. Shermer’s reflections on
various instances and types of moral progress are illuminating
and valuable, but because of this deficiency in his conception of
moral progress, we will concentrate on Macklin’s and Singer’s
views. To the extent that Shermer is presupposing the truth of
some version of utilitarianism, our critique of Singer’s view
should apply to him as well.

Determinate Fixed Content Accounts

Both Macklin and Singer offer a reductionist understanding
of moral progress according to which the valid moral norms
by which progress is gauged have a determinate content that is
knowable at present and unchanging. That is, both theorists hold
that moral progress just is and will continue to be better compli-
ance with some specific (and very small) set of valid moral norms
whose content can be ascertained now. For Macklin, the content
is formulated in two substantive norms, the principle of humane-
ness and the principle of humanity; for Singer, the content is that
all interests are to count morally and its corollary that all beings
who are sentient and thereby have interests are to be accorded
moral standing. For both Macklin and Singer, the substantive
norms by which progress is gauged have three key features: they
 Contemporary Accounts of Moral Progress  71
are (1)  fixed or unchanging, (2)  of determinate content, and
(3) fully knowable here and now.
Other determinate fixed content reductionist accounts are con-
ceivable. For example, one might hold that moral progress is (and
will continue to be) better compliance with a norm according to
which all persons are to be accorded equal basic moral status or
one that asserts that all people are to be free of oppression or
domination. We will argue that no reductionist account conceiv-
able at present offers a plausible, comprehensive account of moral
progress.
To summarize:  the reductionist accounts considered so far
characterize moral progress as the increasing realization, in in-
dividual behavior and social practices and institutions, of some
presently identified substantive moral norm or norms, which are
presumed to apply at all times and in all places. We will grant
that reductionist accounts also hold that this increasing realiza-
tion occurs through the exercise of the moral powers. Such views
are reductionist in that they hold that moral progress consists
wholly in increased compliance with some valid norm or set
of valid norms. Improvements in moral reasoning, motivation,
moral concepts, or conceptions of morality itself are all said to be
progressive only insofar as they contribute to better compliance
with the identified substantive norm or norms. Such views are of
determinate fixed content because they hold that all valid moral
norms (or at least all basic moral norms) can be identified at the
present time and will remain valid in all future social contexts.
Reductionist, determinate fixed content accounts are problem-
atic for several reasons. First, they do not cover some important
instances and types of moral progress, and thus they offer neither
a satisfactory account of moral progress nor a comprehensive set
of criteria for determining whether moral progress has occurred.
For instance, in relation to Singer’s account, it would be implau-
sible to argue that improvements in the concept of moral responsi-
bility, the abandonment of the divine command view of morality,
improvements in understandings of virtues such as honor, the
72  What Is Moral Progress?
abolition of dueling, and the decriminalization of interest-​based
lending are instances of expanding the circle. Singer might reply
that these types of moral progress are instances not of expanding
the circle but of greater realization of the more fundamental prin-
ciple that utility is to be maximized.5 This would be unhelpful,
however, not only because it would constitute the abandonment
of Singer’s central claim that moral progress is the expansion of the
circle of concern6 but also because it would make the plausibility
of the resulting theory of moral progress depend upon the validity
of utilitarianism—​a much-​contested normative ethical theory and
rightly so—​as well as upon a vast set of empirical generalizations
to the effect that all of the various types of moral progress have
in fact involved increases in overall utility. The belief that there
are irreducibly distinct types of moral progress seems much more
plausible than the hypothesis that all instances of progressive
moral change involved greater realizations of utility.
It would also be unconvincing to say that the types of moral
progress listed above are all instances of better compliance with
Macklin’s two principles. This is most obviously true with re-
gard to improvements in our conception of morality and in the
treatment of non-​human animals. Her two principles do not, in
themselves, implicate any particular concept of what morality
is. They could simply be viewed as arbitrary commands issued
by God. Further, they do not address fundamental questions
about moral standing. In fact, as formulated they apply only to
human beings and therefore cannot encompass moral progress

5
  Singer does suggest, for example, that the abandonment of divine com-
mandment theory in favor of a reason-​based morality is an instance of moral
progress. See preface to The Expanding Circle. But he does not offer a con-
ception of moral progress that can encompass that example, let alone the great
diversity of instances and types of moral progress listed above.
6
  Moreover, given the goal of maximizing utility, it is not clear that expan-
sions of the moral circle are even the most morally progressive social changes
that have occurred. Agricultural surpluses, the introduction of markets, and the
monopolization of coercion by the state arguably had a greater positive impact
on overall utility and human flourishing.
 Contemporary Accounts of Moral Progress  73
in the treatment of non-​human animals. And when combined
with different background assumptions about who counts as
human—​in effect, with different views of which beings have the
highest moral status—​they yield quite different assessments of
progress.
One might reply that these problems only apply to fixed con-
tent views that characterize moral progress as the increasing re-
alization of a very small set of substantive norms, as is the case
with Macklin and Singer. The full range of types of moral prog-
ress can be accounted for, it might be argued, if one expands the
relevant set of valid norms. As we have seen, however, such an
approach would still leave important aspects of moral progress
unaccounted for. For example, it seems a stretch to characterize
an improvement in the concept of morality itself as simply an
instance of better compliance with some norm or set of norms.
Furthermore, the greater the number of supposedly valid norms,
the less confident we will be that they include all and only valid
moral norms and that these norms are permanently, rather than
only conditionally, valid—​that is, valid not just under current
circumstances but also under all institutional contexts that may
obtain in the future. To take only one instance among many,
consider the scope of the right to self-​defense—​the set of self-​
protective actions an individual is permitted to take. The range of
protective actions permitted by the right to self-​defense is argu-
ably broader in conditions in which one must rely solely on one’s
self for defense than when one can rely on institutionalized police
protection or on neighbors, passersby, etc.7 Insofar as the validity

7
  Russell Powell (2007), “The Law and Philosophy of Preventive War: An
Institution-​Based Approach to Collective Self-​Defense,” Australian Journal of
Legal Philosophy 32:  67–​89. One might reply that norms can be formulated
in a complex conditional way that takes into account different institutional
and other environmental conditions. Perhaps, but there is no reason to believe
that at any particular time we can foresee all of the relevant conditions with
sufficient accuracy to formulate the needed conditions in the specification of
the norm.
74  What Is Moral Progress?
of moral norms depends upon complex institutional contexts,
our ability to predict whether and if so how these norms will
change in the future is quite limited.

Indeterminate Fixed Content Accounts

One might reply that Macklin’s and Singer’s views, as well as
those that appeal to a larger set of supposedly valid norms, are
simply poor representatives of the reductionist thesis. Perhaps
there are content-​neutral versions of reductionism that are not
vulnerable to the above objections. Such an indeterminate fixed
content variant of the reductionist account would hold that all
moral progress reduces to better compliance with valid moral
norms but would not pretend to be able to specify the set of valid
moral norms at the present time.
The problem, however, with trying to reduce all moral prog-
ress to better compliance with moral norms—​whether they are
understood to be presently specifiable or not—​is that some
moral improvements in motivation appear to be morally pro-
gressive independently of whether they contribute to better
compliance with valid moral norms. For example, suppose that
people become more strongly motivated to combat certain in-
justices because they perceive them to be injustices but that,
due to some contingency beyond their control, their efforts
are frustrated and no progress is made toward remedying the
injustices. Presumably this improvement in motivation would
constitute moral progress even though it did not result in better
compliance with the relevant norms of justice: individuals who
developed this motivation would be morally better people,
and people becoming morally better is in itself a form of moral
progress. So, while it is true that better moral motivations
may increase the chances of norm compliance when institu-
tional contexts change, it is mistaken to characterize improve-
ments in moral motivation as moral progress solely by virtue
of this contingent, instrumental connection. If this is so, then
 Contemporary Accounts of Moral Progress  75
moral progress cannot be reduced to better compliance with
valid norms.
At this point a proponent of the indeterminate fixed con-
tent view might reply that progress in motivation can in fact be
reduced to better compliance with valid norms, if we include in
the list of valid norms “One ought to have and act from good
motivation.” The difficulty with this reply is that it renders the
reductionist account unilluminating. For example, it obscures
causal relations, such as the possibility that, as Norbert Elias and
others have argued, better behavioral conformity to substantive
norms (e.g., norms that prohibit homicide or that require reli-
gious tolerance) in some cases is a causal precursor to better moral
motivation—​and vice versa. Further, the reductionist reply’s un-
derstanding of what counts as a moral norm is so capacious as to
render the dispute over the truth of reductionism a merely verbal
one. And once one acknowledges the importance of the distinc-
tion between substantive, directly action-​guiding norms (such as
“Do not kill”) and those that require the development of mo-
tivations or understandings of virtues, the claim that all moral
progress is better compliance with norms becomes uninteresting.

Moral Progress as the Increasing Performance

of Morality’s Evolutionary Function
Consider now a very different approach to moral progress that
includes a cluster of theories that we will refer to as “function-
alist” accounts. Rather than holding that moral progress consists
entirely in increasing conformity to or compliance with valid
moral norms, functionalist accounts first identify what they take
to be the constitutive function of morality and then define moral
progress as increased efficacy (and perhaps efficiency) in the per-
formance of that function.8

  By “efficacy” we mean success in achieving some end; by “efficiency” we

8

mean doing so with minimal costs broadly conceived.

76  What Is Moral Progress?
The idea that functional analysis is central to understanding
morality is not new. Ethics in the Aristotelian tradition has long
drawn close connections between function, individual well-​
being, and morality—​connections that have largely been severed
by modern evolutionary theory. Modern evolutionary science
rejects the Aristotelian notion that human beings have a distinct
function, and it provides little reason to think that biological
fitness inherently or even generally tracks human flourishing.9
However, contemporary evolutionary theory does provide con-
ceptual and empirical resources for conceiving of morality—​and
hence moral progress—​in functionalist terms.
The origins of functional complexity in nature was one of the
greatest scientific puzzles in human history, with Immanuel Kant
famously proclaiming that there would never be a non-​teleological
explanation of the natural adapting of means to ends—or as Kant
(in)famously put it, that “there would never be a Newton for the
blade of grass.” Yet biology found its Newton in one Charles
Darwin, who provided the first and only naturalistic explanation
of the exquisite functional match between the traits of organisms
and the ecological design problems they need to solve. The puzzle
of biological function was this: how can the function of a given
trait explain that trait’s existence when the laws of physics require
that causes precede their effects? The Darwinian solution to this
puzzle was as follows:  To say, for example, that “the function
of the vertebrate heart is to pump blood” is simply shorthand
for the causal-​historical claim that the vertebrate heart exists in
its present form and frequency because it had fitness-​enhancing
effects on ancestors that possessed it.10 The modern vertebrate
heart was shaped by cumulative selection over deep evolutionary

9
 See Russell Powell and Allen Buchanan (2011), “Breaking Evolution’s
Chains: The Prospect of Deliberate Genetic Modification in Humans,” Journal
of Medicine and Philosophy 36(1): 6–​27.
10
  See Karen Neander (1991), “Functions as Selected Effects: The Conceptual
Analyst’s Defense,” Philosophy of Science 58(2): 168–​184.
 Contemporary Accounts of Moral Progress  77
time, gradually enhancing its circulation-​facilitating effects over
many generations in response to the specific ecological demands
of different vertebrate lineages. The Darwinian account of func-
tion renders functions explanatory, without violating physical
law and without appealing to purposes or intentions. If there
is any rigorous theory of function that could underpin an ac-
count of moral progress, it will likely be the Darwinian theory
of function.
The evolutionary functionalist conception of moral progress,
then, holds that one morality is better than another when it more
successfully performs the role (or achieves the effects) that mo-
rality was evolutionarily selected to perform over many human
generations in response to specific ecological pressures. An evo-
lutionary functionalist account of moral progress thus hangs on
the claim that morality has an evolutionary function and that this
function can be reliably ascertained.

Kitcher’s Evolutionary Moral Functionalism

The dominant view among evolutionary anthropologists is that
morality is a social technology that evolved via biological and cul-
tural selection to deal with problems that early humans faced in the
environment in which many unique human psychological char-
acteristics emerged—​the so-​called environment of evolutionary
adaptation (EEA).11 In The Ethical Project,12 Philip Kitcher holds
that morality from its beginnings had a single basic function: to
cope with what he calls “altruism failures”—​situations in which
members of a group do not act in ways that acknowledge the
interests of others. He accepts the standard characterization of
the EEA:  small, scattered groups of weakly genetically related
human beings competing with other groups for crucial resources.

11
  A more detailed and critical discussion of the prevailing evolutionary ex-
planation of morality is provided in Part II.
12
  Philip Kitcher, The Ethical Project (Harvard University Press, 2011).
78  What Is Moral Progress?
Under these conditions, so the explanation goes, the physical sur-
vival of a group, as well as its ability to sustain and pass on its
social arrangements, depended heavily on achieving a high degree
of cooperation within the group. Altruism failures impeded the
needed cooperation and in some cases led to destructive conflicts
among group members. Groups that developed norms and prac-
tices to cope with altruism failures—​to avoid them altogether, to
reduce their incidence, or to mitigate their negative consequences
for cooperation—​thrived, and those that did not fell by the way-
side. A more detailed and critical discussion of the prevailing ev-
olutionary explanation of morality is provided in Part II—​for
now, we will simply accept this characterization of the origins of
human morality.
For Kitcher, morality just is a social technology for coping
with altruism failures. In other words, Kitcher not only espouses
what might be called etiological functionalism, or the hypothe­
sis that morality first emerged as an adaptation for solving al-
truism failures; he also holds that this function is constitutive of
morality—​that all there is to anything that could properly be
called morality is the performance of this function. This is im-
portant because we shall argue that even if etiological function-
alism is correct, it is quite another matter to defend constitutive
functionalism. Furthermore, Kitcher’s conception of moral prog-
ress is derived directly from his functionalist characterization of
morality: moral progress consists in “functional refinement, first
aimed at solving the original problems [the earliest instances of
altruism failures] more thoroughly, more reliably, and with less
costly effort.”13 He continues: “In the course of progress, how-
ever, the background itself changes, generating new functions for
ethics to serve, and hence new modes of functional refinement.”
Kitcher is unclear about what precisely he means by “altruism
failure.” Because “altruism” is a central evolutionary biological

13
  Ibid., p. 221.
 Contemporary Accounts of Moral Progress  79
concept and because Kitcher glosses the ethical project in evo-
lutionary biological terms, it is difficult not to read the term “al-
truism failure” as a claim about the failure to manage conflicts of
interest in ways that are evolutionarily beneficial to the parties
whose interests are in conflict, resulting in lost opportunities for
cooperation and/​or the disruption of cooperation. Alternatively,
one might read “altruism failure” in psychological terms, that is,
as simply the failure to take the interests of others seriously, re-
gardless of whether doing so is fitness-​enhancing or facilitates co-
operation. Neither reading of this key concept in Kitcher’s theory
can support a plausible functionalist account of moral progress.
Kitcher’s claim that the function of morality is to solve al-
truism failures is problematic in part because it is insufficiently
precise:  according to standard evolutionary accounts, the basic
function of morality is to solve conflicts of interest within the
group that undermine cooperation or cohesion, not to solve
altruism failures per se. As will be discussed in more detail in
Chapter  5, data and theory suggest that morality evolved in a
highly competitive intergroup environment in which extending
altruism to out-​group members would often have been evolu-
tionarily deleterious. The result was the evolution of a highly pa-
rochial altruism.14 Indeed, much evidence suggests that morality
was evolutionarily fine-​tuned to exacerbate intergroup altruism
failures in the competitive arena of competing cultural groups.15
Once the evolutionary function of morality is viewed in this
more precise light, it becomes clear that it cannot encompass cru-
cial cases of moral progress, many of which involve extending
altruism to strangers, to members of foreign cultural groups, and
to individuals with no strategic capacities at all. Further, coping

14
  See H. Gintis and S. A. Bowles, A Cooperative Species: Human Reciprocity
and Its Evolution (Princeton University Press, 2011).
15
  See Allen Buchanan and Russell Powell (2015), “The Limits of Evolutionary
Explanations of Morality and Their Implications for Moral Progress,” Ethics
126(1): 37–​67.
80  What Is Moral Progress?
with altruism failures also fails to establish a new function for
morality for the same reasons that it fails to count as a refinement
of the original function—​because acknowledging the interests of
out-​group members and nonstrategic individuals (including non-​
human animals, severely disabled people, the global poor, etc.)
was and is not fitness-​enhancing and often serves no strategic ev-
olutionary purpose (see Chapter 4 for a detailed discussion). If
instead Kitcher is arguing that the basic functional capacities of
morality should be deliberately extended to encompass subject
matter that it was “designed” by natural selection to exclude, then
the motivation for such an extension must come from standards
of morality that are independent of evolutionary functionalist
considerations—​and, in that case, Kitcher’s account of moral
progress becomes unilluminating and ultimately nonfunctionalist
to boot.
Moral progress does not consist in the performance of a bio-
logical function, old or new, because many paradigmatic instances
and types of moral progress are neither the result of functional re-
finements nor instances of new functions. The case for this claim
is made more thoroughly in Part II. For the moment, it suffices
to note that many human beings, both in thought and in practice,
now exhibit “inclusive” moral responses that go well beyond the
narrow confines of the group-​centered, “tribalist” sort of mo-
rality that was supposedly selected for in the EEA.16 In particular,
many people now believe that all human beings have certain basic
rights regardless of their group membership and their capacities
for cooperation, and there is also an increasing understanding
that at least some non-​human animals have moral standing. This
suggests that much of contemporary human morality cannot be
understood in functionalist terms. Evolutionary accounts may
explain how morality began, but they cannot explain important
features of contemporary moralities, including some of the best

16
 Ibid.
 Contemporary Accounts of Moral Progress  81
examples that we have of moral progress.17 It is only if one makes
the mistake of thinking that morality is static that one would
confuse morality in its original character with morality. And to
think of morality as static, as we shall see, is to deny both the
importance of environment and the power of culture. It is not
surprising that thinkers who make the mistake of thinking that
morality is static because they are fixated on morality in its orig-
inal character would fail to appreciate moral progress.

Railton’s Moral Functionalism

Peter Railton advances a view that is in important respects sim-
ilar to Kitcher’s (and predates it by two and a half decades) but
sufficiently distinct to merit separate consideration. He provides
a functionalist characterization of morality, offers an outline of
his own substantive characterization of the correct moral theory,
and then provides an account of what moral progress is and how
it can occur.18
Railton holds that morality is concerned “most centrally” with
coping with the fact that there is a plurality of individuals with
distinct and sometimes conflicting interests.19 Like other func-
tionalists, Railton believes that biological and cultural selection
shape stable moralities, understood as social technologies for
coping with conflicts of interest. His substantive moral theory
asserts that moral norms, concepts, and practices are valid to the

17
 It is natural to interpret evolutionary theorists of morality, including
Kitcher, as holding a very distinctive thesis about morality: namely, that it is
constituted by that function or those functions. In other words, when they
say that morality is a social technology for performing a certain function, they
mean that it is the performance of that function that makes something a mo-
rality. They apparently have no concept of morality independent of the perfor-
mance of that function; or at least there is no indication that they consider such
a possibility.
18
  Peter Railton (1986), “Moral Realism,” Philosophical Review 95(2):  pp.
163–​207.
19
  Ibid., p. 189.
82  What Is Moral Progress?
extent that they approximate those that “would be rationally ap-
proved of were the interests of all potentially affected individuals
counted equally under circumstances of full and vivid informa-
tion.”20 Railton also sketches an illuminating account of how
moral progress, understood according to his substantive moral
theory, can occur. It is not clear whether he intends this account
to cover all instances and types of moral progress, but he does not
indicate that he intends its application to be limited.
According to Railton, when a group’s morality disregards or
discounts the interests of some of its members, this may lead to
the systematic thwarting of their interests, producing alienation
and frustration, which in turn can result in challenges to social
and political arrangements. Under certain circumstances, such
disruptive forces can produce changes in social practices and un-
derstandings of moral norms that better accommodate interests
that have hitherto been disregarded or discounted. Further, he
maintains that “in the long haul, barring certain exogenous effects,
one could expect an uneven secular trend toward the inclusion of
the interests of (or interests represented by) social groups that are
capable of some degree of mobilization.”21 We have emphasized
the latter clause because it will have important implications for
the adequacy of Railton’s theory as a comprehensive account of
moral progress.
Railton’s view nicely characterizes one instance of moral prog-
ress on the list offered at the beginning of this essay: changes that
lessen the tendency of social structures or policies arbitrarily to
disregard or discount the interests of certain groups within so-
ciety. He also extends this conception of progress to interac-
tions between groups, as when more “cosmopolitan” or human
rights–​respecting ways of dealing with other groups take hold in

20
  Ibid, pp. 190–​191.
21
  Ibid, pp. 194–​195 (emphasis added). On Railton’s view, to the extent that
moralities differ in their ability to cope with interest conflicts, they move soci-
eties closer to or further from social equilibrium.
 Contemporary Accounts of Moral Progress  83
a group’s morality. He thinks that moral progress occurs when
the frustration and alienation that result from a group’s interests
thus being short-​changed disrupt or at least challenge existing
arrangements in such a way as to foster new, more egalitarian
norms and practices.22
Given the preceding criticisms of Kitcher’s functionalist
view, there are three clear limitations of Railton’s account of
moral progress. First, it overlooks the possibility that moral
progress is sometimes driven by concern for individuals who
have no strategic capacities and thus are not “capable of some
degree of mobilization” that could disrupt cooperation suffi-
ciently to foster norm change. Indeed, this seems to be pre-
cisely what has occurred, not only in the case of non-​human
animals but also in cases involving protections for vulnerable
minority groups, such as children and people with severe dis-
abilities. For example, the development of norms requiring
the better treatment of certain non-​human animals obviously
cannot be understood as a case of a group contributing to
progressive social change through its reactions to having the
interest of its members disregarded or discounted. So far, non-​
human animals have been utterly incapable of fostering norm
change through disruption or other challenges to our practices
regarding them and, barring some remarkable evolutionary
leap, this is not likely to change.23

22
  It is perhaps unclear whether Railton sees himself as presenting a theory of
moral progress or a theory of one kind of moral progress. Our criticisms show
that his account is inadequate as a theory of moral progress, though it captures
one important element of such a theory.
23
  Railton might reply that the better treatment of non-​human animals oc-
curred not because of their frustration or alienation but because of the frustra-
tion and alienation of human individuals who have come to have interests in
the welfare of non-​human animals. The difficulty here is that there is nothing
in Railton’s evolutionary account of individual rationality or of morality as a
social technology to cope with conflicts of interest that would explain why any
human individuals would develop such interests.
84  What Is Moral Progress?
Likewise, in the case of exploited human groups, Railton
seems to assume that the dynamic of moral progress at the global
level is the same as that within societies: marginalized groups,
in response to the systematic thwarting of their interests, shake
things up, creating the opportunity for convergence on more
egalitarian norms. This may fit some forms of improvement,
such as liberation from colonial rule and the subsequent en-
trenchment of an international legal norm against colonization.
But in other cases, the development of more cosmopolitan global
norms—​for example, norms prohibiting or constraining the ex-
ploitation of weak states by powerful ones—​does not seem to
come about mainly through the “mobilization” of discontented
groups in ways that cause serious disruptions of cooperation.
Railton does not consider the possibility that the global order is
“thick” enough to make the poorest people vulnerable to being
systematically disadvantaged by its structures, while at the same
time “thin” enough to insulate the powerful from ill-​effects of
their discontent.
A second problem with Railton’s account is that improvement
in the treatment of non-​human animals and vulnerable groups
within and across societies may not be the only cases of moral
progress that it is unable to accommodate. Consider, for example,
cases of proper de-​moralization, in which certain behaviors pre-
viously regarded as immoral—​ such as masturbation, lending
money at interest, or profit-​seeking—​come to be seen as mor-
ally neutral (see Chapter 8). It would be implausible to say that
prohibitions on masturbation were instances of some cohesive
subgroup having their interests accorded inadequate weight rel-
ative to the interests of others and that the abandonment of the
prohibition was the result of social disruptions caused by the
frustrations and alienation of such a group. Nor does the de-​
moralization of money-​lending and profit-​seeking fit Railton’s
model. Railton’s view also cannot recognize as instances of
moral progress any cases involving the abandonment of moral
norms that were costly for all to comply with and which do not
 Contemporary Accounts of Moral Progress  85
represent a special disregarding or discounting of any particular
group’s interest.24
The third major limitation of Railton’s view is indicated by the
qualifying adjective “centrally” in his claim that morality is centrally
about managing conflicts of interest among individuals. It may be that
morality as it has existed and now exists is “centrally” concerned with
coping with conflicts of interests among human individuals and human
groups; but it is arbitrary to exclude from the scope of morality and
thus moral progress everything that does not fit this description. As we
noted in our criticism of Kitcher above, individuals can and do make
moral evaluations of other-​regarding behavior that have nothing to do
with coping with interpersonal conflicts of interest. Indeed, both the-
oretical and practical work on social justice has given special attention
to the protection of vulnerable—​that is, strategically disempowered—​
populations. Further, morality for some time now has included an in-
trapersonal dimension. Many people regard themselves as subject to
moral norms that have to do with how they ought to be and live, quite
independently of the effect of their behavior on others. There is no
reason to think that they are confused—​that they are misapplying the
concept of morality—​when they think and act this way.
Perhaps the most serious flaw of any thesis which holds that
morality is constituted by the performance of some function—​
and this applies equally to Kitcher’s and Railton’s views—​is that
it is incompatible with a proper appreciation of what might be
called the open-​ended normativity of the ethical:  the fact that
human beings have the capacity to engage in ongoing critical
scrutiny of the norms they are currently adhering to.25 Even if

24
  For examples and extended discussion, see Allen Buchanan and Russell
Powell (2017), “De-​Moralization as Emancipation: Liberty, Progress, and the
Evolution of Invalid Moral Norms,” Social Philosophy and Policy 34(2): 108–​135.
25
  Allen Buchanan (2012), “The Open-​Ended Normativity of the Ethical,”
Analyse & Kritik: Zeitschrift fur Sozialtheorie 34(1): 81–​94. Nothing in our char-
acterization of open-​ended normativity implies that reason is self-​motivating.
Everything we say is compatible with the view that the exercise of open-​ended
normativity is motivated by moral emotions or passions.
86  What Is Moral Progress?
morality first developed because it fulfilled certain functions
crucial for survival, it is undeniable that at some point human
beings developed the capacity to articulate the norms they have
been following and the moral concepts they have been using,
to subject them to critical appraisal, and to affirm, abandon, or
modify them accordingly. And it is undeniable that human be-
ings are sometimes effectively motivated to exercise this capacity
and to act on the results of its exercise, irrespective of functional
considerations. The open-​endedness of moral thinking and re-
sponse helps explain the development of interpersonal (and
interspecies) moral norms that are not explainable in terms of
morality’s etiological function (the effect of managing interper-
sonal conflict and coordination problems), as well as norms of
intrapersonal morality. The next chapter examines the capacity
for open-​ended normativity in more detail. Here it is sufficient
to note that it always makes sense to ask whether coping with
altruism failures is all that we should ultimately care about, from
a moral point of view. We should and do care about whether our
social practices manage altruism failures in a way that is just and
that involves the least coercive mechanisms of control, even if
this means that some altruism failures will go unchecked or that
cooperative productivity will be diminished or some interper-
sonal conflicts will occur. In circumstances in which survival does
not depend on maximizing reproduction, other considerations
matter and people can and do engage in moral reasoning about
which ones matter most. Simply put, there is no good reason
to identify moral progress with bio-​functional facts, particularly
since evolution is not a goal-​oriented process with human flour-
ishing or cosmic justice as its telos.
Thus far we have interpreted Railton as holding a functionalist
view of what morality is along with an account of moral prog-
ress that derives from it:  moral progress is better performance
of morality’s function. Another interpretation is possible, how-
ever. Railton can instead be read as advancing a normative ethical
 Contemporary Accounts of Moral Progress  87
thesis, from which his definition of moral progress is derived,
one that does not hinge on his functional characterization. That
thesis, it will be recalled, is that individual behaviors and social
practices are morally right so far as they “would be rationally ap-
proved of were the interests of all potentially affected individuals
counted equally under circumstances of full and vivid informa-
tion.” Insofar as Railton holds that moral progress is increasing
conformity of individual behaviors and social practices to those
that would be approved by a rational, idealized agent committed
to the equal consideration of interests, his view faces the same
problem that Singer’s does: it presupposes the truth of a hotly dis-
puted normative ethical thesis, namely, utilitarianism. In contrast,
in the next chapter, we will propose an answer to the question
“what is moral progress?” that avoids any such grand theoretical
commitment. The view we develop there will also avoid a flaw
that has marred many accounts of moral progress, including all
of those examined so far:  namely, a lack of epistemic humility.
The next chapter makes the case for a dynamic, provisional un-
derstanding of moral progress, one that allows for progress in
understandings of what moral progress is and acknowledges that
any current understanding is subject to revision.

Campbell’s and Kumar’s Functionalist View

In a yet unpublished book manuscript that Richmond Campbell
and Victor Kumar have authored and generously shared with
us, a different, more complex kind of functionalist view is ad-
vanced. Campbell and Kumar repeatedly characterize human
morality as a social technology that is an adaptation that emerged
to solve “problems of interdependent living.” So far, this sounds
very similar to Kitcher’s and Railton’s functionalisms. Campbell
and Kumar add an important twist, however:  they incorpo-
rate the “moral foundations” view advanced by Jonathan Haidt
and others. According to the moral foundationalists, there is a
88  What Is Moral Progress?
short list of innate moral foundations. Although (somewhat dis-
turbingly) the list has changed more than once, it is now said to
include the following items: care/​harm, authority/​obedience, pu-
rity/​contamination, fairness/​reciprocity. It is somewhat unclear
whether these items, when spelled out, are best thought of as
norms or as values or as some combination of norms, values, and
virtues. Setting aside that unclarity, one can say that for Campbell
and Kumar, as for Haidt et al., the key point is that there is some
small set of evolved types of moral responses that are universal, or
nearly so, among normal human beings. These moral responses
are supposed to be adaptations that were selected for in the EEA,
and it is assumed that they not only have not changed since that
time but also that for purposes of understanding morality and its
possibilities for moral progress one can safely assume that they
will not change. Different moral cultures may emphasize one or
more of the foundations relative to others, giving it more weight
when there are conflicts among the foundations; but there is only
one set of foundations. Whatever morality becomes, it becomes
only by building on these foundations; and one need not take se-
riously the possibility of foundational change.
Campbell and Kumar incorporate the moral foundations
view into their functionalism as follows:  the constitutive (not
just etiological) function of morality is to solve problems of in-
terdependent living through interpreting and assigning relative
weights to the small set of moral foundations. Different moral
cultures may do this differently, and there is no reason to think
there is one correct way of doing it. In other words, like most
other functionalists, Campbell and Kumar seem to hold that
functionalism implies or at least strongly suggests some sort of
ethical pluralism. But they also think that because morality—​
all morality—​is constituted by the function of solving common
problems of interdependent living by toggling a small set of moral
foundations, ethical pluralism is constrained. Not just anything
goes, and there is reason to believe that all viable moralities will
share some common ground.
 Contemporary Accounts of Moral Progress  89
We believe that the addition of the moral foundations compo-
nent does not rescue Campbell’s and Kumar’s view from the main
objections we have raised against other functionalist accounts.
No view that holds that the function of solving problems of in-
terdependent living is constitutive of morality can accommodate
either the morality of the treatment of non-​human animals or the
intrapersonal aspects of morality. To expand the notion of “in-
terdependent living” so as to accommodate our moral responses
toward animals that are incapable of being anything but passive
recipients of our decisions is to misuse the term and to sever the
characterization of the constitutive function of morality from a
plausible account of its etiological function. In other words, it
may be that originally the (only) function of morality was to reg-
ulate interactions among people (in a group), but it now regu-
lates the behavior of people toward beings that do not interact
with them—​that are not participants with them in a cooperative
scheme of any kind but are merely passive recipients of their
actions—​and the way individuals live in aspects of their life that
do not involve problems of interdependent living.
There is a further problem of the Campbell and Kumar view
that stems specifically from its reliance on the moral foundations
hypothesis. Even if one acknowledges that the foundations may
be interpreted and weighed differently as moralities evolve, it is
surely a case of epistemic hubris to assume that the list of foun-
dations will never change. Given the open-​ended normativity of
human beings—​and given the fact that intelligent people have re-
peatedly falsely believed that they had a fix on what morality not
only is but always will be—​there is no good reason to believe
that the list won’t change. And if that is so, then one cannot de-
fine moral progress as the interpretation and weighting of this
small set of values (or norms or virtues) in the process of solving
“problems of interdependent living.” In other words, even if one
ignores the intrapersonal aspect of morality and the fact that mo-
rality now reaches to beings with which we do not experience
“problems of interdependent living” but that are merely passive
90  What Is Moral Progress?
recipients of our treatment of them, Campbell’s and Kumar’s
view suffers the problem of all fixed content views. If Campbell
and Kumar respond by saying that the moral foundations are so
indeterminate as to allow for major and unanticipated changes in
morality in the future, they thereby sap the moral foundations
hypothesis of whatever explanatory power it had. If the moral
foundations hypothesis is to have explanatory power, then it
must be possible to characterize the foundations in a rather sub-
stantive way; but the more fully one does this, the less plausible it
is to say that, with respect to the foundations of morality at least,
the evolution of human morality is over.
Finally, none of the proponents of the moral foundations view,
including Campbell and Kumar, have established that the foun-
dations are genetic rather than cultural in origin. The fact (if it is
a fact) that the various items on the list play a foundational role
in moral thinking and responses across all or most cultures does
not imply that they are the product of gene-​based selection. They
might instead be a cultural response to problems that were pre-
sent in the EEA or at some later period. In brief, universality does
not entail genetic origins. But if culture played a significant role
in the emergence and spread of the foundations, then there is all
the more reason to eschew the epistemic arrogance of assuming
that they will not change.

Conclusion
In this chapter, we have evaluated several rival accounts—​
or sketches of accounts—​of moral progress and found them
wanting. Some of these accounts invoke evolutionary thinking
to argue that morality is functional, not only in an etiolog-
ical sense but also constitutively, and then go on to advance
or at least suggest an analysis of moral progress in light of the
supposed function. We have argued that none of these views
can explain the variety of types of moral progress. If evolu-
tionary thinking is to illuminate the nature of morality and
 Contemporary Accounts of Moral Progress  91
the possibilities for moral progress, it must abandon consti-
tutive functionalism. In the next chapter, we begin to develop
an alternative theory that draws on evolutionary thinking but
without assuming that morality is limited to the performance
of any biological or cultural function.
 CHAPTER 3

A Pluralistic, Dynamic Conception

of Moral Progress

An appreciation of the weaknesses of reductionist and more

broadly monistic accounts of moral progress—​ whether they
are grounded in valid norm compliance or in functional
performance—​suggests the cogency of a pluralistic account, one
that recognizes there is more than one irreducible type of moral
progress.1 Just as importantly, a healthy appreciation of human
fallibility regarding the nature and demands of morality suggests
that one should be wary of determinate fixed content accounts of
moral progress of any kind, whether they are reductionist or not.
The point is that human beings have often (perhaps more often
than not) been wrong about some aspects of morality and that
there is no reason to believe that the sources of their errors have

1
  So far, we have only argued for a nonreductionist account that is mod-
estly pluralistic. A more expansive pluralism may be worth considering. For
example, one might hold that improvements in moral concepts also are mor-
ally progressive, independently of whether these improvements contribute to
better compliance with valid norms, better motivation, or better embodiment
of the virtues. Although we will not attempt here to determine definitively the
scope of moral progress pluralism, our surmise is that improvements in moral
concepts, as well as in moral reasoning and the concept of morality itself, are
instances of epistemic progress but are moral progress only insofar as they con-
tribute either to better compliance with moral norms or to better motivations
or the flourishing of the moral virtues.
 A Pluralistic, Dynamic Conception of Moral Progress  93
been eliminated. On the contrary, the burgeoning psychological
literature on normal cognitive biases and errors, motivated rea-
soning, the persistence of false beliefs in the face of corrective
information, and epistemically flawed cognitive dissonance res-
olution mechanisms should dissipate any complacency that we
today are immune to the moral errors of previous generations of
human beings. A more epistemically responsible course is to re-
ject the assumption that we now know everything about morality
that is needed for making sound judgments about moral prog-
ress. That means avoiding fixed determinate content accounts of
moral progress.

Advantages of a Pluralistic Provisional Understanding

of Moral Progress
A pluralistic, provisional account is one that (1)  acknowledges
that there is or may be a plurality of valid basic moral princi-
ples, (2)  counts better compliance (not mere conformity) with
valid moral norms as moral progress, but also (3) recognizes that
there are other irreducible types of moral progress as well, and
(4) regards our current beliefs as to which moral norms are valid,
as well as our current understandings of improvements in moral
concepts, of the virtues, and of moral reasoning as only provi-
sional, subject to revision over time.
If one assumes that moral judgment, moral reasoning, and
understandings of moral virtues, of moral concepts, and of mo-
rality itself are fallible and subject to revision over time, then it is
ill-​advised to characterize moral progress simply as increasingly
adequate compliance with moral norms that are now thought
to be valid or to equate moral progress with the performance of
some function we can now identify. To do so ignores an impor-
tant point, namely, that our basic understanding of moral prog-
ress should reflect our fallibility and should acknowledge our
capacity for open-​ended normativity, which enables us to detect
errors in our thinking about moral progress and to correct them
94  What Is Moral Progress?
accordingly. This in turn suggests that a sound conception of
moral progress will understand its own characterization of moral
progress as only provisional—​as the best we can do for now.
To elaborate: on a provisional account of moral progress, the list
of apparently distinct types of moral progress set out in Chapter 1
should be seen as subject to revision in two respects. First, it may
well be that some items on the list, such as better understandings of
moral concepts, may be reducible in this sense: such epistemic gains
may be moral improvements only insofar as they contribute either
to better compliance with valid moral norms or to better motivation
or virtues or better moral reasoning.2 Second, it might turn out that
some items on the list are not cases of moral progress at all.3 In light
of the history of errors regarding morality and a recognition that
members of the present generation of human beings are afflicted
with many cognitive biases and social-​epistemic sources of error,
any attempt to characterize moral progress ought to be presented as
provisional so as to exhibit appropriate epistemic modesty.
It is worth noting that the epistemic or fallibilist objection to
all fixed determinate content accounts of moral progress holds
regardless of the metaphysical views that such accounts presup-
pose. For instance, the objection stands even if robust moral re-
alism is true—​that is, even if there is some set of permanently
valid substantive moral norms grounded in moral truths that are
wholly independent of actual or idealized practical reasoning and

2
  For reasons adduced earlier, it seems unlikely that we would at some later
date come to view progress in motivation as reducible to better norm compli-
ance. It is possible, however, that some other types of moral progress that we
identify might turn out to be reducible to better norm compliance or some
other type of moral progress.
3
  Some cases of apparently proper de-​moralization might turn out not to
be morally progressive after all, once the full, long-​term consequences of
abandoning the norm in question come to light. Consider the norm against
unmarried women having children. It is perhaps possible that in unjust soci-
eties, where unmarried poor women are unlikely to receive adequate social and
economic support, sustaining this norm might be morally preferable all things
considered.
 A Pluralistic, Dynamic Conception of Moral Progress  95
invariant across different human environments and evaluative
standpoints. Robust realist views can evade the epistemic or falli-
bilist objection only by adopting an extremely implausible moral
epistemology, according to which human beings now have the
ability to discern all the moral facts. Given the errors of our pre-
decessors, there is little reason to believe that we are in so happy
a condition. So, even those who espouse a robust realist meta-​
ethics should reject determinate fixed content understandings of
moral progress, if conceptions of moral progress are supposed to
provide adequate guidance for making judgments about whether
moral progress has occurred, is occurring, or is likely to occur in
the future. Determinate fixed content views, when paired with a
robust realist meta-​ethics, fail to acknowledge—​at their peril—​
the difficulty of knowing whether we currently possess an accu-
rate and exhaustive understanding of valid moral norms.
If, in contrast, advocates of determinate fixed content ac-
counts subscribe to some version of meta-​ethical constructivism,
then the epistemic objection applies with equal or perhaps even
greater force. If valid moral norms are those that would result
from some idealized procedure of practical reasoning, then our
actual judgments about the set of valid moral norms will be in-
evitably speculative and subject to revision since the conditions
under which we engage in moral reasoning are always less than
ideal. Revision might be called for if we came to approximate
more closely the ideal reasoning procedure or if we came to re-
alize that our current reasoning approximates it less closely than
we had previously thought. Indeed, any estimate of how close we
are now to engaging in ideal procedures is itself contingent on
subjective credences. To characterize moral progress as increasing
conformity to some fixed set of norms now thought to be valid
because we believe they would be the outcome of an ideal pro-
cedure would be to ignore this implication of constructivism.4

  For what may be the most sophisticated and empirically informed devel-
4

opment of the notion of constructivism and its relevance to moral progress, see
96  What Is Moral Progress?
So, on both robust realist and constructivist meta-​ethical views,
determinate fixed content accounts of moral progress look less
cogent than provisional accounts.
Suppose that in response to these moral epistemological crit-
icisms, proponents of determinate fixed content accounts, or
functionalist accounts for that matter, were simply to tack on a
“provisional” caveat in recognition of human moral-​epistemic
limitations. Would this enable them to avoid our criticisms? In
fact, one might think that all considered moral judgments, in-
cluding judgments about moral progress, should contain implicit
“provisional” disclaimers that hedge for moral error, even if their
proponents do not make these provisos explicit. Tacking on a
“provisional” qualifier would not save fixed content or function-
alist accounts of moral progress, however, since as we have seen
these accounts hinge on controversial assumptions about the spe-
cific content of fundamental moral principles, about the fixedness
of this content across institutional contexts, about the possibility
of reducing all types of moral progress to one type, and so on.
The inherent corrigibility of moral progress judgments only (if
significantly) exacerbates these problems; they are serious enough
quite apart from the problem of corrigibility.
Thus, something more abstract—​something not tied to any
particular substantive moral norms or functions or even to an
indeterminate fixed content—​is needed for a cogent characteri-
zation of moral progress. A conception of moral progress ought
to be consistent with an appreciation of the open-​ended norma-
tivity of the ethical and the epistemic limitations of our ability to
predict where the ongoing process of critical reflection will lead.
Whatever it takes moral progress to be must include the proviso
that what it says should be subject to revision in the light of better
understandings of morality. The possibility that we might come

Gerald Gaus, The Tyranny of the Ideal: Justice in a Diverse Society (Princeton

University Press, 2016).
 A Pluralistic, Dynamic Conception of Moral Progress  97
to understand morality in rather radically different ways means
that we cannot even assume that what we now think of as an ac-
curate catalog of types of moral progress is correct.
A provisional conception of moral progress is not only epi-
stemically but also morally preferable, given that human beings
are prone to moral errors that can have disastrous consequences.
Acknowledging that our current understanding of morality and
hence our current understanding of moral progress are subject to
revision encourages humility, and thus may serve to reduce the
risk of destructive hubris or ideology to which earlier thinking
about moral progress often succumbed. A  moment’s reflection
on the many crimes committed in the name of moral progress
indicates that this feature of an open-​ended conception is a sig-
nificant point in its favor. Indeed, revising one’s conception of
moral progress so as to take into account its epistemic limitations
is itself an instance of moral (not merely epistemic) progress, at
least insofar as it reduces the risk of wrongdoing in the service of
misguided understandings of moral progress.

Meta-​Moral Progress
There is another, more radical way in which a conception of moral
progress might undergo revision. In the past, important forms
of moral progress have frequently been achieved through means
that involved significant moral costs. Sometimes these moral costs
were anticipated by the agents of moral progress, sometimes not.
In some instances, there may have been no alternative way to
achieve the improvement. When this was the case, a change might
still count as moral progress, all things considered, even if it were
achieved at significant cost. Yet, other things being equal, moral
progress that is achieved without moral costs is clearly morally
preferable and more commendable. For example, the abolition
of slavery in the British Empire was achieved without blood-
shed, while abolition in the United States came only as the result
of an extraordinarily bloody civil war in which around 700,000
98  What Is Moral Progress?
combatants and many noncombatants perished. Further, an im-
provement that involved unnecessary moral costs would, ceteris
paribus, be less morally commendable than one that did not—​and
in the extreme case might not even count as moral progress at all.
Suppose that one could identify a historical trend toward
increasing opportunities for “cleaner” achievements of moral
progress. Perhaps no overall trend of this sort is likely to be dis-
cernible; nonetheless, there might be evidence of such a trend in
certain areas—​for example, an increased frequency of the reme-
dying of unjust inequalities through better laws and social pol-
icies rather than through violent revolution. That itself would
count as moral progress. One might refer to such moral progress
in the achievement of moral progress by a special term: “meta-​
moral progress.”
If the incidence of meta-​moral progress continued to increase,
a point might be reached at which, quite reasonably, a change
would not be thought to count as moral progress unless it were
achieved without significant moral costs. To put the point dif-
ferently:  as opportunities for “clean” moral progress increased,
we might come to value what we would at first call meta-​moral
progress, the achievement of moral progress by increasingly
moral means, to the point that our concept of moral progress it-
self underwent revision so that we eventually came to count as
moral progress only those changes that came about “cleanly.”
Regardless of whether such a revision would be reasonable or
is likely to occur, a sophisticated conception of moral progress
should encompass the idea that improvement in the means of
achieving moral progress is an important aspect of moral prog-
ress and that a trend toward “clean” moral progress is itself a kind
of moral progress. To acknowledge the possibility that awareness
of the increasing incidence of meta-​moral progress might result
in a more demanding conception of moral progress—​one that
recognized only “cleanly” achieved moral improvements—​we
might say that our conception of moral progress should be not
only provisional but also dynamic.
 A Pluralistic, Dynamic Conception of Moral Progress  99
The Social Moral Epistemology of Moral
Progress: Inequality as a Source of Cognitive Bias
A provisional, dynamic conception of moral progress has another
attractive feature: it can capitalize on a very broadly reliabilist ac-
count of justified judgments about moral progress.5 If we recog-
nize that moral thinking not only is self-​reflectively critical and
hence open-​ended but also has the capacity to improve its results
through devising strategies for protecting against its own failures,
then we should be more confident in the products of our critical
moral reflections if we have reason to believe that the circumstances
in which we have arrived at them are conducive to better reasoning.
Identifying the conditions under which moral reasoning is less
likely to be distorted by prejudice and ignorance can advance
our understanding of moral progress. More precisely, judgments
about whether moral progress has occurred or what would have
to happen for moral progress to occur are more reliable (ceteris
paribus) if they are formed in epistemic conditions that equip us
with good relevant factual information (including information
about the consequences of complying with the norms under con-
sideration), that provide opportunities for critical deliberations
that are not biased by the exclusion of alternative points of view,
that include awareness of previous revisions of norms as well as
alternatives to the norms under scrutiny, and that feature provi-
sions for combatting predictable sources of bias.
One potent source of bias is inequality. As Elizabeth Anderson
notes, members of groups that benefit from unjust social arrange-
ments are characteristically subject to biases in their assessments
of the capacities and predicament of the victims of injustices.6

5
  Here, we use the term “reliabilist” in a very broad sense, without assuming,
as many epistemological reliabilists do, that reliability is to be understood as
accurate tracking of facts (in this case moral facts) that are completely inde-
pendent of reasoning processes and of any mode of social construction.
6
 Elizabeth Anderson, “The Social Epistemology of Morality:  Learning
from the Forgotten History of the Abolition of Slavery,” in Michael S. Brady
100  What Is Moral Progress?
These biases often result from inequalities in power that insulate
the powerful from social interactions in which the oppressed can
participate as equals in interactions in which persons make and
respond to claims upon one another—​a process that may be es-
sential for the development of justified moral beliefs and adequate
moral concepts. Accordingly, judgments about whether a change
is morally progressive are more reliable, other things being equal,
when they are made under conditions in which inequalities are
not of such a nature and magnitude as to produce predictable
cognitive and affective (especially empathy) deficits and in which
social practices and institutions allow individuals engaged in
value-​based discussions to interact on terms of equality.
A dramatic and disturbing illustration of how extreme so-
cial inequality can disable empathy is provided by Alexis de
Tocqueville. In Democracy in America he quotes from a letter
written by an aristocratic woman in pre-​revolutionary France.7
The letter is to the woman’s daughter. The initial passages re-
veal that the writer is a caring, thoughtful grandmother. But then
there is a sudden transition: she casually notes that there was re-
cently a protest against taxes in the village attached to her family’s
estate, that the leader was broken on the wheel (an especially hor-
rific form of death by torture), and that thirteen of the protesters
were summarily hanged. She then writes approvingly that this
drastic punishment is “. . . a fine example . . . especially to [en-
courage people to] respect the governors and their wives, and not
to throw stones in their garden.” Tocqueville speculates that such
callous cruelty is no longer possible where the extreme inequality
of position that produces it no longer exists. The example is espe-
cially sobering because the

and Miranda Fricker (eds.), The Epistemic Life of Groups (Oxford University
Press, 2016, pp. 75–​94).
7
  Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, ed. Sanford Kessler, trans.
Stephen Grant (Hackett, 2000, p. 250).
 A Pluralistic, Dynamic Conception of Moral Progress  101
people whom the caring grandmother could not even recog-
nize as suffering human beings were not denizens of some distant
country; they were her neighbors.
There is another way in which inequality can result in an ep-
istemic environment that distorts understandings of what mo-
rality requires and hence of what constitutes moral progress. In a
society with pervasive racial or gender discrimination, the victims
of discrimination will be unable to exhibit or in some cases
even develop important capacities, including capacities that are
thought to be relevant to determining their rights and statuses.
Social experience in such environments will seem to confirm false
beliefs about the limited capacities of such individuals—​the very
false beliefs that are invoked to justify the discriminatory prac-
tices that create the distorted experience.8
For instance, where women or people of color are barred from
anything but the most rudimentary education and are confined
to menial tasks, they will have little opportunity to exhibit higher
mental abilities. Under such conditions, false beliefs about the
supposedly inferior rationality of these groups will seem to be
confirmed by the dominant form of social experience. It will also
be difficult in such environments for people to understand that
the status quo is morally defective and hence difficult to mobi-
lize support for an important form of moral progress, namely the
overcoming of discrimination. Indeed, their understanding of the
scope of potential moral progress will be truncated, and this de-
fect may not be remedied unless and until discrimination is suf-
ficiently mitigated to allow women or people of color to exhibit
their true capacities.
Chapters 9 and 10, which examine the modern human rights
movement as an instance of moral progress in the form of inclu-
sivity, expand on this point by arguing that the social moral epis-
temology of human rights is reflexive: the best social-​epistemic

8
  Allen Buchanan, “The Reflexive Epistemology of Human Rights,” unpub-
lished paper.
102  What Is Moral Progress?
conditions for determining whether the increasing implemen-
tation of human rights is morally progressive are those under
which those rights are already sufficiently realized to allow for
a social experience that is conducive to reliable judgments about
natural abilities of human beings that are relevant to recognizing
the moral equality of persons.
Some success in overcoming injustice and reducing inequality,
therefore, may be a necessary condition for improving the moral-​
epistemic environment in ways that are conducive to developing
an adequate understanding of what moral progress encompasses.
Given that understandings of morality and moral progress can
and in some cases should change, it is important to try to en-
sure that whatever changes in our understandings occur are likely
to be truly progressive by optimizing the epistemic conditions
under which we engage in moral reasoning and in which our
moral responses are shaped. Doing this would require a number
of reforms, from combatting normal cognitive biases and errors
and remedying defective social-​epistemic practices (including ad-
herence to flawed norms of epistemic deference) to eliminating
unjust social practices which produce distorted social experi-
ences that foster the false beliefs that motivate and reinforce these
injustices.

Moral Progress as Reaching or Approaching

a Moral Ideal
Some might complain that the provisional, dynamic under-
standing of progress we have endorsed is unsatisfying because it
purchases humility at the price of vacuity. It is true, the complaint
would continue, that the understanding of progress endorsed so
far in this book is informative so far as it includes a list of types
of moral progress. But the list lacks a unifying, overarching con-
ception of what moral improvement is and, in the name of epi-
stemic humility, is presented neither as being complete nor as the
final word. Surely (the complaint would continue) it is possible
 A Pluralistic, Dynamic Conception of Moral Progress  103
to provide a more substantive understanding of what moral prog-
ress is—​one that avoids the errors of the various contemporary
views examined in the previous two chapters. More specifically,
moral progress can be informatively characterized as progress to-
ward the full or at least fuller realization of some ideal state of
affairs—​and, in particular, of an ideal human society.
As Gerald Gaus has argued, such a proposal quickly encounters
a painful dilemma. If the ideal state of affairs is similar enough to
the actual status quo for us to be able to make reliable judgments
about what the ideal state would be like, whether it is attainable,
whether it would be stable if attained, and whether we could seri-
ously approach its realization by morally acceptable means, then
a proper regard for epistemic humility should make us wary. The
very proximity to what we know that is needed to be confident
that the supposedly ideal state of affairs is in fact ideal means that
it is likely to be a parochial and to that extent inadequate yard-
stick for gauging moral progress.
To use Gaus’s felicitous phrase, if the ideal is “in the neigh-
borhood” of the status quo, we may think we are in a reasonably
good epistemic position, precisely because of this proximity, to
know what we need to know in order to ascertain that move-
ment toward it would be moral progress.9 But an ideal that is
in our neighborhood may be seriously incomplete, or even
wrong-​headed in some important respects, given the fallibility of
judgments about morality, and hence about moral progress, and
given new opportunities that may arise in the future but which
we cannot predict now. Our conception of what an ideal state of
affairs in our “neighborhood” would be like may be shaped by
moral understandings that are themselves distorted by the unjust
social arrangements of our present environment. Or our belief
that some new state of affairs in our “neighborhood” is ideal may
simply reflect the limits of our moral imagination.

9
 Gaus, The Tyranny of the Ideal, supra note 4, p. 4.
104  What Is Moral Progress?
Alternatively, if we opt for an ideal that is not in our
neighborhood—​one that is morally and factually distant from
the social arrangements of which we have anything that could
honestly be called knowledge—​then the reliability of our judg-
ment that it really is ideal, or even that it is something that we
ought to strive for, will be accordingly compromised. Consider,
for example, a supposedly ideal society in which people are fully
impartial in their attachments and commitments, where altruism
and even love are literally universal, and in which the economy is
somehow fueled not by self-​interest but by a desire to contribute
to the general welfare. Such an ideal may seem morally desirable,
but it is so very different from our world that there is little reason
to believe either that it is feasible or, were it to be obtained, that it
would be optimally valuable.
If one asks whether some radically different state of affairs
would be morally optimal, one must be sure to ask “for whom?”
If the beings inhabiting the supposedly ideal state of affairs are
sufficiently like us, then the judgment that the ideal state of af-
fairs would be optimal for them will be dubious because we are
unlikely to be in a position to determine whether there would be
the right sort of fit between the radically different conditions in
the ideal state, on the one hand, and the capacities for flourishing
possessed by beings like us, on the other. Suppose the propo-
nent defining moral progress in terms of such a radically dif-
ferent ideal condition replies as follows: “The ideal state will be
optimal for those who inhabit it because they will be shaped by it
in such a way as to ensure a good fit; they will be quite different
from us.” The difficulty with this reply is that, as we are now,
we have little reason to believe that this prediction of a good fit
is valid, primarily because we will not know enough about what
such “improved” beings would be like. To summarize:  “close”
ideals are likely to be tainted by parochialism and for that reason
are unsuitable candidates for an understanding of moral progress
that is both comprehensive and durable, while “distant” ideals
are likely to evidence perilous epistemic arrogance because our
 A Pluralistic, Dynamic Conception of Moral Progress  105
knowledge of what it would be like to occupy the ideal condition
diminishes with factual and moral “distance.”
It might be thought that there is a third alternative:  charac-
terize an ideal state of affairs with sufficient abstractness that it
is not likely to be tainted by parochialism but not so abstract as
to be epistemically problematic. The difficulty here is that ab-
stractness sufficient to avoid the parochialism problem would be
compatible with a plurality of alternative characterizations for
filling out the description of the ideal state sufficiently to make it
action-​guiding, to allow it to guide efforts to achieve moral prog-
ress. Thus, the abstract version of the “approaching the ideal”
characterization of moral progress does not avoid the charge that
motivated it in the first place, namely the criticism that it is unin-
formative. On the other hand, when we choose among alternative
concrete specifications of the ideal, as we must do if it is to be
informative, then the original dilemma resurfaces. Specifications
that are “close” enough to the status quo to allow a confident
judgment that the posited state of affairs would be so compre-
hensively morally desirable as to define the ultimate goal of mor-
ally progressive change are likely to be parochial. Specifications
that are “distant” enough to avoid parochialism are likely to pre-
suppose evaluations of what the supposedly ideal state would
be like and about the permissibility of the necessary means for
achieving and sustaining it that we are not, given our present ep-
istemic standpoint, warranted in making.
As Gaus emphasizes, at least as a generalization, the morally
responsible course of action is to characterize as moral progress
relatively incremental improvements from the status quo because
the very feature that makes such modest aims unsatisfying to rad-
ical reformers—​their “closeness” to the undoubtedly defective
status quo—​also makes it more likely that we will know what we
are talking about when we say they would be improvements. The
key point is that if the ideal is “distant” from where we are, then
to know that some counterfactual state of affairs is the ultimate
standard by which moral progress is to be gauged would require
106  What Is Moral Progress?
that we currently know much more than we are likely to know.
Specifically, for a characterization of a nonexistent state of affairs
to answer the question “What is moral progress?” we would have
to know (1) that all the aspects of the supposedly ideal state of
affairs can coexist, (2) that living in that state would be morally
optimal for those who occupy it (not for us or at least for us
as we are now, assuming that attaining it will take a long time),
(3) that the morally relevant consequences of the attainment of
the ideal state would also be optimal, (4) that the ideal state can
be realized or at least seriously approximated by means that are
morally acceptable, and (5) that falling short of the ideal would
not mean failing to realize the values that make the ideal desirable
(the problem of the second best). The more “distant” the ideal is,
the less likely it is that we—​as we are and where we are—​will be
able to answer any of these questions. Yet we must be able to an-
swer all of them if we are to define moral progress by reference to
some ideal state of affairs and do so in an informative way.
It is worth pointing out that although Gaus’s conservative,
incrementalist recommendation may seem prudent, adopting
it could come with a steep price:  sticking to the pursuit of in-
cremental improvements relative to the status quo runs the risk
that efforts to make moral progress will reflect a seriously inad-
equate conception of morality and hence of moral progress and
may do little to remedy the deepest moral failings of the existing
social world. In other words, incrementalism may achieve only
superficial reform, perpetuating serious injustices to which we
are now blind. This risk can be mitigated if two conditions are
satisfied:  first, the marginalized and disadvantaged are able to
voice their concerns and their voice is taken seriously in public
deliberations and, second, society is tolerant toward bold “exper-
iments of living” within the existing institutional structure that
offer models of social organization that are significantly different
from the status quo. At least where these two conditions are sat-
isfied, it appears that it is generally better to run the risk of super-
ficial reform that an incremental approach inevitably entails than
 A Pluralistic, Dynamic Conception of Moral Progress  107
to indulge in the epistemic arrogance and moral irresponsibility
entailed by trying to steer society as a whole toward a distant
supposed ideal.

Interim Conclusions
We can recapitulate the main results of Part I’s inquiry into the
nature of moral progress as follows:
(1) Not all change that is progressive from a moral point of
view constitutes moral progress. A change is not a case of
moral progress in any significant sense if it comes about
fortuitously, as a result of causes beyond human control,
without any contribution from human action or motiva-
tion. A  change that is progressive from a moral point of
view is moral progress in the strong sense only if it involves
improvements in moral capacities or the exercise thereof.
(2) Determinate fixed content accounts that reduce moral
progress to better compliance with norms whose contents
are thought to be presently ascertainable ought to be
rejected because (a) human beings are not warranted in be-
lieving that they currently grasp all valid moral norms or
that the norms they believe are valid will remain so under
different institutional contexts and (b) there are some types
of moral progress that are not reducible to better compli-
ance with moral norms.
(3) Indeterminate fixed content accounts are consistent with
(a) being true, but they fail because (b) is true.
(4) Functionalist accounts should likewise be rejected because
there are important types of moral progress that are not
explicable in functionalist terms.
(5) These shortcomings suggest that a sound account of moral
progress should be (a) pluralistic (nonreductionist), (b) pro-
visional (that is, presented with an acknowledgment that it
is subject to revision), and (c) dynamic in that it recognizes
108  What Is Moral Progress?
the possibility that what initially was regarded as meta-​
moral progress—​the achievement of moral improvement
by “clean” means—​might become a requirement for what
counts as moral progress tout court. Note that (b) does not
imply that the facts about what constitutes moral progress
are themselves changeable. A provisional stance is an epi-
stemic, not a metaphysical, position, and thus it is compat-
ible with both realist and nonrealist meta-​ethical theories.
(6) Even if the metaphysical question is left unanswered, it is
still possible to develop a theory of moral progress that
includes a provisional identification of types of moral
progress and explores, in the light of the best empirical
information, the conditions under which progress has oc-
curred and the obstacles to achieving it.
(7) It is possible to improve the epistemic environment in
which judgments about moral progress are made by
drawing on the insights of social moral epistemology.
(8) Characterizing moral progress in terms of the full or in-
creasing realization of some ideal state of affairs (either
of society or of individuals, for example, in terms of their
virtues) entails an uncomfortable dilemma. Either the ideal
state is characterized as not being very distant from the
status quo, in which case it may be afflicted by parochi-
alism, not taking seriously enough the possibility that moral
progress may turn out to be significantly different from
what we now take it to be, or the ideal state will be charac-
terized as very different from the status quo, in which case
our grounds for thinking that it really is ideal will be shaky
because it will be so different from states of affairs about
which we have sufficient knowledge to evaluate. Even if
the supposedly ideal state would be most desirable were it
attained and attained through morally acceptable means,
the greater the differences between it and the status quo,
the less reliable our judgments about whether it is attain-
able and attainable by permissible means are likely to be.
 A Pluralistic, Dynamic Conception of Moral Progress  109
Both horns of the dilemma can be avoided by adopting a
vague or formal characterization of the ideal state in terms
of which progress is to be understood, but this is not likely
to be informative.

Is Moral Progress Unified?

This chapter has not provided an informative, unifying explana-
tion of why all the cases and types of moral progress provision-
ally identified in Chapter 1 are in fact instances of moral progress.
The analysis so far has left us with a disunified, and to that extent
inelegant, conception of moral progress. But perhaps it is a mis-
take to assume that an informative unifying account can be pro-
vided. After all, there is no good reason, at present, to think that
morality is unified—​that is, to assume that there is some grand,
unifying fundamental moral norm, concept, or value from which
all aspects of morality can be informatively derived.10 In fact, it
is far from clear that all valid moral norms can be derived from
one basic moral norm or even a small set of basic norms. If the
assumption that morality is unified is unwarranted, then so is the
assumption that moral progress is unified.
The apparent disunity of the moral may be an artifact of tem-
porary or permanent human epistemic limitations, or it may be
an intrinsic feature of the subject matter itself; at this point, one
cannot say which. What can be said with some confidence is that
accounts that equate moral progress with adherence to contentful
norms that are presently ascertainable, with the performance of
certain functions, or for that matter with any single type of moral
progress, or with the asymptotic realization of some ideal state of
affairs (whether near to or distant from the status quo), are inad-
equate from our current moral-​epistemic vantage point.

10
  Walter Sinnott-​Armstrong, “The Disunity of Moral Judgment,” unpub-
lished paper.
110  What Is Moral Progress?
It might be objected that on some moral theories morality is
unified and that such theories can ground a unified theory of
moral progress—​one that explains, in an informative way, what
all the types of moral progress listed earlier have in common. For
example, some utilitarians hold that every aspect of morality, from
valid moral norms and moral motivations to the virtues and un-
derstandings of moral status, can be grounded in the principle of
utility; and some Kantians would say that the whole of morality
consists, at bottom, in the conformity of the will of imperfectly
rational beings to the fully rational will. The well-​known diffi-
culty with both of these views is that no one has yet succeeded
in producing the needed derivation—​in showing that all aspects
of morality can be derived from either of the two master princi-
ples. The sounder judgment, we believe, is that no one possesses
a unified account of morality that could serve as the basis for an
informative unifying explanation of the various types of moral
progress that, for now, any plausible theory of moral progress
ought to recognize.
A more hopeful and positive answer to the question “What
is moral progress?” is that to the extent that our current under-
standings of various aspects of morality are formed in reliable ep-
istemic conditions, we can confidently identify various types of
moral progress that have already occurred and draw conclusions
about the need for more progress with respect to those types,
while recognizing that new types that we cannot now even im-
agine may in the future come into view. Whether or not the reader
finds our analysis fully convincing, we hope it will do something
to restore the question of moral progress to a prominent place in
the research agenda of moral and political philosophy.
This book will now leave questions of moral unity be-
hind and turn its focus to one type of moral progress. As we
emphasized in the Introduction, the strategy of this book is
based on the conviction that the development of increasingly
inclusive moralities is a particularly important form of moral
progress. The next chapter explores a powerful challenge to the
 A Pluralistic, Dynamic Conception of Moral Progress  111
liberal cosmopolitan assumption that significant moral prog-
ress in the dimension of inclusiveness is likely or even possible.
This “evoconservative” challenge, as we will call it, appeals to
work in contemporary evolutionary moral psychology to argue
that human nature poses formidable constraints on inclusivist
moral responses. In brief, evoconservatives accept a familiar
evolutionary story about the origins of human morality and
then conclude that, given these origins, the potential for genu-
inely inclusive moralities is severely limited. Part II will show,
however, that evoconservatives overestimate the explanatory
reach of evolutionary accounts of morality: such explanations
may capture much of what morality was, but they do not tell
the whole story about what morality now is or what it may
become.
 PART II
Evolution and the Possibility
of Moral Progress
 CHAPTER 4

Is Evolved Human Nature an Obstacle

to Moral Progress?

The Introduction showed why it is important to resurrect the

all-​but-​buried topic of moral progress and to restore its pride of
place in contemporary liberal political theory. Part I took the first
step toward reviving the victim of premature burial. This chapter
confronts a potentially powerful conservative challenge to one es-
pecially important type of moral progress that is the central focus
of this book—​the growth of inclusivist morality. As we noted
earlier, inclusivist moralities are those that reject group-​based
(e.g., race-​, ethnicity-​, nationality-​, or species-​based) restrictions
on moral standing and moral status, as well as the notion that
moral standing is to be attributed to “outsiders” only in virtue of
self-​serving strategic considerations.
The conservative challenge to the liberal faith in inclusivist
moral progress that we discuss in this chapter rests on four pil-
lars: the first is that human nature shapes the possibility-​space of
moral progress; the second is that human nature, if it makes sense
to talk of such a thing at all, is not a fixed, timeless essence but
rather a product of evolution; the third is that our evolved na-
ture, at least so far as it includes our capacity for morality, heavily
favors exclusivist (or “tribalistic”) moralities over inclusivist
ones; the fourth is that this evolved disposition toward exclusivist
morality is highly recalcitrant to cultural modification.
116  Evolution and the Possibility of Moral Progress
The first pillar is not new. For centuries, and long before the
Darwinian revolution in biology, conservative thinkers have held
that our capacity for being moral and hence for moral progress
is shaped, indeed seriously constrained, by human nature. And
they have taken a rather pessimistic if not unflattering view of
what our nature is and of our prospects for acting in morally pro-
gressive ways, typically emphasizing the dominance of passions
over reason and selfishness over concern for the common good.
The second and third pillars, in contrast, are something
new: they represent an attempt to enlist modern evolutionary sci-
ence in the service of conservative thinking about the prospects
for moral progress, at least so far as inclusiveness is concerned.
This is not to say that all or even most thinkers who believe that
our evolved morality is strongly anti-​inclusivist are conserva-
tives. So far as evolutionary moral psychologists are operating
as scientists, they are merely characterizing the way they think
human moral capacities are configured, without purporting to
draw any moral or political philosophical lessons. But as will be-
come clear in a moment, other thinkers have attempted to draw
normative conservative conclusions from scientists’ characteriza-
tion of evolved human moral nature.
The lack of scientific backing for their rather dark character-
ization of human nature has always been the Achilles heel of
traditional conservatism. What traditional conservatives have
had to say about human nature and about the nature of society
has often been a matter of empirically under-​informed specula-
tion or cherry-​picking from the annals of human history, rather
than the fruit of empirically informed scientific reasoning. This
is not surprising, of course, given that through most of the his-
tory of conservative thought, indeed until very recently, little
genuinely scientific knowledge of human nature and society was
available. Conservatives can now at last tout a scientific basis for
their view of human nature, one that can provide a more solid
grounding for their pessimistic conclusions about the possibil-
ities of moral progress. Evolutionary theory, the contemporary
Is Evolved Human Nature an Obstacle to Moral Progress?  117
conservative can proudly say, tells us that evolved human nature
is a serious obstacle to moral progress, especially in inclusivist
form. We call those who hold this modernized conservative view
“evoconservatives” to distinguish them from traditional conser-
vatives. Our attempt to revive thinking about moral progress has
thus taken an unexpected turn: we must now consider whether
the advent of evolutionary moral psychology can revitalize a
conservative tradition according to which the scope of any plau-
sible theory of moral progress must inevitably be quite modest.

The Adaptive Function of Morality: The

Received View
What is the purported evolutionary function of morality, and
on what evidential foundation does it rest? Before considering
the received adaptationist explanation of morality, it is impor-
tant to be clear about the explanandum (the phenomenon to be
explained). “Morality” in the relevant evolutionary literature
includes both social and individual dimensions of normative
thought and behavior: it refers, broadly, to a social commitment
to preference-​independent norms, modulated by other-​directed
and inward-​directed moral emotions and judgments and typ-
ically enforced through institutionalized sanctions. Painting a
finer-​grained picture would involve filling in specific moral con-
tent, such as a sense of fairness, prohibitions against particular
behaviors, conceptions of virtues, specific punitive reactions to
norm violations, and so on.
Why think that morality at any level of description might be
amenable to evolutionary explanation? One reason is that moral
systems are spatiotemporally ubiquitous in human societies.
Moral rules structure the behavior of all known hunter–​gatherer
bands, nomadic tribes, sedentary agricultural populations, and
modern, post-​industrial people on all habitable continents and
across all ecological niches and modes of subsistence. Another
reason is that morality as a functional kind is likely very old: moral
118  Evolution and the Possibility of Moral Progress
systems are presumed to have been in place at least since the ori-
gins of behaviorally modern humans in the upper Paleolithic and
possibly much earlier as evidenced by high levels of cooperative
foraging and coordinated warfare in the paleoanthropological
rec­ord; such phenomena are hard to explain without postulating
norms that underpin social cooperation and coordination. Third,
although moral systems vary considerably, they exhibit signifi-
cant commonalities in form and content.1 Taken together, such
patterns cry out for a selectionist explanation. This is because in
any system with variation and heredity, including biological and
cultural systems, the spatiotemporal ubiquity of some complex
set of co-​occurring features is indicative of adaptation or some
other stabilizing constraint.
Furthermore, moral systems present as “adaptively configured”
so as to foster cooperative social arrangements, producing a func-
tional match to coordination problems that is incredibly unlikely
to arise through chance processes alone—​that is, in the absence of
selection (or, more technically, the non-​random sampling of com-
peting variants). Just as it is unlikely that the length of a pollinating
moth’s proboscis just happens to match the size of the trumpet-​
shaped spur of the orchid from which it typically extracts nectar,
so too is it unlikely that moral systems just happen to solve com-
plex social coordination problems without having been through
the filter of natural selection.
The basic logic of selectionist explanation is simple. If a pop-
ulation varies in some heritable trait and if such trait variations
have differential effects on the probability of the survival and

1
  Donald Brown, Human Universals (McGraw Hill, 1991); Richard Joyce,
The Evolution of Morality (MIT Press, 2006); but see Jesse Prinz, “Is Morality
Innate?” in W. Sinnott-Armstrong (ed.), Moral Psychology, v.  1 (MIT Press,
2008, pp. 367–​406). Cross-​cultural universality should not be taken, in itself,
to imply “innateness.” Cooking, for example, is a ubiquitous human trait that
appears to have dramatically shaped human morphological and social evolu-
tion, even though it is culturally acquired. See Richard Wrangham, Catching
Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human (Basic Books, 2009).
Is Evolved Human Nature an Obstacle to Moral Progress?  119
reproduction of organisms that possess them, then there will be
evolution by natural selection—​“descent with modification,” to
use Darwin’s phrase. Traits that are produced in this manner are
known as “adaptations,” and the mechanistic process that pro-
duces them is known as “adaptation.”2 In essence, selection pres-
sures generated by the interaction of organismic traits and the
fitness-​relevant features of their environment act as a filter: traits
(and their associated developmental generators, which are often,
but not always, genes) that reduce biological “fitness” (expected
reproductive success) will tend to not get passed on in sufficient
numbers to determine the character of future populations. This is
because the individuals who carry these relatively less fit variants
die before they can reproduce, have fewer offspring, or have off-
spring that do not survive long enough to reproduce.
It is vital here to emphasize that to say that something is an
“adaptation” is a strictly backward-​looking statement—​it is a
claim about the selective etiology of a trait, not about its pre-
sent utility or current contribution to survival and reproduction.
Thus, to the extent that morality is associated with reproductive
costs in the modern environment, this does little to undermine
the selective-​etiological claim that significant aspects of morality
are adaptations.
However, even if some trait clearly presents as an adaptation,
this does not mean that we can easily identify what the trait is
an adaptation for. For example, the array of dorsal plates on the
iconic dinosaur Stegosaurus looks like an adaptation, but there is
little agreement as to its particular functions. Did the stegosaur’s
bony plates serve as a defensive bulwark against carnivorous
dinosaurs, as a mechanism of thermoregulation, or as a mode
of signaling to conspecifics and mates? We may never know the
proper function of stegosaur plates because the crucial etiological
information may be forever lost to the depths of geological time.

2
  See Robert Brandon, Adaptation and Environment (Princeton University
Press, 1990).
120  Evolution and the Possibility of Moral Progress
In contrast, investigations of the adaptive function of morality
are at once more promising and more challenging than the study
of stegosaur plates. It is more promising because morality has
a comparably recent origin (geologically speaking), and unlike
stegosaur plates, it can be studied in living human beings at var-
ious stages of development in a wide range of societal contexts,
some of which approximate the ancestral state of human societies
in which morality first evolved. It is more challenging because
morality is a social-​psychological trait that is much harder to de-
lineate than simple morphological features and must be inferred
(rather than directly observed) in the fossil record.
Despite these epistemic challenges, a plausible empirical case
for the specific adaptive functions of morality, on a certain coarse-​
grained description of the trait, has begun to emerge. The received
view among evolutionary theorists who believe that human mo-
rality can be given a specific selectionist explanation goes roughly
like this. Morality developed and spread among small, scattered
hunter–​gatherer groups in the middle to late Pleistocene, where it
was selected for coordinating social behavior and managing pat-
terns of interaction that resulted in costly intragroup conflicts.
In particular, morality helped solve collective action problems
by reducing free-​riding, enabling individuals to resist tempta-
tions to act selfishly, and preventing dominant individuals from
monopolizing the fruits of cooperation—​thereby generating an
evolutionary return that was greater for each individual than
would have been possible if each had acted alone or as part of a
group that did not cooperate effectively.3 The fruits of increased

3
 Michael Tomasello, A Natural History of Human Morality (Harvard
University Press, 2016); Chris Boehm, Moral Origins:  The Evolution of
Virtue, Altruism, and Shame (Basic Books, 2012); Chris Boehm, Hierarchy in
the Forest: The Evolution of Egalitarian Behavior (Harvard University Press,
2001); Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind (Pantheon, 2012); Kim Sterelny,
The Evolved Apprentice: How Evolution Made Humans Unique (MIT Press,
2012); Philip Kitcher, The Ethical Project (Harvard University Press, 2011);
Joyce, The Evolution of Morality, supra note 1; Robert Wright, Nonzero: The
Is Evolved Human Nature an Obstacle to Moral Progress?  121
social coordination and cooperation included (inter alia) higher
foraging yields, enhanced warfare capabilities, territorial acqui-
sition, the efficient management of common resources, and the
resolution of internal disputes. Ethnographic research has estab-
lished that the morality of hunter–​gatherer societies, which is
widely regarded as the ancestral state of human morality, is ubiq-
uitously anti-​hierarchical and that violations of so-​called egali-
tarian norms—​especially attempts to monopolize resources or to
exercise authority over fellow group members (except very tem-
porarily, as when one individual is selected to lead a war party)—​
are met with forceful sanctions, ranging from social ridicule to
ostracism to execution.4
What explains the evolutionary shift from a distinctively
chimp-​like social life dominated by hierarchy and self-​interest to
a distinctively human society sustained by stable altruism and ro-
bust egalitarian moral norms? Although chimpanzees do engage
in minimally cooperative behaviors, such as in monkey hunts, in
raids on other chimp groups, and in internal struggles for dom-
inance, this cooperation is generally fragile, easily disrupted by
temptation, and for the most part instrumentally driven.5 Why
are human hunter–​gatherer bands far more cooperative and egal-
itarian than chimp groups, and what role did this novel social
structure play in human ecology?
A number of contemporary evolutionary theorists have
converged on the hypothesis that cooperative foraging was the
key “ecological design problem” that prompted the evolution
of the egalitarian ethos in humans.6 Though somewhat specula-
tive, the empirically constrained hypothesis is as follows: early in

Logic of Human Destiny (Pantheon, 2000); Allan Gibbard, Wise Choices, Apt
Feelings: A Theory of Normative Judgment (Harvard University Press, 1992).
4
 Boehm, Hierarchy in the Forest, supra note 3, pp. 81–​82.
5
 Felix Warneken and Michael Tomasello (2006), “Altruistic helping in
human infants and young chimpanzees,” Science 311: 1301–​1303.
6
  See, e.g., Sterelny, Evolved Apprentice, supra note 3; Boehm, Hierarchy in
the Forest, supra note 3.
122  Evolution and the Possibility of Moral Progress
human evolution (~400,000 years ago), there was a shift to hunting
large dangerous quarry, particularly during frequent periods of
glaciation when edible plants and small game animals were scarce.
Such large game included extremely dangerous animals like
mammoths, extinct giant buffaloes, extinct giant baboons, hip-
popotamuses, and the like. For 98 percent of human history, this
intensively cooperative feat was accomplished with rudimentary
stone-​tipped wooden spears and other non-​projectile weapons.
This required not only meta-​cognitive capacities such as shared
intentionality (or “plural agency”)7 that were presumably lacking
in the last common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees but also
sophisticated normative mechanisms for underwriting the eq-
uitable distribution of the spoils once the fruits of cooperation
were realized. If any single dominant individual were (in standard
chimp style) to dominate the spoils of the hunt, others would re-
frain from cooperating in future hunts. The evolution of an egal-
itarian ethos (at least among hunters)—​including the institutional
enforcement of equitable distribution—​ensured that the spoils of
cooperation were divided evenly and that all who participated
would benefit from the hunt. By reducing human tendencies to
act selfishly and hierarchically, morality made ultra-​cooperation
in distantly related individuals possible.
Various evolutionary theoretical accounts have been offered
to explain stable cooperation in moderate-​sized non-​kin groups,
such as reciprocal altruism, indirect (reputation-​ based) reci-
procity, and punishment-​reinforced cooperation. There is, how-
8

ever, reasonably broad agreement on the basic Darwinian logic: in

a population of competing cultural groups subject to the climatic

7
 Tomasello, A Natural History of Human Morality, supra note 3.
8
 See, respectively, Robert Trivers (1971), “The Evolution of Reciprocal
Altruism,” Quarterly Review of Biology 46(1):  35–​ 57; Richard Alexander,
The Biology of Moral Systems (De Gruyter, 1987); and Robert Boyd, Herbert
Gintis, Samuel Bowles, and Peter Richerson (2003), “The Evolution of
Altruistic Punishment,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA
100(6): 3531–​3535.
Is Evolved Human Nature an Obstacle to Moral Progress?  123
upheavals of the late Pleistocene, those that developed effective
moralities, that is moralities that were capable of avoiding the
costs associated with cooperation failures, were more likely to
pump hominins into the next generation, to persist as groups, to
sustain and transmit their social structures, and/​or to give rise to
offspring groups.9 These ecological conditions, so the argument
goes, conferred a reasonably high probability on the evolution of
morality in broad strokes and go some way toward explaining its
more specific contours, such as our evaluative attitudes toward
kin, kith, strangers, patriots, non-​reciprocators, gluttons, cheats,
murderers, and the like.

9
 Samir Okasha and Peter Godfrey-​Smith discuss several ways in which
group-​level selection might be cashed out. See Samir Okasha, Evolution and
the Units of Selection (Oxford University Press, 2006); Peter Godfrey-​Smith,
Darwinian Populations and Natural Selection (Oxford University Press, 2009).
There is continued controversy over the level at which selection must op-
erate in order to stabilize cooperative interactions among non-​kin. A growing
chorus of biologists, anthropologists, and philosophers of science now argue
that robust cooperation in moderate-​sized groups of non-​kin is only likely to
evolve through a process of selection at the group level, given the costs of al-
truism and norm enforcement to individual fitness within groups. See Haidt,
Righteous Mind, supra note 3; David Sloan Wilson and Edward O. Wilson
(2007), “Rethinking the Theoretical Foundation of Sociobiology,” Quarterly
Review of Biology 82(4):  327–​348; Boyd et  al., “The Evolution of Altruistic
Punishment,” supra note 8; Samuel Bowles (2009), “Did Warfare Among
Ancestral Hunter–​Gatherers Affect the Evolution of Human Social Behaviors?”
Science 324(5932):  1293–​1298; Samuel Bowles (2008), “Conflict:  Altruism’s
Midwife,” Nature 456: 326–​327; Boehm, Hierarchy in the Forest, supra note 3;
Elliott Sober and David Sloan Wilson, Unto Others (Harvard University Press,
1999); for a partially dissenting view, see Sterelny, Evolved Apprentice, supra
note 3. For the present purposes, it does not matter whether selection for moral
traits can be cashed out at the level of individuals in a group-​structured popu-
lation or at the level of cultural groups proper since in either case a selectionist
explanation would be vindicated. We will not consider evolutionary explana-
tions of morality at the level of cultural variants themselves (e.g., so-​called me-
metic theories) since the received selectionist explanation conceives of moral
traits as parts of the individual or group phenotype, rather than as units of se-
lection in their own right. Quite apart from their widely discussed conceptual
and methodological problems, memetic theories have no clear implications for
constraints on the space of moral (and hence moral progress) possibility, and
thus we will not address them here.
124  Evolution and the Possibility of Moral Progress
It is important to emphasize a point about the dynamic na-
ture of adaptation that is often lost in discussions of the evolu-
tionary function of morality. Organisms do not simply adapt to
pre-​existing ecological niches, much as keys are molded to fit
locks. Rather, organisms and their selective environments are co-​
determinative, in the sense that a lineage’s adaptive moves shape
the very ecological design problems that it needs to solve.10 For
instance, the evolution of altruism generates a selection pressure
for cheaters who can effectively parasitize the evolutionary gen-
erosity of altruists, which then results in selection pressures for
cheating detection, which in turn results in selection for subtle
cheaters, and thus selection for the detection of subtle cheating,
and so on. The point is that adaptation is a dynamic, open-​ended
process, so we should not think of morality as a stable evolu-
tionary key to the fixed ecological lock of cooperation. We will
return to the dynamic nature of adaptation in Chapter 7, where
we explore the ways in which culturally engineered social envi-
ronments interact with evolved components of moral psychology
to drive moral progress and moral regression.

The Darker Side of Morality

Focusing on the prosocial effects of prehistoric morality can
obscure its darker side. Ethnographic work, behavioral studies,
and mathematical models of cultural evolution indicate that the
development of egalitarian and other altruistic moral norms in
moderately sized groups of distantly related individuals whose
reputations are harder to monitor hinges on institutional-
ized moralizing punishment11; and the evolution of third-​party

10
 See Richard Lewontin (1978), “Adaptation,” Scientific American 239:
156–​169.
11
 Sarah Mathew and Robert Boyd (2011), “Punishment Sustains Large-​
Scale Cooperation in Prestate Warfare,” Proceedings of the National Academy
of Sciences USA 108(28): 11375–​11380; Joseph Henrich et al. (2006), “Costly
Punishment Across Human Societies,” Science 312(5781):  1767–​1770; Boyd
Is Evolved Human Nature an Obstacle to Moral Progress?  125
punishment in large groups of non-​kin appears to pose a higher-​
order altruism problem that only group-​level selection can solve
since punishing is often costly to the punishers. Group-​level se-
lection, in turn, is only sufficiently strong in the context of fre-
quent and frequently lethal intergroup conflict,12 where losing
groups are extinguished and the individuals composing them are
killed, dispersed, absorbed by winning groups, or marginalized
to resource-​poor areas.
Thus, the high frequency of mortal conflict between pre-
historic human groups is a central assumption—​and empirical
conclusion—​of the multilevel selection modeling work on the
evolution of altruism. The logical structure of this inference runs
as follows: moral norms underpinning cooperation are not suf-
ficiently adhered to in the absence of punishment due to the in-
vasion of free-​riding strategies; all known human societies have
institutions of punishment that enforce moral norms underpin-
ning cooperation; the evolution of punishment requires suffi-
ciently strong group selection; group selection is only sufficiently
strong in the context of frequent lethal intergroup conflict; thus,
we can conclude that human life in the late Pleistocene involved
frequent antagonistic intergroup interactions.
The idea is that groups that contained more altruists and mor-
alizing punishers, and consequently more cooperative social
structures, tended to outperform and “replace” groups with less
effective moralities in economic and military contests between
groups.13 Economic advantages of moral groups included higher

et  al., “The Evolution of Altruistic Punishment,” supra note 8; Boehm,

Hierarchy in the Forest, supra note 3.
12
 Bowles, “Did Warfare Among Ancestral Hunter–​ Gatherers,” supra
note 9; Boyd et  al., “The Evolution of Altruistic Punishment,” supra note
8; Robert Boyd and Peter Richerson (2002), “Group Beneficial Norms Can
Spread Rapidly in a Structured Population,” Journal of Theoretical Biology
215: 287–​296.
13
  Sober and Wilson, Unto Others, supra note 9. Although punishment may
not be necessary for group selection to stabilize cooperative behaviors that
do not implicate altruism (the stag hunt game may offer such an example), it
126  Evolution and the Possibility of Moral Progress
foraging yields (increased success in hunting large game), which
in turn supported larger group sizes. Moralities also enhanced
warfare capabilities since better cooperation means better coor-
dination in military conflicts and larger group sizes confer a sig-
nificant advantage in raiding, border skirmishes, and full-​scale
military conflicts, with victorious groups populating the terri-
tories and commandeering the resources of vanquished groups.
In addition, moral systems provided more effective dispute
resolution, helping to make sure that internal conflicts did not
cause the group to dissolve or leave it vulnerable to predation
by other groups. Notice that the foraging benefit—​the ability
to cooperate in hunting large dangerous game—​and the warfare
benefit—​the ability to coordinate military actions against other
groups—​implicate not only overlapping psychological capacities
(such as shared intentionality and anti-​free-​riding and egalitarian
sentiments) but also the ability to develop complex technologies,
to improve upon them, and to transmit these manufacturing skill
sets faithfully down the generations.
As Kim Sterelny persuasively argues, moral norms likely
underpinned the institutions responsible for sustaining and trans-
mitting crucial technological crafts, methods of food preparation,
and natural history information in hunter–​gatherer bands. Such
a scenario would have provided fertile conditions for Darwinian
selection to occur in the meta-​population of culturally and moral
psychologically variable hunter–​gatherer bands.
This “how possibly” explanation of the evolution of morality
is supported by several converging lines of interdisciplinary
research. Although none of them is in itself decisive, taken to-
gether they make a strong circumstantial case for the key role

is likely that only the targeted severity of punishment can exert an influence
on the payoff matrix sufficient to sustain large-​scale participation in warfare,
norm enforcement, and other forms of cooperation that are group-​beneficial
but individually costly and hence vulnerable to free-​riding. See Peter Richerson
and Robert Boyd, Not by Genes Alone:  How Culture Transformed Human
Evolution (University of Chicago Press, 2005, pp. 220–​225).
Is Evolved Human Nature an Obstacle to Moral Progress?  127
of intergroup competition in prehistoric human ecology. First,
examinations of the ethnographic, archeological, and evolu-
tionary anthropological records attest to the prehistorical ubiq-
uity of intergroup conflict in hunter–​ gatherer bands.14 This
conclusion is perhaps not all that surprising: the scarcity of re-
sources during the climatic upheavals of the Pleistocene, which
would have triggered competitive intergroup interactions (see
Chapter  7), combined with the ultra-​coordinated hunting ca-
pacities and weapons-​making industries of humans during that
same time, would have been ripe conditions for intergroup con-
flict. Although the record of intergroup conflict in the very late
Pleistocene and early Holocene is well established, there is still
no “smoking gun” of warfare that dates back to the time period
in which human morality is thought to have emerged. There are,
for example, no cave paintings from the late Pleistocene depicting
warfare among bands (though depictions of human forms are in
themselves extremely rare and typically schematic), nor are there
any fossilized hominids from this period with spear points em-
bedded in their remains (though the human fossil record of this
period remains spotty).
Further, the inferences we are entitled to make about pre-
historic human societies and behaviors from observations of
modern hunter–​gatherer bands—​even ones that are organization-
ally similar to those that existed during the upper Paleolithic—​
are somewhat limited since living hunter–​gatherer lifeways are
not necessarily reliable traces of the prehistoric human past.
Evidence that chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), the phylogeneti-
cally closest living taxon to Homo sapiens, regularly engage in vi-
olent intergroup conflicts could suggest that the tendency toward

  Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature (Viking, 2011); Bowles,
14

“Did Warfare Among Ancestral Hunter–​Gatherers,” supra note 9; Boehm,

Hierarchy in the Forest, supra note 3; Richard Wrangham and Dale Peterson,
Demonic Males:  Apes and the Origins of Human Violence (Houghton
Mifflin, 1996); Lawrence Keeley, War Before Civilization (Oxford University
Press, 1996).
128  Evolution and the Possibility of Moral Progress
intergroup antagonism was transmitted to humans and chimps
from a common ancestor or alternatively that it was arrived at
in parallel in Homo and Pan through adaptation to similar ec-
ological regimes (but see the discussion of bonobos in the next
chapter).15 However, it is unclear whether the chimp “power im-
balance” model of intergroup aggression, whether it is grounded
in homology or parallelism, can usefully be applied to Pleistocene
humans who had different modes of subsistence and weapons
that could kill at a distance.16
Sterelny suggests that frequent intergroup conflict is unlikely
to occur in persistence predators, such as Homo.17 A wide range
of evidence indicates that humans are specifically adapted for
persistence hunting:  pursuing faster prey for extended periods
through endurance running and tracking, until the prey becomes
exhausted and can be speared at close range.18 Persistence hunting
was probably the dominant mode of big game hunting for humans
until the very late invention of projectiles (such as the bow and
arrow) and the domestication of horses and dogs. However,
other persistence hunters, such as wolves and spotted hyenas,
also engage in violent and risky intergroup conflict, so antago-
nistic behaviors are not inconsistent with this specialized mode
of predation. Population genetics also offers somewhat equivocal
answers to the question of prehistoric conflict: inferences about
human population sizes from comparative genomic data indicate a
population holding steady throughout the late Pleistocene—​data
that are consistent with high levels of intergroup competition19

15
 R.  W. Wrangham and L. Glowacki (2012), “Intergroup Aggression
in Chimpanzees and War in Nomadic Hunter–​ Gatherers:  Evaluating the
Chimpanzee Model. Human Nature 23: 5–​29.
16
  Raymond Kelly (2005), “The Evolution of Lethal Intergroup Violence,”
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 102(43): 15295–​15298.
17
 Sterelny, Evolved Apprentice, supra note 3.
18
  D. M. Bramble, and D. E. Lieberman (2004), “Endurance Running and the
Evolution of Homo,” Nature 432: 345–​352.
19
  See Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, A Cooperative Species. Human
Reciprocity and Its Evolution (Princeton University Press, 2011).
Is Evolved Human Nature an Obstacle to Moral Progress?  129
but that, as Sterelny points out, can also be explained by extrinsic
environmental variables suppressing human population growth.
In his seminal book War Before Civilization, Lawrence Keeley’s
survey of pre-​state warfare exploded the politically charged myth
of peaceful human prehistory—​what he describes as the “thrall
of nostalgic delusion” that fueled degeneration theories of civ-
ilization that were popular in the academy (see Introduction)
and which urged a return to the less hierarchical and allegedly
peaceful ways of our hunter–​gatherer past.20 Upon re-​examining
the archeological and ethnographic records, Raymond Kelly
argues that although Keeley is right that homicide and violence
were rife in “unsegmented” pre-​state societies during the late
Pleistocene, intergroup conflicts were of a limited nature during
this time. Warfare properly conceived, Kelly maintains, did not
emerge until the agricultural revolution, which allowed for the
emergence of complex segmented (roughly, differentiated and
hierarchically structured) societies equipped with group iden-
tities.21 In a paradoxical twist, and contra received social scien-
tific and behavioral ecological wisdom, Kelly argues that it was
not resource scarcity but rather economic bounty wrought by the
agricultural revolution that created conditions ripe for warfare—​
since it was only under conditions of surplus “that a society can
afford to have enemies for neighbours.” Before that time, Kelly
contends, warlike groups would have been selected against since
warfare was not selectively advantageous. Kelly’s theory hinges
on the assumption that spears and other close-​range weaponry
nullified the power imbalances that drove intergroup conflicts in
chimpanzees, effectively making warfare too risky in moderately
sized human groups; it also assumes that the benefits of proso-
cial interactions would have almost always outweighed the fit-
ness benefits of antagonistic relations between power-​imbalanced
groups—​both questionable assumptions.

20
 Keeley, War Before Civilization, supra note 14.
21
  Kelly, “The Evolution of Lethal Intergroup Violence,” supra note 16.
130  Evolution and the Possibility of Moral Progress
In short, existing ethnographic, archeological, and evolutionary
anthropological data are somewhat equivocal on the issue of
Pleistocene warfare; and researchers remain divided on the extent
to which antagonistic intergroup interactions shaped the ecology
of late Pleistocene humans.22 The question is not so much whether
human social evolution was shaped (at some point) by intergroup
violence but, rather, how far back in human prehistory intergroup
conflict extends and how central a role it played in the evolution of
morality.
There is another line of evidence, however, that in our view
indicates the centrality of human intergroup conflict in the upper
Paleolithic:  the impressions or traces of prehistoric ecological
regimes left on modern human psychology. There is evidence
that core elements of human moral psychology were forged
in conflict between moderate to large ethnolinguistic groups.23
“Parochial altruism,” which consists in the combination of in-​
group favoritism/​empathy and out-​group antagonism/​antipathy,
is among the most cross-​culturally robust features of human
moral psychology and a direct prediction of group selectionist
accounts of morality.24 Ethnocentric bias—​a cluster of percep-
tual, affective, and behavioral biases that favor in-​groups over
out-​groups—​emerges rapidly in very young children beginning

22
 M. Lahr et  al. (2016), “Inter-​Group Violence Among Early Holocene
Hunter–​Gatherers of West Turkana, Kenya,” Nature 529(7586): 394–​398.
23
 Melissa McDonald, Carlos Navarrete, and Mark Van Vugt (2012),
“Evolution and the Psychology of Intergroup Conflict: The Male Warrior
Hypothesis,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 367: 670–​679;
Mathew and Boyd, “Punishment Sustains Large-​Scale Cooperation,” supra
note 11; Jung-​Kyoo Choi and Samuel Bowles (2007), “The Coevolution
of Parochial Altruism and War,” Science 318:  636–​640; Helen Bernhard,
Urs Fischbacher, and Ernst Fehr (2006), “Parochial Altruism in Humans,”
Nature 442:  912–​915; Richerson and Boyd, Not by Genes Alone, supra
note 13.
24
  Choi and Bowles, “Coevolution of Parochial Altruism and War,” supra
note 23.
Is Evolved Human Nature an Obstacle to Moral Progress?  131
at around three years of age25; the expression of ethnocentric bias
is cognitively automatic and does not require reward and punish-
ment or explicit acculturation26; and as will be discussed in more
detail in Chapter 7, there is also evidence that humans have innate
tendencies to “essentialize” human groups and to automatically
assign moral significance to group membership—​which in turn
serves to modulate empathy and altruism and thus interactions
with other groups. The extent to which in-​group and out-​group
biases are aspects of a single adaptive psychological system, or
rather distinct traits that can be “toggled” independently in de-
velopment and evolution, remains unclear.27
Although the “innateness” or “instinctual” nature of in-​group/​
out-​group bias has not been established beyond a reasonable
doubt (for example, through a “poverty of the stimulus”–​style
argument), its pan-​cultural nature, its rapid acquisition in on-
togeny, its intertwining with empathy and altruism, and its con-
sistency with predictions of evolutionary biological theory are
at least strongly suggestive that it is genetically prespecified to
some degree. This “innateness” conclusion is consistent with ob-
servations that ethnocentric bias is robustly scaffolded by cul-
ture, that it is shaped by moral norms, and that it is overrideable
by executive function or acculturation. Even if in-​group/​out-​
group moral psychology is an adaptation to intergroup conflict,
as seems highly plausible, this does not definitively pinpoint the
relevant time frame of adaptation. It is possible that ethnocentric
biases evolved through gene–​culture co-​evolution in the small

25
  Frances E. Aboud (2003), “The Formation of In-​Group Favoritism and
Out-​ Group Prejudice in Young Children:  Are They Distinct Attitudes?”
Developmental Psychology 39(1): 48–​60.
26
  Jay J. Van Bavel, Dominic J. Packer, and William A. Cunningham (2008),
“The Neural Substrates of In-​Group Bias: A Functional Magnetic Resonance
Imaging Investigation,” Psychological Science 19(11): 1131–​1139.
27
  Marilynn Brewer (1999), “The Psychology of Prejudice: Ingroup Love or
Outgroup Hate?” Journal of Social Issues 55(3):  429–​444; M. Hewstone, M.
Rubin, and H. Willis (2002), “Intergroup Bias,” Annual Review of Psychology
53:575–​604.
132  Evolution and the Possibility of Moral Progress
evolutionary window that comprises postagriculture human
existence—​which, if true, would be consistent with Kelly’s hy-
pothesis regarding the post-​Neolithic origins of war. Though this
notion might run contrary to the “gradualism” presupposed by
traditional evolutionary biological theory, there is increasing ev-
idence that significant human genetic evolution has indeed oc-
curred on this surprisingly short timescale. Nevertheless, given
the pan-​ cultural distribution, reliable psychological develop-
ment, and complex proximate neural mechanisms implicated in
in-​group/​out-​group biases, it seems more likely that ethnolin-
guistic bias arose much earlier in the human lineage, and hence
that these adaptive psychological configurations contain infor-
mation about—​or traces of—​human social ecology as it was in
the deep past.
Sterelny is skeptical of Kelly’s warless Pleistocene world, but
he nonetheless argues, contra Bowles, Gintis, Boyd, Richerson,
and their multilevel selection theorist collaborators, that “co-
operation and altruism are the fuel of war, but not warfare’s
child.”28 Yet even if Sterelny is right that basic cooperative capac-
ities predate intense intergroup conflict, perhaps originating as
early as erectus-​grade Homo (as inferred from levels of coopera-
tive hunting in Homo erectus29), and even if, notwithstanding the
modeling work alluded to above, punishment can evolve absent
a group selection context, this is consistent with morality being
co-​opted and honed in co-​evolution with intergroup conflict
during the late Pleistocene. The apex predatory skills for hunting
dangerous megafauna are readily transferrable to hunting dan-
gerous weapons-​wielding hominins. In short, lethal intergroup
conflict may have arisen either subsequent to or directly in con-
nection with the emergence of ultra-​cooperation in humans; ei-
ther way, human morality was selectively shaped—​and, if group

 Sterelny, Evolved Apprentice, supra note 3, p. 190.

28

  Manuel Domınguez-​Rodrigo (2002), “Hunting and Scavenging by Early

29

Humans: The State of the Debate,” Journal of World Prehistory 16(1): 1–​54.

Is Evolved Human Nature an Obstacle to Moral Progress?  133
selectionist theorists are right, originally forged—​in the crucible
of intergroup conflict.
A striking feature of the received selectionist explanation,
therefore, is that it implies morality is essentially an intragroup af-
fair. The same ecological conditions and selection pressures that
made moral traits adaptive would have imposed a fitness cost on
extending “evolutionarily excessive” moral consideration to out-​
group members. Just as free-​riding on in-​group members will
tend to undermine group performance in a competitive intergroup
arena, so too will excessive moral consideration toward members
of the out-​group. The selectively optimal combination appears
to have been reasonably expansive moral consideration to-
ward members of one’s in-​group (with a caveat for women and
children, which we will return to later) and highly strategic—​
including predatory, antagonistic, and apathetic—​behavior to-
ward strangers, who were often distrusted, dehumanized, and
delegitimized.30
In their groundbreaking theoretical defense of group selection,
Elliott Sober and David Wilson take note of this implication for
human moral psychology:

It should be obvious . . . that multilevel selection theory does not

lead to the fulfillment of a romantic vision of universal niceness.

30
  McDonald, Navarrete, and Van Vugt, “The Male Warrior Hypothesis,”
supra note 23; Carlos Navarrete and Daniel Fessler (2006), “Disease Avoidance
and Ethnocentrism,” Evolution and Human Behavior 27: 270–​282; Pinker, The
Better Angels of Our Nature, supra note 14. The claim is not that intraspecific
aggression is always adaptive, as the costs of aggression will often outweigh
its benefits, nor that cooperation between groups was never fitness-​enhancing.
Under certain conditions, intergroup hostility can lead to lost opportunity
costs, such as the benefits of material trade and mate exchange that would
have flowed from non-​ antagonistic interactions. Nevertheless, patterns of
intergroup homicide in pre-​state humans, as well as in common chimpanzees,
indicate that intergroup predation often reaps evolutionary rewards; and this
would have been particularly true for weapons-​wielding hominins with the
cognitive prowess to make case-​by-​case risk–​benefit calculations.
134  Evolution and the Possibility of Moral Progress
Conflict and competition are not eliminated but merely elevated
in the biological hierarchy, where the problem of social dilemmas
appears all over again at an even grander (and potentially more de-
structive) scale.31

If the prevailing group selectionist theory is right, then morality

not only emerged and co-​evolved in a Darwinian crucible of
intergroup conflict but it also made large-​scale human conflict
possible by amplifying internal cooperation and by carving up
the moral community and the scope of altruistic norms along in-​
group/​out-​group boundaries.
Still, it is important not to overstate the degree of conflict and
the lack of cooperation between human groups in the environ-
ment of evolutionary adaptation. There is evidence of a significant
degree of trading, exogamy, military alliances, and other forms
of cultural exchange among even geographically distant cultural
groups. Some local early human evolutionary environments may
have been, for a number of reasons, more amenable to peaceful
relations among groups than others; and evidence suggests that
human moral psychology exhibited sufficient flexibility to allow
them to take advantage of these conditions, perhaps in the form
of minimally inclusivist moralities. This is our first serious in-
dication that the evoconservative view that human moral nature
is “hard-​wired” for tribalistic morality is simplistic. Further, the
hypothesis that we are hard-​wired for exclusivist morality is in
tension with the psychological findings noted above, namely that
in-​group favoritism does not automatically result in uniform
out-​group aggression and antagonism and that there is greater
cultural variation in degrees of out-​group antagonism than there
is in degrees of in-​group favoritism. We will return to the adapt­
ive flexibility of prehistoric human morality in greater detail in
Chapter 7, where we advance an alternative evolutionary model

31
  Sober and Wilson, Unto Others, supra note 9, p. 174.
Is Evolved Human Nature an Obstacle to Moral Progress?  135
of the development of human moral psychology. If the theory
we advance is right, then it is misleading to say that human be-
ings are “hard-​wired” for exclusivity; it is more accurate to say
that humans have an adaptively plastic capacity to develop either
exclusivist moralities or inclusivist moralities, depending upon
certain crucial features of the environment in which moralities
develop and evolve.
Accordingly, we can restrict our delineation of the expla-
nandum to the psychological and social mechanisms that dispose
human beings to demarcate the moral community in particular
ways—​and this more fine-​grained delineation allows for a mean-
ingful adaptationist analysis of the trait. Nevertheless, to say that
the above adaptationist account is the received selectionist expla-
nation of morality is not to say that it is the received explana-
tion. Some prominent moral psychologists and philosophers of
science argue that allegiance to specifically moral norms is an ev-
olutionary byproduct of adaptive tendencies toward norm com-
pliance in general32 or that certain moral norms are byproducts
of moral emotions and nonmoral capacities.33 To further compli-
cate matters, when some theorists maintain that morality did not
evolve, what they mean is that it did not evolve through gene-​
based selection (including, perhaps, gene–​culture co-​evolution),
although they are open to the possibility that specific moralities
could have been culturally selected for.
There is also the vexed conceptual problem of how to de-
lineate properly moral norms from those typically thought
of as social conventions. “Do not rape” appears to be a

32
  See, e.g., Edouard Machery and Ron Mallon, “The Evolution of Morality,”
in J.  M. Doris (ed.), The Moral Psychology Handbook (Oxford University
Press, 2010, pp. 3–​46); Chandra Sripada and Stephen Stich, “A Framework for
the Psychology of Norms,” in P. Carruthers, S. Laurence, and S. Stich (eds.),
The Innate Mind: Culture and Cognition (Oxford University Press, 2006).
33
 Ibid.
136  Evolution and the Possibility of Moral Progress
qualitatively different sort of norm than “Use the small fork
for salads,” even if they both have normative force and pro-
vide reasons for acting or refraining from acting in particular
ways. Theorists have proposed a number of ways in which
the moral–​conventional distinction might be drawn, including
(1)  the content of norms (e.g., moral norms are harm-​based,
whereas conventional norms do not implicate the interests
of others), (2)  the affective reactions produced by norm vio-
lations (e.g., guilt, anger, indignation, and perhaps disgust re-
sult from the violation of moral norms, whereas conventional
norm violations provoke weaker or no emotional responses),34
and (3) the subjective justification of norms (e.g., in the minds
of moral agents, conventional norms are grounded in social
practice, whereas moral norms are grounded in considerations
that are authority/​practice-​independent).35 In addition, studies
of normal36 and abnormal37 moral psychological development
have been interpreted as providing evidence that humans have
specialized, innate moral faculties that are distinct from their
generic normative capacities.
Many theorists remain skeptical, however, that the moral–​
conventional distinction can be sustained, given that pan-​
cultural studies have shown that conventional norm violations
can also provoke powerful emotional and institutional re-
sponses and that harm-​based moral judgments are sometimes
and in some cultures viewed as authority-​dependent.38 It does

34
 Sean Nichols (2002), “Norms with Feeling:  Towards a Psychological
Account of Moral Judgment.” Cognition 84: 221–​236.
35
  Nicolas Southwood (2011), “The Moral/​Conventional Distinction,” Mind
120: 761–​802.
36
  E. Turiel, The Development of Social Knowledge: Morality and Convention
(Cambridge University Press, 1983).
37
  R. Blaire (1995), “A Cognitive Developmental Approach to
Morality: Investigating the Psychopath,” Cognition 57: 1–​29.
38
  D. Kelly, S. Stich, K. J. Haley, S. J. Eng, and D. M. T. Fessler (2007), “Harm,
Affect, and the Moral/​Conventional Distinction,” Mind & Language 22: 117–​
131; see also Machery and Mallon, “The Evolution of Morality,” supra note 32.
Is Evolved Human Nature an Obstacle to Moral Progress?  137
not matter for present purposes whether there is a proper subset
of norms that are distinctively moral; indeed, our working defi-
nition of morality, like that of most cultural evolutionary theo-
rists, does not rely on the moral–​conventional distinction. The
key claim here is that the human capacity for norm acquisition
and implementation (including motivations for adherence and
enforcement)39 is likely adaptive and was selected for its ability
to coordinate action and support cooperation within groups,
with specific norms culturally selected for these effects. If par-
ticular moral judgments stably and substantially contributed to
cooperation (e.g., judgments with regard to in-​group harm or
free-​riding), then we might expect gene–​culture co-​evolution to
select for genetic factors that make the expression of those judg-
ments more likely. Thus, even if the moral–​conventional dis-
tinction is not vindicated, evaluative judgments often thought
to be distinctively moral may play an especially important and
culturally ubiquitous role in mitigating selfish tendencies, re-
solving potentially destabilizing intragroup conflicts, and mo-
tivating punishment.
Chapter 8 will revisit the diverse origins, functions, and effects
of social norms. Our focus until then will be on the evolution of
normativity in its especially weighty forms. Our aim is to eval-
uate neither the standard selectionist account nor its detractor
theories. Instead, we will argue that even if a selectionist explana-
tion of certain aspects of morality could be given along the lines
sketched above, whether it is grounded in cultural group selec-
tion or reciprocity or some combination of the two, this would
still leave much of contemporary morality beyond the scope
of evolutionary explanation altogether. This, in turn, will show
that morality is not constrained by evolution to the degree that
evoconservatives and others might suppose.

  Sripada and Stich, “A Framework for the Psychology of Norms,” supra

39

note 32.
138  Evolution and the Possibility of Moral Progress
The Evoconservative Logic
It is important to recognize that many proponents of the
standard selectionist explanation of morality do not subscribe to
a conserva­tive brand of politics, nor have they suggested that the
evolutionary explanations they give, if vindicated, would have
any conservative moral or political implications. Philip Kitcher,
for instance, maintains that although morality has the evolu-
tionary function of solving cooperation failures within groups,
its emergence prompted an ongoing ethical discussion, which due
to our deliberative faculties can go in any number of directions,
including inclusivist ones.40 Likewise, one upshot of Boyd and
Richerson–​type models of cultural evolution is that punishment
can theoretically stabilize any norm, including more inclusive
ones, regardless of whether it is group-​beneficial.41
Nevertheless, authors from a variety of disciplines have inferred
from the received selectionist explanation of morality that the
content of human morality is seriously constrained—​particularly
in relation to the scope of other-​regard. These evoconservatives
contend that the ecological challenges our distant ancestors faced
generated selection pressures for evaluative tendencies that lim-
ited effective moral commitments to members of one’s own
kin, group, tribe, or nation—​and that these putative facts about
human evolutionary history significantly constrain the shape of
plausible moralities and the scope of other-​regarding concern.
This, in turn, is thought to suggest that cosmopolitan and other
inclusivist moral principles are not appropriate or realistic for be-
ings like us.
Stephen Asma, for instance, stresses the moral importance of
tribal biases, arguing that moral emotions “cannot stretch indef-
initely to cover the massive domain of strangers and nonhuman

  Personal communication; see also Chapter 1.

40

 Robert Boyd and Peter Richerson (1992), “Punishment Allows the

41

Evolution of Cooperation (or Anything Else) in Sizable Groups,” Ethology

and Sociobiology 13: 171–​195.
Is Evolved Human Nature an Obstacle to Moral Progress?  139
animals,” given that our other-​regarding dispositions were lim-
ited by evolutionary design to our “affective communities” of
kith and kin.42 U.S.  appellate judge and legal theorist Richard
Posner, in debates with moral philosopher and animal welfare
proponent Peter Singer, defends species-​based moral discrim-
inations by appealing to similar evolutionary considerations.43
International law theorists Jack Goldsmith and Eric Posner con-
tend that it is a mistake to try to create an international legal
order grounded in cosmopolitan moral principles because “we
should not expect individual altruism to extend to people who
are physically and culturally more distant”—​and they argue that
such biopsychological plausibility constraints on the moral ob-
ligations of individuals apply with equal force to institutions.44
Francis Fukuyama, a prominent conservative bioethicist and po-
litical theorist, holds that political orders and social norms must
be grounded in a substantive conception of human nature that
pays heed to our evolved biases toward kin and in-​group, as well
as to the evolutionarily evidenced limitations of our capacity
to sympathize with all human beings.45 Leading psychologist
Jonathan Haidt, who has stressed the moral psychological signif-
icance of in-​group loyalty, expresses a related view:

It would be nice to believe that we humans were designed to love

everyone unconditionally. Nice, but rather unlikely from an evolu-
tionary perspective. Parochial love—​love within groups—​amplified

42
  Stephen Asma, “The Myth of Universal Love,” New York Times, January
5, 2013; Stephen Asma, Against Fairness (University of Chicago Press, 2012,
pp. 45–​46).
43
 Richard Posner and Peter Singer, “Animal Rights:  A Debate,” Slate,
June 2001.
44
  Jack Goldsmith and Eric Posner, The Limits of International Law (Oxford
University Press, 2005, p. 212).
45
  Francis Fukuyama, Our Posthuman Future (Farrar, Straus and Giroux,
2002, pp. 127–​128).
140  Evolution and the Possibility of Moral Progress
by similarity, a sense of shared fate, and the suppression of free
riders, may be the most we can accomplish.46

Whether evolutionary limits on love significantly constrain mo-

rality depends, of course, on the extent to which behaving morally
toward others requires love. Although Haidt does not directly
address this question, his statement occurs within the context of
reflections on what we can expect by way of moral behavior, so
it seems fair to interpret him as suggesting that the character of
our evolved morality does not bode well for the possibility of
inclusivist morality.
Larry Arnhart, a proponent of the “Darwinian right,” goes
further in arguing that not only does an evolutionary perspective
on human nature bolster conservative views vis-​à-​vis the limita-
tions of human altruism but “we can judge political regimes as
better or worse depending on how well they satisfy the evolved
desires of human nature.”47 Thus, evoconservatives believe that
there are significant evolved psychological constraints on the
shape of human morality, that these constraints are essentially
fixed, and that they result in a scope of other-​regard that is effec-
tively restricted to in-​groups.
The chief “improvement” of evoconservatism over traditional
conservative philosophies is that it appeals to contemporary ev-
olutionary psychology to ground its empirical claims about the
moral limitations of human nature. Evoconservatives hold that
the content of morality—​in particular, the scope of moral duties
and the class of beings who are recognized as having moral
standing—​is severely constrained due to evolutionary history.
This in turn limits the set of social practices and institutions that
are feasible. Highly inclusivist social arrangements, such as an
international order exemplifying cosmopolitan principles of jus-
tice, would then be unattainable or at least unsustainable. The

46
 Haidt, Righteous Mind, supra note 3, p. 245.
47
  Larry Arnhart, Darwinian Conservatism (Imprint Academic, 2005, p. 84).
Is Evolved Human Nature an Obstacle to Moral Progress?  141
evoconservative lesson, then, is that attempts at moral reform
that pay inadequate heed to evolved constraints on human other-​
regard not only are ultimately futile but also proceed at great
peril since they are likely to destroy the value of existing moral
practices and the institutions grounded in them.
There is a much weaker evoconservative claim that might be
distinguished here. This weaker view holds that selectionist ex-
planations of morality imply limited sympathy or feelings of pos-
itive regard for distant strangers but that this psychological claim
in itself has no conservative political implications. That is to say,
it acknowledges that humans may develop effective institutions
and cultural practices that allow them to treat distant strangers as
being worthy of moral consideration, even equal consideration,
even if they are incapable of “loving” them (to use Haidt’s words)
or their compassion is attenuated under certain conditions, such
as mass-​scale humanitarian tragedies.48 In other words, social
practices and institutions may produce inclusivist morality, or
a broadened range of what Sober and Wilson have called “be-
havioral altruism,” without unlimited compassion or love. Some
of the writers discussed above (including Haidt) are unclear as
to whether they are only making the psychological claim or also
making the mistake of assuming that if the psychological claim
is true, then conservative moral or political conclusions follow.
Some, including Posner and Goldsmith, clearly make the mis-
taken inference from the former to the latter. As we will see, to do
so is to fail to appreciate how cultural developments, in particular
institutions, can expand our capacities for behavioral altruism
and shift human moral psychology in inclusivist directions.
The strong evolutionary constraints view has much more
radical implications than those who endorse it acknowledge. If
human morality is explainable according to the selectionist logic

48
  See D. Västfjäll, P. Slovic, M. Mayorga, and E. Peters (2014), “Compassion
Fade: Affect and Charity Are Greatest for a Single Child in Need,” PLOS One
9(6): 100115.
142  Evolution and the Possibility of Moral Progress
that evoconservatives endorse, then it is an understatement to
say that inclusivist morality is a nonstarter. It implies that the
scope of moral consideration tout court is very limited, not just
the scope of equal basic moral consideration. In other words, it
implies that is it implausible not only to expect people to regard
all human beings as worthy of equal basic moral consideration
but also to expect people to regard many human beings as worthy
of any moral consideration at all.
As the quotes above indicate, there is an unsatisfying vagueness
in the evoconservative stance. In fact, at least four evoconservative
claims can be distinguished.
1. Any “morality” that is inclusive is practically ineffective
and merely aspirational (because human moral emotions,
such as sympathy or love, are “hard-​wired” by evolution to
be quite limited in their scope).
2. Inclusivist elements of morality, to the extent that they
exist, are not durable (because the strong exclusivist, that is,
intragroup, nature of human moral responses will inevitably
undermine inclusivist developments).
3. The limits of inclusivist morality have already been reached
or soon will be (because we are already at or near the end of
the “evolutionary leash” on human culture).
4. Any effort to realize inclusivist ideals or norms will en-
counter serious resistance from the exclusivist tendencies
that were selected for in the remote human past (even if the
durability of such norms could be secured in theory).
We are sympathetic to the fourth evoconservative claim, albeit
with certain important qualifications that we will elaborate in
Chapter 7, where an alternative evolutionary model of moral psy-
chological development is outlined. But we hasten to add that the
fourth claim has no concrete practical implications for any partic-
ular inclusivist proposal for institutional reform or instance of in-
dividual moral development. It is one thing to say that those who
wish to expand the moral circle should recognize that what they
Is Evolved Human Nature an Obstacle to Moral Progress?  143
propose may go against the evolutionary psychological grain;
it is quite another to say that any particular move in the direc-
tion of greater inclusion is doomed to failure. If evoconservatism
were restricted to claim 4, it would not be a very interesting view.
It would be about as helpful as the warning to “proceed with
caution” in developing new technologies:  a trite admonition to
be mindful of risk that supplies no specific guidance as to when
risk is unacceptable or how to determine when risk is justified or
whether it might be mitigated.
Consequently, we will focus on claims (1), (2), and (3). It is
these assertions that make the evoconservative view interesting
and which, if true, make it a serious threat to the project of de-
veloping a theory of moral progress that gives a prominent place
to increases in inclusiveness. In the next chapter we provide a
systematic critique of all three evoconservative claims, thereby
clearing the way for a cogent naturalistic theory of moral prog-
ress along the dimension of inclusiveness.
Before doing so, however, it is important to bring to the fore
certain common misconceptions about adaptation that might
load the dice in favor of the strong evolutionary constraints
view. As we noted earlier, modern evolutionary science rejects
the Aristotelian notion that species’ natures, if these exist in any
meaningful sense, are fixed essences.49 However, the concept of
human nature operational in evolutionary moral psychology
gets its explanatory purchase only insofar as it takes human na-
ture to consist of a cluster of moral psychological traits that are
highly “developmentally canalized,” that is, robust across diverse
cultural contexts. Just how developmentally robust putative

49
  For philosophical analyses of the scientific utility of the concept of human
nature, compare David Hull (1986), “On Human Nature,” Proceedings of the
Philosophy of Science Association 2: 3–​13, and Tim Lewens, “Human Nature: The
Very Idea,” Philosophy & Technology 25(4): 459–​474, with Edouard Machery
(2008), “A Plea for Human Nature,” Philosophical Psychology 21:  321–​329,
and Grant Ramsey (2012), “Human Nature in a Post-​Essentialist World,”
Philosophy of Science 80(5): 983–​993.
144  Evolution and the Possibility of Moral Progress
elements of human moral nature are remains hotly contested.
Nevertheless, it is important to recognize that even if one can
establish that certain features of morality are adaptations, this
does not in itself tell us how malleable these features are. Some
plants, for example, have an adaptive propensity to grow tall in a
crowded forest but wide in an open field. Likewise, the fact that
some trait is an adaptation—​the result of selection acting on her-
itable variation—​does not imply that the trait is “innate” since
cultural evolution can produce adaptations that are transmitted
through mechanisms of social learning. By the same token, the
fact that certain features of moral psychology are innate (that
is, genetically prespecified) does not imply that they are unal-
terable or even difficult to modify through enculturation. The
amenability of a given trait to environmental alteration is a sepa-
rate contingent question from whether the trait is an adaptation,
whether it is innate, and whether it has a genetic or cultural basis
(or both).

The Received Evolutionary Account Supports a

“Strategic” Conception of Morality
The foregoing discussion shows that the received selectionist
explanation does not, in itself, make any explicit claims or li-
cense any strong inferences about constraints on the shape of
human morality. However, it could be read to suggest, in line
with the evoconservative inference, that the only sort of mo-
rality that humans are capable of engaging in, in any sustained
and robust way, is what we referred to in Part I  as morality
as cooperative group reciprocity—​or the strategic conception
of morality.50 Recall that according to morality as cooperative
group reciprocity theories, moral standing is something that
members of a cooperative group confer on one another—​and
only on one another. Individuals excluded from this reciprocal

50
  See David Gauthier, Morals by Agreement (Clarendon Press, 1989).
Is Evolved Human Nature an Obstacle to Moral Progress?  145
arrangement have no moral standing at all, and hence there are
no moral duties constraining how out-​group members should
be treated. Moral standing is conferred only on individuals who
can either disrupt or contribute to cooperation—​that is, on the
basis of “strategic capacities” relative to a cooperative scheme
(though this need not involve explicit strategic calculations in
every case). The strategic conception has a radical implication: it
denies moral standing to individuals of other groups, and to in-
dividuals within the group, if they lack the ability to harm or
benefit the group, as is the case with severely disabled individ-
uals; and it may relegate individuals with limited strategic ca-
pacities to lower moral statuses.
The strategic conception of morality neatly accords with,
and is arguably central to, evolutionary theories of morality. It
is not surprising, therefore, that evolutionary theorists have ex-
plicitly linked the selectionist account to a strategic, prudence-​
based theory of morality, such as that of David Gauthier.51
Prominent evolutionary theorists have argued that to under-
stand morality, one must view societies as populations of in-
dividuals seeking their own self-​interest.52 Even evolutionary
theorists who acknowledge that contemporary human mo-
rality is not confined solely to morality as cooperative group
reciprocity still view reciprocity relations and social coordina-
tion functions as dominating contemporary moral behavior.53
If they are right, then the possibilities for moral progress in
the form of inclusivity are severely limited because robustly
inclusive moralities do not make moral standing or status de-
pend upon cooperative group membership or the capacity to
reciprocate.

51
  For example, Kim Sterelny and Ben Fraser (2017). “Evolution and Moral
Realism,” The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 68(4): 981–​1006.
52
 Alexander, Biology of Moral Systems, supra note 8, p. 3.
53
 See, e.g., Joyce, The Evolution of Morality, supra note 1, c­hapter  4;
Gibbard, Wise Choices, Apt Feelings, supra note 3.
146  Evolution and the Possibility of Moral Progress
Why Accounts of Moral Progress That Simply Appeal
to Reasoning Are Inadequate
As we have seen, evoconservatives infer from prevailing evolu-
tionary accounts of morality that inclusivist moralities are not
psychologically feasible for beings like us—​ and that morally
progressive institutional reforms, such as an international order
reflecting cosmopolitan principles, are unrealistically utopian.54
Importantly, liberal proponents of moral progress have done
little to block this inference. In fact, some moral philosophers,
whom we dub “evoliberals,” have tacitly affirmed and reinforced
the evoconservative view. Evoliberals argue that if there is to be
significant progress in dealing with serious problems now facing
humanity, it will be necessary to undertake biomedical interven-
tions that enhance human moral capacities in order to remove or
at least relax evolved constraints on human moral nature.55 The
assumption here is that our evolved psychology is so morally
feeble, and in particular that the human capacity for other-​regard
is so limited, that the radical step of altering its biological basis
may be morally required. We will critique the evoliberal view in
the final chapter of this volume. Our point here is simply that
some liberal thinkers who discuss moral progress have accepted
key evoconservative assumptions.
Other recent discussions of moral progress, which tend to rely
heavily on the efficacy of moral reasoning, have done little to
deflect the evoconservative and evoliberal challenges to cultural
moral reform. Though improvements in moral reasoning are part
of the story (see Part III), focusing solely on reason ultimately
proves inadequate to the task of explaining how inclusivist moral
progress is possible, given the kinds of evolved beings that we

  Goldsmith and Posner, Limits of International Law, supra note 44.

54

  See Ingmar Persson and Julian Savulescu (2012), “Moral Enhancement,

55

Freedom and the God Machine,” Monist 95(3):  399–​ 421; Ingmar Persson
and Julian Savulescu, Unfit for the Future: The Need for Moral Enhancement
(Oxford University Press, 2011).
Is Evolved Human Nature an Obstacle to Moral Progress?  147
are. As we will show later, these explanatory deficits translate into
normative deficits:  an inadequate understanding of how moral
progress comes about supplies incomplete guidance for how to
sustain and achieve more of it.
Eminent evolutionists of the nineteenth and twentieth cen-
turies, such as Darwin, Huxley, and Simpson, believed that the
capacity for reason enabled human beings to escape their base bi-
ological natures. This view is echoed, albeit in more sophisticated
forms, by some contemporary moral and political philosophers.
For example, Peter Singer, whose view was discussed in detail in
Chapter  1, attributes the move toward greater inclusion to the
human capacity to reason to moral truths even when doing so is
not conducive to evolutionary fitness.56 We agree with Singer and
his collaborators that the capacity for reasoning will be an impor-
tant part of any adequate explanation of inclusivist moral prog-
ress. More specifically, such an explanation will assign a key role
to what we earlier called “open-​ended normativity”: the capacity
to make explicit the norms one has hitherto been following and
subject them to rational criticism and revision. One way this hap-
pens is that critical reflection leads to the recognition that ex-
isting norms are being applied inconsistently or are arbitrarily
restricted in their scope, which in turn provides reasons to revise
them.57 However, simply saying (as Singer does) that inclusivist

56
  K. D. Lazari-​Radek and Peter Singer (2012), “The Objectivity of Ethics
and the Unity of Practical Reason,” Ethics 123:  9–​ 31; Peter Singer, The
Expanding Circle: Ethics, Evolution, and Moral Progress (Princeton University
Press, 2011). Enlightenment thinkers (including the French encyclopedists) and
nineteenth-​century liberals who advanced doctrines of progress also exhibited
a rather naive faith in the efficacy of reason, without fully appreciating the need
to consider the particular social and other environmental factors that modulate
its exercise. John Stuart Mill, for example, appears to have put too much faith in
the efficacy of freedom of expression under conditions of widespread literacy,
not sufficiently appreciating the ways in which cultural forces (e.g., media) and
normal cognitive biases can interact to produce and disseminate false beliefs.
57
  For a pathbreaking analysis of how individuals come to realize that they
hold inconsistent views about the morality of particular behaviors and how
they come to resolve these inconsistencies in morally progressive ways, see
148  Evolution and the Possibility of Moral Progress
moral commitments are a product of reasoning is not a sufficient
basis on which to naturalize moral progress, for three reasons.
First, reasoning is much older than the emergence of inclusivist
morality, so reasoning alone is not sufficient for the emergence
of inclusivist morality. Again, this is not to deny that reasoning
is a crucial component of inclusivist trends—​it is, rather, to say
that the operation of reasoning of the right sort and on a suffi-
ciently large scale in the moral realm has only occurred under
some conditions, and Singer’s account is incomplete because it
fails to consider or spell out these conditions. To that extent, his
account has limited value both for explaining how moral progress
has occurred and for understanding how to sustain it.
Second, at present the penetrance of inclusivist morality is
quite uneven, with different human beings and different human
cultures exhibiting inclusivist commitments to a greater or lesser
degree; and yet there is no reason to believe that these interper-
sonal and intercultural differences in penetrance are the result of
populational differences in the general capacity for reasoning.
Third, the exercise of human reason can sometimes contribute
to expansions of the moral circle, but in other cases it plays a sig-
nificant role in contracting the circle in ways that lead to moral
regression. This occurs, for example, when people judge that
some human beings do not count morally on the basis of false
premises about natural differences between groups of humans
(such as blacks and whites, men and women, heterosexuals and
homosexuals) or due to mistaken ideas about which characteris-
tics qualify one for equal moral status or for moral standing more
generally. It also occurs when reasoning is used in an ad hoc or
confabulatory way to justify pre-​existing moral judgments that
are motivated by negative affects like disgust, fear, or distrust.58

Richmond Campbell and Victor Kumar (2012), “Moral Reasoning on the

Ground,” Ethics 122(2): 273–​312.
58
  Jonathan Haidt (2001), “The Emotional Dog and Its Rational Tail: A Social
Intuitionist Approach to Moral Judgment,” Psychological Review 108: 814–​834.
Is Evolved Human Nature an Obstacle to Moral Progress?  149
Thus, while Singer is right to say that reasoning plays an im-
portant role in the development of more inclusive moral com-
mitments, he lacks an account of the developmental conditions
under which the right sort of reasoning occurs and is likely to be-
come sufficiently pervasive to result in large-​scale moral progress
notwithstanding resistance from evolved exclusivist tendencies.
He also lacks an account of why the capacity for reasoning has
often failed to be exercised in such a way as to achieve greater
inclusiveness.
Just as reasoning functions differently in different social en-
vironments, so too does the capacity for self-​ scrutiny that
open-​ended normativity requires. Chapter  1 discussed Michele
Moody-​Adams’s argument that a precondition for moral prog-
ress is that individuals be in a position to scrutinize their own
values and the social practices that implement them: “One of the
most important tasks of constructive moral inquiry,” she argues,
“is to  .  . . break down the common human resistance to self-​
scrutiny.”59 However, she does not specify or even indicate the
conditions under which this breakdown in the resistance to self-​
scrutiny is likely to occur or under which self-​scrutiny dimin-
ishes; and thus, her explanation of moral progress, like Singer’s
appeal to reason, is incomplete.
Richmond Campbell and Victor Kumar advance a much more
detailed, illuminating, and empirically grounded account of one
kind of reasoning that can result in moral progress: the identifica-
tion and resolution of inconsistent moral responses, which they
argue occurs through the interaction of intuitive and deliberative
systems that guide moral judgment.60 But like Singer and Moody-​
Adams, they do not explain the conditions under which this is

59
 Michele Moody-​ Adams (1999), “The Idea of Moral Progress,”
Metaphilosophy 30(3): 168–​185, p. 175.
60
  Campbell and Kumar, “Moral Reasoning on the Ground,” supra note 57.
They argue that in contrast to deductive reasoning from principles, moral in-
consistency reasoning is a dedicated moral system that emanates from distinct
cognitive-​affective pathways (p. 296).
150  Evolution and the Possibility of Moral Progress
likely to occur, so their view, too, is insufficiently naturalized.
Nor do they provide an account of why people, and even en-
tire cultures, can fail to identify moral inconsistencies or to work
through them rationally but instead employ various cognitive-​
affective strategies to minimize the dissonance that arises from
exposure to logically contradictory information without re-
vising their pre-​existing beliefs. As an instance of the latter, all
too common phenomenon, consider the following case. In the
racist culture of the American South, it was commonly thought
that blacks were of inferior intelligence. When confronted with
a black person who clearly showed high intelligence, there was a
ready strategy for resolving the contradiction—​not by discarding
or reducing confidence in the generalization about the intelligence
of blacks but by explaining away the apparently disconfirming
case:  it was said that the black person in question “must have
some White blood.”61 This was a gross failure of moral consist-
ency reasoning among people who possessed normal capacities
for reasoning.
Contemporary philosophical theories of how moral prog-
ress occurs, which tend to lean heavily on the efficacy of moral
reasoning, are inadequate—​not because moral reasoning is un-
important in driving moral progress (it is very important) but
because such theories fail to identify the circumstances under
which moral reasoning is likely to contribute to inclusivist moral
progress. More importantly, such theories have not provided an
empirically grounded account of the general conditions under
which moral progress is likely to occur and to be sustainable. As
a result, they fail to rebuff conservative charges that certain types
of moral progress are not realistic for beings like us. Moreover,

61
  This example is drawn from the personal experience of one of the authors,
but this sort of cognitive dissonance resolution, which accounts for the resil-
ience of false beliefs about out-​group individuals, is familiar to those acquainted
with the racist culture of the American South as it existed well into the twen-
tieth century.
Is Evolved Human Nature an Obstacle to Moral Progress?  151
they fail to take seriously enough the conservative claim that
moral reasoning in itself has limited causal efficacy in driving
moral progress. We have in mind a more optimistic picture of the
role of moral reasoning than conservative thinkers tend to paint.
Nevertheless, to focus on moral reasoning while neglecting the
biological and social conditions under which moral reasoning can
flourish, as liberal theorists have been wont to do, is to gloss over
explanatory components that are crucial to any genuinely natu-
ralistic theory of moral progress.
In sum, a naturalistic account of how inclusive moral commit-
ments emerge despite the evolved parochiality of human moral
emotions, judgments, and norms cannot simply appeal solely to
capacities for reason or self-​scrutiny or to strategic self-​serving
relations between groups. It must identify the conditions under
which reasoning capacities are exercised in such a way as to foster
inclusivist commitments even in the absence of strategic motiva-
tions.62 This, in turn, requires understanding how the capacity
for cultural innovations can create moral developmental envi-
ronments in which valid moral reasoning and self-​scrutiny can
flourish—​and how this cultural scaffolding can be dismantled in
ways that lead to moral regression.
To be fair, current philosophical theories of inclusivist moral
progress do not purport to offer complete explanations—​and,
like them, we make no pretentions of doing so. Our aim, how-
ever, is not merely to plug explanatory gaps in existing theories
of moral progress by providing supplementary empirical details.
Rather, it is to sketch a model of inclusivist moral progress that
not only is consistent with but affirmatively draws upon and

62
 One might assert that inclusivist morality is a dispositional trait that
humans have long (or always) possessed but that the conditions necessary for
its expression only manifested quite recently in human history. Even if one
were content to describe such highly flexible, nonselected behaviors as condi-
tionally expressed traits (which we are not), our point is that any naturalized
account of inclusivist moral progress would need to identify the difference-​
making conditions for their expression.
152  Evolution and the Possibility of Moral Progress
unifies current biological and social scientific understandings of
moral psychology and culture.
This chapter has articulated both the evoconservative view and
the evolutionary account of the origins of human morality on
which it is premised. The next chapter argues that evolutionary
explanations of morality are limited in certain crucial respects
that make the pessimistic inferences that evoconservatives draw
from it invalid. More specifically, it argues that the received ev-
olutionary explanation of morality cannot account for robustly
inclusivist features of contemporary human morality and that
this “inclusivist anomaly” indicates that the strong evolutionary
moral constraints view is mistaken.
 CHAPTER 5

The Inclusivist Anomaly and the Limits

of Evolutionary Explanation

One major flaw in the evoconservative appeal to evolutionary

theory is that contemporary morality, as experienced and
exhibited by significant numbers of people and embodied in so-
cial practices and institutions, is strikingly more inclusive than
one would expect if selectionist explanations were the whole
story, or even most of it. In other words, from a selectionist per-
spective, inclusivity is highly anomalous. This chapter will first
highlight four aspects of this inclusivity, drawing upon empirical
evidence that strongly suggests that inclusivist morality is not a
rare, exceptional, or merely academic phenomenon. It will then
show that none of these aspects can be explained by the received
selectionist account of the origins of morality or by alternative
evolutionary accounts.

The Inclusivist Anomaly

The first feature of contemporary human morality that is anom-
alous from the standpoint of the received evolutionary account
of morality is that significant numbers of people now regard at
least some non-​human animals as proper subjects of moral con-
sideration; that is, they believe that there are moral constraints
on how we are to treat animals, constraints that do not derive
154  Evolution and the Possibility of Moral Progress
from contingent human interests or sensitivities. There remains,
of course, much disagreement over precisely what treatment is
due certain non-​human animals and from what moral princi-
ples such obligations are derived. However, there is an increas-
ingly broad-​based consensus in developed countries that animal
cruelty is a wrong to animals qua moral subjects in their own
right1—​a moral judgment that is increasingly enshrined in the
laws of developed nations. Animal blood sports are widely il-
legal and seriously punishable, and there are significant, institu-
tionalized constraints on the use of certain non-​human animals
in medical experimentation—​with some uses, such as research on
great apes, having been prohibited categorically because of the
high subject-​centered moral status that is attributed to these an-
imals. Further, considerable efforts, involving significant finan-
cial costs, have been made toward reducing the pain, fear, and
anxiety to which food animals are subjected during the process
of killing them.2 The best explanation of such laws is that they
reflect a relatively recent sea change in the moral commitments
of significant numbers of people—​enough people to ensure that
they were enacted and implemented in spite of the opposition to
them on the part of those whose economic or other interests they
adversely affect and in spite of the fact that they do not serve the
nonmoral interests of those who support them. The financial cost
of enforcing laws for the better treatment of non-​human animals
is considerable, and the willingness of the public to bear it cannot
be explained in terms of strategic self-​interest.
Second, many people regard valid moral norms as
universalizable; that is, they believe it is incorrect to say, for ex-
ample, that X is permissible for me but not for you, for blacks but
not for whites, or for men but not for women—​without adducing

1
  David DeGrazia (2009), “Moral Vegetarianism from a Very Broad Basis,”
Journal of Moral Philosophy 6: 143–​165.
2
  See, e.g., U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Library, Humane
Slaughter Act (2014).
 The Limits of Evolutionary Explanation  155
a morally relevant difference-​making feature. Importantly, be-
longing to or identifying with a particular group, such as a race,
gender, religion, or ethnicity, is widely and increasingly held not
to be an acceptable difference-​maker when it comes to ascrip-
tions of moral status, including political and civil rights.3 In the
United States, for example, there is “near universal endorsement
of the principle of racial equality as a core cultural value,”4 even if
implicit forms of prejudice and stereotype remain pervasive and
explicitly racist attitudes are still prevalent in certain subpopula-
tions. One psychological review of the shift toward egalitarian
norms concludes:  “the single clearest trend in studies of racial
attitudes has involved a steady and sweeping movement toward
general endorsement of the principles of racial equality and inte-
gration.”5 Furthermore, this commitment to equality is widely
institutionalized in laws and policies prohibiting racial, ethnic,
and gender discrimination; and here, too, the social resources de-
voted to enforcement are substantial.
Third, there is the culture of human rights: many people now
recognize that all human beings ought morally to be treated in
certain ways by their own governments, irrespective of whether
there are local laws in place that protect their rights and irrespec-
tive of the contingent strategic properties that people possess.
This is the foundation of “cosmopolitan moral principles,” that
is, principles that accord an equal basic moral status to all human
beings, irrespective of group membership and strategic capacities.

3
 For a discussion, see Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature
(Viking, 2011, ­chapter 7).
4
 A. Pearson, J. F. Dovidio, and S. L. Gaertner (2009), “The Nature
of Contemporary Prejudice:  Insights from Aversive Racism,” Social and
Personality Psychology Compass 3: 314–​338, p. 314; see also J. F. Dovidio and S.
L. Gaertner, “Aversive Racism,” in M. P. Zanna (ed.), Advances in Experimental
Social Psychology, v. 36 (Academic Press, 2004, pp. 1–​51).
5
 Lawrence Bobo, “Racial Attitudes and Relations at the Close of the
Twentieth Century,” in N. J. Smelser, W. J. Wilson, and F. M. Mitchell (eds.),
Racial Trends and Their Consequences, v.  1 (National Academy Press, 2001,
pp. 264–​301, 269).
156  Evolution and the Possibility of Moral Progress
These principles have been codified in international human rights
law, which has been incorporated into the domestic law of, and
legally binds, over two hundred nations. Although enforcement
of human rights by international institutions is weak, there is
substantial enforcement through domestic courts in a growing
number of countries.
Further, there are substantial pressures for compliance
with cosmopolitan moral principles other than the threat of
enforcement—​from the “naming and shaming” of governments
concerned with their reputations to making membership in desir-
able trade regimes and military alliances as well as access to loans
and credits conditional on human rights performance. There is
now a large, growing, and methodologically sophisticated litera-
ture showing that the contemporary international human rights
regime has significant, measurable positive effects on the behavior
of some states.6 The concept of basic inalienable rights, which not
only has been at the core of modern human rights practice since
its inception but also has served as the bedrock of modern consti-
tutional democracy as well as the motivation for the anti-​torture,
abolitionist, and decolonization movements,7 is an affirmation of
the equal status of all people regardless of their group member-
ship and independent of any benefits they confer or threats they
pose to cooperation—​and thus constitutes an explicit rejection of
cooperative group reciprocity-​based theories of morality.
Fourth is the emergence of a subject-​centered morality that
compels us to recognize the moral standing of individuals who

6
 See, e.g., R. Goodman and D. Jinks, Socializing States:  Promoting
Human Rights Through International Law (Oxford University Press, 2013);
K. Alter, The New Terrain of International Law:  Courts, Politics, Rights
(Princeton University Press, 2014); B. Simmons, Mobilizing for Human
Rights:  International Law in Domestic Politics (Cambridge University
Press, 2009); T. Risse, S. Ropp, and K. Sikkink, eds., The Power of Human
Rights:  International Norms and Domestic Change (Cambridge University
Press, 1999).
7
  See Allen Buchanan (2012), “The Egalitarianism of Human Rights,” Ethics
120(4): 679–​710.
 The Limits of Evolutionary Explanation  157
pose no threat to us or who do not contribute to cooperative
goods. Even if a vulnerable minority group or gender can safely
be exploited or oppressed without incurring any long-​term risks
to the majority group, it is widely held that such treatment is in-
consistent with the moral status of those individuals. Likewise,
it is widely held that persons who lack strategic capacities, such
as severely disabled individuals, may not justly be denied access
to social resources or excluded from the class of beings that are
proper subjects of moral concern. Here, too, the change is not
merely in professed beliefs but also in behavior: in many countries
there is a considerable expenditure of resources to implement the
legal rights of people with intellectual and developmental disabil-
ities, the elderly, and other vulnerable persons, even in the face of
significant economic strains.8
There is another type of evidence that indicates that inclusivist
morality actually exists:  data showing significant voluntary ef-
forts by private (nongovernmental) organizations and individuals
to improve the condition of the world’s neediest people, not-
withstanding a slumping global economy9—​with average global
rates of individuals aiding strangers approaching 50  percent.10
Although government-​ to-​
government humanitarian aid may
often be motivated by perceived state interest (in reputation or
more tangible geopolitical or economic gains), private giving to
strangers is much more likely to be a genuine expression of non-
instrumental concern. Subject-​centered moral consideration for
strangers and non-​human animals also fuels the growing demand

8
 For figures, see United Cerebral Palsy Report, The Case for Inclusion
(2014),   http:// ​ u cp.org/​ t he-​ c ase-​ f or-​ i nclusion/​ p ast-​ r eports/​ C ase_​ F or_​
Inclusion_​Report_​2014.pdf.
9
  See Gallup News Service, Gallup Poll Social Series: Lifestyle (Princeton,
2013); Chronicle of Philanthropy, How America Gives (Washington,
DC, 2012), https://www.philanthropy.com/specialreport/special-report-how
-america-gi/154.
10
 Charities Aid Foundation. World Giving Index:  A Global View of
Giving Trends (2013), https://​www.cafonline.org/​about-​us/​publications/​
2013-​publications/​world-​giving-​index-​2013.
158  Evolution and the Possibility of Moral Progress
for “ethically sourced” goods and services, with a level of support
that is sufficient to prompt a global corporate response to meet
these non-​instrumental consumer concerns.
The best explanation for the constellation of considered judg-
ments that underlie all of these social changes is that substan-
tial numbers of people now believe that the moral worth of
human beings and some non-​human animals derives from prop-
erties other than their strategic capacities. The third feature—​the
emergence of human rights culture—​can be seen as an explicit
shift from a cooperative group reciprocity morality to subject-​
centered morality. As we will explore more fully in Chapter  9,
the preambles of some human rights treaties state that these rights
are grounded in the “dignity” of the human individual; but some
human rights theorists find the notion of dignity fuzzy or unin-
formative and opt instead for practical rationality or responsive-
ness to reasons, or the capacity to participate in an interpersonal
process of giving and accepting reasons for conduct. What these
different approaches have in common is a rejection of the idea
that moral status and more specifically the possession of human
rights depends upon the possession of strategic properties or
membership in some particular human group.

Morality Is Not Like a Moth’s Proboscis

Recall that the received adaptationist explanation takes morality
to be straightforwardly functional. According to the prevailing
evolutionary account, morality evolved in order to solve a so-
cial coordination problem, just as a pollinating moth’s proboscis
was “engineered” by natural selection to solve a flower nectar
extraction problem. We think that none of the above inclusivist
features of contemporary morality can plausibly be explained in
standard selectionist terms, that is, as adaptations or predictable
expressions of adaptive features that arose in the environment of
evolutionary adaptation (EEA) and that were designed to solve a
particular ecological design problem.
 The Limits of Evolutionary Explanation  159
The survival of human groups in the late Pleistocene and early
Holocene depended crucially on the exploitation of animals,
which clearly lack strategic capacities. Early human groups that
treated non-​human animals as subjects of moral worth would
have paid a high fitness price, for this would have placed severe
restrictions on the exploitation of animals for protein and other
valuable materials like skin and bone, as well as for their working
capacities, including their use as beasts of burden. This would
have been particularly true for nomadic hunter–​pastoralist tribes
and other post-​Neolithic populations that relied increasingly on
domesticated animals for their subsistence. Competition among
these groups would have placed a fitness premium on maximizing
control over animal domesticates and their life cycles.
Similarly, the tendency to universalize moral judgments may
have been adaptive if it were restricted to members of one’s own
group, along the lines discussed above; but it is hard to see how
the tendency to universalize would have contributed to a group’s
survival if it were extended to out-​group individuals regardless of
their strategic capacities. Doing so would have had two negative
consequences: first, it would have made the group vulnerable to
predation by groups that did not acknowledge that moral judg-
ments or norms should be universalizable and, second, it would
have limited the group’s ability to exploit other vulnerable groups
in fitness-​enhancing ways.
Nor is the core commitment of human rights culture—​the be-
lief that every human being has certain basic moral entitlements—​
something that is explainable in terms of morality as cooperative
group reciprocity. Especially in cases of armed conflict, but in
many other kinds of interactions as well, groups that honor
the commitment to human rights (which prohibits a no-​holds-​
barred approach to conflict) may be disadvantaged, rather than
advantaged, in fitness terms. The fact that nations could enhance
their overall productivity by oppressing certain groups or by
withdrawing basic measures of support for, say, certain disabled
individuals or children is not considered a morally acceptable
160  Evolution and the Possibility of Moral Progress
reason for doing so. Thus, unlike morality in the form of coop-
erative group reciprocity, which fits quite naturally with evolu-
tionary theory, subject-​centered morality comes with attendant
fitness costs that are difficult to explain on standard evolutionary
accounts.
So far we have shown that inclusivist moral commitments
cannot plausibly be explained as adaptations derived in the EEA.
Could they instead be explained as cultural adaptations to design
problems posed by more recent human ecological environments?
Consider, for instance, the view that the social environment has
changed so profoundly, due to the increasing interconnectedness
of human communities, that a more inclusive morality is actually
a group-​beneficial trait and, further, that the spread of inclusivist
moralities in recent human populations is due to the advantages
or fitness benefits they conferred. If that were true, then the
inclusivist anomaly would vanish.
Philip Kitcher appears to favor such a view.11 As we saw in
Chapter 2, Kitcher holds that the function of ethics is to replace
altruism failures with behavioral altruism and that this replace-
ment is constitutive of moral progress. We and other scholars
have interpreted this to mean that moral progress occurs when
altruism problems are solved in ways that are mutually beneficial
to the parties whose interests are in conflict.12 Thus, Kitcher ap-
parently believes that moral progress is achieved only when mo-
rality as cooperative group reciprocity enables humans to expand
the circle of cooperators to include previously excluded strategic
partners.13 It is important to note that on this interpretation of
Kitcher many of the putative achievements of subject-​centered
morality, such as basic rights for persons with disabilities or very
young children, will not count as instances of moral progress.

11
  Philip Kitcher, The Ethical Project (Harvard University Press, 2011).
12
  E.g., William FitzPatrick (2012), “Review of Philip Kitcher’s The Ethical
Project,” Ethics 123(1): 167–​174.
13
 Kitcher, The Ethical Project, supra note 11, pp. 236, 307.
 The Limits of Evolutionary Explanation  161
This is because such moral inclusions do not avoid fitness costs or
involve mutual benefits as they do not implicate a group of per-
sons who would, if treated well, contribute to the net cooperative
good or, if treated poorly, undermine it.
Our claim that Kitcher’s account of moral progress is focused
problematically on morality as cooperative group reciprocity is
bolstered by the fact that he argues that in the current environ-
ment the costs that arise from social practices and institutions
that disregard the interests of some of the world’s population
are so severe that a more cosmopolitan morality is actually pru-
dential. Emphasizing the strategic capacities of oppressed and
marginalized groups, he contends that inegalitarian distributions
cannot be long maintained “given the technological possibilities
for violent retaliation now increasingly available to the poor and
oppressed.”14 Kitcher thus appears to argue that recent expan-
sions of our moral circle are due to the presence of ecological
conditions that make such expansions fitness-​enhancing or oth-
erwise advantageous.
There are two problems with this view. First, it clearly cannot
account for one dramatic departure from morality as cooperative
group reciprocity: the growing recognition that there are moral
constraints on our treatment of non-​human animals that lack stra-
tegic capacities and whose unrestrained exploitation continues to
have advantages (e.g., economic). Indeed, Kitcher recognizes the
difficulty that the animal ethics movement poses for his function-
alist account of moral progress,15 and he attempts to resolve this
difficulty by suggesting that animal domestication has created an
expanded, cooperative society that now includes non-​human an-
imals whose interests we have come to endorse. All of this sug-
gests that Kitcher’s conception of the “ethical project” is more
closely bound to cooperative groups than he has acknowledged.

14
  Ibid., p. 311.
15
  Ibid., pp. 306–​307.
162  Evolution and the Possibility of Moral Progress
Second, under present and foreseeable conditions, the costs
of social practices and institutions that discount or disregard
the interests of the world’s worst-​off people fall disproportion-
ately on the world’s worst-​off. It hardly seems likely that the
richest societies are suffering any major disadvantages or a loss
of reproductive fitness (whether biological or cultural) because
of their support for the deeply inegalitarian global order. One
might argue that the exploitation of vulnerable populations could
lead to terrorism and other forms of “blowback” against pow-
erful nations—​and that this gives powerful nations a wholly self-​
interested reason not to exploit vulnerable peoples but rather to
bring them into the cooperative fold. But the empirical linkages
here are too dubious and contingent to ground a global expan-
sion of the moral circle. As we noted earlier, it is a sad fact that
exploited groups often are unable to make life for the exploiters
unpleasant enough to effect change.
Thus, inclusivist morality is not merely a “scaled up” contem-
porary version of the strategic, cooperative group–​restricted mo-
rality that arose in the EEA. While some types of cooperation
may be explained as the result of stable, self-​interested solutions
to coordination problems, much of human morality, in partic-
ular the putatively progressive changes that we have pointed to,
cannot plausibly be explained in this way. Inclusivist shifts do
not amount to moving from a suboptimal Nash equilibrium to
a universally preferred one. Game theoretic work on morality is
operating, like much of the evolutionary literature, with the very
strategic conception of morality that represents an impoverished
view of what morality can and now does encompass.
It is important to note that even if inclusivist morality could be
explained as a cultural adaptation to more recent social environ-
ments, this would do little to support the evoconservative argu-
ment, for it would imply that moral inclusivity is limited not by a
rigid, evolved moral psychology but rather by ecological circum-
stances that make it beneficial—​which leaves open the possibility
of further expansions of the moral circle when the right sorts of
 The Limits of Evolutionary Explanation  163
ecological conditions are “naturally” present or can be engineered
with moral goals in mind. In sum, standard selectionist explana-
tions of morality not only fail to cite ecological conditions and
selection pressures that can explain these inclusivist features of
modern morality; they also render them inexplicable.16

Morality Is Not Like a Peacock’s Tail

Another potential, if highly implausible, adaptationist explana-
tion of inclusivist moral features appeals to principles of mate
selection, especially the so-​called evolutionary handicap prin-
ciple.17 The theory underlying the handicap principle is that
certain “ornamental” traits and behaviors—​such as a peacock’s
tail or a bowerbird’s elaborate constructions—​can be explained
as hard-​to-​fake signals of vigor. Such traits necessarily handicap
their bearer’s chance of survival by, for example, increasing the
chances that they will be spotted by predators or reducing the
time they can allocate to foraging. The fact that the trait’s bearer
can thrive despite the handicap indicates exceptional survival and
reproductive capacities, and thus the trait evolves in tandem with
mate preferences of the opposite sex, in some cases to morpho-
logical extremes.
Applied here, the sexual selection theory would postulate that
inclusivist moral behavior amounts to hard-​to-​fake signals of
vigor (akin to a peacock’s tail) that are appealing to the opposite
sex and that spread through the population due to their effects on
mating success. In what way does inclusivist morality handicap its
bearers? The idea would be that inclusivist moral response entails
doling out “excessive” doses of altruism in a way that is analo-
gous to conspicuous consumption, which, like the bowerbird’s

16
 Cf. K. D. Lazari-​Radek and Peter Singer (2012), “The Objectivity of
Ethics and the Unity of Practical Reason,” Ethics 123: 9–​31.
17
 A. Zahavi and A. Zahavi, The Handicap Principle:  A Missing Piece of
Darwin’s Puzzle (Oxford University Press, 1997).
164  Evolution and the Possibility of Moral Progress
bower and some types of helping behavior in birds, indicates
that the individuals’ survival and reproductive capacities are so
formidable that they have altruism to spare. To make this case,
one would need to show that (1) culturally acquiring inclusivist
moral traits supplies an advantage in sexual competition that
outweighs its straightforward costs to fitness outside of the
mating context and (2) this advantage has resulted in the pro-
liferation of these traits in human populations. It is difficult
enough to demonstrate these effects in the context of Veblen
or positional goods18—​in the case of inclusivist moral norms,
neither of these extravagant claims seems plausible enough to
warrant serious consideration.

Morality Is Not Like a Hyena’s Clitoris

Even if standard selectionist explanations of inclusivist morality
fail, the latter could still be afforded an evolutionary explanation
if it can be shown to be a byproduct of other adaptive features.
For instance, some theorists argue that cultural moral norms,
such as the incest taboo, are not objects of selection in their own
right but incidental byproducts of disgust reactions and other
moral sentiments.19 In this section we will consider whether
inclusivist morality can be given an evolutionary byproduct ex-
planation and, if so, whether this might have any evoconservative
implications.
We will consider three types of byproduct explanation that
might be put forward to account for inclusivist morality. The par-
adigmatic byproduct explanation is what may be called a “causal
byproduct explanation.” This describes the scenario in which one
trait is causally linked to another trait that is selected for, thereby

18
 Geoffrey Miller (2007), “Sex Selection for Moral Virtues,” Quarterly
Review of Biology 82(2): 97–​125.
19
 Ibid.
 The Limits of Evolutionary Explanation  165
“hitchhiking” its way to populational prominence. Functionless
trait X is an evolutionary causal byproduct of adaptive feature Y
only if X is causally related to Y such that when Y is selected for,
X reliably accompanies it. The term “byproduct” is often used in
the evolutionary psychological literature as a catchall for any trait
that cannot be given a plausible selectionist explanation,20 such as
art, music, and science. However, a causal byproduct explanation
must do more than simply show that some other type of explana-
tion is implausible; it must provide a positive account that meets
the standards of adequacy for scientific explanation.
In their famous architectural spandrel analogy, Gould and
Lewontin compared (initially) functionless byproducts to the un-
avoidable, roughly triangular, geometric space created by resting
a dome on top of contiguous arches.21 A “spandrel” in the evo-
lutionary sense is any necessary, predictable side consequence of
selection for another trait, be it genetic, structural, physiological,
cognitive, or behavioral.22 A classic example relates to the large
and fully erectile clitoris of the female spotted hyena, which is
comparable in size to the male counterpart’s penis and is explained
as a byproduct of selection for increased aggression.23 The causal
pathway from adaptation to byproduct is postulated to run as fol-
lows: female hyenas that are more aggressive tend to be socially
dominant and thus able to commandeer more resources for their
offspring; consequently, hyena populations experienced selection
for increased female aggression; increased aggression in mammals
is typically produced by increasing levels of testosterone; and a

20
  See David Buss et al. (1998), “Adaptations, Exaptations, and Spandrels,”
American Psychologist 53(5): 533–​548.
21
 Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin (1979), “The Spandrels of
St. Marcos and the Panglossian Paradigm:  A Critique of the Adaptationist
Programme,” Proceeding of the Royal Society of London B 205: 581–​598.
22
 Stephen Jay Gould (1997), “The Exaptive Excellence of Spandrels as a
Term and Prototype,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA
94: 10750–​10755.
23
 Stephen Jay Gould, Hen’s Teeth and Horse’s Toes (W.W. Norton &
Co., 1983).
166  Evolution and the Possibility of Moral Progress
direct side effect of increased levels of testosterone in females is
an enlarged clitoris. Here, the same reasonably well-​understood
proximate mechanisms that produce the underlying adaptation
(aggression dominance) are also shown to reliably produce the
byproduct (a hypertrophied clitoris).
So far as we are aware, no one has so much as sketched in the
broadest of outlines such a causal pathway in the case of any di-
mension of inclusivist morality. Just as altruism is not an una-
voidable byproduct of nepotism (altruism is rare in the animal
world, but nepotism is common), inclusivist morality is not an
unavoidable byproduct of exclusivist (group-​ restricted) mo-
rality. Indeed, humans were perfectly capable, for hundreds of
thousands of years, of restricting the universalizability of their
moral judgments to members of their own group. In the absence
of such a description of the relevant causal connections, there is
no basis to reach any evoconservative conclusions about the du-
rability or potential scope of moral inclusivity.
More importantly, even if we set aside the matter of causal
linkages, inclusivist moral features are not plausible candidates
for byproduct explanation because they have not reliably ac-
companied any of the putatively relevant adaptations thought to
have arisen in the EEA. For tens or hundreds of thousands of
years, human beings possessed the whole suite of cognitive and
emotional adaptations that plausibly underpin morality—​such
as capacities for norm-​following, perspective-​taking, preference
for consistency in belief, and the parochial altruism character-
istic of group-​restricted morality. And yet very few human be-
ings exhibited anything approaching the full suite of inclusivist
moral features that now characterize morality for many people
today until very recently in human history. Further, there are
still many people, and even entire cultural groups, whose mo-
rality lacks one or more of the above inclusivist features. This
time lag problem is fatal to the causal byproduct explanation,
for it shows that inclusivist morality is not a “necessary,” “inev-
itable,” “predictable,” “enjoined,” or even “highly likely” result
 The Limits of Evolutionary Explanation  167
of selection for group-​restricted morality or any other adaptation
listed above, and thus is not amenable to the causal byproduct
explanation. Just imagine a similar pattern in the context of a
paradigmatic byproduct explanation, such as the hyena’s clitoris
discussed above:  if there was a 100,000-​year temporal gap be-
tween increased hyena aggression and clitoral enlargement, this
would completely vitiate the byproduct explanation as selection
for increased aggression would no longer be sufficient for, or
confer a high probability on, the hypertrophied clitoris.
That said, a time lag between the origin of a trait and the emer-
gence of its putative byproduct is not inherently fatal to by-
product explanation. It is perfectly plausible that cases could be
identified in which a change in some environmental variable (e.g.,
temperature or atmospheric oxygen levels) is necessary before the
byproduct can emerge. Such causal patterns are actually common
in macroevolution, where innovations arise and are often present
for some time in a lineage before they have major evolutionary
effects. Nevertheless, the onus is on the proponent of the time lag
byproduct explanation to provide a plausible, evidenced account
of what the lagging environmental factor is—​and no such mech-
anism has been proposed to explain the origin of inclusivist mo-
rality. Later, we will argue that it is not an accident that some of
the most dramatic instances of moral progress occurred relatively
recently in human history, but our account will not show the ca-
pacities that enabled them to be causal byproducts of adaptations.
Accounts of evolutionary explanation that advert to difference-​
making causes fare no better. Events may have many causes, but
only certain causes are “difference-​makers”—​causes that explain
some particular variation across a population of outcomes. In the
present context, we want to ask:  why do humans increasingly
exhibit inclusivist morality rather than more truncated forms
of morality? The evolution of basic moral capacities may be a
precondition for the more recent emergence of inclusivist moral
features in the human lineage, but this is a far cry from an ex-
planation. The existence of basic moral adaptations may help to
168  Evolution and the Possibility of Moral Progress
explain why humans exhibit inclusivist moral features while, say,
chimps (assuming they lack basic moral adaptations) do not; but
this does not explain why some behaviorally modern humans ex-
hibit inclusivist moral features while other behaviorally modern
humans do not since both possess basic moral adaptations.
Whatever the crucial difference-​makers here might be, they will
not be evolved psychological capacities.
A second type of byproduct explanation involves selection for
some generic or overarching capacity, which in turn enables the
development of some lower-​level or nested capacity. For instance,
one might describe astrophysics as a byproduct of selection for
symbolic thought (which is often thought to be associated with
the evolution of language). In the case of inclusivist morality, the
claim would be that a range of generic adaptive capacities, such
as reasoning, theory of mind, norm-​following, and so on, in con-
junction with as-​ yet-​unspecified sociocultural circumstances,
combine to produce inclusivist morality as a byproduct.
In The Descent of Man, Darwin not only offered a proto–​group
selectionist account of the origins of altruism and moral virtue,
which presupposed an environment of intergroup conflict,24 but
also advanced what appears to be a generic byproduct theory of
expansive other-​regard:

As man advances in civilization, and small tribes are united into

larger communities, the simplest reason would tell each individual
that he ought to extend his social instincts and sympathies to all
the members of the same nation, though personally unknown to
him. This point being once reached, there is only an artificial bar-
rier to prevent his sympathies extending to the men of all nations
and races.25

24
 Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex
(John Murray, 1871, pp. 155–​156).
25
  Ibid., p. 122.
 The Limits of Evolutionary Explanation  169
On Darwin’s account, sympathy for one’s kin and kith may be
adaptive, but the expansion of moral sentiments beyond the
group to all human beings is a product not of selection but of
logical extension. Notice that there is no suggestion of a causal
byproduct explanation in Darwin’s remark. Instead, he suggests
that the extension of regard beyond the narrow confines of the
tribe is a result of the operation of reason combined with the
human capacity to reflect on the norms we now follow, conclude
that their scope is arbitrarily restricted, and then be motivated to
act on less restrictive norms.
The first thing to note about this type of byproduct explanation
is that, unlike its paradigmatic counterpart, it is not much of an
explanation at all. In hinting at the open-​ended nature of morality,
Darwin may be gesturing in the right direction; but without fill­
ing in the crucial social, historical, and psychological details, the
proposed generic capacities only make the explanandum possible
but not likely and fail to pick out causal difference-​makers (evolu-
tionary or otherwise) that explain why some human populations
developed inclusivist moral features while others did not. But
even if one finds this type of byproduct explanation adequate,
the generic capacities that it features are consistent with an indefi-
nite disjunction of lower-​level capacities and behaviors, including
a durable and dramatically expanded inclusivist morality—​and
thus it offers no succor to the evoconservative.26

26
 Some evolutionary psychologists (e.g., Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous
Mind [Pantheon, 2012]) have proposed that human morality clusters along in-
nate, content-​specific foundational attractors, such as justice, harm, in-​group
loyalty, sanctity, authority, and so on. Other moral nativists argue that cer-
tain regions of moral morphospace (such as a wholly strict liability moral
system in which mental states are irrelevant to ascriptions of culpability)
are psychologically inaccessible. See John Mikhail, “Moral Grammar and
Human Rights:  Some Reflections on Cognitive Science and Enlightenment
Rationalism,” in Ryan Goodman, Derek Jinks, and Andrew Woods (eds.),
Understanding Social Action, Promoting Human Rights (Oxford University
Press, 2012, pp. 160–​202). Even if something along these lines were true, if there
are significant differences between the relative weights placed on these foun-
dations across cultures (as there seems to be) and if innate constraints impose
170  Evolution and the Possibility of Moral Progress
A third type of byproduct explanation, one that promises to
be more explanatory and perhaps more constraining, attempts to
account for some phenomenon by showing that a certain adapt­
ive capacity is “misfiring” or operating outside of its selected
domain. “Misfire” explanations will first specify the range of
stimuli that trigger the proximate mechanisms underlying a given
adaptive capacity and then show that modern ecological circum-
stances are configured such that they trigger this capacity in a
non-​fitness-​enhancing context. For instance, the fact that mar-
riage rates among unrelated children raised together on Israeli
kibbutzim are unusually low, despite social pressures to marry, is
attributed to the misfiring of an incest avoidance mechanism that
produces a sexual aversion between individuals who are in reg-
ular physical proximity for their first few years of life.
One might assert that we can account for inclusivist morality
by showing that humans have an innate, adaptive empathy re-
sponse:  a moral aversion to causing harm and an inclination to
alleviate suffering, when these are up close and personal. In the
EEA, this empathy response would have been limited to inter-
actions with one’s immediate group members, and thus would
have benefited primarily kin and cooperating group members.
Modern technology, however, bombards contemporary humans
with images and information that familiarize strangers and their
plight, triggering the misfire of an ancient empathy response out-
side of its selected domain. This cannot be the whole story, how-
ever; as the record of intergroup conflict makes clear, humans
have little difficulty acting on truncated sympathies at close
range. (Most of the victims of the Rwandan genocide were killed

only broad structural rules on moral trait acquisition (such as the perceived
relevance of intentional states to moral culpability), then this will not have any
obvious evoconservative implications. Nevertheless, even basic conceptions
of moral responsibility have changed significantly over time (see Appendix),
which bespeaks a substantial degree of flexibility in even very basic aspects of
human moral thought and behavior and indicates a more substantial role for
institutions than many evolutionary theorists of morality have acknowledged.
 The Limits of Evolutionary Explanation  171
within arm’s reach, with machetes, and in many cases by their
neighbors). Neuropsychological data show that empathy is sig-
nificantly modulated by kin relations and group identification,
can have relatively minor effects on moral behavior, and in some
cases will exacerbate intergroup conflict by enhancing in-​group/​
out-​group effects.27
There will be more to say about the link between empathy and
inclusivist/​exclusivist morality in Chapter 11, where we consider
the possibility of moral enhancement through the application of
biomedical technologies to human beings. For now, we simply
want to argue that the shift to subject-​centered morality and its
associated expansions of the moral circle cannot be explained as
the result of manipulating sympathies that were evolutionarily
“designed” for small-​ group living. Arguably more important
than any “misfiring” empathy is that we have developed institu-
tions and cultural practices that encourage us to treat strangers as
if they warrant moral consideration, even if the empathy or love
we feel toward them is limited.
Could the inclusivist anomaly be explained instead as a misfire
of the adaptive egalitarian ethos that developed in the EEA? The re-
ceived view in evolutionary anthropology is that hunter–​gatherer
egalitarianism, the ancestral state of human morality, is effective
in small-​scale nomadic groups but is incapable of preventing
large, sedentary populations from devolving into vertically com-
plex (hierarchical) societies with high levels of inequality. Even
theorists who helped to explode the myth of the peaceful hunter–​
gather band—​a modern version of the “noble savage” discussed
in the Introduction—​have argued that the shift to modern con-
stitutional democracy and human rights constitutes a partially
successful restoration of our prehistoric egalitarian moral psy-
chology.28 One might argue, therefore, that the egalitarianism

  See Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature, supra note 3, ­chapter 9.
27

 Chris Boehm, Moral Origins:  The Evolution of Virtue, Altruism, and

28

Shame (Basic Books, 2012), pp. 96–​97.

172  Evolution and the Possibility of Moral Progress
motivating the inclusivist anomaly is structurally homologous to
that which underpins hunter–​gatherer morality—​that they ema-
nate from a single, ancestral evolved capacity. If this is the case,
then cosmopolitan morality can be explained as the misfiring of
an adaptive ancestral trait in the modern environment.
There are several problems with this misfire explanation. The
first is that hunter–​gatherer morality is manifestly not subject-​
centered since it readily excludes from moral consideration sim-
ilarly situated subjects belonging to other groups. There is now
extensive documentation of dehumanizing discourse and treat-
ment between warring hunter–​gatherer bands.29 And despite the
limitations of their technologies for killing, rates of intergroup
homicide in prehistoric societies were extremely high by modern
standards, which is indicative (if not proof) of severely exclusivist
attitudes toward out-​group members, licensing the inference that
there were very weak normative constraints on how out-​group
members were treated.
A second and related problem is that hunter–​gatherer mo-
rality is simply not “egalitarian” in the sense that human rights
and other inclusivist moralities are egalitarian. In extant hunter–​
gatherers, egalitarian norms are not only group-​restricted but
also even within the group apply mainly to interactions between
males and are rarely extended to family units.30 This is precisely
what one would expect if hunter–​gatherer morality were a stra-
tegic evolutionary solution to the ecological problems posed
by cooperative hunting, cooperative defense, and intergroup

29
  See, for example, Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature (Viking,
2011); Bowles, “Did Warfare Among Ancestral Hunter–​Gatherers”; Richard
Wrangham and Dale Peterson (eds.), Demonic Males:  Apes and the Origins
of Human Violence (Houghton Mifflin, 1996); Lawrence Keeley, War Before
Civilization (Oxford University Press, 1996); Samuel Bowles and Herbert
Gintis, A Cooperative Species: Human Reciprocity and Its Evolution (Princeton
University Press, 2011); Chris Boehm, Hierarchy in the Forest: The Evolution
of Egalitarian Behavior (Harvard University Press, 2001).
30
 Boehm, Hierarchy in the Forest, supra note 29.
 The Limits of Evolutionary Explanation  173
warfare, as the received view hypothesizes. The fact that women
have been effectively relegated to a lower moral status in most
cultures throughout human history is consistent with the notion
that hunter–​gatherer moralities are strategic and hence not truly
egalitarian in the subject-​centered sense of the term. Women have
historically been largely institutionally confined to, and biolog-
ically specialized for, reproductive and rearing roles; as a result,
they lack the strategic capacities that, on prevailing evolutionary
views, explain the recognition of full moral status. This makes
the shift toward women’s rights even more remarkable—​and
inexplicable—​from a simplistic evolutionary standpoint.
Moreover, even if the misfire explanation were correct, there
is no reason to think that it would support the evoconservative
inference since we do not know just how far our hunter–​gatherer
moral psychology could be stretched beyond its selective domain
by altering the conditions under which it is expressed. Finding
that a human psychological trait is produced by a misfire of some
adaptive capacity tells us little about how flexible that trait can
be in diverse social learning environments, just as finding that
a psychological trait is an adaptation tells us next to nothing
(for reasons adduced earlier) about that trait’s developmental
malleability.
We are not suggesting that putatively innate adaptive
capacities—​such as empathy, a sense of fairness, and parochial
altruism—​are not important components of or preconditions for
inclusivist morality. But we think that the inclusivist trend is
too robust to be explained as the simple manipulation of prehis-
toric moral sentiments evolutionarily configured for small-​group
living. It is true that in recent years human beings have developed
sophisticated methods for producing conditions that broaden the
empathy response in the service of inclusivist morality, but this
leaves unexplained why it is that many people and governments
are committed to doing so—​and any plausible answer to this
question, we believe, will advert to moral motivations that are
not accounted for by evolutionary theory. Of course, this does
174  Evolution and the Possibility of Moral Progress
not imply that inclusivist features are inconsistent with evolu-
tionary theory—​only that they are not explained by it.
Finally, could inclusivist morality be explained as an adaptation
or byproduct of cultural evolutionary processes, and what would
such an explanation look like? To the extent that cultural systems
involve heritable variation that is causally connected to the differen-
tial survival and reproduction of cultural groups, they are subject to
evolution by natural selection. Importantly, however, we cannot as-
sume that any cultural variants that proliferate in a population do so
because they are more evolutionarily fit than competing variants—​
lest natural selection become a tautologous, non-​explanatory, non-​
causal claim that the fittest are simply those which survive. Rather,
we must identify what Elliott Sober has called “source laws,” or ec-
ological conditions that make some variants relatively more fit than
others and thus produce evolutionary forces.31 As discussed above,
no plausible source laws have been offered for the differential re-
production of inclusivist norms, whether the “level of selection” is
taken to be cultural groups or cultural variants themselves. If we say
that the fitness conditions are determined simply by what human
beings have come to desire or endorse, then, again at the pain of
tautology, it is incumbent upon the proponent of such an explana-
tion to provide an account of why humans have come to desire or
endorse some particular cultural variants over others.
This brings us to another possibility: could inclusivist norms
be explained instead as the result of psychological biases in how
culture is acquired and transmitted? Robert Boyd and Peter
Richerson have developed a mathematically and empirically rig-
orous account of how adaptive cultural variation can accumulate
and be sustained in human populations, notwithstanding prop-
erties of cultural inheritance that make it uniquely susceptible to
the spread of maladaptive variants and the loss of adaptive ones.32

  Elliott Sober, The Nature of Selection (University of Chicago Press, 1984).

31

  Robert Boyd and Peter Richerson, Culture and the Evolutionary Process
32

(University of Chicago Press, 1985).

 The Limits of Evolutionary Explanation  175
Unlike genetic inheritance, which is highly faithful and strictly
“vertical” between parents and offspring, cultural inheritance
can be “horizontal” or “oblique,” with cultural variants trans-
mitted between members of the same generation and across
unrelated generations (in a pathogen-​ like fashion) within
the lifetime of a single individual. Given these dynamics,
what enables adaptive cultural variants (such as technolog-
ical industries) to be shaped and sustained in a cultural pop-
ulation? Boyd and Richerson propose, and provide extensive
evidence in support of the claim, that cultural copying biases—​
such as tendencies to copy cultural variants that are sufficiently
common in a population, to emulate prestigious individuals,
and to copy clearly successful strategies—​allow for cumulative
cultural adaptation.
However, because these cultural copying biases are imperfect
heuristics, they also permit the accumulation of neutral or mal-
adaptive variations. Maladaptive cultural variants can become
common in a population, can be adopted by prestigious indi-
viduals, and can in some cases be mistaken for successful strat-
egies. Nevertheless, it is difficult to see how an explanation of
inclusivist morality as a nonadaptive or maladaptive byproduct
of cultural copying biases would go. Goodman and Jinks33
identify several distinct avenues through which inclusivist
human rights norms have spread, including coercion, rational
persuasion, and acculturation. Frequency-​dependent copying
biases, such as conformity bias in relation to a surrounding cul-
ture or reference group, could help account for processes of
acculturation—​but they cannot explain why inclusivist norms
rose to sufficiently high frequencies or (relatedly) why they
were stabilized through coercion or found to be persuasive by
large segments of the population.

33
  Goodman and Jinks, Socializing States, supra note 6.
176  Evolution and the Possibility of Moral Progress
Rebutting the Charge of Utopianism
Consider again the evoconservative claim that because morality
is a product of natural selection, or (alternatively) a byproduct of
adaptive features, or a case of “misfiring,” it is highly constrained
as to its content. We have already shown that there are signifi-
cant limits with respect to the scope of morality that biological
and cultural evolutionary theory can plausibly explain. However,
those who advance the constraints view might reply that we
have not in our discussions of the inclusivist anomaly shown
evoconservatism to be mistaken.
At best, they could argue, we have shown that human beings
have the capacity to expand their conception of duty or their un-
derstanding of moral status beyond the confines of their group.
This does not show, however, that a more inclusive morality ac-
tually exists. This is because morality is more than a set of beliefs
about duty and moral status; it must be realized in behavior,
patterning human interactions in meaningful, predictable ways.
Human beings will not live an inclusivist morality, so the objec-
tion goes, even if they possess inclusivist beliefs about the con-
tent of morality and the scope of the set of beings with moral
standing. People may entertain the notion of equal moral worth,
but it is clear that they often fail to act in accordance with this
commitment, as shown, for example, by the minuscule propor-
tion of GDP dedicated to alleviating global poverty.
This retort fails. It simply begs the question by assuming what
is in dispute, namely, whether human beings have the capacity to
act on inclusivist moral conceptions, whether they have so acted,
and whether they have done so without morally unacceptable
costs. It ignores the fact, discussed earlier, that inclusivist morality
is not merely an idea—​that it is significantly realized in individual
behavior, social practices, international and domestic law, and
institutions—​and at substantial cost in terms of expenditures of
resources, both public and private. It is a fact that there have been
remarkable changes in attitudes and behavior toward non-​human
 The Limits of Evolutionary Explanation  177
animals in the last few decades. It is also a fact that there are
functioning institutions that implement, though imperfectly of
course, cosmopolitan moral norms, the most obvious of which
are those that comprise international and regional human rights
regimes. Similarly, laws and social practices designed to improve
the opportunities of people with disabilities have been enacted,
again at considerable cost. And, as we noted earlier, institutions
can motivate people to act altruistically even when the affective
components of helping behavior are lacking. Furthermore, ad-
hering to egalitarian moral commitments is entirely consistent
with making prudential projects an integral part of one’s concep-
tion of the good life,34 and hence inclusivist morality is not vul-
nerable to another version of the “utopianism” critique: namely,
the charge that its requirement of impartiality is too demanding
of moral agents.
The fact that a moral norm is imperfectly realized does not make
it a lofty, unrealistic ideal. Virtually all moral norms are imperfectly
realized (consider, for example, “Do not lie”). The key point is that
the capacity for critical reflection on moral norms and conceptions
of moral standing, combined with our ability to create new social
practices and institutions, operating in favorable environments, have
substantially transformed human morality for significant numbers
of human beings—​and have done so without imposing any sub-
stantial (let alone prohibitive) social or moral costs. So the first and
strongest evoconservative claim—​that inclusivist morality is merely
aspirational—​clearly fails. If inclusivist moral commitments were
limited to a small minority of contemporary human beings, such
large-​scale changes in law, social practice, and individual behavior
would be inexplicable.
What about the second evoconservative claim, that even if
inclusivist elements somehow manage to emerge, they will not be

 Elizabeth Ashford (2000), “Utilitarianism, Integrity, and Partiality,”

34

Journal of Philosophy 97(8): 421–​439.

178  Evolution and the Possibility of Moral Progress
durable?35 There are two reasons to reject this gloomy prediction.
First, although one should never assume that current practices
and institutions will persist indefinitely—​indeed, Chapter 9 will
offer good reasons for appreciating the fragility of human rights
culture—​there seems to be no evidence at present that inclusivist
practices and institutions are headed for disintegration. It is true
that these inclusivist developments are relatively recent; but the
same is true of the modern state and the global market economy,
yet no one would predict that because the latter are recent devel-
opments they are likely to collapse in the foreseeable future.
Second, there is nothing in the standard evolutionary expla-
nations, whether selectionist or byproduct, that could serve to
ground a prediction that inclusivist social practices or institutions
are likely to collapse. To ground the prediction that inclusivist
developments are not durable, one would need more than an ex-
planation that shows that they are in a sense against the grain (an
overly simplistic picture that we in any case criticize in Chapter 6);
one would need a theory showing that cultural innovations that
go against the grain are incapable of being sustained. No such
theory is currently available. To the contrary, as we noted earlier,
modeling work by Boyd and Richerson and their collaborators
suggests that the dynamics of cultural transmission allow for the
stabilization of a very wide range of norms and behaviors (via
punishment and other incentives) even if they fail to promote fit-
ness, are not group-​beneficial, and do nothing to remedy altruism
failures.
Finally, consider the third evoconservative claim, namely that
we have already reached the end of the evolutionary leash—​that
no further developments in the direction of greater inclusion can
be expected. Goldsmith and Posner advance a specific version
of this thesis, arguing that efforts to extend institutional orders
that confer equal rights beyond the nation-​state are futile, due

  See, for example, Stephen Asma, Against Fairness (University of Chicago

35

Press, 2012, pp. 459–​460).

 The Limits of Evolutionary Explanation  179
to the same biological and psychological constraints that pre-
clude strong obligations on the part of individual citizens to
foreigners—​namely, that both individuals and the institutions
they form tend to have weak or nonexistent cosmopolitan sen-
timents.36 Once again, evolutionary explanations of morality do
not support the general prediction or Goldsmith and Posner’s
specification of it. The fact that inclusivist institutions now ex-
tend moral consideration to millions of strangers we will never
encounter—​namely, our fellow citizens in the modern state—​is
hard enough to explain given the standard evolutionary account
of parochial altruism. To explain why the circle of regard has ex-
tended as far as the nation-​state but can extend no farther is even
more daunting. Once we recognize the limits of evolutionary ex-
planations of morality and the significant steps toward inclusivist
morality that have already been achieved, we can reasonably infer
that we are far from the outer limits of our capacities for moral
inclusivity.

The Open-​Ended Normativity of the Ethical

An explanation is needed of the curious fact that, although
human beings apparently began with highly constrained, group-​
based moralities, many of them have come to have moralities
that are much more inclusive. Evolutionary psychologists Leda
Cosmides and John Tooby argue that “once human cultures
were propelled beyond those Pleistocene conditions to which
they were adapted at high enough rates, the formerly necessary
connection between adaptive tracking and cultural dynamics was
broken down.”37 Even so, this still leaves us in need of an expla-
nation as to why human morality has taken an inclusivist turn.

36
  Jack Goldsmith and Eric Posner, The Limits of International Law (Oxford
University Press, 2005, pp. 209–​212).
37
  Leda Cosmides and John Tooby (1989), “Evolutionary Psychology and
the Generation of Culture. 2. Case Study: A Computational Theory of Social
Exchange,” Ethology and Sociobiology 10: 51–​97.
180  Evolution and the Possibility of Moral Progress
We will sketch one such explanation over the course of the next
two chapters. For now, we will simply note that any naturalistic
account of the inclusivist shift will feature a capacity that we have
called the open-​ended normativity of the ethical.38 This is the ca-
pacity to reflect on and revise our moral norms and modify our
behavior accordingly, even when doing so is not only not fitness-​
enhancing but even fitness-​reducing.39 Darwin’s remarks about
inclusive moral regard, which we noted earlier, suggest that he
was aware of this capacity and thought that it helped explain how
humans can transcend the narrow confines of cooperative group
morality. Likewise, some contemporary philosophers, such as
William FitzPatrick, have argued that the “intelligent extension
of evolutionarily influenced evaluative judgment” is no more
constrained by its evolved underpinnings than other domains of
human inquiry, such as science and mathematics.40
It is crucial to emphasize that the capacity for critical revi-
sion extends not just to duty norms (moral “oughts” and “ought
nots”) but also to something more fundamental:  judgments
about which kinds of beings have moral standing and about the
different moral statuses of various types of being with moral
standing. If humans are capable of deliberately and radically re-
vising the grounds by which the moral community is delineated,
then constraints imposed by evolution will be far weaker than
many have supposed.

38
  Allen Buchanan (2012), “The Open-​Ended Normativity of the Ethical,”
Analyse & Kritik: Zeitschrift fur Sozialtheorie 34(1): 81–​94.
39
 Kitcher maintains that morality was shaped in part through delibera-
tive, collaborative discussions “around the campfire” regarding how to reduce
costly conflicts in group living (The Ethical Project, supra note 11, pp. 97, 104).
We agree that moral change can and has been brought about by social delib-
eration but think that whether this takes place around a campfire or a session
of the General Assembly of the United Nations, it will not, going forward, be
limited to matters of strategic morality.
40
  William J. FitzPatrick, “Debunking Evolutionary Debunking of Ethical
Realism,” Philosophical Studies 172(4): 883–​904.
 The Limits of Evolutionary Explanation  181
It is clear that the capacity for open-​ended normativity exists.
There have been significant revisions both in our conceptions
of duties and in our assumptions about moral standing, as we
have already discussed.41 To say that some humans possess this
capacity, however, is not to say that the capacity is sui generis or
that it is exercised pervasively. As we shall see, it may be that the
capacity is acquired and exercised only under certain environ-
mental conditions broadly understood, including certain institu-
tional configurations and resulting motivations. The point is that
we have strong evidence for the existence of this capacity in the
form of what many of us regard as the most progressive develop-
ments in morality, even if we do not yet possess a good account of
the conditions under which the capacity is likely to be effectively
exercised. In Chapter 5, we will begin to develop an account of
what those conditions are.
We have already shown that inclusivist morality is not amenable
to standard evolutionary explanations. Could this more general
capacity for open-​ended normativity be afforded an evolutionary
explanation? Both selectionist and byproduct explanations of the
standard sort will come up short here for the same reasons that
that they came up short in connection with inclusivist morality.
For instance, if one attempts to show that open-​ended norma-
tivity is a byproduct of, say, the preference for consistency in be-
lief, one is once again confronted with the fatal time lag problem
discussed in connection with the emergence of inclusivist mo-
rality. It is likewise unclear how the ability to critically reflect

41
  For example, abolitionists attacked the common belief that African slaves
were less than fully human and hence not possessors of “natural rights” by pro-
viding public venues in which freed slaves could exhibit rationality. Similarly,
advocates of “animal liberation” have worked to make the public aware of the
intense pain, fear, and anxiety that animals raised for food can suffer under con-
ditions of “factory farming” and in the processes by which they are slaughtered.
In such cases, changes in beliefs and a motivation to act consistently across like
cases have resulted in removing restrictions on the scope of moral norms and
even revisions in our understandings of which kinds of beings have particular
moral statuses.
182  Evolution and the Possibility of Moral Progress
on and revise moral norms might be explained as a specific ap-
plication of one or more generic adaptive capacities. One might
assert that open-​ended normativity is a byproduct of an evolved
general cultural learning device or a nested capacity of a more ge-
neric cognitive flexibility that helped humans cope with variable
ancestral environments. But these would hardly constitute evo-
lutionary explanations, let  alone ones that have any interesting
upshot for moral theory or practice. In any case, what matters
for present purposes is not whether open-​ended normativity can
be given an evolutionary explanation per se but whether it can
be given an evolutionary explanation that implicates the sorts of
constraints on human morality and society that evoconservatives
and others envision—​and clearly it cannot since by definition the
capacity is, like language and reason, open-​ended.
So far, we have argued that standard evolutionary explanations
fail to account for the four inclusivist features of contemporary
morality. It is important to emphasize that we do not mean to
advocate any mysterious or transcendental view regarding their
origins. Rather, our contention is that any naturalistic explana-
tion of inclusivist morality must feature the capacity for open-​
ended normativity. Explanations that advert solely or principally
to the modulation of ancestral moral sentiments under modern
environmental conditions, without assigning any role to the ca-
pacity for open-​ended normativity, will not suffice.

Evoconservatism and Minimal Moral

Psychological Realism
As was noted earlier, some authors appeal to evolutionary expla-
nations of morality, infer from these explanations that the content
of morality is highly constrained, and then draw conserva­
tive ethical and political lessons therefrom. We think that such
authors have operated with a deficient grasp of both the expla-
nandum (morality) and the scope of evolutionary explanation.
At best, they have selectively focused on those aspects of existing
 The Limits of Evolutionary Explanation  183
morality that are plausible candidates for evolutionary explana-
tion. Less charitably, their penchant for evolutionary explanations
may have shaped (or rather truncated) their conception of what
morality now encompasses, causing them to overlook the great
flexibility of moral cognition, behavior, and norms as illustrated
by the success of inclusivist morality. In other words, they may
have unwittingly tailored their conception of the explanandum to
fit their favored type of explanans. If all one has is a hammer, one
should resist the temptation to assume that reality consists only
of nails. Even better, one should consider acquiring more tools.
Evoconservatives can be seen as attempting to heed the prin-
ciple of minimal psychological realism (PMPR), which was given
its first clear statement by Owen Flanagan.42 The PMPR holds
that moral theory and moralities should take the psychological
capacities of human beings into account in framing their concep-
tions of moral principles, duties, and virtues. “Taking into ac-
count” our psychological capacities here is usually understood to
mean recognizing the empirically evidenced limitations of those
capacities. Thomas Nagel has similarly argued that the ideals set
by our moral and political theories must be “motivationally rea-
sonable,” with respect to both their prescriptions for individual
behavior and the institutions they require we adopt.43 According
to Flanagan, a moral ideal satisfies the PMPR if its prescriptions
are presently realizable by “all biologically normal human be-
ings” or “asymptotically realizable” by their descendants.44 The
PMPR is the naturalizing philosopher’s version of the slogan
“ought implies can.”
Evoconservatives appear to be taking the PMPR seriously.
They think that moralities and institutions should be realistic in

42
  Owen Flanagan, Varieties of Moral Personality: Ethics and Psychological
Realism (Harvard University Press, 1991).
43
  Thomas Nagel, Equality and Partiality (Oxford University Press, 1991,
p. 21).
44
 Flanagan, Varieties of Moral Personality, supra note 42, p. 340.
184  Evolution and the Possibility of Moral Progress
the sense that they should not overestimate human abilities to ex-
tend sympathy—​and, more fundamentally, moral community—​
to out-​groups. They reason that because our moral traits are
products of selection in the EEA, or constrained byproducts of
the same, our capacities for other-​regard are highly circumscribed.
But once one recognizes that humans have the capacity for open-​
ended normativity and robust culture—​especially in the form
of constructing institutions—​it becomes clear that the motiva-
tional limits of evolved “internal” psychology are not nearly so
constraining as evoconservatives assume. “Ought implies can”
makes sense, but one must be careful not to underestimate the
“can”—​or what is “asymptotically realizable” by humans in ro-
bust deliberative and institutional environments.
The human capacity to reflect on and revise our conceptions of
duty and moral standing can give us reasons here and now to ex-
pand our capacities for moral behavior by developing institutions
that economize on sympathy and enhance our ability to take the
interests of strangers into account. This same capacity might
also give us reasons, in the not-​too-​distant future, to modify our
evolved psychology through the employment of biomedical in-
terventions that enable us to implement new norms that we de-
velop as a result of the process of reflection. In the final chapter,
we consider this possibility.
Recall the “evoliberal” claim that human altruism is so unal-
terably parochial that the radical biomedical alteration of human
moral capacities is required. Evoliberals tacitly make an impor-
tant point that reinforces our claim that the PMPR provides little
guidance. If our conception of morality implies that aspects of
our evolved psychology are preventing us from living up to our
moral commitments and if we can relax these constraints by
employing biomedical interventions, then, other things being
equal, we ought to develop such technologies and deploy them.
We ought to change our so-​called moral hardwiring to allow us to
be morally better than we now can be. The project of biomedical
moral enhancement is thus compatible with the “ought implies
 The Limits of Evolutionary Explanation  185
can” thesis, but it shows that what we ultimately can do may de-
pend in part on assessments about what we ought to do.
In both cases, the limits of our evolved motivational capacities
do not translate into a comparable constraint on our capacity for
moral action. The fact that we are not currently motivationally
capable of acting on the considered moral norms we have come
to endorse is not a reason to trim back those norms; it is a reason
to enhance our motivational capacity, either through institutional
or biomedical means or through some form of moral education,
so that that it matches the demands of our considered morality
(a problem discussed at length in Chapter 11). The PMPR is
therefore far less informative than often assumed.
The evoconservative misappropriation of the PMPR is the
contemporary version of a classic foible of conservative thought.
Traditional conservatives have been justly criticized for basing their
pessimistic predictions about the possibilities for significant social
progress and institutional reform on an unscientific conception of
human nature—​and, more specifically, on the idea that human na-
ture suffers serious and permanent cognitive and motivational lim-
itations. Modern conservatives—​some of whom might properly be
called evoconservatives—​give the appearance of improvement be-
cause they appeal to science, and to evolutionary explanations in par-
ticular, to ground their pessimistic conclusions. But we have shown
that old and new conservatives have something in common: they
both fail to appreciate that even though human beings have limita-
tions, they also have the capacity to stretch them considerably.

Conclusion
Evolutionary psychologists and empirically savvy ethicists are
right to reject the antiquated view that morality is purely a ra-
tional, cultural construct—​an exogenous constraint on the ex-
pression of an evolved human nature that is thoroughly amoral or
even immoral. Nothing we have said in this chapter suggests that
our evolved psychology can be discounted, either in moral theory
186  Evolution and the Possibility of Moral Progress
or in the design of institutions. We cheerfully acknowledge that
evolved psychological capacities, interacting with particular so-
cial and institutional environments, can pose serious obstacles to
using our rationality in ways that result in more inclusive moral-
ities. Indeed, the next chapter offers a model that explains in de-
tail why environments that mirror conditions of the EEA—​such
as those characterized by great physical insecurity, high parasite
threat, severe intergroup competition for resources, and a lack
of institutions for peaceful, mutually beneficial cooperation—​
will tend to be very unfriendly to the development of inclusivist
morality.
Evolutionary explanations of morality can thus help to ex-
plain why inclusivist attitudes both were a long time coming
and remain imperfectly realized today. At the same time, how-
ever, this chapter has offered compelling reasons, both theo-
retical and empirical, to believe that human morality is only
weakly constrained by human evolutionary history, leaving
the potential for substantial moral progress open. Our point
is not that human beings have slipped the “leash” of evolution
but rather that the leash is far longer than evoconservatives and
even many evolutionary psychologists have acknowledged—​
and no one is in a position at present to know just how elastic
it will turn out to be.
 CHAPTER 6

Toward a Naturalistic Theory

of Inclusivist Moral Progress

Chapters 4 and 5 argued that evolved human nature is not as for-

midable an obstacle to moral progress as evoconservatives have
thought. Yet evoconservatives do paint a picture of human mo-
rality that challenges traditional liberal accounts of moral prog-
ress. In particular, they suggest that moral progress in the form of
inclusivist morality faces formidable psychological and cultural
hurdles, rooted in our evolved nature. This chapter outlines an
evolutionary developmental model of inclusivist moral progress
that calls into question the seemingly uncontroversial but ulti-
mately misleading assertion that inclusivist morality goes against
the human evolutionary psychological grain tout court or, as is
also sometimes said, that we are “hard-​wired” for exclusivist,
tribalistic morality. On the account of moral psychological de-
velopment that we advance, evolved human nature is both an
obstacle to moral progress and an enabler of it, depending upon
the environment and the degree to which it resembles certain con-
ditions that were prevalent in the environment of evolutionary
adaptation (EEA).
If our model withstands scrutiny, it will also enable us more
confidently to reject another evoconservative/​evoliberal claim
upon which we cast doubt in Chapter  4:  the assertion that al-
though humans are capable of some degree of moral inclusion,
188  Evolution and the Possibility of Moral Progress
they are now bumping up against the limits of this capacity. To
begin to determine whether the limits of inclusivity have been
reached, or what their outer bounds might be, it is first neces-
sary to do what the standard evolutionary explanation does not
do: provide an account of how inclusivist morality could have de-
veloped from, and notwithstanding the constraints of, exclusivist
morality. It bears noting that even the most illuminating scientific
explanations of human thought and behavior rarely if ever iden-
tify a full set of sufficient conditions for some large-​scale socio-
cultural outcome. Accordingly, our aim here is simply to identify
important necessary conditions for inclusivist moral progress.
After outlining our evolutionary model of moral psychological
development, we will go on to advance three further hypotheses
(H1–​H3) that draw on and extend this model:

(H1) Inclusivist morality is a luxury good in the sense that it is only

likely to be widespread and stable in highly favorable conditions—​
namely, those in which the harsh environmental conditions of the
EEA have been overcome.
(H2) Inclusivist gains can be eroded if these harsh conditions
reappear or if significant numbers of people come to believe
that they exist.
(H3) A  combination of normal cognitive biases and defective
social-​epistemic practices can cause people wrongly to believe that
such harsh conditions exist, especially if there are individuals in
positions of power and prestige who have an interest in spreading
this false belief.

An Evolutionary Developmental Model

of Moral Inclusivity
Our evolutionary explanation of how human beings whose
moral capacities were shaped in the EEA could come to have
inclusivist moral responses begins, oddly enough, with a much
simpler model system: the water flea. Some species of water flea
Toward a Naturalistic Theory of Inclusivist Moral Progress  189
develop elaborate armor, including defensive spines and helmets,
but only if they detect the chemical signatures of predators in
the water in which they develop. The development of armor,
however, comes at a cost, including reduced locomotion and
added energy requirements. As a result, water fleas have evolved
a mechanism of conditional expression that enables them to de-
velop armor only when they find themselves confronted with
the high probability of a predator-​rich environment. Such traits
are known in evolutionary biology as “adaptively plastic” traits.
The benefit of adaptive plasticity is that it enables a lineage to
achieve a better adaptive match across more environments than
would be possible if it produced a single phenotype in all envi-
ronments. Adaptively plastic traits allow organisms condition-
ally to express alternative character states, depending on which
state is most appropriate for the environment at hand. The or-
ganism accomplishes this by detecting environmental cues
during its development that indicate which character state is ec-
ologically appropriate and then triggering the development of
that state.
Our central hypothesis is that exclusivist morality is like
flea armor—​the result of an adaptively plastic “toggle” that is
keyed in to cues of out-​group threat that are detected in the en-
vironment in which individuals and cultures develop and evolve
together. More precisely, exclusivist moral response is a condi-
tionally expressed trait that develops only when cues that were
in the past reliably correlated with out-​group predation, exploi-
tation, competition for resources, and disease transmission are
detected. In the animal world, the adaptively plastic detection
of a predation threat can involve not only the detection of perti-
nent chemical cues, as with the water flea, but also more cogni-
tively sophisticated inspection of predatory types, motivations,
and behaviors.
Because humans are linguistic and robustly cultural creatures,
the detection of out-​group threat can also involve the social
transmission of beliefs about out-​groups. This can take the form
190  Evolution and the Possibility of Moral Progress
of explicit and implicit beliefs that individuals come to hold as a
result of a combination of personal experience and cultural in-
culcation through “testimony” broadly understood. The cultural
transmission of beliefs about out-​groups has the advantage of
avoiding the risks of trial-​and-​error learning but also the disad-
vantage of increasing the chance of faulty detections. We will re-
turn to this important feature of our evolutionary model of moral
development in the next chapter, where we emphasize that cul-
ture enables the boundaries between groups to be radically re-
drawn so that, for example, groups within societies can become
subject to exclusivist moral responses.
As with flea armor, the development of exclusivist moral
tendencies has costs. In particular, out-​group aggression, an-
tipathy, and distrust—​features strongly associated with ex-
clusivist morality—​reduce the chances of mutually beneficial
interactions with neighboring groups, such as trade, mate
exchange, and alliances, and increase the chances of dan-
gerous, belligerent, mutually destructive interactions with
foreigners. Because of this evolutionary trade-​ off, exclu-
sivist tendencies will, according to the adaptive plasticity hy-
pothesis, be tempered in environments in which out-​group
threats are not detected during development or in which they
are counterbalanced by opportunities for cooperation with
out-​groups. This is not to say that moral developmental en-
vironments in which out-​group threats are diminished are au-
tomatically conducive to deep forms of moral inclusion. To
the contrary, there is every reason to think that attitudes to-
ward out-​groups would, prehistorically and historically, have
been governed by strategic self-​interest, rather than genuinely
subject-​centered considerations. Additionally, in-​group favor-
itism appears to be evolutionarily primitive and hence less cul-
turally and situationally variable than out-​group antagonism;
and in-​group biases (in terms of empathy, trust, cooperative
tendencies, etc.) result in very significant forms of discrim-
ination against out-​group members even where they do not
Toward a Naturalistic Theory of Inclusivist Moral Progress  191
translate into active out-​group hostility or derogation.1 Thus,
even if moral developmental environments are conducive to
prosocial interactions between groups, this does not mean
that these interactions will necessarily be guided by robustly
inclusivist moral commitments of the sort that characterize
recent expansions of the moral community. Moreover, as so-
cial psychologist Marilynn Brewer notes, the very fact of in-​
group/​out-​group social differentiation creates fertile grounds
for intergroup antagonism and conflict: there is a fine line be-
tween the absence of trust and active distrust or between a lack
of cooperation and active competition.2 The point, however, is
that adaptive moral plasticity makes positive intergroup rela-
tions possible, not that it makes them inevitable.
For such an adaptively plastic moral psychological mechanism
to have evolved, there must have been reliable periodic selection
pressures generated by both exclusivist-​friendly and inclusivist-​
friendly ecological regimes. This picture is supported by research
on Pleistocene technology which suggests that long-​ distance
trade, and thus rudimentary markets, predated even the exist-
ence of language in hominids. Rigid groupishness or extreme
preferences for kin would have made it difficult or impossible
to participate in these bartering systems and therefore to reap
the fitness-​enhancing benefits they conferred. In addition to the
trade of material culture, out-​marrying and military alliances,
which are fairly commonplace activities in hunter–​gatherers, re-
quire cooperative relationships with out-​groups that would have
been difficult or impossible to achieve if exclusivist morality were
rigidly “hard-​wired.” In an environment in which opportunities
for cooperation with out-​ groups arose with some regularity,

1
  Gordon Allport, The Nature of Prejudice (Cambridge University Press,
1954); Marilynn Brewer (1999), “The Psychology of Prejudice: Ingroup Love
or Outgroup Hate?” Journal of Social Issues 55(3): 429–​444; M. Hewstone, M.
Rubin, and H. Willis (2002), “Intergroup Bias,” Annual Review of Psychology
53: 575–​604.
2
  Brewer, “The Psychology of Prejudice,” supra note 1, p. 435.
192  Evolution and the Possibility of Moral Progress
human groups that could appropriately “toggle” (within and
across generations) between exclusivist and inclusivist responses
based on environmental cues would have had a fitness advantage
over groups that were capable of only exclusivist responses.
In using the limited analogy of a toggle, we do not mean to
suggest that moral exclusivity and inclusivity are discrete char-
acter states that can be switched on and off. To the contrary, they
are clearly continuous rather than binary features. That is to say,
moralities can be more or less inclusive, and they may be inclu-
sive in some dimensions while being exclusive in others, as a re-
sult of the complex interaction of biological, psychological, and
cultural forces shaping moral development and evolution. Still,
one can speak meaningfully of more and less inclusive moralities
and of a relatively exclusive morality coming to be more inclusive
and vice versa. Given the spectrum of inclusivity/​exclusivity, one
might prefer to think of the adaptively plastic moral psycholog-
ical mechanism we are contemplating here as less like water flea
armor and more like adaptively plastic plant growth that allows
plants to adjust to angles of sunlight. That is, one may prefer to
think of moral exclusivity as less like a toggle and more like a dial
that can be adjusted to fit local circumstance. In either case, the
thrust of the theory and its ethical implications remain the same.
In fact, our rejection of the evoconservative’s pessimistic
conclusions about the possibilities for inclusivist moral prog-
ress depends only on the thesis that humans possess a flexible
capacity for moral response, one that allows for inclusivist re-
sponses under certain conditions; it does not depend on the thesis
that this capacity is itself an adaptation. In other words, even if
we are wrong in surmising that the EEA included inclusivist-​
friendly conditions that were sufficiently pervasive and persistent
to create stable selection pressures for inclusivist response, that is
consistent with the capacity for inclusiveness being compatible
with our evolved nature.
Suppose that very early in the EEA, through the mech-
anism of genetic mutation, some human beings acquired a
Toward a Naturalistic Theory of Inclusivist Moral Progress  193
nondiscriminating capacity for what we would now call “proso-
cial” behavior, a disposition to cooperate with any human being
they encountered. This cooperative response might simply be a
propensity to reciprocate, to engage in what game theorists call
a tit-​for-​tat strategy, or it might be a propensity for psycholog-
ical altruism, a disposition to aid others even where there is no
prospect of reciprocation. If either sort of cooperative dispo-
sition arose in an environment in which human beings existed
only in very small groups—​more specifically, in families of only
one or two generations—​then there would have been no repro-
ductive penalty for such a “promiscuous” capacity for cooper-
ation, so long as individuals did not encounter human beings
from other groups with which their own group would have to
compete for vital resources. In such an environment, any human
being one encountered would be highly likely to be kin, and thus
an undifferentiating cooperative or altruistic response would
work as an effective kin selectionist heuristic. Under these condi-
tions, a “promiscuous” disposition toward cooperative behavior
would not reduce an individual’s fitness or the fitness of a small
group of which she was a member. If early human beings were
relatively solitary, existing only in very small kin groups, then so
long as they continued in that condition, a “promiscuous” dis-
position to cooperate would have conferred fitness advantages,
even if it would have been disastrous under different conditions
in which groups were larger or encounters with other groups
were common.
If, however, this situation changed—​if groups increased in size
and hence intragroup genetic relatedness became more attenuated
or if contacts between groups increased—​then a promiscuous co-
operative or altruistic response would become fitness-​reducing,
and we would (ceteris paribus) expect there to be selection for
the emergence of a less “promiscuous,” that is, more discrimi-
nating disposition to exhibit altruism or cooperation only toward
members of one’s own group and to adopt (at best) a cautious
reciprocation orientation toward members of other groups. As
194  Evolution and the Possibility of Moral Progress
contact between competing groups increased, groups that de-
veloped cultures that sharply distinguished between “us” and
“them” would have thrived, and those that were unable to restrict
the originally promiscuous response would have been driven to
extinction. An implication of this scenario is that the parochi-
ality of human altruism is the result of cultural factors that rein
in or demarcate the boundaries of an originally promiscuous
inclusivist response, rather than stemming from a conserved “in-
nate” biological disposition toward groupishness that interacts
with local cultural systems to generate a more or less discrimi-
nating moral response. If this view is correct, then it gives further
strong reasons to reject the notion that humans are “hard-​wired”
for moral exclusivity.
It is notoriously difficult to make reliable inferences about nat-
ural history—​in this case, about the social ecological conditions
of early humans—​particularly when we have no direct evidence
to consult. There remains some question as to whether the social
world of early humans was more like that of the relatively soli-
tary orangutans or rather more like the highly social and group-​
structured societies of chimps and bonobos. How might such an
inference be made? Biologists often rely on a model lineage to
infer the presence or absence of some trait in a target lineage.3
One natural thing to do would be to compare Homo sapiens to
its closest living “sister taxa”—​namely, the lineage that includes
chimpanzees and bonobos—​and then infer that any trait shared
between humans and chimpanzees/​ bonobos was present in
and transmitted continuously from their most recent common
ancestor. Such phylogenetic inferences are based on the prin-
ciple that a trait present in two closely related existing species
(e.g., extant chimpanzees and humans) can be inferred to have
existed in and been faithfully transmitted from their most recent
common ancestor. This hypothesis postulates fewer causes, or

 Arnon Levy and Adrian Currie (2014), “Model Organisms Are Not
3

(Theoretical) Models,” British Journal for Philosophy of Science 66(2): 327–​348.

Toward a Naturalistic Theory of Inclusivist Moral Progress  195
character state changes, than the alternative hypothesis, namely
that the shared traits arose independently in extant groups from
a common ancestor that did not possess the trait. This basic phy-
logenetic analysis licenses the defeasible inference that the last
common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees was highly gre-
garious and highly groupish in its social ecological orientation,
quite unlike the solitary and more evolutionarily distant orang-
utan. This phylogenetic inference is defeasible because it only
holds barring compelling evidence to the contrary—​a key pro-
viso that we will return to shortly.
However, there is an important wrinkle in the phylogenetic in-
ference when it comes to imputing social ecological properties be-
yond the bare fact of gregariousness to the last common ancestor
of humans and chimps. Recall that the proposed model contends
that exclusivist moral psychology evolved by natural selection
under conditions of out-​group threat, which arose in part from
competition over scarce, scattered resources that tended to spark
intergroup conflicts. Similar evolutionary–​ ecological explana-
tions have been given for the stark differences we see between
chimpanzees and bonobos (pygmy chimps) in their tendencies
toward intergroup aggression, or what might loosely be referred
to as “proto-​exclusivist” moral psychology. For chimpanzees, re-
sources are few and far between, and as a result violent intergroup
conflict is common, with one group often raiding and brutally
killing members of competing groups (patterns mirrored, to some
extent, in human hunter–​gatherer groups, as discussed below).
Bonobos, in contrast, have abundant, static resources and, as a re-
sult, enjoy relatively peaceful intergroup relations (although they
retain the presumably ancestral trait of gregariousness).
Given this divergence between chimps and bonobos in proto-​
exclusivist morality, we are faced with what, at first blush, ap-
pears to be a phylogenetic inference impasse:  since humans are
equal in evolutionary distance to chimps and bonobos, phylo-
genetic data do not speak in favor of or against imputing proto-​
exclusivist ecological conditions or capacities to early humans. We
196  Evolution and the Possibility of Moral Progress
are left instead to infer the social circumstances of early humans
by drawing upon other sources of evidence, such as paleoclimatic,
archeological, and cross psychological data (against the theoret-
ical backdrop of evolutionary theory). But we need not give up
on the phylogenetic inference so quickly, for there is compelling
evidence that the bonobo social condition—​marked by reduced
levels of intergroup aggression, increased tolerance, and passive
coping strategies during competitive feeding interactions (in con-
trast to the dominance orientation of chimpanzee and human
males)—​is in fact the “derived” (rather than ancestral) condition.
If that is right, then the ancestral social state of the human–​chimp/​
bonobo common ancestor more likely resembled the chimp con-
dition than the bonobo condition and thus can be imputed, on
the parsimonious assumption of faithful common ancestry, to the
target lineage (namely, early humans).
Why think that the peaceful bonobo condition is derived?
The reason is that evolutionary anthropologists have identified
the anatomical signature of selection for reduced aggression—​a
syndrome of phenotypic traits that includes reductions in cra-
nial capacity and tooth size, shortening of the face, floppy ears,
and depigmentation of body parts—​ juvenile-​like traits that
are regularly observed in domesticated species and that appear
to be a byproduct of selection on regulatory genes or phys-
iological systems that produce reduced aggression.4 It turns
out that bonobos exhibit these features of evolutionary “self-​
domestication,” suggesting that the peaceful nature of bonobo
society is a derived condition that evolved in response to a highly
localized ecology (namely stationary, bountiful resources), while
the proto-​exclusivist chimp condition is ancestral and adapted
to a broader range of ecological circumstances. In essence, self-​
domestication syndrome is a “trace” of selection processes that

4
  Brian Hare, Victoria Wobber, and Richard Wrangham (2012), “The Self-​
Domestication Hypothesis:  Evolution of Bonobo Psychology Is Due to
Selection Against Aggression,” Animal Behavior 83: 573–​585.
Toward a Naturalistic Theory of Inclusivist Moral Progress  197
took place in the prehistoric past.5 The self-​ domestication
hypothe­sis strongly suggests that the disparities we observe be-
tween chimp and bonobo aggression are the result of adaptive
evolution in bonobos that occurred after their geographic isola-
tion and phylogenetic split from chimps. A  phylogenetic anal-
ysis thus supports the (defeasible) parsimonious inference that
early human conditions were more chimp/​ bonobo-​ like than
orangutan-​like and more chimp-​like than bonobo-​like.
One problem with phylogeny-​ based inferences, however,
is that there are innumerable ways that the traits of target and
model lineages can be parsed, and thus more distant lineages may
in some cases be more appropriate models for a given trait of
the target. Thus, baboons, gorillas, chimpanzees, and even gib-
bons have been used to model the evolution of particular traits
thought to exist in early humans. Although some have argued
that relatively solitary apes, such as orangutans, are a better
model of early human societies,6 this ignores not only the phy-
logenetic data discussed above but also a large body of evidence
from evolutionary anthropology and archeology establishing the
scattered, variable nature of Pleistocene resources7 and the ubiq-
uity of organized warfare in pre-​state societies.8 It also overlooks

5
  For a discussion of the epistemic role of traces in the historical sciences,
see Adrian Currie, Rock, Bone and Ruin: An Optimist’s Guide to the Historical
Sciences (MIT Press, 2018).
6
  See Alexandrea Maryanski and Jonathan Turner, The Social Cage: Human
Nature and The Evolution of Society (Stanford University Press, 1993).
7
  See Chris Boehm, Hierarchy in the Forest:  The Evolution of Egalitarian
Behavior (Harvard University Press, 2001); Kim Sterelny, The Evolved
Apprentice: How Evolution Made Humans Unique (MIT Press, 2012); Peter
Richerson and Robert Boyd, Not by Genes Alone: How Culture Transformed
Human Evolution (University of Chicago Press, 2005).
8
  See Lawrence Keeley, War Before Civilization (Oxford University Press,
1996); Samuel Bowles (2009), “Did Warfare Among Ancestral Hunter–​
Gatherers Affect the Evolution of Human Social Behaviors?” Science
324(5932):  1293–​1298; Sarah Mathew and Robert Boyd (2011), “Punishment
Sustains Large-​Scale Cooperation in Prestate Warfare,” Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences USA 108(28): 11375–​11380.
198  Evolution and the Possibility of Moral Progress
extensive research in social psychology which strongly suggests
that humans appear to have innate dispositions to form groups,
to essentialize them, and to make moral discriminations that
closely track group membership (see further discussion in the
next section). In sum, phylogenetic analyses, data about the cha-
otic nature of Pleistocene climate and ecology, archeological and
ethnographic records of coordinated warfare in modern and pre-
historic hunter–​gatherer groups, and the existence of apparently
“innate” group identity-​formation capacities and cross-​cultural
in-​group/​out-​group psychological dynamics license a reason-
ably strong inference:  early humans lived in intensely social,
highly cooperative, and rigidly group-​structured environments.
Nevertheless, for the purposes of our argument against the
evoconservatives, it is not necessary to take a position in the
dispute as to whether human societies in the earliest stages of
the EEA were smaller and more solitary or consisted of larger,
competing groups. If the former scenario (call it the “solitary
origins” account) turns out to be correct, then we can explain
how, as encounters among groups began to occur and groups
became larger, there would have been selection among genetic
dispositions for a more parochial altruistic response, as well as
among cultural groups for cultural innovations that reined in
the originally promiscuous altruistic or cooperative response
so that it extended only to members of one’s own group. If the
latter scenario (call it the “social origins” account) turns out
to be correct, then we can explain that cooperative responses,
right from the start, must have been discriminating rather than
promiscuous but also point out that groups that developed the
capacity to override the propensity to react with hostility to-
ward strangers would have gained a fitness advantage under
circumstances in which there were increasing opportunities for
mutual benefit through exogamy, military alliances, and long-​
distance trade. Either scenario can explain why human beings
have the capacity for inclusivist moral responses (under certain
Toward a Naturalistic Theory of Inclusivist Moral Progress  199
conditions) and hence why it is misleading to say that human
beings are “hard-​wired” for exclusivist morality. And if it is
true that humans are not hard-​wired for exclusivist morality,
then the prospects for further moral progress in the dimension
of inclusivity look brighter than evoconservatives are willing
to admit.
One main point of the preceding line of argument bears em-
phasis. Regardless of whether human beings originally had a
nondiscriminating or a discriminating cooperative response, it
is easy to understand how current human beings can have a ca-
pacity to respond in either an inclusive or an exclusive fashion,
depending upon the circumstances—​and it is also not hard to see
why cultural innovations can either enhance inclusion or pro-
duce regressions toward exclusivity. If humans originally had
a nondiscriminating disposition to cooperate (with any human
beings), then there would have been selection for cultural inno-
vations that served to restrict that disposition, in other words,
selection for the capacity for exclusivist responses. If humans
originally had a discriminating cooperative disposition, then, as
environmental conditions changed to create more opportunities
for mutually beneficial cooperation among groups, there would
have been selection for cultural innovations that moderated or
even overrode the disposition for exclusivity. And if environ-
mental conditions changed again to evoke EEA-​like threat cues
(either through an objective deterioration of the conditions for
mutually beneficial cooperation among groups or through the
widespread misperception that this has occurred), then the dis-
position for exclusivist responses would become ascendant. To
summarize: regardless of which account of the origins of human
altruistic response that one accepts, there is good reason to be-
lieve that humans, rather than being hard-​wired for exclusivity,
have a momentous moral plasticity—​a capacity for both exclu-
sivist and inclusivist response—​that is shaped by biology, culture,
or (most likely) both.
200  Evolution and the Possibility of Moral Progress
Evidential Support for the Adaptive Plasticity Model
For the reasons discussed above, the adaptive plasticity model
of moral psychological development is not beyond dispute. The
solitary origins account, which postulates the initial evolution
of an unconditional altruistic response, is not theoretically im-
plausible. But the theoretical plausibility of a hypothesis does not
give us sufficient reason to believe it is true. Unlike the solitary
origins account, the thesis that human beings are pre-​culturally
disposed toward groupish moralities and that the development of
this disposition is triggered by specific cues of out-​group threat is
supported by a wide range of evidence from history, psychology,
biology, anthropology, and cognitive science.
For instance, evolutionary psychologists Corey Fincher and
Randy Thornhill propose an adaptive plasticity hypothesis to ex-
plain the strong cross-​cultural correlation between what they call
“in-​group assortative sociality,” which is associated with ethno-
centric, xenophobic, authoritarian, and conservative psycholog-
ical orientations, and parasite stress.9 They marshal a formidable
amount of evidence in support of the claim that in-​group bias
tends to develop when signs of infectious disease are detected
during human moral development, whereas less xenophobic at-
titudes and behaviors (or, on our terminology, more inclusivist
ones) tend to emerge when cues of infectious disease are absent.
We expand this account to include other signs of out-​group threat
broadly construed, such as competition for scarce resources
and, especially, socially constructed beliefs about out-​groups.
In so doing, we carve out a more fundamental role for culture
in our adaptive plasticity account of human moral psychology.
In particular, we argue below that social-​epistemic practices and

9
  Corey Fincher and Randy Thornhill (2012), “Parasite-​Stress Promotes In-​
Group Assortative Sociality: The Cases of Strong Family Ties and Heightened
Religiosity,” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 35:61–​79; C.  D. Navarrete and
D.  M.  T. Fessler (2006), “Disease Avoidance and Ethnocentrism,” Evolution
and Human Behavior 27: 270–​282.
Toward a Naturalistic Theory of Inclusivist Moral Progress  201
evolved cognitive biases can interact to result in faulty detections
of out-​group threat, resulting in the development of exclusivist
tendencies in circumstances that are otherwise conducive to
inclusivist morality.
It is well established that in-​group/​out-​group biases are among
the most cross-​culturally robust of human psychological traits—​
biases that can easily be manipulated in laboratory and field study
investigations.10 The mere fact of group membership, even when
the groupings are temporary and essentially meaningless, has
been shown to generate these moral psychological dynamics.11
Cues that are associated with out-​group threat—​including the
transmission of infectious disease,12 competition over scarce re-
sources, external physical dangers,13 and beliefs and practices
that are dissonant with in-​group values and thus imperil group
cohesion14—​have all been shown to trigger negatively valenced
moral emotions, such as fear, anger, and disgust, which in turn
lead to increasingly aversive intergroup attitudes and behaviors.
In contrast, the adaptive plasticity hypothesis predicts that ex-
clusivist moral tendencies tend to be attenuated in populations
inhabiting environments in which cues of out-​group threat are
absent, and the evidence supports this prediction, too. The pre-
cise developmental pathway through which detections (whether
veridical or not) lead to the relevant plastic moral response is un-
known; all that matters for the purposes of our theory, however,

10
  Donald Brown, Human Universals (McGraw Hill, 1991).
11
 H. Tajfel and J.  C. Turner, “The Social Identity Theory of Intergroup
Behavior,” in S. Worchel and W. G. Austin (eds.), Psychology of Intergroup
Relations (Nelson-​Hall, 1986, pp. 7–​24).
12
  See Fincher and Thornhill, “Parasite-​Stress,” supra note 9.
13
  See B. M. Riek, E. W. Mania, and S. L. Gaertner (2006), “Intergroup Threat
and Outgroup Attitudes:  A Meta-​Analytic Review,” Personality and Social
Psychology Review 10(4):  336–​53; M. Sherif and C.  W. Sherif, “Ingroup and
Intergroup Relations: Experimental Analysis,” in M. Sherif and C. W. Sherif
(eds.), Social Psychology (Harper & Row, 1969, pp. 221–​266).
14
  Richerson and Boyd, Not by Genes Alone, supra note 7; Hewstone, Rubin,
and Willis, “Intergroup Bias,” supra note 1.
202  Evolution and the Possibility of Moral Progress
is that such pathways exist and act with some reliability. The more
out-​group threat cues that are present in the developmental en-
vironment, the stronger the statistical biasing toward exclusivist
moral tendencies will be.
If the capacity for moral responses is an adaptively plastic trait,
then the common assertion that exclusivist morality is “hard-​
wired” in humans and that inclusivity goes against the grain
of our evolved moral nature is extremely misleading because it
wrongly suggests that exclusivist dispositions are invariant across
all environments. Further, the concept of an adaptively plastic
trait can accommodate a more nuanced understanding of what
the EEA was like. Even though it is true that the EEA lacked de-
veloped institutions for mutually beneficial cooperation among
groups (including preeminently a developed market economy),
there is evidence that limited cooperation among groups some-
times occurred and may have been commonplace in some locales.
Intergroup cooperation in the EEA, as noted above, included ex-
ogamy (marrying members of other groups), trade (sometimes
over long distances), and military alliances. If humans were hard-​
wired for exclusivist morality—​if they uniformly reacted with
fear and hostility to strangers and failed to show any consider-
ation for their interests—​exogamy, trading, and intergroup alli-
ances could not be sustained to the degree that they were. The
key point here is that the EEA was not uniformly and thoroughly
inimical to cooperative and even respectful relationships. While it
is likely that in most cases the EEA was overall rather unfriendly
to inclusivist moral responses, there were clearly local exceptions.
An evolved moral psychology that included an adaptively
plastic capacity to respond to strangers would have been more
fitness-​enhancing than one that was hard-​wired for exclusion.
To that extent, one would expect that selection pressures in the
EEA would have favored the development of a flexible capacity
for both inclusivist and exclusivist responses that is responsive
to local ecological demand. Groups that developed this adaptive
moral plasticity would have had a fitness advantage over those
Toward a Naturalistic Theory of Inclusivist Moral Progress  203
that did not, so the capacity for conditional moral expression
would spread in the human population.
Critics of evolutionary psychology have rightfully cautioned
that one cannot reliably infer from a particular adaptive pat-
tern of behavior that there is a specific organ or cognitive mech-
anism “designed” by natural selection to produce that behavior.15
However, the “how possibly” explanation that we offer to ac-
count for the evolution of moral inclusivity is not a wildly spec-
ulative or empirically irrefutable “just so” story, concocted in
an ad hoc manner that dismisses non-​adaptive explanations out
of hand. To the contrary, the model we propose is empirically
constrained in that it has the benefit of broad-​based evidential
support and takes non-​adaptive—​indeed non-​biological—​factors
seriously.
The basic in-​group/​out-​group dynamics around which our
model is built are robustly cross-​cultural and develop predict-
ably very early in individual development—​which is indicative of
some degree of pre-​cultural specification. Furthermore, there is a
great deal of experimental, sociological, and historical evidence to
support the plasticity thesis. Recall that developed market econ-
omies make peaceful, mutually beneficial behavior among people
from different groups—​call them “strangers”—​possible and give
people incentives to engage in it. Norbert Elias and others have
argued that once these opportunities for peaceful, mutually ben-
eficial relations among strangers become pervasive, there is cul-
tural selection for behavior (as well as attitudes and motivations
to support the behavior) that signal the willingness to cooperate
peacefully and on terms of reciprocity.
Joseph Henrich and collaborators provide experimental ev-
idence to support this hypothesis in experiments involving
the ultimatum game.16 In the ultimatum game, the investigator

15
 Elizabeth Lloyd (1999), “Evolutionary Psychology:  The Burdens of
Proof,” Biology and Philosophy 14: 211–​233.
16
  Joseph Henrich et  al. (2010), “Markets, Religion, Community Size, and
the Evolution of Fairness and Punishment,” Science 327(5972): 1480–​1484.
204  Evolution and the Possibility of Moral Progress
authorizes one subject to choose how much of some significant
amount of money to share with another participant (a stranger)
in a one-​shot (ephemeral) interaction. The second participant
stipulates beforehand whether he or she will accept or refuse al-
locations of particular sums; if the actual offer is rejected, then
each player receives zero.
The results are strikingly different, depending on whether the
population playing the game includes individuals from devel-
oped market economies or individuals from societies in which
markets are not developed. People from populations with high
levels of market integration are much more likely to exhibit a
commitment to treating strangers fairly; in contrast, individ-
uals from communities that lack robust market economies tend
to have little compunction against dividing the money in ex-
tremely unfair ways. The explanation for these differences is
not, of course, that human populations differ in their innate
moral psychology—​but rather that certain moral norms have
proliferated through cultural selection in human populations
that possess robust institutional frameworks for cooperation.
These experiments support our main thesis that human beings
are not hard-​wired for exclusivist moral responses but instead
possess an adaptively plastic trait: the capacity to modulate their
responses depending upon the environmental context in which
their moral capacities develop. In this case, the exclusivist moral
response depends on whether individuals encounter one another
in the context of developed market relations and hence are able
to see one another as mutually beneficial cooperators, or rather
as strangers who are to be feared at worst and disregarded at best.
Recent work by Victor Kumar lends additional credibility to
the adaptive plasticity hypothesis.17 He argues that the disgust re-
sponse evolved as a proximate mechanism of exclusion: persons

17
  Victor Kumar (2017), “Foul Behavior,” The Philosophers’ Imprint 17(15)
https://quod.lib.umich.edu/p/phimp/3521354.0017.015/—foul-behavior?
view=image.
Toward a Naturalistic Theory of Inclusivist Moral Progress  205
who are objects of disgust tend to be avoided and excluded from
valuable social relationships. When one individual reacts with
disgust toward another, he or she exhibits the emotion of dis-
gust through characteristic body language, facial expression, and
vocal intonations. These all serve as signals to others that the ob-
ject of disgust is to be avoided and thereby excluded—​in effect
relegating the object of disgust to something like the status that
strangers typically had in the EEA. Suppose that Kumar is right
about the social meaning and function of the disgust reaction—​
suppose that disgust is an “othering” or outcasting mechanism, a
response that signals that the object of disgust is to be excluded
in some important way. Clearly, whether one human being reacts
with disgust to another human being can depend on how the first
individual has learned to see the second individual and that, in
turn, can be shaped by the first individual’s culture. This further
supports our view that it is a mistake to see exclusivist responses
as hard-​wired: instead, they are adaptively plastic, and whether
an exclusion response occurs—​and toward whom—​is subject to
modification by culture.

Adaptive Plasticity and the Limits

of Cultural Malleability
This does not mean that exclusivist responses are infinitely mal-
leable through cultural influences. If moral developmental en-
vironments prominently feature certain threat cues that were
pervasive in the EEA, then there may be limits to the formative
influence of culture. For example, if members of another group
exhibit extreme hostility, are seen to carry deadly diseases, or are
imposing values that threaten to severely undermine cooperation
in one’s own group, then it will be extremely difficult for cultural
innovations, including cosmopolitan commitments, to overcome
reactions of fear, hostility, and disgust toward them. It will like-
wise be difficult for cosmopolitan norms to take root and to be
sustained if there are widespread perceptions of these conditions,
206  Evolution and the Possibility of Moral Progress
even if these perceptions are not veridical (see Chapter 7 for an
extended discussion of this crucial point).
By the same token, one should not underestimate the difficulty
of altering entrenched cultural moral systems even in favorable
moral developmental environments. Even if biological and social
conditions are ripe for the development of a more inclusivist mo-
rality, the inertia of cultural evolutionary hangovers can prevent
or delay the development of more inclusive moral norms. For ex-
ample, the significant differences in cultural conceptions of honor
between northern populations in the United States and those in
the American South have been explained as the result of these
regions being settled by peoples with different cultural moral
systems adapted to different historical ecologies.18 In particular,
Scotch-​Irish livestock herders were the predominant settlers of
the South, whereas peasant farmers from Germany, England, and
the Netherlands were the chief settlers of the North. Livestock
herding is robustly associated with hyper-​ masculine, honor-​
based cultures around the world because it typically occurs in
rugged, lawless regions of countries where theft and other forms
of predation are commonplace—​ and where violent reactions
serve as a necessary deterrent in the absence of an effective police
force.19 Despite being arguably ill-​suited for the ecological con-
ditions of twentieth-​century America, the honor culture of the
American South has been slow to change and southern moral-
ities have struggled to become more inclusive. To the extent that
cultural moral demographics of the South have begun to shift in
inclusivist directions, the relocation of relatively culturally in-
clusive Northerners to the South has likely played a significant
role. The developmental interconnectedness of certain norms and
values in a cultural web can make them difficult to modify, and

18
  R. E. Nisbett and D. Cohen, Culture of Honor: The Psychology of Violence
in the South (Westview Press, 1996).
19
 Stefan Linquist (2015), “Which Evolutionary Model Best Explains the
Culture of Honour?” Biology and Philosophy 31: 213.
Toward a Naturalistic Theory of Inclusivist Moral Progress  207
individuals already primed for exclusivist responses are liable to
react in psychologically hostile ways to the introduction of po-
tentially destabilizing moral norms.
The fundamental point is not that inclusivist progress is easy to
achieve but rather that, from the standpoint of both theory and
experimental evidence, the adaptive plasticity hypothesis fares
better than the hard-​wired hypothesis. And this matters greatly
for the prospects of moral progress, as will soon become clear.

Advantages of a Biocultural Account of Moral

Development and Evolution
The central idea of the naturalized theory we have proposed is
that whether the toggle (or dial) of the adaptively plastic capacity
moves toward exclusion or inclusion depends on whether certain
threat cues are salient during moral development. It is vital to em-
phasize that this is no more an environmental determinist view
than it is a genetic determinist view. The claim is that favorable
environments—​ones in which the harsher conditions prevalent
in the EEA are muted—​create a space for the development of
inclusivist responses but do not ensure it. Whether the potential
for inclusivist morality is realized depends, as we shall see, upon
a number of factors, including the presence of incentives for de-
veloping cooperative relationships with strangers (which markets
preeminently provide) and on cultural innovations of various
sorts, including communication and transportation technologies
that link previously separated groups, techniques for perspective-​
taking, reductions in parasite threat, and improvements in moral
concepts and moral reasoning.
This chapter has articulated the main outlines of a naturalized
theory of moral progress that takes the evolutionary history of
human moral capacities seriously, while avoiding the error of
underestimating the power of culture when it fosters the exercise
of the capacity for open-​ended normativity. The key to this ac-
count is the hypothesis that human beings evolved an adaptively
208  Evolution and the Possibility of Moral Progress
plastic capacity to develop either exclusivist or inclusivist moral
responses and corresponding social practices and institutions,
depending upon the environment and whether it mimics—​or is
thought by its inhabitants to approximate—​the harsh conditions
of the EEA.
The chief advantages of such a biocultural theory are these.
First, unlike the moral hard-​wiring story, the adaptive plasticity
account is compatible with important facts about morality as it
now exists for many human beings and is reflected in signifi-
cant social practices and institutions. In other words, the various
inclusivist phenomena that present as anomalies for the hard-​
wiring view are perfectly consistent with the adaptive plasticity
view. So our theory can explain what the rival theory cannot.
Our theory can also explain everything that the rival theory can
explain—​and it can explain these features better. This is because
our theory gives a more informative explanation of why exclu-
sivist moral responses occur when they do, while at the same time
explaining why they can give way to more inclusivist responses
under certain conditions. Second, by relying on the adaptive plas-
ticity hypothesis, our theory beats the hard-​wiring theory at its
own game: it tells a more convincing evolutionary story. Given
that there were some opportunities in the EEA for intergroup
cooperation, selection would be expected to have favored an
adaptively plastic capacity over an inflexible or hard-​wired ca-
pacity that would have resulted in lost opportunities for fitness-​
enhancing intergroup cooperation.
To summarize the discussion thus far:  early human groups
evolved under ecological conditions that commonly favored
the development of exclusivist morality and severely penalized
inclusivist tendencies. Such conditions included:

(1) Severe competition for resources among scattered, weakly

genetically related groups, with levels of productivity suf-
ficiently low that sharing resources with out-​groups entails
dangerously high costs.
Toward a Naturalistic Theory of Inclusivist Moral Progress  209
(2) The absence of institutions (in particular markets and se-
curity arrangements) to facilitate peaceful, mutually
beneficial cooperation among groups—​ in contrast to
the existence of efficacious institutions within hunter–​
gatherer societies to prevent powerful individuals from
monopolizing resources and exploiting vulnerable
individuals.
(3) High risk of infection by biological and social para-
sites: these include pathogens carried by members of for-
eign groups to which one’s own group had little or no
immunological resistance and human “social parasites”
whose integration into a host group risked undermining
social cohesion through free-​riding or a lack of familiarity
with or commitment to host group norms.
Such ecological conditions would have generally favored mo-
ralities underwritten by truncated forms of moral emotions. In
particular, sympathy would have been circumscribed to in-​group
members, resulting in severe limitations on the capacity for altru-
istic behavior beyond the confines of the group.20 Indeed, theory
suggests that parochialism was a precondition for the evolvability
of human altruism, and there is evidence that altruism and pa-
rochialism are mediated by a common proximate developmental
cause. Studies show that oxytocin, a neurotransmitter that modu-
lates empathy, not only enhances intragroup altruism but also ac-
centuates exclusivist moral response, particularly in competitive
intergroup environments (see Chapter 11 for a more detailed dis-
cussion).21 Altruism and exclusivism appear, therefore, to be two
sides of the same adaptive coin—​and this makes good sense if, as
the received evolutionarily view suggests, morality was forged in
the crucible of intergroup conflict.

20
  Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind (Pantheon, 2012).
21
 Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, A Cooperative Species. Human
Reciprocity and Its Evolution (Princeton University Press, 2011).
210  Evolution and the Possibility of Moral Progress
Nevertheless, this is far from the whole story. According to the
model we propose, in environments in which out-​group threat
cues are attenuated or absent, adaptively plastic moral response
mechanisms permit the evolution of more inclusivist moral re-
sponses, which can be shaped by social and in particular insti-
tutional conditions. This brings us to the thesis that inclusivist
morality is in effect a “luxury good.”

Inclusivist Morality as a Luxury Good

Chapters 5 and 6 argued that the view that there are strong ev-
olutionary constraints on morality overlooks the existence of a
remarkable human characteristic:  the capacity for open-​ended
normativity—​ a capacity that is crucial to understanding the
development of more inclusive moralities and other types of
moral progress as well. While evolutionary developmental en-
vironments have favored varying degrees of exclusivity over
the course of human history, conditions amenable to the exer-
cise of open-​ended normativity and hence to the development of
more inclusivist moralities appear to be rare. In particular, they
seem to be connected to a range of recent sociopolitical develop-
ments that have taken place predominantly in highly resourced
populations. Such developments include (inter alia) healthcare
and public health infrastructures, reductions in crime, rule of law,
property rights, literacy, and the emergence of markets, to name
a few. There is an important sense, therefore, in which inclusivist
morality is a luxury good.
If the adaptive plasticity hypothesis of exclusivist morality is
right, then moral progress and the above sociopolitical develop-
ments do not merely have a common cause: they are reciprocal
causes of one another. Conditions of infectious disease, phys-
ical insecurity, interethnic conflict, and low rates of productivity
seed exclusivist moral responses, which in turn feed back into
the exacerbation and perpetuation of the conditions that trigger
Toward a Naturalistic Theory of Inclusivist Moral Progress  211
exclusivist tendencies. Furthermore, there is a link between ex-
clusivist psychological orientations and mental rigidity, closed-​
mindedness, dogmatism, and fear of uncertainty.22 Individuals
exhibiting these psychological orientations are less able or willing
to critically examine assumptions underlying their moral world-
view, to perceive the complexities of moral problems, to ac-
knowledge that they hold logically contradictory beliefs, or to
be motivated to iron out logical contradictions within their belief
system. These traits, in turn, make it difficult or impossible to
subject one’s values and cultural practices to critical scrutiny, thus
impeding inclusivist moral development and perhaps moral prog-
ress more generally. In other words, it is likely that the same envi-
ronmental conditions that impede the development of inclusivist
morality inhibit other forms of moral progress as well.
Although the focus of our inquiry is on moral inclusivity, we
surmise that other forms of moral progress (such as proper de-​
moralization and improvements in our understandings of virtues,
moral concepts, and morality itself) may also be luxury goods.
This would be the case if, for example, it turns out that these
moral improvements rely upon prior improvements in moral
reasoning—​and if, as we have suggested, the efficacy of moral
reasoning as a significant contributor to moral progress requires
favorable conditions.
By the same token, cultural innovations that alleviate condi-
tions that trigger exclusivist responses act to break the vicious
spiral, creating an environment in which inclusivist morality
can flourish. Cultural innovations can modify evolved moral re-
sponses in two ways. First, they can remove or ameliorate the
harsh conditions of the EEA. This has been accomplished, for
example, by the division of labor and improvements in agricul-
tural technologies that greatly increased the social surplus, thus

 John T. Jost et  al. (2003), “Political Conservatism as Motivated Social

22

Cognition,” Psychological Bulletin 129: 339–​375.

212  Evolution and the Possibility of Moral Progress
reducing the cost of sharing resources with strangers; by the de-
velopment of institutional infrastructures for peaceful, mutually
beneficial cooperation among groups; and by improvements in
medicine and public health that dramatically reduced parasite
stress.
Second, cultural innovations in the form of new moral norms,
more sophisticated moral reasoning, and new techniques for per-
spective-​taking can reshape moral responses; but this is likely to
occur on a large scale only if economic conditions are sufficiently
favorable and there is a reasonable degree of physical security,
both actual and perceived. It is beyond the scope of this book to
develop a comprehensive account of how cultural innovations
can, under favorable conditions, result in moral progress for sig-
nificant numbers of people and in such a way as to change social
practices and institutions. Instead, we will simply offer a few illus-
trations of how progress in the form of inclusiveness has occurred.
All of the illustrative cases fit the luxury goods hypothesis:  the
morally progressive change occurred on a large scale only recently
and under conditions favorable to the development of inclusivist
moral responses. That is, in each case progress was achieved on a
significant scale in societies that had already attained high levels of
physical security and material abundance.

Case Example: Abolition
A remarkable example, or rather set of examples, of cultural
innovations that contributed to increased inclusivity is ex-
tensively documented by historians of the British abolitionist
movement. In order to convince people that slavery was a
wrong and such a serious wrong as to require legal prohibi-
tion, with all the economic costs this entailed, British abolition-
ists had to overcome or at least weaken the racist ideology that
supported slavery and to overcome the complacency of those
who were not deeply racist but simply turned a blind eye to the
Toward a Naturalistic Theory of Inclusivist Moral Progress  213
evil.23 To accomplish these goals, abolitionists employed a number
of techniques that evidenced a remarkable grasp of both human
psychology and what is now called “social epistemology.” To
counter the belief that Africans were not sufficiently rational to
possess natural rights, including the right to liberty, abolitionists
arranged extensive speaking tours and funded books and journal
articles in which freed African slaves publicly demonstrated
their rationality. They also developed sophisticated techniques
for evoking sympathy for the suffering of slaves. For example,
anti-​slavery societies sent artists, under false pretenses, to travel
on slave ships and to make detailed drawings of the unspeakable
conditions to which slaves were subjected in the Middle Passage,
which were later copied and distributed widely. In addition,
taking advantage of existing norms of epistemic (and moral)
deference to the clergy, they worked to win over the clergy
and even provided them with “canned” anti-​slavery sermons.24
Perhaps the most important cultural innovation that contributed
to the success of abolitionism was the printing press, along with
a great increase in literacy in the decades prior to the founding of
the movement—​which dramatically amplified the effects of the
aforementioned cultural innovations.25

23
  In Chapter 4, we note that much of the opposition to emancipation was
not explicitly racist. Predictions that freed slaves would engage in violence
against their former masters, and forecasts of economic ruin were perhaps as
powerful as outright racism, at least in the case of British abolitionism.
24
 For an accessible account of abolitionist techniques that draws upon
and synthesizes much primary scholarship, see Adam Hoschild, Bury the
Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire’s Slaves (Houghton
Mifflin Harcourt, 2005).
25
  Some scholars have argued that the development of the novel helped some
people to broaden their empathy and extend their sympathy to foreigners, to
women, and to members of other social classes. This technique for fostering in-
clusivity, like the ones previously noted, depended on the great cultural innova-
tion of literacy plus printing. See, for example, Martha Nussbaum, Cultivating
Humanity:  A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education (Harvard
University Press, 1997).
214  Evolution and the Possibility of Moral Progress
Many abolitionists apparently were motivated in part by the
belief that slavery was incompatible with Christianity, but their
strategies for mobilizing anti-​slavery sentiment and political ac-
tion included techniques that operated independently of explic-
itly religious appeals. Indeed, there have been countless places
and times in which religious beliefs have served to justify and
reinforce exclusivist moralities and drive moral regressions, in-
cluding slavery. The fact that religious beliefs and motivations
have resulted in both uncontroversial moral progressions and
uncontroversial moral regressions suggests that there are other
difference-​making factors at play in driving these moral trajec-
tories. A naturalized account of abolitionist successes does not
deny the importance of religious belief and motivation but in-
stead explains how a combination of favorable circumstances,
evolved psychological responses, the capacity for open-​ended
normativity, and social-​ epistemic practices enabled religious
activists to bring about one of the greatest instances of moral
progress.

Case Example: Animal Welfare

For a second example, think of the techniques employed by
advocates for the better treatment of animals. These include the
distribution of films and television spots depicting the mistreat-
ment of animals in laboratories, “factory” farms, and meat-​pro-
cessing plants (similar to abolitionist artists depicting the horrors
of the Middle Passage), as well as the dissemination of scientific
information to show that animals used in experimentation and
food production experience pain and fear much as humans do.
Through direct appeals to emotions by offering descriptions and
images of animal suffering and by changing our beliefs about the
capacity of animals for suffering, these techniques extend our
sympathy while at the same time revealing the inconsistencies in
our moral responses and behavior. The case of progress in the
Toward a Naturalistic Theory of Inclusivist Moral Progress  215
treatment of non-​human animals is especially encouraging be-
cause the impetus has come not from the oppressed community
itself but from outside. It is a remarkable illustration of the ca-
pacity for inclusivist moral thinking and behavior.

Evidence for the “Luxury Good” Hypothesis

The key point is that these inclusivity-​advancing cultural inno-
vations are only likely to arise, become pervasive, and take root
under highly favorable socioeconomic conditions. Our hypothe­
sis that inclusivist morality is a luxury good fits the historical
evidence, in several respects. First, significant penetrance of
inclusivist moral commitments in human populations, such as the
extension of moral regard to non-​human animals and the con-
demnation of slavery, is a rather recent phenomenon and appears
to correlate, roughly, with the remarkable gains in productivity
that began in Britain and western Europe in the mid-​eighteenth
century.26 While it is true that vegetarianism has been practiced by
some members of some Asian religious cultures—​Jains, Hindus,
and Buddhists—​a more general shift in attitudes toward the treat-
ment of animals, translated into widespread legal and institutional
reform, is relatively recent and appears to have been initiated
mainly in societies of relative abundance and security. Further, it
is not clear that the practice of vegetarianism in these Asian re-
ligious traditions indicates the recognition that non-​human ani-
mals have moral status on their own account; instead, eating them
is avoided in order to escape the cycle of reincarnation. Second,
periods of severe economic downturn correlate with increases in
xenophobic and racist behavior, particularly when out-​groups

 Gregory Clark, A Farewell to Alms:  A Brief Economic History of the

26

World (Princeton University Press, 2009); and Robert William Fogel, The
Escape from Hunger and Premature Death, 1700–​2100 (Cambridge University
Press, 2004).
216  Evolution and the Possibility of Moral Progress
(including minorities within larger populations) are salient.27
Third, in conditions of great physical insecurity and where the
institutional infrastructure for peaceful, mutually beneficial re-
lations among groups has broken down—​as in the case of failed
states or war zones—​group ties strengthen, while hostility to-
ward and distrust of out-​groups increase.28 Fourth, outbreaks of
deadly infectious diseases (whether the recent Ebola epidemic
or the Mexican typhus outbreak in the early twentieth century)
tend to evoke disproportionate fears among significant numbers
of people, including those in developed nations far from the site
of the outbreak, disposing them to adopt unusually harsh policies
toward foreigners and immigrants within their own borders.29
In later chapters we will elaborate the luxury good hypothesis.
Here we wish only to emphasize that although moral progress
in the form of inclusion is only likely to occur and be sustained
in environments that do not feature the harsh conditions of the
EEA, there are additional necessary conditions for progress. In
particular, a complex social-​epistemic environment is needed.
The case of British abolitionism, to which we will recur later,
nicely illustrates this point: British society in the late eighteenth
and early nineteenth centuries was not only more materially
prosperous and physically secure than ever before; it also fea-
tured impressive communication technologies made effective by
unprecedented levels of literacy as well as political conditions
that included freedom of expression and the responsiveness of
government to public opinion.

27
 Lincoln Quillian (1998), “Prejudice as a Response to Perceived Group
Threat: Population Composition and Anti-​Immigrant and Racial Prejudice in
Europe,” American Sociological Review 60(4): 586–​611.
28
  Linda Tropp, ed., The Oxford Handbook of Intergroup Conflict (Oxford
University Press, 2012, p. 116).
29
 H. Markel and A.  M. Stern (2002), “The Foreignness of Germs:  The
Persistent Association of Immigrants and Disease in American Society,”
Milbank Quarterly 80(4): 757–​788.
Toward a Naturalistic Theory of Inclusivist Moral Progress  217
Proceeding on the assumption that a general theory of moral
progress should illuminate moral progress in the form of inclu-
sion, this chapter has proposed an alternative evolutionary model
of moral psychological development and evolution and has dem-
onstrated how this naturalized theory helps to flesh out more sat-
isfying explanations of a number of historical gains in inclusion.
The next chapter elaborates on the biocultural dimensions of the
theory and shows that it provides valuable insights into how re-
gression toward moral exclusivity comes about.
 CHAPTER 7

Naturalizing Moral Regression

A Biocultural Account

The previous chapter sketched an evolutionary model of exclu-

sivist moral psychological development and showed that inclusivist
morality is a luxury good in the sense that it is only likely to be
widespread and stable in highly favorable conditions—​namely,
those in which the harsh environmental conditions of the envi-
ronment of evolutionary adaptation (EEA) have been overcome.
This chapter advances two further hypotheses that draw upon and
extend this model: first, that inclusivist gains can be eroded if these
harsh conditions reappear or if significant numbers of people
come to believe that they exist and, second, that a combination
of normal cognitive biases and defective social-​epistemic practices
can cause people wrongly to believe that such harsh conditions
exist, especially if there are individuals in positions of power and
prestige who have an interest in spreading this false belief. Our
aim will be not to make a bulletproof case for each of these theses
but simply to show that they are important elements of any natu-
ralistic theory of inclusivist moral progress.

Regression and the Demagogic Manipulation of Belief

A theory of moral progress ought to explain not only how prog-
ress occurs but also how regression can come about. The key
 Naturalizing Moral Regression  219
to our naturalistic account of regression is the prediction that
inclusivist gains will tend to be eroded if EEA-​like conditions
return or if enough people come to believe such conditions exist.
This hypothesis gains plausibility from the same evidence that
supports the “luxury good hypothesis” discussed in the pre-
vious chapter—​but it is also supported by the fact that, as we
have suggested, exclusivist moral responses that were selected
for in the EEA can be triggered by people’s perceptions of their
predicament. For the exclusivist moral response to be activated,
such perceptions need not be veridical—​that is, it is not necessary
that competition among groups actually be unavoidably severe
or that allowing foreigners into one’s society will actually result
in deadly epidemics, threaten the stability of existing norms, or
undermine cooperation in some other way; all that is necessary is
that people come to believe this is so.
Importantly, the same resources for cultural innovations that
made inclusivist morality possible can also be used to dismantle
it. This is precisely what occurs when certain people (such as ex-
tremist political elites) have a dominant interest in provoking
exclusivist moral responses in others and have the social power
and psychological savvy to act effectively on this interest. Those
who mobilize exclusivist moral responses can succeed in either
of two ways. The first is by directly creating an environment
that is, objectively speaking, friendly to exclusivist morality and
unfriendly to inclusiveness. This occurs when such individuals
provoke highly destructive intergroup conflicts that destroy in-
stitutional infrastructures for peaceful interaction and public
health or create conditions of severe scarcity and ruthless com-
petition for resources. Alternatively, governments or political
leaders can create an environment that is subjectively unfriendly
to inclusivist morality by persuading enough people that they are
living in an environment that mimics the harsh characteristics of
the EAA, even when in reality it does not.
One salient tactic common to those who manipulate belief to
encourage exclusivist attitudes is to blame social problems on
220  Evolution and the Possibility of Moral Progress
some external group characterized as a dangerous “other.” To
take another historical example: many Southerners who resisted
school integration and other civil rights gains in the 1950s and
1960s claimed that it was “outside agitators” who were causing
these changes, implying that people within southern society, in-
cluding African Americans, who were satisfied with the status
quo were the victims of an aggressive invasion of foreign ideas.
The ubiquity and power of this style of discourse make perfectly
good sense on our naturalized theory of moral regression, given
its emphasis on the potency of representing “the other” as not
only alien but also dangerous—​if not biologically or physically,
then socially. Similarly, prominent figures on the political right
blame the decline of American manufacturing on “unfair” trade
practices by other countries, with no mention of the role of au-
tomation in reducing the number of manufacturing jobs. As
we noted in the Introduction, a significant type of moral prog-
ress is the recognition that some misfortunes are not the result
of the actions of malicious “others” but are due instead to im-
personal forces. The tendency to blame all problems affecting
Americans on foreigners is a clear and potentially destructive case
of regression.
If the manipulators of exclusivist tendencies can succeed in
making enough people believe that out-​ groups pose serious
threats, this will not only strengthen in-​group ties; it will also
elicit out-​group antagonism, which in turn can cause people to
act in ways that induce reciprocal fear in out-​groups—​and what
began as a misperception of intergroup threat will rapidly be-
come reality. In other words, an initial misperception that an-
other group is hostile can prompt hostile behavior toward that
group, which in turn will lead that group to respond in kind,
resulting in a spiral of epistemic reinforcement. As political
scientist Robert Jervis has shown, even if the initial response
prompted by a misperception that the other group is hostile
is purely defensive, it may be misinterpreted as aggressive—​
a dynamic we have seen time and again in, for example, cold
 Naturalizing Moral Regression  221
war brinkmanship.1 In a similar vein, social ostracism causes
members of oppressed groups to judge their oppressors as less
than human, as well as to infer that their oppressors view them as
less than human—​resulting, again, in the mutual reinforcement
of subjective out-​group threat.2 Likewise, the ghettoization of
oppressed groups into substandard living conditions serves to
“confirm” morally relevant beliefs about out-​groups, such as
the notion that they are breeding grounds for crime or disease,
which in turn are used to justify their social exclusion.

Evolved Cognitive Biases and Perceptions

of Out-​group Threat
Recent work in the psychology of normal cognitive biases and
errors helps flesh out the idea that misperception can trigger re-
sponses that were adaptive in the EEA even when, objectively
speaking, the conditions of the EEA no longer obtain. Lawrence
Hirschfeld provides impressive empirical work to support the hy-
pothesis that cognitively normal human children exhibit, at a very
early age, what might be called an essentializing “natural kinds”
ontology with respect to human groups.3 In simplest terms, chil-
dren tend to sort the human beings they encounter or hear about
into groups and assume that all members of a given group share
a hidden essence that determines, in rather rigid fashion, how
all members of the group behave. Hirschfeld’s point is not that

1
 Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics
(Princeton University Press, 1976, pp. 58–​62).
2
  See Brock Bastian and Nick Haslam (2010), “Excluded from Humanity: The
Dehumanizing Effects of Social Ostracism,” Journal of Experimental Social
Psychology 46: 107–​113.
3
 Lawrence Hirschfeld, Race in the Making:  Cognition, Culture, and the
Child’s Construction of Human Kinds (Bradford, 1998); S. A. Gelman (2009),
“Learning from Others:  Children’s Construction of Concepts,” Annual
Review of Psychology 60:  115–​140; Ilan Dar-​Nimrod and Steven J. Heine
(2011), “Genetic Essentialism:  On the Deceptive Determinism of DNA,”
Psychological Bulletin 137(5): 800–​818.
222  Evolution and the Possibility of Moral Progress
children are born racist but that they do have a psychological dis-
position to essentialize human groups, which can, given the right
environment, provide a template for the development of racist
attitudes and behaviors.
Also drawing on a considerable empirical literature, Sarah-​
Jane Leslie examines a normal cognitive error that may feature
in a proximate explanation of how the psychological disposition
Hirschfeld documents can result in exclusivist moral responses.4
She notes that what she calls “generic overgeneralization” occurs
when one sees—​or believes—​that some member of another group
has exhibited dangerous or violently aggressive behavior, and as
a result one comes to believe that all members of that group will
behave in the same way. Hirschfeld’s analysis makes this apparent
case of hyper-​inductions more explicable: if all members of the
group share a common deterministic essence, then an observation
that one member of the group behaves in a certain way provides a
basis for concluding that they all do.
This tendency to essentialize human groups is reinforced
by the intergroup asymmetry observed in the so-​called funda-
mental attribution error:  people tend to attribute positive in-​
group behaviors to internal character dispositions and negative
in-​group behaviors to situational factors, whereas they make the
reverse set of attributions in relation to out-​group members.5
Indeed, what is disturbing about generic overgeneralization is
that it apparently only applies in connection with highly nega-
tive behavior.6 If a member of another group exhibits commend-
able behavior, people do not tend to attribute that behavior to all
other members of the group.

4
  Sarah-​Jane Leslie (2017), “The Original Sin of Cognition: Fear, Prejudice
and Generalization,” Journal of Philosophy 114(8): 393–​421.
5
  Miles Hewstone (1990), “The ‘Ultimate Attribution Error’? A Review of
the Literature on Intergroup Causal Attribution,” European Journal of Social
Psychology 20(4): 311–​335.
6
  Leslie, “The Original Sin of Cognition,” supra note 4.
 Naturalizing Moral Regression  223
Evolutionary risk management theory can go some way toward
explaining this asymmetry of attribution.7 Recall that the adaptive
plasticity account holds that moral development is shaped by the
detection of out-​group threat. The detection of out-​group threat,
in turn, involves probabilistic “judgments” under conditions of
uncertainty. In these circumstances, evolutionary theory predicts
that certain cognitive biases will evolve as a result of an adaptive
error rate asymmetry between false positives and false negatives.
In the EEA, when it came to judgments about whether a
stranger was dangerous, the risk attaching to a false negative was
much greater than the risk of a false positive. That is to say, a
false judgment that a stranger was innocuous could be lethal—​
and thus would have entailed far greater risks than a false judg-
ment that a stranger was dangerous—​which would merely have
resulted in lost opportunities from forgoing prosocial interactions
with out-​group members. Given the paucity of social practices
or institutions for mutually beneficial interactions with strangers
and given high levels of biological and social parasite threat, a
false judgment that a stranger was innocuous could be disastrous
to the in-​group—​and thus would have entailed far greater risks
than a false judgment that a stranger was dangerous or not to
be trusted. In such an environment, erring on the side of false
positives would be adaptive, and hence there would be selection
for generic overgeneralization in relation to negatively valenced
out-​group traits.
One might think that the proclivity to essentialize human
groups is simply a byproduct or evolutionary fallout of the adapt­
ive tendency to essentialize the biological world in general.8 The

7
 M.  G. Haselton and D. Nettle (2006), “The Paranoid Optimist:  An
Integrative Evolutionary Model of Cognitive Biases,” Personality and Social
Psychology 10: 47–​66; M. Haselton, D. Nettle, and P. Andrews, “The Evolution
of Cognitive Bias,” in D.  M. Buss (ed.), The Handbook of Evolutionary
Psychology (Wiley and Buss, 2005, pp. 724–​746).
8
  See F. J. Gil-​White (2001), “Are Ethnic Groups Biological ‘Species’ to the
Human Brain?” Current Anthropology 42: 515–​554.
224  Evolution and the Possibility of Moral Progress
tendency to essentialize the biological world appears to be innate
and is most likely an adaptation.9 Very young children, across
very disparate cultures, come to form essentializing beliefs about
species of animals, for example—​that is, they attribute the prop-
erties of animals of a single species or type to a common, immu-
table essence. This tendency may be fallacious from a scientific
perspective, but it serves as a reasonably good evolutionary heu-
ristic, given that conspecifics will tend to behave in characteristic,
predictable ways. So perhaps ethnic “essentializing” implicates
the same cognitive faculties that identify and characterize bio-
logical species. If the tendency to essentialize living things were
the whole story, however, then people would essentialize positive
traits of out-​groups as much as they do negative traits. Yet as
we have seen, there is a fundamental asymmetry in this regard.
Thinking of out-​groups as natural kinds and attributing their
negative (but not positive) behavior to internal, immutable char-
acter dispositions possessed by every member of the group looks
very much like an evolutionary biological heuristic for managing
out-​group threat. Like conspecifics, co-​ethnics share many prop-
erties that are not evident from superficial inspection—​and given
the asymmetric cost between false negatives and false positives,
generic overgeneralization may not only allow for the successful
prediction of individual behavior but also help avoid the risks
that attend intergroup interactions.

The Social (Mis)Construction of Belief

Once properly fleshed out, an adaptive plasticity account of ex-
clusivist morality tells us part of what we need to know about
how to increase the probability that moral progress will persist
and grow. Much of the remaining part of what we need to know
is supplied by integrating our knowledge of evolved cognitive

  See G. A. Gelman, The Essential Child: Origins of Essentialism in Everyday

9

Thought (Oxford University Press, 2003).

 Naturalizing Moral Regression  225
biases, discussed above, with social moral epistemology. By “so-
cial epistemology” we mean the critical evaluation of alternative
social practices and institutions with regard to their efficacy and
efficiency in promoting true or justified beliefs.10 Social moral
epistemology focuses on the social promulgation of beliefs that
tend to be crucial for moral judgment, moral reasoning, and the
moral emotions.11 How do social moral-​epistemic practices in-
teract with cognitive biases and other evolved features of human
moral psychology to impede or facilitate the development of
inclusivist morality?
Inclusivist shifts, we have suggested, are the result of cul-
tural innovations that can flourish and be sustained only under
a narrow range of moral developmental environments, making
inclusivist morality a luxury good. We have further suggested
that the moral bridges that these cultural innovations provide can
be dismantled using the same materials that were used to con-
struct them: human psychology and culture. It will prove valu-
able to home in now and elaborate on how some individuals can
use these resources to manipulate the beliefs of others in such a
way as to trigger exclusivist moral responses, thereby reversing
the gains that constitute an important form of moral progress.
The vast literature on genocides and ethnic cleansings, as well
as that on eugenic forced sterilizations, demonstrates that those
who mobilize others to commit violations of basic human rights
on a massive scale often rely on a technique that involves “de-
humanization of the other.”12 Dehumanization is one type of

10
 Social epistemology focuses on the social norms and processes by
which some individuals come to be regarded as experts in various domains
of knowledge, on how individuals come to seek expertise and to identify
experts, and, more generally, how beliefs are socially promulgated.
11
  Allen Buchanan (2002), “Social Moral Epistemology,” Social Philosophy &
Policy 19(2): 126–​152.
12
  N. Haslam, “Dehumanization:  An Integrative Review,” Personality and
Social Psychology Review 3:  252–​264; and Jonathan Glover, Humanity:  A
Moral History of the Twentieth Century (Yale University Press, 2001).
226  Evolution and the Possibility of Moral Progress
so-​called delegitimizing belief,13 a class of extremely negatively
valenced attributions to out-​groups that serve to exclude them
from the moral community.14 Dehumanization involves clas-
sifying out-​groups as subhuman, either by identifying them as
non-​human animals with lesser or no appreciable moral status
(such as vermin or insects) or by identifying them as negatively
valenced supernatural entities (such as evil demons).
The first step in the delegitimization process, however, is to
convince people that some people are the “other”—​members of a
distinct group that is significantly different from one’s own, and
different in ways that warrant hostile actions toward its members.
Even if, as Hirschfeld and others have shown, there is an innate
disposition to sort people into groups, how the sorting plays out
depends on how children and adults are acculturated. For ex-
ample, in Nazi Germany, children were taught to identify Jews
by the shape of their supposedly distinctive noses. Once a group
is identified—​or rather constructed—​the next step is to create the
perception that they are less than human, or more like beasts, with
respect to, for example, their reduced reasoning capacities, their
tolerance of pain, their lack of uniquely human moral emotions,
their tendency to transmit infectious disease, and so on. If the
out-​group is thought to lack traits like rationality, this precludes
entertaining the possibility that intergroup conflicts could be re-
solved through reason-​based negotiations.
For example, Nazi propaganda, in political speeches, textbooks,
and cartoons, portrayed Jews as a deadly bacillus infecting so-
ciety and as plague-​ carrying rats. Similarly, propaganda that
fueled the Rwandan genocide referred to Tutsis as cockroaches.
From the standpoint of manipulating beliefs in order to trigger

13
  D. Bar-​Tal, Shared Beliefs in a Society: Social Psychological Analysis (Sage,
2000, pp. 121–​122).
14
 See also S. Opotow (1990), “Moral Exclusion and Injustice:  An
Introduction,” Journal of Social Issues 46: 1–​20.
 Naturalizing Moral Regression  227
exclusivist moral responses, these dehumanizing metaphors kill
two birds with one stone:  they activate the parasite threat re-
sponse that triggers disgust, fear, and other negatively valenced
emotions that modulate out-​group antipathy, while at the same
time removing the impediment to harsh treatment of the other
that the recognition of the other’s humanity erects. Exclusion
from the moral community results in what Albert Bandura has
called “moral disengagement,”15 which allows individuals to treat
out-​group members in ways that are inconsistent with their hu-
manity and which would otherwise trigger moral inhibitions.
A similar moral disengagement function can be attributed to san-
itized euphemisms, which are often coupled with parasite stress
triggers—​such as referring to mass murder as ethnic or political
“cleansings” or “purges.”
Ironically, the rhetoric of dehumanization is a back-​handed
tribute to a fundamental gain in inclusiveness:  if most people
did not regard other human beings, as such, as deserving of basic
moral consideration, it would not be necessary to instill the belief
that some people are subhuman in order to mobilize violence to-
ward them. The use of dehumanization and contamination meta-
phors to foster intergroup hatred or to justify aggression toward
out-​groups, therefore, is an excellent example of a technique that
causes people to regress toward the exclusivist moral responses
that were more uniformly typical of human beings before the
synergism of improved environmental conditions, open-​ended
normativity, and cultural innovation did their progressive work.
Mobilizers of ethnic and racial hatred exhibit an impressive
working knowledge of both normal cognitive biases and so-
cial epistemology. They use existing social-​ epistemic institu-
tions such as the media and government information agencies,
as well as norms of epistemic deference to medical personnel,
scientists, teachers, and in some cases clerics, in order to exploit

  Albert Bandura (2002), “Selective Moral Disengagement in the Exercise of

15

Moral Agency,” Journal of Moral Education 31: 101–​119, p. 109.

228  Evolution and the Possibility of Moral Progress
normal cognitive biases (such as generic overgeneralization
and responses to parasite threat) in order to activate exclusivist
moral responses that dismantle culturally constructed bridges to
inclusion.
Another historical example will reinforce this conclusion. In
the Third Reich public schoolteachers were issued a teachers’
manual in which they were instructed to teach children not only
facts but also values. They were told to instill in their pupils the
Golden Rule—​an impressive thought experiment, which, if prop-
erly applied, can reduce the risk of exclusivist moral responses
by encouraging one to put oneself in the other’s place. However,
this instruction came with an important proviso: that it was to be
made clear to students that the Golden Rule only applies to racial
comrades.16 The teachers were also instructed to help students
learn to distinguish racial comrades from inferior types and to
understand just how dangerous and subhuman Jews in particular
are. Here we have an example of a deliberate educational effort to
disable a cultural innovation that fosters inclusiveness, in this case
the Golden Rule. This effort proceeds, moreover, by exploiting
the psychological dispositions that Hirschfeld, Leslie, Haslam,
Bandura, and others identify, as well as the social-​epistemic re-
sources of the society in which it occurs—​in particular, the pat-
terns of deference to supposed experts, such as schoolteachers,
who have an especially formative influence on the child’s moral
education.
Perhaps the clearest example of how the perception of out-​
group threat can dismantle culturally constructed inclusivity is
the nationalist version of social Darwinism that appears to have
played a significant role among the causes of the Second World
War. According to this ideology, nations are locked in an inevi-
table struggle of unlimited violence in which the only alternatives
are domination or subjugation and ultimately extinction. This

16
  Claudia Koontz, The Nazi Conscience (Harvard University Press, 2003,
p. 119).
 Naturalizing Moral Regression  229
view gained popularity in the countries that came under the sway
of fascism (Italy and Germany) and militarism (Japan) and, per-
haps in response to the spread of the Great Depression through
global trade and financial networks, was combined with a belief
in economic autarchy. This is the view that a country must con-
trol within its own borders all the natural resources required for
its economy to function or to function well enough for it to suc-
ceed in the Darwinian struggle against other nations.
There is an impressive social science literature that builds a
strong case for the conclusion that leaders who accepted the
nationalist social Darwinist claims about international rela-
tions were biased toward “preventive” aggression and that
they typically attempted to justify striking first on grounds of
perceived “necessity.”17 The necessity here is rational, though
only conditionally so:  given the requisite premises about the
inevitability of violent conflict among nations and assump-
tions about the existential risk that attaches to losing, it is
rational for each nation to attempt to strike first before its po-
tential opponent becomes powerful enough to dominate. And
given the economic autarchy view, one must engage in wars of
aggression to command more and more resources, given the
premise that if one does not do so, other nations will use them
against one.
The hyper-​realist picture of international relations painted by
nationalist social Darwinism has been thoroughly exploded in
the international relations literature for several decades now, and
the doctrine of autarchy has disappeared from respectable eco-
nomic discourse. What matters, however, is not whether these
views are true but whether they are believed to be true. To believe
them is, in effect, to believe that we are living in the harsh envi-
ronment characteristic of the EEA, with this modification:  the
relevant groups are not small batches of hunter–​gatherers or

 Ian Kershaw, Fateful Choices:  Ten Decisions That Changed the World,
17

1940–​41 (Penguin, 2013, pp. 274, 277).

230  Evolution and the Possibility of Moral Progress
hunter–​pastoralist tribes but nations.18 Acting on their nation-
alist social Darwinist and economic autarchy views, the leaders of
fascist Italy and Germany, along with their ally militarist Japan,
disabled the existing institutional infrastructure for peaceful
cooperation in international relations (including the League of
Nations and the Hague Conventions) and thereby created an en-
vironment that more closely approximated their own distorted
vision. Given the environmental sensitivity of human morality, it
is hardly surprising that once the aggressors succeeded in creating
a harsher, more dangerous international environment, it became
difficult if not impossible for their opponents to cleave to their
own inclusivist moral commitments. Indeed, war propaganda
in the democracies often indulged in the same dehumanization
techniques their enemies used, in part to rationalize barbaric ac-
tions against civilian enemy populations, as in the case of Allied
terror bombing of German and Japanese cities.

Case Study: Eugenics
Reflection on the eugenics movements of the late nineteenth and
early to mid-​twentieth centuries further bolsters the conclusion
that our naturalized theory provides valuable resources for un-
derstanding regression and for appreciating certain recurring
commonalities among otherwise quite different cases of regres-
sion. The eugenics movement was in fact highly heterogeneous—​
there were positive and negative, radical and reformist, liberal and
conservative eugenicists. Yet there were five widely held if not

18
  Nations are already examples of inclusiveness: they are “imagined com-
munities” that manifest strong ties among veritable strangers. The destruc-
tiveness of nationalism when combined with social Darwinism illustrates an
important point: developments that in themselves might be viewed as instances
of progress, such as the transcendence of cramped “tribal” identities in favor of
larger communal identities like nationality, need not be progressive, all things
considered, depending upon what other moral developments have occurred or
failed to occur.
 Naturalizing Moral Regression  231
universally endorsed themes: (1) that the most serious social ills,
from poverty and crime to drunkenness, “promiscuity,” and child
neglect, are the deterministic result of a cluster of traits found
in some “genetically inferior” individual human beings; (2) that
these traits are hereditary and are inherited in a straightforward
fashion; (3) that those human beings who have these clusters of
hereditary traits are, as a result of some of the traits themselves,
reproducing at a much higher rate than are people with “good”
genes (or germplasm, to use the earlier term); (4) that private phi-
lanthropy and the welfare state are fostering the reproduction
of individuals with these deleterious packages of traits by buff-
ering them against evolutionary selection pressures that would
otherwise have eliminated them from the gene pool; and (5) that
if there is not a radical change in human reproductive patterns
rather soon—​that is, unless the higher reproductive rate of the
people with deleterious genes is not stemmed—​major social ills
will worsen to the point where civilization itself is imperiled.19
Eugenic discourse fits the template we have delineated: a certain
group (in this case, those with supposedly defective germplasm)
is characterized as “other,” as dangerous, and as the bearers of
diseases (eugenicists talked of the vertical transmission of disease,
from generation to generation, and described those with defec-
tive genes as agents of infection). Reflection on eugenic discourse
also shows how exclusion can be, as it were, internalized: for eu-
genicists, the dangerous “others” are not foreigners, members of
another society; they are among us and constitute a growing pro-
portion of the members of our society. In a subsequent work we
intend to explore in detail this phenomenon of the internaliza-
tion of exclusion, that is, the ways in which discourse, individual

  For discussions, see Russell Powell (2015), “In Genes We Trust: Genetic

19

Engineering, Eugenics and the Future of the Human Genome,” Journal of

Medicine and Philosophy 40(6): 669–​695; A. Buchanan, D. Brock, N. Daniels,
and D. Wikler, From Chance to Choice:  Genetics and Justice (Cambridge
University Press, 2001, ­chapter 2).
232  Evolution and the Possibility of Moral Progress
behavior, and social policy can cast certain groups within society
as dangerous “others” or as having less than full basic moral
status. We intend to build on the work in this volume to con-
struct a naturalistic theory of ideology.
Historians of eugenics have emphasized that a “public health”
model was central to eugenic thinking. The idea was that the ver-
tical transmission of disease could not be stemmed by individual
healthcare but required large-​scale social policy changes, either to
encourage the “fitter” types to reproduce more or to encourage
or force the “unfit” to reproduce less (or preferably not at all)
or both. Because it was thought that the disproportionate pro-
liferation of deleterious genes would result in the destruction of
civilization, eugenic thinking appealed to what Michael Walzer
in a quite different context calls the idea of a “supreme emer-
gency.” In a lethal plague in which the transmission of disease
is horizontal (from person to person existing at the same time),
extraordinary measures, including policies that are coercive, may
be necessary. To halt the spread of infection, individuals may
have to be quarantined, travel prohibited, mandatory vaccination
programs initiated, and so on. In brief, such a state of emergency
may license infringements of individuals’ rights that would be im-
permissible under ordinary conditions. Similarly, the eugenicists
argued, the ordinary moral rules, including those implicating in-
dividual rights, are abrogable when the vertical transmission of
disease threatens catastrophe for all of humankind.20
Eugenic discourse also manifests dehumanization techniques
that play on the disgust response:  those with deleterious genes
are likened not only to plague-​carrying vermin but also to sewage
polluting the public water supply.21 Just as important, eugenic
rhetoric also appealed to another threat cue from the EEA: the
danger of social parasites, free-​riders, or “useless eaters” who will

20
  Allen Buchanan (2007), “Ethics, Beliefs, and Institutions:  Eugenics as a
Case Study,” Journal of Political Philosophy 15(1): 22–​45.
21
 Ibid.
 Naturalizing Moral Regression  233
soak up resources without contributing. Eugenic literature often
featured elaborate calculations of how much social wealth would
be absorbed by some number of generations of “defectives” and
even went so far as to predict that unless such parasitism was
stopped society would be reduced to a condition of primitive
scarcity.22
Each of these instances of moral regression could be elaborated
in greater detail, and no doubt our desire to present them con-
cisely slips over certain nuances and complications. Nevertheless,
our characterizations are sufficiently accurate to illustrate the
power of our naturalistic theory to help illuminate at least some
important forms of moral regression. Understanding the ways in
which the EEA shaped human moral capacities helps explain both
why regressive phenomena as different from one another as those
we have described all appeal to certain ideas and metaphors—​
such as disease, scarcity, free-​riding, and degeneration—​and why
such appeals are so motivationally potent.

What’s New?
At this point, one might object that we have merely stated what
everyone knew already—​for example, that eugenicists, Nazis, and
more recent genocidaires dehumanized their victims and that un-
scrupulous politicians foment conflict by playing on fears of “the
other.” It is important to emphasize, therefore, that the natural-
ized account of moral progress and moral regression that we have
developed here is not an attempt to reinvent the wheel. It is true
that some of the processes of social change we have focused on
have already been characterized by psychologists, historians, and
sociologists, for example, in the Holocaust studies literature. Our
contribution is to provide an explanatory framework that unifies

22
  See, for example, Eugenics Catechism (American Eugenic Society, 1926),
which calculates the social costs of the continued reproduction of the fictional
Jukes family.
234  Evolution and the Possibility of Moral Progress
and deepens this diverse body of interdisciplinary work, relating
it to evolutionary understandings of human nature and linking
it to philosophical discussions of moral progress. In particular,
we have shown how normal cognitive biases, existing patterns
of epistemic deference, and evolved mechanisms of conditional
moral expression can work together to produce forms of moral
behavior that philosophers and other thinkers have characterized
as regressive.
We have also shown that existing theories of racial and
ethnonational behavior are not only consistent with the pre-
vailing evolutionary explanation of the origins of human mo-
rality but in fact enriched by it. The naturalistic account of moral
progress we have proposed is by no means “reductionistic” or
“scientistic.” It is no more fundamentally an evolutionary ex-
planation than it is a social scientific, historical, or philosophical
one. Its aim is to integrate evolved psychological mechanisms,
cognitive biases, and social moral-​epistemic practices into a dy-
namic developmental account of morality that does not reduce
fundamentally to any one of these phenomena. Unlike views of
human culture that could be seen as “biologically imperialistic,”
our account takes culture—​and cultural innovation—​seriously
and conceives of human morality as only loosely constrained by
its evolved genetic moorings.
We do not purport to offer an account that encompasses every
important facet of moral progress or regression, let alone one that
provides generalizable sufficient conditions for any instance of
it; nor do we expect our account to explain every aspect of the
instances of moral progress or regression to which it is applied.
Our goal, rather, is to provide an empirically constrained and in-
formed model that ties together a diverse range of observations
about human moral thought and behavior by recourse to a few
organizing principles and idealized causal mechanisms. This ac-
count does not merely restate a list of widely documented dispo-
sitions (e.g., intergroup violence is triggered by resource scarcity;
individuals with disease and disability have often been excluded
 Naturalizing Moral Regression  235
from the moral community; altruism is modulated by group
membership; people tend to form racial and ethnic stereotypes;
dehumanization of the out-​group can facilitate interethnic vio-
lence, etc.); nor does it simply repackage these observations in
bio-​conceptual garb. Rather, it brings these diverse phenomena
under a unified causal-​explanatory umbrella, with philosoph-
ical and scientific theories of human nature playing mutually
informing roles.
Theories give data meaning. Observations only count as data in
relation to some hypothesis, and what we perceive as data depends
heavily on our background theories.23 As Tooby and DeVore
state, “Models (or theories) are organs of perception: they allow
new kinds of evidence and new relationships to be perceived.”24
The model we propose not only explains known patterns of data
and the links between them but also is likely to reveal entirely
new sources of evidence that corroborate—​or compel us to elab-
orate, modify, or abandon—​elements of the model.
One might skeptically query whether any single observation
could falsify our theory; but falsifiability is no longer treated as
the gold standard for theory adjudication. The question, rather,
is whether the proposed model adds to our explanatory toolkit.
To be deemed inadequate, one would need to show that most of
what we want to explain in the domain of moral progress and
moral regression is not amenable to the explanatory tools our
theory provides. To the contrary, as we have seen, the model of-
fers a range of novel explanatory insights in this domain.
Further, our account takes the interaction between biology and
culture seriously: it holds that threat cue detection can be faulty

23
 Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould, “Punctuated Equilibria:  An
Alternative to Phyletic Gradualism,” in T. J.  M. Schopf (ed.), Models in
Paleobiology (Freeman, Cooper, 1972, pp. 82–​115).
24
 J. Tooby and I. DeVore (1987), “The Reconstruction of Hominid
Behavioral Evolution Through Strategic Modeling,” in Warren G. Kinzey
(ed.), The Evolution of Human Behavior: Primate Models (SUNY Press, 1987,
pp. 183–​237, p. 184).
236  Evolution and the Possibility of Moral Progress
yet still provoke exclusivist responses and that human beings can
manipulate one another’s beliefs in ways that create false positives
for threat detection. At the most general level, these techniques
for belief manipulation can be called cultural innovations, but
our analysis goes further than that by emphasizing that whether
manipulation succeeds will depend upon the social-​ epistemic
environment—​whether certain individuals have incentives for
manipulating the beliefs of others and whether they can rely on
effective communication technologies (from the printing press to
Twitter) and exploit established patterns of epistemic deference
to do so. The fundamental point is that the same cultural innova-
tions that allow people to expand the moral circle can be used to
dismantle the bridges that have with great effort and over a long
period of time achieved successive expansions.
Evolutionary explanations of the origins of morality provide
us with the beginnings of an account of what must occur if moral
progress in the form of greater inclusiveness is to continue and
be sustained. Our evolutionary model suggests that those who
value this form of moral progress should support efforts to (1) al-
leviate the harsh conditions characteristic of the EEA wherever
they still exist, (2) avoid regression to EEA-​like conditions or to
perceptions of those conditions where more favorable circum-
stances now prevail, and (3) prevent those who would mobilize
exclusivist moral responses from using social-​epistemic resources
to dismantle the cultural innovations that have been instrumental
in expanding the moral circle.
Concretely, the first task requires reducing the incidence of in-
fectious disease, creating conditions of greater physical security
in many parts of the world (including in microenvironments in
developed nations), fostering economic development to increase
social surpluses, and creating institutional structures that link
groups in peaceful, mutually beneficial cooperation. The second
and third tasks involve not only solidifying objective conditions
that are friendly to the development of inclusivist morality but
also protecting inclusivist cultural innovations against efforts to
 Naturalizing Moral Regression  237
dismantle them by those who create perceived conditions of out-​
group threat. The protective effort will need to draw on the same
resources that regressive forces utilize:  knowledge of evolved
human psychology (including normal cognitive biases) and an
appreciation for how socially promulgated beliefs can influence
our conditional moral responses (social moral epistemology).
Any naturalized account of moral progress will therefore need
to be informed by evolutionary psychology and social moral
epistemology—​not only to provide a realistic account of how
(and how much) inclusivist moral progress is possible but also to
supply practical guidance on how best to achieve and sustain the
moral progress of which we are capable.
Evolutionary explanations of morality that stress the predis-
position toward exclusivist morality do not show that inclusivist
morality is impossible. Nor do they show that inclusivist gains
made thus far have reached their limit or are unsustainable. They
do indicate, however, that whether the gains made thus far will be
sustained and whether further gains can be achieved depend on
the environment in which our moral powers develop and operate.
A key upshot is not simply that exclusivist morality is a predispo-
sition rather than an inevitability. It is that the exclusivist predis-
position is itself conditional: this disposition is only activated by
certain cues that may or may not be present in the developmental
evolutionary environment. In that sense, it is too strong to say
that inclusivist morality goes against our evolved grain; instead,
it is more accurate to say that under certain conditions inclusivist
morality goes against our evolved grain. The task that lies before
us is to spell out these conditions in greater detail.25

25
 At the outset of this inquiry, we noted that even if rejecting extreme
forms of exclusivist morality is uncontroversially progressive, it should not be
assumed that greater inclusivity is, even on a liberal account, always better.
Nor should we assume, even if the adaptive plasticity account were right, that
human moral capacities could be stretched indefinitely along the dimension
of inclusivity without incurring significant moral costs. Therefore, a problem
238  Evolution and the Possibility of Moral Progress
Our analysis has scrupulously avoided any suggestion that
some elite should, naturalistic theories in hand, take it upon
themselves to guide humanity toward moral progress. The
dangers associated with misuse of the notion of moral prog-
ress and with claims of moral expertise are amply illustrated in
human history. Nonetheless, we believe that it is a mistake to re-
spond to these dangers by refusing to explore the possibility of
a naturalized theory of moral progress. The better course is to
develop an account of how some of the most important putative
instances of moral progress (and regression) have occurred and
then, armed with that explanatory framework, address the ques-
tion of how abuses of the notion of moral progress can best be
avoided. Indeed, many such abuses can be understood (and per-
haps ultimately mitigated) by recourse to an explanatory frame-
work like the one we have sketched here. If it turns out that the
risk of abuse is intolerably and unavoidably high, then perhaps
“moral progress” should remain conspicuously absent in liberal
discourse. Absent such a showing, however, we will continue to
remain open to the possibility that a theory of moral progress
may eventually reclaim its rightful place at the heart of liberal
political theory.

remains:  under what circumstances will human beings be able to determine

when greater inclusiveness is progressive and when it is regressive? In particular,
a theory of inclusivist moral progress should shed light on the circumstances
in which the capacity for open-​ended normativity is likely to be exercised in
such a way as to give inclusivity its due without giving short shrift to special
moral ties. Another important task is to spell out the implications of our thesis
for attributions of moral praise and blame. If individuals live in an environment
that is hostile toward sustaining inclusivist moral commitments, then their vi-
olation of inclusivist moral principles may be less blameworthy. It may still be
the case, however, that such individuals have obligations to try to change the
environment so that they are able to adopt and honor more inclusivist moral
commitments.
 CHAPTER 8

De-​Moralization and the Evolution

of Invalid Moral Norms

Thus far our naturalistic theory of moral progress has focused

on moral inclusivity. However, as Part I  makes clear, there are
many other important types of moral progress—​and we believe
that human evolutionary history both constrains and enables
progress in some of these dimensions, too. The present chapter
illustrates this point by examining moral progress in the form of
proper de-​moralization, which occurs when behavior thought
to be morally impermissible rightly comes to be seen as morally
neutral or even commendable.
In what follows, we explain why proper de-​moralization is
a paradigmatic type of moral progress, why improper and even
outright destructive moral norms evolve and persist, and how
invalid moral norms can be identified and overcome.1 We will
also construct and critique another “evoconservative” challenge
to moral reform, in this case one that appeals to cultural evolu-
tion in arguing that de-​moralization is a risky, hubristic endeavor
that is likely to have unintended bad consequences. Once again,
we will show that these evoconservative assertions are fatally

1
  Arguments in this chapter are drawn from Allen Buchanan and Russell
Powell (2017), “De-​Moralization as Emancipation: Liberty, Progress, and the
Evolution of Invalid Moral Norms,” Philosophy & Social Policy 34(2): 108–​135.
240  Evolution and the Possibility of Moral Progress
oversimplified and that the same evolutionary resources that lead
to the entrenchment of invalid moral norms can be marshaled to
break free of their hold. Here, as in preceding chapters, the aim is
to offer not a purely evolutionary theory of moral progress but
a biocultural one. Evolutionary theory will play two roles in the
analysis to follow: first, we will show that certain conservative ad-
monitions against de-​moralization rest on a faulty understanding
of cultural evolution; second, we will show how sound evolu-
tionary thinking can illuminate the emergence and persistence of
invalid (and in some cases highly destructive) moral norms and
thereby provide guidance for the kinds of cultural innovations
that can help us escape their thrall.

Invalid Moral Norms as Constraints on Liberty

Although morality necessarily involves constraints on liberty,
people can mistakenly believe that morality constrains them
when it does not. Liberal thinkers of the Enlightenment under-
stood that these “surplus moral constraints” (as we will call them),
in the form of invalid moral norms, can impose significant lim-
itations on freedom and flourishing and ought to be overcome.2
Surplus moral constraints have both internal and external aspects.
Internally, they amount to limitations on an individual’s liberty
imposed by conscience. Internal constraints of conscience may be
accompanied by external constraints, including not only various
sanctions (including punishment) for violating the moral norms
in question but also subtler but nonetheless powerful forms of

2
  The fact that abandoning a moral norm would increase liberty does not,
of course, show that this change constitutes moral progress. Abandoning valid
moral norms might increase liberty but would not be progressive. The topic of
this chapter is proper de-​moralization—​abandonment of invalid moral norms.
So far as invalid moral norms constrain liberty, they do so without justification,
and removing these constraints counts as moral progress, other things being
equal, for two reasons: first, because it is a case of remedying a defective un-
derstanding about what morality requires and, second, because (at least from a
liberal standpoint) unjustifiable constraints on liberty are to be avoided.
De-Moralization and the Evolution of Invalid Moral Norms  241
social pressure. Contemporary liberal thinkers have tended to
focus chiefly on external constraints and in particular on curtail-
ments of liberty wrought by the coercive power of the state.3 Yet
internal constraints of conscience may persist and continue to re-
strict freedom, even when external sanctions and social pressures
have abated. Internalized improper moralization can thus signif-
icantly limit an individual’s options for acting and in ways that
entail great material and psychological costs, even when external
sanctions have been removed.
Emancipation from surplus moral constraints is an impor-
tant type of moral progress, at least for any conception of moral
progress that values liberty. Because surplus moral constraints are
unnecessary limitations on liberty, escaping their thrall is a form
of emancipation. To the extent that surplus moral norms signif-
icantly interfere with liberty, welfare, or other important moral
values or duties (such as those associated with justice or benefi-
cence), the de-​moralization of those norms, all else being equal,
constitutes moral progress.
Instances of proper de-​moralization abound and play a prom-
inent role in the catalog of morally progressive developments.
Profit-​seeking, lending money at interest, premarital sex, homo-
sexual behavior, interracial marriage, masturbation, refusal to die
“for king and country,” and virtually all instances of resistance to
government authority were once widely thought to be immoral
but are no longer so regarded by many people. We will take it
for granted, because we are assuming a broadly liberal moral
perspective, that these are all cases of proper de-​moralization—​
that, at least from a secular liberal point of view, beliefs that
these behaviors are morally wrong per se or that they warrant

3
  Focusing only on external constraints not only obscures the fact that in-
valid moral norms, if internalized, can unnecessarily limit liberty; it also abets
a failure to see that false factual beliefs can limit liberty and at great cost. Allen
Buchanan, “Prisoners of Misbelief:  The Epistemic Conditions of Freedom,”
in David Schmidtz and Carmen Pavel (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Freedom
(Oxford University Press, forthcoming, pp. 508–​524).
242  Evolution and the Possibility of Moral Progress
institutionalized punishment were unjustified and that coming to
realize the falsity of these beliefs is an instance of moral prog-
ress. Later, we will suggest that one of the major points of con-
tention between liberals and conservatives is a disagreement
about how reliably one can determine when a given instance of
de-​moralization is a case of proper de-​moralization. If one is to
develop an account of the relationship between liberty and de-​
moralization, one must be able to determine when internalized
moral norms and external sanctions for violating those norms are
instances of surplus constraint and when they are not.
Paradigmatic cases of de-​moralization present as clear cases of
moral progress in the liberal tradition. For example, if one is ho-
mosexual but has internalized a norm that brands all homosexual
behavior as sinful and morally abhorrent and if one adheres to this
norm, then one may experience great psychological suffering due
to the self-​inflicted frustration of one’s most basic needs. These
needs include not just sexual satisfaction but also the intimacy
and deep attachment of partnership—​needs that can be frustrated
even after homosexual behavior has been decriminalized and
other formal external sanctions have been removed; and if the
internalized norms of conscience have sufficient psychological
inertia, these needs may continue to be denied even in the ab-
sence of any external constraints at all. Alternatively, if a person
violates the moral prohibition of homosexuality and engages in
homosexual acts in order to meet these basic human needs, then
he may experience haunting shame and guilt.
Similarly, if one believes that any perceived insult to one’s honor
requires violent retaliation, one may put oneself at lethal risk by
initiating a duel or feel compelled to engage in otherwise violent
behavior that runs contrary to one’s basic values, thereby risking
self-​alienation, unnecessary trauma, and guilt. Likewise, if people
in a society refrain from profit-​seeking or from lending money
at interest on the grounds that these vital economic behaviors
are immoral, the result may be the perpetuation of a state of ec-
onomic underdevelopment, with disastrous consequences for
De-Moralization and the Evolution of Invalid Moral Norms  243
human welfare, liberty, and justice. Some have argued that the
persistence of moral norms against profit-​based lending partly
explains the economic underdevelopment of the Middle East.4
One final example: in a society in which it is widely believed
that it is wrong for women to engage in independent economic
activity outside the home, women will not only be barred from
important paths to flourishing but also remain so dependent
upon men and have so little influence on the political process that
there may be little prospect of eliminating the grosser abuses of
patriarchal society, including domestic abuse and honor killings.
In short, the costs of surplus moral constraint, and accordingly
the benefits of proper de-​moralization, can be extraordinarily
high. That is why proper de-​moralization is an important form
of moral progress.

Why Do Invalid Moral Norms Evolve and Persist?

At this point, a puzzle looms: if some supposed moral constraints
are so costly to obey because they are clearly irrational, destruc-
tive, or bigoted, then why did they come about in the first place
and why do they persist? Consider, for example, biblical pro-
hibitions on planting more than one kind of crop in a field or
wearing garments with more than one kind of fiber, on women
trimming the edges of a man’s beard, on simmering a young goat
in its mother’s milk, or, in some cultures, a norm against eating
fish that results in avoidable malnourishment or one that requires
men to gorge on protein-​rich foods while depriving women of
the same nutrients.
Such norms seem to be irrational limitations on liberty at best
and destructive of human welfare at worst. How did these norms
come to be institutionalized and internalized by large numbers
of people and to persist despite their costs and apparent lack

4
 Timur Kuran, The Long Divergence:  How Islamic Law Held Back the
Middle East (Princeton University Press, 2012).
244  Evolution and the Possibility of Moral Progress
of sound grounding in morality or prudence? Having a theory
of the origination and persistence of improper moralizations
may help us develop effective strategies for overcoming them.
Evolutionary explanations of morality—​especially cultural evo-
lutionary explanations—​may provide some of the resources nec-
essary for constructing such a theory. In what follows, we will
consider several evolutionary explanations of how invalid moral
norms arise, proliferate, and persist.

Surplus Moral Norms as the Result of Adaptation

Any population exhibiting variation and heredity is an evolving
system; and if the trait variations it exhibits are causally connected
to differential survival and reproduction, then the population
can not only evolve (that is, change in its distribution of herit-
able traits over time) but also produce adaptations.5 Culture is
an evolving system that has been shown to produce adaptations.
Indeed, on dominant accounts of the evolution of cultural capac-
ities in the genus Homo, culture was designed by natural selec-
tion to serve as a parallel channel of non-​genetic inheritance for
the accumulation of cultural adaptations.6 It thus makes sense to
query whether any, and if so what proportion, of such apparently
invalid moral norms are adaptations. It also makes sense to ask,
accordingly, whether the mere fact that a moral norm is an adap-
tation has any epistemic bearing on the question of its validity.
As we saw in earlier chapters, the prevailing evolutionary se-
lectionist explanation holds that in the environment of evolu-
tionary adaptation (EEA), there were strong selective pressures
for the coevolution of moral psychology and moral culture that
supported “thick” moral relations among in-​group members but

5
 For a classic statement of the necessary conditions for adaptation, see
Richard Lewontin (1978), “Adaptation,” Scientific American 239(3): 157–​169.
6
  See Peter Richerson and Robert Boyd, Not by Genes Alone: How Culture
Transformed Human Evolution (University of Chicago Press, 2005).
De-Moralization and the Evolution of Invalid Moral Norms  245
xenophobia, distrust, and reciprocity-​ contingent attitudes to-
ward out-​group members. This “thin” moral consideration ex-
tended to out-​group members culminated in a refusal to accord
them equal moral status and, in extreme cases, the denial of any
moral standing whatsoever.
The first and most obvious implication of this evolutionary
account of the origins and persistence of invalid moral norms
is that individual and cultural susceptibilities to bigoted, xeno-
phobic, and unjustified discriminatory norms may have straight-
forwardly adaptive roots. The reason for this is simple:  invalid
norms are often adaptive, and valid norms are often maladaptive;
that is to say, we have good reason to believe that the validity
of moral norms is not determined by, and often fails to track,
their biocultural fitness. As we saw in Chapter 5, the inclusivist
anomaly is an evolutionary anomaly precisely in virtue of its
failure to track biocultural fitness. The “adaptive plasticity” model
of moral psychological development proposed in Chapter 6 and
elaborated on in Chapter  7 further fleshes out this Darwinian
explanation of invalid moral norms, particularly in relation to
exclusivity. According to that model, exclusivist psychological
tendencies and cultural norms arise in response to cues of out-​
group threat permeating the environment in which moralities
develop and evolve. This adaptively plastic system, we argued,
interacts with normal cognitive biases (such as group essentialism,
generic overgeneralization, epistemically flawed cognitive dis-
sonance resolution, etc.), as well as the cultural construction of
morally relevant beliefs about out-​groups, to produce and sus-
tain environments that are conducive to invalid exclusivist mo-
ralities. Although some EEA environments would have allowed
for the development and evolution of more inclusive moralities,
the model indicates that many arbitrarily discriminatory moral
systems will arise as biocultural moral adaptations, or else as
evolutionary “misfires” of these adaptive faculties because the
out-​group threat cues to which they are responding are not ve-
ridical. At the same time, the model suggests that environmental
246  Evolution and the Possibility of Moral Progress
alterations that reduce cues of out-​group threat make it possible
to break free of invalid moral norms, or at least exclusivist ones.
Not all adaptive moral norms are straightforwardly functional,
however. Some moral norms that appear irrational or arbitrary
are in fact mechanisms for delineating group membership, co-
ordinating group action, signaling cooperative intent, and/​ or
maintaining group cohesion. This is, for example, how hunter–​
gatherer religious rituals are now widely understood.7 Norms re-
quiring distinctive attire, body modification, hair growth, or ritual
participation draw a boundary around the group in such a way
as to reduce the risk of exposure not only to out-​group biolog-
ical parasites but also to “alien” ideas, norms, and behaviors that
could destabilize cooperation within the group (see Chapter 6).
The biblical requirement of male circumcision and the prohibi-
tion on simmering a young goat in its mother’s milk, mentioned
earlier, may be instances of this phenomenon: circumcision is a
costly device to signal a distinctive group identity, and the pro-
hibition on simmering a goat in its mother’s milk banned partic-
ipation in a ritual of the competing Canaanite religion. Various
cultural dietary restrictions (such as prohibitions on pork or beef
consumption) may also serve to demarcate group boundaries and
serve as similar costly signals of cooperative intent, though they
do so by co-​opting disgust mechanisms that readily react to an-
imal products that are prone to microbial contamination.8
Other seemingly irrational moral norms have an even less ob-
vious effect on the fitness of cultural groups. Because cooperation,
at least on a fairly large and complex scale, requires coordination
through the following of norms and because internalization of
norms improves compliance and reduces the costs of achieving

7
 Russell Powell and Steven Clarke (2012), “Religion as an Evolutionary
Byproduct:  A Critique of the Standard Model,” British Journal for the
Philosophy of Science 63(3): 457–​486.
8
 Daniel Fessler and Carlos Navarrette (2003), “Meat Is Good to
Taboo: Dietary Proscriptions as a Product of the Interaction of Psychological
Mechanisms and Social Processes,” Journal of Cognition and Culture 3(1): 1–​40.
De-Moralization and the Evolution of Invalid Moral Norms  247
it, it is important for individuals to develop the disposition to
follow moral norms automatically, as it were. Given that this is
so, the internalization of some norms may be functional only in-
sofar as they contribute to the habit of obedience to authority, a
habit that has significant fitness payoffs in the case of other, di-
rectly functional norms. Here an analogy may be helpful. In basic
military training, considerable time is devoted to what American
soldiers used to call “monkey drills”—​learning to execute rather
complex movements on the parade ground that are of no use in
combat. The standard explanation for why military authorities
devote so much time and energy to such apparently functionless
behavior is that it helps form the habit of immediate, unreflective
obedience to orders.
Similarly, some of the seemingly excessive and nonfunctional
moral rules found in the Bible or in the taboos of premodern
societies recorded by anthropologists may be only indirectly
functional: they may serve chiefly or exclusively to cultivate the
disposition to follow supposedly authoritative norms, a dispo-
sition that can have considerable fitness benefits. In addition,
as Norbert Elias has emphasized in his monumental book The
Civilizing Process, compliance with some apparently nonfunc-
tional norms may promote cooperation and even reduce the inci-
dence of violence if they serve as social signals of self-​restraint, or
readily observable proxies for “prosocial” dispositions.9

Surplus Moral Norms as the Result

of Evolutionary Mismatch
Other apparently invalid and indeed outright destructive moral
norms can be explained as “evolutionary hangovers”—​remnants
of moral responses that were perhaps functional in the EEA but

9
 Norbert Elias, The Civilizing Process Sociogenetic and Psychogenetic
Investigations, 2nd ed., revised, illustrated (Wiley, 2000); Steven Pinker, The
Better Angels of Our Nature (Viking, 2011).
248  Evolution and the Possibility of Moral Progress
are unnecessary in and discordant with the current environ-
ment. Modern human ecology is far removed from the hunter–​
gatherer lifeways that characterized the vast majority of human
evolutionary history and in which core components of human
moral psychology purportedly evolved (see Chapter 11). Thus,
as Stephen Pinker notes, some of “our ordeals come from a mis-
match between the sources of our passions in evolutionary his-
tory and the goals we set for ourselves today.”10
Evolutionary moral mismatch can take two forms. The first,
which we will refer to as the “Pleistocene hangover,” is a mis-
match between the “innate” psychological dispositions that so-
lidified in the EEA and the modern ecological environment that
our evolved prehistoric psychologies must navigate. A  classic
example is the human fondness for sweet foods and aversion to
bitter foods. Sweetness generally indicates the high energy den-
sity of a food source and is a good proxy for vitamin C content;
in addition, primates are able to store fructose as fat, which can
then be tapped for crucial calories in times of food shortage. In
contrast, bitterness (especially in plants) tends to indicate the pres-
ence of natural pesticides and other sources of toxicity and is as-
sociated with low-​quality foods. High-​energy sweet foods, such
as fruit, berries, and honey, tend to be rare and comprised only a
very small—​and highly desired—​portion of early hunter–​gatherer
diets (which consisted mainly of meat and tubers). Humans have
thus inherited an evolved penchant for sweet foods and their as-
sociated neurochemical pathways of reward and an aversion to
bitter foods. In the modern human environment, however, in
which there is a superabundance of calories and effectively unlim-
ited access to high-​energy foods, the sweet tooth adaptation (and
the adaptive aversion to bitter plant foods) may result in obesity,
diabetes, and other serious damage to long-​term human health.

10
  Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate (Penguin Classic 2002, p. 219). For a more
recent articulation of the ‘mismatch hypothesis,’ see Ronald Giphart and Mark
Van Vugt, Mismatch: How Our Stone Age Brain Deceives Us Every Day
(Robinson 2018).
De-Moralization and the Evolution of Invalid Moral Norms  249
Other Pleistocene hangovers involve specifically moral psy-
chology. For example, leadership–​followership psychology was
critical to coordinating activities of prehistoric human groups,
such as hunting, foraging, war-​making, and resolving internal
disputes11—​particularly as human societies expanded to sizes that
make strictly egalitarian decision-​making cumbersome and inef-
ficient in real-​time conflicts.12 However, leadership–​followership
psychology may pose grave risks in the modern world, where
state-​level conflicts involve hundreds of millions of people and
deploy powerful weaponry that can have irrevocable conse-
quences for generations far into the future. For instance, there
is a well-​documented human tendency to gravitate toward au-
thoritarian, hawkish, masculine, and charismatic leaders in times
of actual or perceived intergroup conflict.13 In the EEA, such ag-
gressive posturing and “rally-​round-​the-​flag” proclivities may
have been adaptive; but in the modern world of interstate brink-
manship and terrorism with weapons of mass destruction, such
“hawkish” virtues may have devastating costs. Moreover, elites
may exploit this prehistoric moral psychology by provoking
intergroup conflicts or by engendering perceptions of intergroup
threat—​or of a threat “from within” (see Chapter 11)—​in order
to consolidate power. Indeed, we seem to be witnessing these
demagogic dynamics in contemporary U.S. electoral politics (see
Preface and Chapter 10).
A second type of evolutionary moral mismatch is that be-
tween evolved cultural moral systems and the modern ecological

11
 Mark Van Vugt et  al. (2008), “Leadership, Followership, and
Evolution: Some Lessons from the Past,” American Psychologist 63(3): 182–​196.
12
 Although early human societies are generally thought to have been
rather egalitarian, subordination to the temporary authority of a powerful
male (so-​called Big Men) in times of armed conflict also seems to have been
common. Ibid.
13
 Mark Van Vugt et  al., “Evolution and the Social Psychology of
Leadership:  The Mismatch Hypothesis,” in C. Hoyt, D. Forsyth, and A.
Goethals (eds.), Social Psychology and Leadership (Praeger, 2008), pp. 267–​282.
250  Evolution and the Possibility of Moral Progress
environment. Consider, for example, the differences in cultural
conceptions of honor between American populations in the
North and those in the South, discussed in Chapter 6. Southerners
are far more likely to respond to insults or affronts to their honor
with violence—​a cultural difference that is explained, as we have
already seen, by the fact that the primary settlers of the South
were livestock herders with a hyper-​masculine, honor-​based cul-
ture. Honor cultures, which are robustly associated with livestock
herding throughout the world, appear to be cultural adaptations
to rugged, lawless regions of countries where there is little or no
institutional recourse to prevent theft and other forms of pre-
dation.14 In modern environments, however, cultures of honor
impose significant surplus moral constraints and tend to involve
improper moralization as well. Imported into grand conflicts be-
tween powerful states and combined with prehistoric leadership–​
followership psychology discussed above, a culture of honor can
cause spiraling, destructive intergroup conflicts; make peaceful
resolutions harder to come by; and create conditions in which the
critical scrutiny of moral norms—​or what we referred to earlier
as the capacity for “open-​ended normativity” (see Chapter 5)—​is
unable to gain sufficient purchase.
An example of a costly evolutionary moral mismatch that
may implicate both innate dispositions and cultural moral norms
concerns the treatment of homosexuality. It has been suggested
that prohibitions on homosexual sex and, even more so, on ho-
mosexual partnership may have been selected for because of
their contribution to higher fertility rates in small, vulnerable so-
cieties (such as the biblical Israelites) whose survival depended
upon achieving high fertility. In addition, this prohibition may
have facilitated an efficient division of labor between men and
women (big game hunting/​warfare, on the one hand, childcare/​
local foraging, on the other), and this specialization may have

14
  R. E. Nisbett and D. Cohen, Culture of Honor: The Psychology of Violence
in the South (Hachette, 1996).
De-Moralization and the Evolution of Invalid Moral Norms  251
been crucial for survival for much of human evolutionary his-
tory. Prohibitions on homosexual sex and the enforcement of
stereotypical gender roles are, of course, no longer critical for
group survival; to the contrary, they can be highly detrimental
to group success. Population increases can be economically dis-
advantageous, and the ability of women to enter the workforce
and to be able to compete for desirable positions has a significant
positive impact on economic development. In modern human
ecology, therefore, prohibitions on same-​sex partnerships and the
enforcement of strict gender roles seem to do far more harm than
good—​and, from the standpoint of morality properly conceived,
this harm is unjust because it falls disproportionately on women
and sexual preference minorities.
Although norms can sometimes change rapidly, evolutionary
investigations of such norm–​environment mismatches show that
formerly adaptive norms can have substantial inertia, even when
societies find themselves in ecological circumstances to which the
norms are ill-​suited. What explains this cultural staying power?
One possibility is that it simply takes time for new cultural var-
iants to emerge and become sufficiently frequent in the popula-
tion for cultural copying biases to drive them to fixation (more
on the dynamics of cultural transmission below). Another pos-
sibility is that some norms are “culturally entrenched”—​a cul-
tural analog of developmental constraint in biology.15 A norm is
culturally entrenched if it is causally connected to other aspects
of a cultural tradition web, such that the norm cannot be altered
without the costly alteration of many other aspects of the web,
resulting in the norm’s selective preservation. Norms that impli-
cate group identity or moral identity, for example, are likely to

15
 For an extended discussion of different types and causes of genera-
tive entrenchment, see W. C. Wimsatt, “Entrenchment and Scaffolding:  An
Architecture for a Theory of Cultural Change,” in L. Caporael, J. Griesemer,
and W. Wimsatt (eds.), Developing Scaffolding in Evolution, Cognition, and
Culture (MIT Press, 2013), pp. 77–​105.
252  Evolution and the Possibility of Moral Progress
be preserved at great cost because they occupy a central, highly
connected position in the cultural web. A key problem for cul-
tural evolutionary research is to identify what the philosopher of
science William Wimsatt calls “escape mechanisms” that allow
for deep modifications of entrenched cultural structures whose
alteration would otherwise send devastating ripples across a cul-
tural system.16 Even if core cultural norms do not budge in an
individual in which they are already entrenched, in today’s world
of pluralistic societies with modes of mass communication, new
generations may acquire cultural elements not only vertically
from their parents but also (and especially) from their peers in
adjacent cultures, allowing even the core norms of a population
to be transformed over time.

Surplus Moral Norms as the Result of Special Interest

Adaptations
There is a tendency to think of organisms either as harmonious
wholes or else as mere vehicles through which genes ensure
their representation in the next generation. Both of these con-
ceptions are wrong. The fallacious “gene’s eye” perspective has
held a strong sway over the public understanding of evolution,
thanks to the effective popularization of evolution by the likes
of Richard Dawkins. Over the last few decades, however, it has
become clear that the genetic level is only one level of the bi-
ological hierarchy at which natural selection can act. Multilevel
selection theory explains, with the aid of rigorous modeling, how
evolution can act on multiple levels simultaneously and how this
multilevel selection process can produce adaptations at one level
of organization that are detrimental to the stability of another
level.17

16
 Ibid.
17
  See David Sloan Wilson and Elliott Sober (1994), “Reintroducing Group
Selection to the Human Behavioral Sciences,” Behavioral and Brain Sciences
17(4): 585–​654.
De-Moralization and the Evolution of Invalid Moral Norms  253
The biological world is comprised of individuals nested within
other individuals:  genes aggregate to form chromosomes, cells
aggregate to form multicellular organisms, multicellular organ-
isms aggregate to form colonies, and so on. Importantly, the
necessary conditions for selection—​heritable variation causally
connected to differential survival and reproduction—​ can be
met at any of these nested levels simultaneously. So, contrary to
the gene’s eye view, genes are not the only objects of selection.
Because selection can work simultaneously in different direc-
tions across levels of organization, a trait that is adaptive at one
level can be deleterious at other levels. Indeed, the key to un-
derstanding the formation and maintenance of higher levels of
biological organization—​such as the multicellular organism—​is
to understand how cooperation is achieved and evolutionarily
“selfish” tendencies mitigated among its lower-​level parts. In the
case of paradigmatic biological individuals comprised of lower-​
level individuals—​such as multicellular organisms comprised of
cells or colonies comprised of organisms—​there are mechanisms
in place to ensure that lower-​level adaptations deleterious to
higher-​level survival and reproduction will be selected against.18
For example, the division of labor between germ and somatic cells
prevents any particular cell line from “going it alone”; likewise,
cancerous cell lines are targeted by the immune system in multi-
cellular organisms, and eusocial insect nest-​mates attack workers
that attempt to reproduce.
Human societies do not resemble paradigmatic individuals,
however, in part because they have far more limited means of
addressing interlevel replication conflicts. This is especially true
of large, complex post-​Neolithic societies, in which adaptations
of lower-​level components (such as elite castes) can emerge de-
spite their deleterious consequences for larger human collectives.

18
 Richard Michod, “Evolutionary Transitions in Individuality,” in B.
Calcott and K. Sterelny (eds.), Major Transitions in Evolution Revisited (MIT
Press, 2011, pp. 169–​197).
254  Evolution and the Possibility of Moral Progress
Thus, norms that benefit an elite subset of individuals or a priv-
ileged class within a society can persist despite the fact that they
are deleterious for most individuals within the society and even
for the society as a whole. We will call such cultural adaptations
special interest adaptations. In the long haul, special interest ad-
aptations may undermine cultural group stability and thus be
selected against; in the short term, however, there is historically
little by way of social mechanisms to stop the evolution of spe-
cial interest adaptations in hierarchically complex, multilayered
human societies, which have historically lacked adequate en-
forcement mechanisms at the group level to guard against them.
The rule of law and constitutional democracy are very recent cul-
tural innovations that, in effect, are designed to check special in-
terest adaptations and place limits on state and elite class power.
An example of a deleterious set of norms generated and per-
petuated as special interest adaptations concerns the profoundly
incompetent, ineffective, and unjust criminal justice systems of
many developing countries that have gained independence from
colonial rule. The norms that underpin criminal justice institu-
tions in many postcolonial developing countries were originally
designed to protect the property and power of colonial rulers and
their elite allies at the expense of the general population—​in es-
sence, they served as mechanisms of popular suppression. After
independence, rather than reforming these norms, many post-
colonial regimes preserved and benefited from them, with elite
groups coming to occupy the powerful positions held by their
former colonial rulers.19
Traits that were originally selected for performing one fitness-​
enhancing function may come to perform a new function, including
a special interest function that enhances the fitness of a subset of
a collective at the expense of other individuals. The complex of

19
 Gary Haugen and Victor Boutros, The Locust Effect:  Why the End of
Poverty Requires the End of Violence (Oxford University Press, 2015), pp.
171–​186.
De-Moralization and the Evolution of Invalid Moral Norms  255
norms that constitute the Indian caste system, for example, may
have reduced the risk of biological parasites that aboriginal peo-
ples of the subcontinent posed to their Vedic conquerors.20 But
later, when the conquered and the conquerors came to comprise
one larger society, these same norms may have functioned to con-
solidate the power of the conquerors’ descendants through their
control over the state apparatus (coercion) and religious authority
(ideology), by preventing the dilution of power through inter-
marriage with descendants of the conquered and by reserving
valued social positions for themselves.21

Surplus Moral Norms as the Result of Failures

of Collective Action
As discussed above, the evolution of paradigmatic evolutionary
individuals, such as organisms and colonies, hinges on the evolu-
tion of effective mechanisms for regulating reproductive conflicts
among lower-​level units. In particular, it requires mechanisms
that control the ability of lower-​level units to act in their own ev-
olutionary “self-​interest,” preventing them from “defecting” or
“free-​riding” in ways that undermine cooperation at the higher
level. Thus, the formation of evolutionary individuals requires
that the evolutionary process find solutions to difficult collective
action problems, and the evidence suggests that human societies
have only limited resources for solving them.
In human cultural evolution, collective action problems can
not only undermine cooperation that is beneficial for all but also
sustain harmful cooperative structures that prevent defection in
ways that leave everybody worse off, including elites that orig-
inally benefited from those cooperative arrangements. In other

  W. H. McNeil, Plagues and Peoples (New York: Anchor, 1998).

20

  It is worth noting that while in the past socioeconomic and political ad-
21

vantages may have been conducive to individual reproductive fitness, this is no

longer true in many societies, where the better off tend to have lower rates of
reproduction.
256  Evolution and the Possibility of Moral Progress
words, some surplus moral norms can persist due to failures of
collective action even when they confer no reproductive advan-
tage on the group or any of its members. Dueling, footbinding,
and female genital mutilation may be examples. Dueling may
have originated through a combination of sexual selection (in an
earlier environment in which females put a premium on physical
courage in males) and selection for relatively constrained forms
of violence (where conflicts are settled on the field of honor by
the actions of two individuals, as opposed to the continuing, un-
containable conflict of intergenerational blood feuds between
groups). But even when these original functions became otiose
due to cultural innovations that provided less physically destruc-
tive outlets for competition among males—​and even though most
people, including most participants in the practice, recognized
how destructive it was—​dueling persisted. Similarly, careful in-
vestigations of female mutilation norms, such as footbinding and
genital cutting, show that these practices arose initially as special
interest adaptations (in particular, as paternity confidence meas-
ures for wealthy elites) and then spread to the general population,
where they were bolstered by false empirical beliefs (e.g., about
their health benefits).22
Why do such destructive and apparently maladaptive norms
persist, even when they fail to benefit or confer a fitness advan-
tage on anybody? A  central explanation for their persistence is
that abolishing them requires solving difficult collective action
problems. For instance, even if each potential duelist believes
the practice to be irrational and even immoral, any defecting
individual will face debilitating social stigma or, in the case of
footbinding and genital mutilation, severely reduced marital
prospects. Similarly, as Kim Sterelny has suggested, even if the
initial victims of female genital mutilation enjoyed an advan-
tage in the mate selection market (given the cultural context

 Gerry Mackie (1996), “Ending Footbinding and Infibulation:  A

22

Convention Account,” American Sociological Review 61(6): 999–​1017.

De-Moralization and the Evolution of Invalid Moral Norms  257
of a patriarchal, deeply sexist society in which female chastity
was inordinately valued), once the practice became widespread,
the advantage evaporated:  if virtually every woman has muti-
lated genitals, having them confers no comparative advantage.23
In other words, undergoing female genital mutilation came to
be a matter of horrific costs with no offsetting fitness benefits
for the individuals undergoing it. The practice persists, Sterelny
argues, because abolishing it, as with the case of dueling, requires
solving a difficult collective action problem. The first defectors
from the practice will suffer a prohibitive reproductive penalty
because they will be viewed as inappropriate mates in societies
in which unmarried females have grim economic prospects, and
they will be subject to moral condemnation, stigmatization, and
intimidation.
Effectively counteracting special interest adaptions, such as
those discussed above, may involve solving a collective action
problem not only for the society as a whole (through, e.g., anti-​
infibulation or anti-​footbinding pledge societies) but also for the
disadvantaged subset of society in particular. A powerful elite or
privileged contingent has at its disposal impressive resources for
blocking the collective action necessary for the masses to eman-
cipate themselves from surplus norms that favor special interests.
These resources include coercion, or attaching material costs to
noncompliance with such norms, as well as ideologies that ob-
scure the fact that the norms are nothing more than instruments of
class domination. Just as mechanisms for reducing somatic muta-
tion rates sustain cooperation in organisms, so too do ideologies
function to reduce rates of cultural “mutation” that could desta-
bilize societal arrangements that benefit all or, in some cases, that
benefit primarily an elite caste. In essence, ideologies can act as
immune systems, blocking invading cultural variants that could
destabilize existing institutional structures and undermine social

  Kim Sterelny (2007), “SNAFUS: An Evolutionary Perspective,” Biological

23

Theory 2: 317–​328.
258  Evolution and the Possibility of Moral Progress
cohesion, whether this is to the benefit of all or only a subset of
society.
Furthermore, participation in a revolution involves a cost to
the individual participator, but whether the revolution will suc-
ceed depends upon whether enough people participate. Even
though emancipation would be best for all members of the
oppressed class, it may be rational for each oppressed member to
refrain from participating in the revolution. Indeed, the tendency
of the worse off to rationalize special interest norms—​that is, to
buy into ideologies that preserve the status quo—​may in fact be
a mechanism for avoiding the costs of challenging prevailing spe-
cial interest norms, given the likelihood that such challenges will
not succeed due to problems of collective action and given that
failure could have disastrous and potentially fatal consequences.
Thus, ideologies may function both as special interest adapta-
tions and as adaptations that enable subjugated groups to cope
with special interest adaptations.

Surplus Moral Norms as the Result of the Dynamics

of Cultural Transmission
Finally, some harmful surplus moral norms may proliferate and
be sustained in a society simply due to the intrinsic dynamics of
cultural transmission, which allow maladaptive variants to spread
rapidly in a cultural population. Unlike the clean lines of vertical
descent exemplified by genetic transmission, cultural variants can
be acquired from and transmitted to any member of a popula-
tion within a single lifetime; this allows cultural variants to spread
much more rapidly than genetic variants, but it also makes cul-
tural transmission uniquely susceptible to the spread of maladap-
tive variants. As discussed in Chapter  5, Richerson and Boyd’s
modeling work has shown that cultural copying biases—​such
as tendencies to copy cultural variants that are common, to em-
ulate prestigious individuals, and to identify transparently suc-
cessful strategies—​can allow for cumulative cultural adaptation.
De-Moralization and the Evolution of Invalid Moral Norms  259
But these are far from fail-​safe heuristics as destructive norms are
often adopted by prestigious individuals—​consider, for example,
celebrity “anti-​vaxxers” (opponents of childhood vaccination)
and more generally the tendency of experts to opine outside of
their proper domain of expertise. Furthermore, futile or harmful
norms are often mistaken for successful ones, particularly in cases
of complex causation, such as epidemiology and disease.24
In sum, seemingly arbitrary, irrational, or bigoted moral norms
may be sustained in a society even though they are deleterious
in modern selective environments, even though they are adapt­
ive for only small subsets of human populations (such as pow-
erful elites), even though they actively harm large segments of
society, and even though they no longer (or never did) confer a
fitness advantage on anyone. It follows that the fact that a norm
is maintained in a society does not, therefore, provide persuasive
or even prima facie evidence that the norm has a salutary func-
tion. This simple fact, as we shall soon see, has momentous im-
plications for traditional conservative thinking, which takes the
longevity of social practices and institutions as evidence of their
“wisdom.”

How Can One Reliably Identify Surplus Moral

Constraints?
This chapter began with a list of relatively uncontroversial cases
of surplus moral constraints and hence proper targets for de-​
moralization. De-​moralization, however, can go awry: people can
and often have come to regard as morally permissible behaviors
that are in fact morally wrong. For example, in the thrall of Nazi
ideology, many ordinary Germans came to believe that behavior

24
  On the unique susceptibility of cultural transmission to deleterious vari-
ants and how cultural copying biases partially overcome these susceptibilities,
see Robert Boyd and Peter Richerson, “Norms and Bounded Rationality,”
in Gerd Gigerenzer and Reinhard Selten (eds.), Bounded Rationality:  The
Adaptive Toolbox (MIT Press, 2002, pp. 281–​296).
260  Evolution and the Possibility of Moral Progress
they previously viewed as immoral when directed at any person
was permissible—​or even obligatory—​when the target was a Jew.
Similarly, as discussed in Chapter 7, eugenic propaganda in the
United States and elsewhere convinced many people that pol-
icies of compulsory sterilization that would otherwise have been
rejected as immoral were not only permissible but obligatory,
given the false assumption that the human gene pool and even
civilization itself was imperiled by the rampant proliferation of
“defective germplasm.”25 How can one reliably ascertain when
abandonment of a moral norm and the constraints it entails is a
case of proper de-​moralization—​and hence of moral progress—​
and when it is not?
One might think that the solution to the problem is simple: any
moral norm is likely to be a surplus moral constraint, and hence
a proper target for de-​moralization, if no sound justification
can be given for retaining it, whereas a positive moral justifi-
cation can be given for abandoning it. Indeed, if one can give a
plausible evolutionary explanation of an apparently destructive
moral norm along the lines sketched earlier, then this may give
one a particularly good reason to doubt its validity, if no rea-
soned justifications for the norm are forthcoming. Assuming that
one knows how to identify sound moral justifications, what
more is needed? If one adopts a broadly liberal perspective, then
justifications must appeal ultimately to the freedom and welfare
of individuals, and brute appeals to religious authority or tra-
dition do not suffice. If compliance with some supposed moral
norm exacts significant human costs and there is no justification
for it in terms of its contribution to individual well-​being and
freedom, then isn’t one justified in thinking that it is a surplus
moral constraint?
Unfortunately, things are not so simple, as generations of con-
servatives have emphasized. Whether an accepted moral norm

 Allen Buchanan (2007), “Institutions, Beliefs and Ethics:  Eugenics as a

25

Case Study,” Journal of Political Philosophy 15(1): 22–​45.

De-Moralization and the Evolution of Invalid Moral Norms  261
ought to be disregarded as being a case of improper moraliza-
tion cannot be determined unless we can reliably ascertain its role
within a complex web of norms, institutions, and social practices.
The justification of moral norms must be holistic or, more pre-
cisely, ecological; but given the limitations of our knowledge
about the social wholes within which norms operate, we are at
risk of failing to see the true value of certain norms. For example,
some moral norms may fit the “monkey drill” analogy discussed
above:  compliance with them may produce no particular sub-
stantive good, but they may nonetheless be valuable because they
cultivate and sustain the disposition to follow those moral norms
that are important for human flourishing. Other norms may
in fact contribute to some substantive good or to the preserva-
tion of valuable liberties but in complex ways that are not likely
to be captured by widely understandable—​and, to that extent,
simple—​moral justifications.
Consider, for example, a set of norms concerning sexual mo-
rality that includes a prohibition on unmarried women bearing
children and that requires stigmatization of those who violate the
norm. Compliance with this norm inflicts serious psychological,
social, and economic costs on unmarried women who have chil-
dren. Yet the norm may in fact be beneficial overall and in the
long run, for the class of women as a whole and perhaps even for
disadvantaged women, in an environment in which social sup-
port for unmarried mothers is lacking and in which marriage is
unattainable for many disadvantaged women (or, if attainable,
does not constitute an economic improvement). In such an un-
just social order, a norm that imposes severe costs on unmarried
women who bear children might, depending upon the factual
particularities, make moral sense, provided that we give signif-
icant weight to the well-​being and opportunity of women over
the long run. And if that is so, then concluding that it is a surplus
moral constraint—​and striving to abolish it—​might not be mor-
ally progressive, all things considered. Whether the norm is jus-
tifiable will depend upon complex moral reasoning that includes
262  Evolution and the Possibility of Moral Progress
among its premises highly disputable empirical predictions about
the consequences of adhering to it or abandoning it.

An Evoconservative Challenge to De-​moralization

Conservatives might attempt to bolster these pre-​scientific re-
flections on the difficulty of knowing the unintended conse-
quences of de-​moralization by appealing to evolutionary theory,
much as they did in arguing against the prospect of inclusivist
moralities (see Chapter  4). In particular, they could make two
evoconservative assertions—​and then conclude, too quickly, we
shall argue, that societies should err in the direction of adher-
ence to the moral status quo. The first assertion is that if a moral
norm has persisted over a long period of time, then this is in itself
a good reason to believe it is beneficial. This assertion reposes
on the two-​pronged assumption that cultural selection acts as
an optimizing force, or at least as a force that tends to produce
group-​beneficial moral norms, and that group-​beneficial moral
norms tend to be non-​surplus moral norms properly conceived.
As the above discussion suggests, however, this evoconservative
assumption turns on a vulgarized, inaccurate view of cultural
evolution. Namely, it wrongly assumes that maladaptive social
practices will be winnowed out in reasonably short order in favor
of adaptive ones, and it mistakenly assumes that adaptive moral
norms will tend to be valid or beneficial from the standpoint of
morality—​and hence, it fails to prop up the conservative assertion
that the longevity of a practice is evidence of its salutary nature.
Recall that to say that a norm is an adaptation is to make a purely
backward-​looking assertion; it tells us nothing whatsoever about
the present effects of the norm.
As we have seen, highly destructive and immoral social practices
can persist for long periods of time because they confer a fitness
advantage (i.e., they are under stabilizing selection), because they
are the result of the consistent misfire of adaptive propensities,
De-Moralization and the Evolution of Invalid Moral Norms  263
because they are evolutionary hangovers, because they are en-
trenched and thus refractory to modification due to their contin-
gent causal connections to other adaptive cultural norms, because
they serve the special interests of powerful elites at the expense
of other segments of the population, because abolishing them
requires solving difficult collective action problems, and because
cultural transmission is highly susceptible to the spread of mala-
daptive variants.
The second idea that conservatives typically invoke to support
their claim that judgments about surplus moral constraints are so
unreliable as to warrant a strong bias for the moral status quo relies
on a metaphor: the notion that society is a “seamless web” or, more
hysterically, a “house of cards.” Snipping one apparently insignifi-
cant fiber may unravel the whole thing (alternatively, making what
one thinks is a minor adjustment in the position of one card may
cause the whole edifice to collapse). The operative notion here is
simple: there are dense interconnections among moral norms and
the social practices that support them, and given how little we know
about the particulars of these dense connections, it is hubristic—​
and morally irresponsible—​to abandon a norm simply because we
cannot produce a convincing justification for it.
The idea that moral culture is like a seamless web is closely,
if implicitly, allied to the evoconservative assertion that cultural
evolution tends to produce optimal configurations of the varie-
gated components of moral systems, taking advantage of subtle
causal interconnections and managing complex trade-​ offs of
which human would-​be social engineers are incurably unaware.
Yet there is an unacknowledged tension here between the ability
of cultural evolutionary processes to sculpt adaptations, on the
one hand, and the aptness of the seamless web metaphor, on the
other. As we have argued in a very different context, the seamless
web and house of cards metaphors greatly exaggerate the core
conservative insight that we ought to take seriously the risk of
unintended bad consequences when we “tinker” with complex
264  Evolution and the Possibility of Moral Progress
biological and social systems.26 Societies, like individual organ-
isms, are not seamless webs, and they are certainly not like houses
of cards, because neither type of entity is a plausible evolutionary
product of natural or cultural selection. For an entity to evolve
through natural or cultural selection, some features of that en-
tity must be able to change without altering (in a countervailing
way) other crucial characteristics. Biological theorist Richard
Lewontin refers to this as the “quasi-​independence” criterion
for adaptation27—​that to be shaped by selection, traits must be
capable of modification without disrupting other important
components of the system. Likewise, Lewontin stressed what we
might call the “incrementality” condition for adaptation: that if
an evolving system is to be capable of achieving an adaptive match
to some ecological design problem, then small changes in certain
features of that system cannot have large ramifications for the
overarching shape and ecological position of the system—​since if
this were not the case, then it is unlikely that selection could ever
push a lineage up an adaptive peak.
Since we know that adaptation exists at both individual and cul-
tural levels, quasi-​independence and incrementality must obtain
at these levels as well.28 It stands to reason that if cultural systems
were as fragile as the seamless web and house of cards metaphors
suggest, they would not be resilient enough to survive and adapt
to changes in the environment, including competition from other
societies and individuals—​and thus, contra the evoconservative,
there would be no scientific reason to think that moral systems

26
  Allen Buchanan, Better Than Human (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2011); Russell Powell and Allen Buchanan (2011), “Breaking Evolution’s
Chains: The Prospect of Deliberate Genetic Modification in Humans,” Journal
of Medicine and Philosophy 36(1): 6–​27.
27
  Lewontin, “Adaptation,” supra note 5.
28
  See Robert Brandon, “Evolutionary Modules: Conceptual Analyses and
Empirical Hypotheses,” in Werner Callebaut and Diego Rasskin-​ Gutman
(eds.), Modularity: Understanding the Development and Evolution of Natural
Complex Systems (MIT Press 2005), pp. 51–​60.
De-Moralization and the Evolution of Invalid Moral Norms  265
are optimally or even beneficially configured. The phenomenon
of cultural adaptation is not compatible with the hyper-​dense de-
velopmental connectedness that conservative metaphors imply.
If one insists on textile or architectural metaphors, then it would
be better to say that individuals and societies are like seamed webs
or complexly modular buildings. Any entity that is subject to se-
lective shaping is likely to feature a good deal of modularity and
redundancy. Modules are functional units that have denser con-
nections among their own constituents than between themselves
and other functional units. Modularity is conducive to adapta-
bility because it allows for incremental (intramodular) changes
that do not result in catastrophic disruptions to the larger system,
with the boundaries between modules akin to seams in a web.
Likewise, functional redundancy is conducive to adaptability be-
cause it allows for changes that undercut a function in one system
or organ to occur without complete loss of that function. For ex-
ample, many genetic innovations in evolution are made possible
by gene duplication that initially results in functional genetic re-
dundancy, which in turn frees up one of the duplicates to assume
a novel evolutionary function. If cultures are robustly evolving
systems capable of achieving adaptation, then it is likely that they
too have resources for functional redundancy that permit lower-​
risk evolutionary tinkering and innovation.
The inaptness of evoconservative metaphors is further con-
firmed by the brilliant modeling work of Boyd and Richerson,
which shows that individual norm compliance is much more de-
velopmentally autonomous than the conservatives’ favorite met-
aphors suggest. Almost any norm, including one that requires
abandonment of a pre-​existing widely accepted norm, can enjoy
robust compliance if there is effective punishment for non-
compliance.29 Norms are thus not as densely interconnected as

29
 Robert Boyd and Peter Richerson (1992), “Punishment Allows the
Evolution of Cooperation (or Anything Else) in Sizable Groups,” Ethology
and Sociobiology 13: 171–​195.
266  Evolution and the Possibility of Moral Progress
evoconservatives assume; and if this is so, then the risk of improper
de-​moralization is not as great as they assert. In short, conserva-
tives are fond of saying that we don’t know enough about society
to disregard long-​standing moral norms, and evoconservatives
might appeal to evolutionary theory to bolster this assertion; but
this would be to misunderstand the implications of biocultural
evolutionary theory and to ignore the fact that we now have a
great deal of evidence that societies are not like seamless webs or
houses or cards.30 None of this is to deny that the risk of unfore-
seen bad consequences is a serious problem for the reliable iden-
tification of proper targets of de-​moralization. The point, rather,
is that the evoconservative stance on this problem, much like its
view on the bounds of moral inclusivity, is unduly pessimistic
and unsupported (and, in fact, contradicted) by current evolu-
tionary theory.

Contained Experiments in De-​moralization

Although the evoconservative line on de-​moralization overstates
the risks of moral reform, any theory of moral progress that
takes seriously the need for emancipation from surplus moral
constraints must develop a plausible strategy for managing
the risks of bad unintended consequences of de-​moralization.
“Managing” is the right term here because it would be both

30
  Of course, enforcement only works if it is employed. It might be the case
that a norm N1 could be abandoned without bad consequences, including the
undermining of a valid norm N2, but only if another norm N3 were enforced.
Suppose, however, that the fact that the enforcement of N3 is necessary to pre-
vent the abandonment of N1 from causing damage to N2 is not known and a
consequence N3 is not enforced. This possibility lends support to a moder-
ately conservative thesis with which the authors agree, namely, that anyone
proposing or welcoming the abandonment of a norm ought to take seriously
the risk of unintended bad consequences of doing so. It does not support the
assumption of extremely dense interconnections among norms suggested by
the seamless web metaphor.
De-Moralization and the Evolution of Invalid Moral Norms  267
unfeasible—​and undesirable if feasible—​to reduce the risks of
bad unintended consequences to zero. Here, as elsewhere, risk
reduction is not costless, and the marginal costs of risk reduction
are likely to rise at some point within the feasible set. Instead of
eliminating risk, the goal is to achieve cost-​effective risk manage-
ment, where costs are construed quite broadly.
It may turn out that, generally speaking, people are better at
making reliable retrospective judgments as to whether the aban-
donment of a norm is a case of proper de-​moralization for two
reasons. First, in retrospect (at least if enough time has elapsed)
we may have reason to conclude that abandoning the norm did
not in fact have serious unintended bad consequences. Here it
is worth noting that there are many cases where conservatives
have predicted dire consequences of de-​moralization that have
not materialized—​for example, that if same-​sex marriage is per-
mitted, the institution of marriage will be damaged, or that if in-
terracial marriage is permitted, it will lead to the degeneration of
the “white race” or to social chaos, or that if consensual homo-
sexual acts are decriminalized, fundamental values will be eroded
and the social fabric will unravel. Or consider the extremely pes-
simistic, if not hysterical, predictions of the social and psycholog-
ical consequences of allowing in vitro fertilization when it first
became available in the 1970s.
Second, if sufficient time lapses after the abandonment of what
was previously thought to be a valid norm and if we believe that
during the interval the cause of social justice has advanced or at
least not been significantly retarded, then we may conclude that
the overall effects of abandoning the norm, over the long run,
have not been bad. Fortunately, the abandonment of a norm often
comes gradually, in stages, as when physician-​assisted suicide
first becomes permissible only under certain highly constrained
circumstances, when medical use is first allowed as an exception
to the prohibition on using marijuana, when gay marriage is le-
galized in certain jurisdictions, or when alternative reproductive
practices (such as germline modification) are permitted under
268  Evolution and the Possibility of Moral Progress
limited conditions. In such cases, there will be time to determine
whether complete abandonment of a prohibition is advisable or
not, and the costs of norm modification will be reversible and
contained.
Such “moral experimentation,” as it might be called, is a cru-
cial complement to moral reasoning in assessing the justificatory
value of existing norms because, as evoconservatives rightfully
note, the intricacies of cultural casual relations may elude even
our best moral reasoning and social modeling. Thus, even if, de-
spite the evolutionary considerations adduced earlier, we take the
existence of norm N to be prima facie evidence that N serves
some valuable social function that would be vitiated if N were
altered, we can conduct controlled “experiments” in norm modi-
fication that allow us to assess the unintended consequences that
are likely to flow from N’s alteration.
This is not to say, however, that contemporaneous or prospec-
tive judgments about surplus moral constraints are never justified.
In some cases, the human costs of continued compliance with a
supposed moral norm are so horrific, the benefits so arbitrarily
skewed toward one group in society, and the lack of a justifica-
tion so patent that we may rightly conclude that adherence to the
norm is a case of unnecessary, self-​inflicted curtailment of liberty.
Several of the instances of de-​moralization listed at the beginning
of this essay seem to us to satisfy these criteria.
In addition to the problem of predicting the consequences
of abandoning a given norm, there is the even more difficult
problem of evaluating the predicted consequences. This evalu-
ation may, in some cases, turn on highly disputed issues of dis-
tributive justice—​perhaps issues that no current theory may be
capable of resolving satisfactorily. De-​moralization may be ben-
eficial for some, perhaps many, but quite harmful to others. In
other words, an account of proper de-​moralization must ulti-
mately take a stand on some of the most fundamental and dis-
puted issues concerning distributive justice.
De-Moralization and the Evolution of Invalid Moral Norms  269
In conclusion, any theory that aims to explicate the impor-
tance of increased liberty or welfare for moral progress ought to
take the phenomenon of de-​moralization seriously and must de-
velop an account of the conditions for making reliable judgments
about surplus moral constraints. Such a theory should make use
of knowledge gained from controlled moral experimentation,
as well as current research in evolutionary theory, to better un-
derstand not only the reliability of moral judgments but also the
origins and persistence of invalid moral norms and to provide
practical guidance as to how emancipation from these norms can
be achieved.
 PART III
The Path Traveled and the Way Forward
 CHAPTER 9

Improvements in Moral Concepts and

the Human Rights Movement

Part II showed that cultural innovations can, under certain fa-

vorable conditions, bring about advances in inclusivity that seem
anomalous if not outright impossible given the simplistic view
that evolved human moral psychology is “hard-​wired” for exclu-
sion. We have offered in its place a more complex and plausible
account of the contribution of evolution to human morality that
can better accommodate these apparent anomalies. In this final
part of the book, we turn our attention to perhaps the most re-
markable cultural innovation for inclusivity: the modern human
rights movement and the legal doctrines and moral understand-
ings that undergird it; and we consider how this achievement fits
into our biocultural model of moral psychological development.
The first aim of this chapter is to identify and explain six re-
markable improvements in moral understanding and one equally
significant improvement in the concept of morality itself. It is
misleading, however, to describe the changes we will discuss
simply as improvements in moral concepts or in the concept of
morality itself because these conceptual changes also typically
involve improvements in the moral beliefs, moral commitments,
and moral sentiments of those who undergo them. And each of
these conceptual changes can also contribute to better compli-
ance with valid moral norms by bringing about improvements in
274  The Path Traveled and the Way Forward
moral beliefs, commitments, and sentiments. Some of the concep-
tual improvements under consideration are so fundamental that
those who have undergone them tend to take them for granted,
neither noticing nor appreciating the augmentation of human
moral powers they constitute. Here, too, our aim is to restore a
sense of appreciation, if not awe, in recognition of how far mo-
rality has developed since its origins under the prehistoric selec-
tive pressures of the environment of evolutionary adaptation.
For reasons explained below, all of the following conceptual
improvements are instances of moral progress in the form of
greater inclusion:  (1) expansions of the membership of the do-
main of justice (the set of beings to whom justice, including pre-
eminently the recognition of rights, is understood to be owed);
(2) enlargements of the territory of justice (the set of behaviors,
social practices, and institutions understood to be subject to as-
sessment in terms of justice) in some instances brought about by
a shift of the line between what is thought to be natural, inevi-
table, and beyond human choice and control and what is subject
to modification by human efforts and hence potentially within
the scope of human responsibility; (3) (relatedly) adjustments in
the boundary between what is considered to be a matter of justice
and what a matter of charity so that some of what was previously
thought to be a matter of charity is now considered a matter
of justice; (4) the ascription to all persons of a set of rights that
exceeds the small set of “negative” natural rights; (5) a refinement
of the concept of basic equal moral status according to which
some basic rights cannot be forfeited by even the worst behav­
ior; and (6) the transition from a “strategic” conception of mo-
rality to one that is “subject-​centered” (a distinction introduced
in Chapter 1 and elaborated on in Chapter 5).
For most of these changes, the assumption that they are im-
provements is relatively uncontroversial, at least for most moral
and political philosophers. One notable exception is the transi-
tion from thinking of rights as purely negative, as having cor-
relative duties that only require refraining, to acknowledging
 Moral Concepts and the Human Rights Movement   275
that there are positive rights as well. “Negative rights” are those
whose correlative obligations require only that agents refrain
from doing certain things (e.g., the right against torture); “pos-
itive” rights are those whose correlative obligations require the
provision of goods or services (e.g., the right to basic education).
In contemporary political philosophy, the denial that there are
any positive rights is a minority position and one that we believe
cannot be defended successfully. There is reasonable disagree-
ment, however, about how expansive the list of positive rights
is. For the purposes of this chapter, there is no need to enter that
fray. Instead, we will assume that there are some positive rights
and that to the extent that the modern human rights movement
acknowledges that there are, it embodies a gain in moral under-
standing over thinking that recognizes only negative rights. We
will, however, explain why efforts to show that there are only
negative rights fail.
One other item on this chapter’s list of improvements in moral
understanding might be thought to be controversial as well: the
notion of non-​forfeitable rights. In another context we would be
happy to defend the idea that if a being is properly regarded as
having the highest basic moral status—​roughly, the status now-
adays ordinarily accorded to human persons—​ then some of
the rights that this status involves cannot be forfeited. But we
needn’t do so to achieve the aims of this chapter. Instead, we can
limit ourselves to a more modest claim:  that it is morally pro-
gressive to reject the previously widespread idea that if an indi-
vidual commits rather common offenses like murder or theft or
treason, he thereby forfeits all of his rights, including the right
not to be subjected to torture or disfigurement and the right to
decent treatment of his bodily remains.
The second aim of this chapter is to show that all six improve-
ments in moral understanding are embodied in modern human
rights doctrine and discourse and help shape human rights in-
stitutions and practice. Since all six changes can be characterized
as instances of inclusion or else as contributing to it, achieving
276  The Path Traveled and the Way Forward
the second aim will help strengthen Part II’s critique of the
evoconservative position. In particular, it will show, more com-
prehensively than the brief discussion of human rights contained
in Chapter 5, that modern human rights practice and institution-
alization constitute significant moral progress in the dimension
of inclusion, thus reinforcing our rebuttal of the evoconservative
claim that inclusivist morality is merely aspirational, a fond wish
rather than a reality.

Expansions of Membership in the Domain of Justice

Perhaps the most dramatic and far-​reaching change in moral un-
derstanding in the dimension of inclusion is the recognition that
all people are subjects of justice—​beings to whom obligations of
justice are owed. In the modern era this is often understood to
mean that they are beings with rights; but justice, especially if it
includes norms of fairness, is not exhausted by the recognition
of rights. A key distinction is between beings who are subjects
of justice and those that are only objects of charity or of the
virtues of sympathy, humaneness, or generosity. For example,
in some less inclusive cultures, non-​human animals are appar-
ently accorded no moral standing whatsoever, not even as objects
of charity. In others, they are accorded a minimal sort of moral
standing: it is generally believed that humans should show some
concern for their welfare, or at least should avoid the gratuitous
infliction of suffering upon them—​but they are not thought to
be the sorts of beings who can be treated justly or unjustly. They
are objects of pity or sympathy or within the scope of the virtues
of charity or beneficence or generosity but not beings to whom
justice is owed.
Similarly, prior to the transformative work of abolitionists in
the late eighteenth and early to mid-​nineteenth centuries, many
people, especially in America, subscribed to a racist ideology
according to which Africans were at best objects of charity, be-
neficence, generosity, or pity but not proper subjects of justice.
 Moral Concepts and the Human Rights Movement   277
If slaveholders treated their slaves badly, they could be criticized
for their lack of humanity or benevolence or for exhibiting the
vice of cruelty but not for violating rights. Abolitionists helped
to spread a major conceptual change that became prominent in
western European culture through the writings of Enlightenment
thinkers: the idea that all people, regardless of race, were rational
beings by nature and that their rationality conferred certain fun-
damental general moral rights, so-​called natural rights.
Yet for many, perhaps most, abolitionists the acknowledgment
that Africans were members of the community of subjects of jus-
tice did not involve a recognition of fully equal status. Instead,
they conceived of Africans as inferior in certain respects but as
sufficiently rational to possess basic natural rights, including the
right to be free and the right to the fruits of their labors. In many
cases, those who thought slavery was a great moral wrong be-
cause it violated these natural rights did not think that blacks de-
served the full range of civil and political rights that whites (or
at least white men) enjoyed. This view was held, for example, by
Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln, both of whom decried
the evils of slavery while taking for granted the inherent inferi-
ority of the “lower races.”
Conceiving of certain group members as objects of charity, be-
nevolence, generosity, humaneness, or pity but not as subjects of
justice did not end with the abolition of Atlantic chattel slavery.
In the Indian caste system, for example, members of higher castes
sometimes appear to act as if they think of their duties toward the
lowest caste members as a matter of benevolence or generosity,
of “noblesse oblige,” rather than as arising out of those persons’
basic moral rights. Other instances of the failure to recognize that
all people are full subjects of justice and to that extent beings with
basic equal moral status probably exist wherever there are rela-
tionships of extreme domination. Nonetheless, the recognition
that all people have some basic rights—​the same basic rights—​is
now widespread and surely must count as a major instance of
moral progress. The modern human rights movement would
278  The Path Traveled and the Way Forward
not have been possible without this conceptual revolution but
has also served to extend and entrench it in social practice, insti-
tutions, and law. Further, the modern human rights movement
represents a further moral advance beyond the recognition that
all human beings have a small set of natural rights: it extends to
all of humanity a much richer set of civil, political, cultural, and
economic rights.

Enlargements of the Territory of Justice:

The Institutional Turn
Another remarkable morally progressive conceptual change is
the expansion in our conception of what features of our world
may be judged just or unjust. This change is grounded in another
conceptual development: the concept of an institution. For most
of human history, most people thought of entities that we now
identify as institutions as being inherent parts of nature. And
until very recently, many people tended to think of the natural
as unalterable, inevitable, and recalcitrant to significant modifi-
cation by human choice. That is not surprising, given that prom-
inent religious views have regarded nature as God’s creation and
therefore as something good, or at least to be accepted with grat-
itude rather than altered.
The etymology of “institution” is revealing:  institutions are
things that are instituted, created by some agent or agents. In an
increasingly secular culture, institutions are assumed to be cre-
ated by human beings. (It is interesting to note that opponents of
same-​sex marriage often say that marriage, as a union between a
man and a woman, was instituted by God and therefore should
not be altered to encompass people of the same sex.)
Thinking of important features of the social world as institu-
tions in the sense of being instituted by humans has momentous
consequences. If they are human creations, they can in principle
be altered or even replaced with new institutions by human be-
ings. And if they can be altered or replaced, it makes sense to
 Moral Concepts and the Human Rights Movement   279
ask whether they should be—​and to ask whether justice demands
institutional change. Once the concept of an institution becomes
widespread, the conceptual revolution it represents becomes all
but invisible.
When institutions such as slavery, serfdom, or other forms
of domination are thought of not as institutions but as natural
features of human life, they are thereby largely insulated from
fundamental criticism. This is especially true in cultures in which
the natural is assumed to be good, as is the case when nature is
thought of as the creation of a divine and benevolent deity or
regarded as a benign teleological system. Even among members
of largely secular societies, appeals to what is supposedly nat-
ural still function to insulate certain social practices or human
behaviors from fundamental criticism. For example, appealing
to vulgar or vulgarized sociobiological claims, some people say
that male infidelity is inevitable because natural; others say that
extreme socioeconomic inequalities are unavoidable or quote ap-
provingly Christ’s statement that “the poor will always be with
us,” on the grounds that it is just part of human nature that some
people are lazy and unproductive or the casualties of misfortune.
Moral progress sometimes consists in reconceiving the natural as
a human creation and, to that extent, subject to moral evaluation
and possible revision.
There is an important connection between this “institutional
turn” and enlargement of the territory of justice. For example, if
property systems come to be regarded no longer as natural facts
but as human creations, then the admission that they significantly
disadvantage some people through no fault of their own can lead
to assessing them in terms of justice. The idea that existing legal
property rights may violate some peoples’ moral rights can be-
come conceivable, gain currency, and fuel social change. Instead
of passively accepting the inequalities generated by existing
property systems as “just the way things are” (that is, natural and
to that extent unalterable or fitting or at least not subject to fun-
damental alteration), people come to see them as defective human
280  The Path Traveled and the Way Forward
arrangements, within the power of human beings to modify or to
replace with better ones. Moral progress in such instances is “the
colonization of the natural by the just.”1
There is another way in which the territory of justice and more
specifically that of human rights can be enlarged in a morally pro-
gressive way: people can come to understand that the list of rights
that all persons should enjoy includes not just “negative” rights,
such as rights against physical harm or unjustified taking of
property or interference with freedom of expression or religious
belief, but also “positive” rights to certain basic goods, services,
or conditions of living, including public health arrangements,
shelter, adequate nourishment, income support during periods of
unemployment, benefits for those with disabilities, and access to
basic education.
It is seriously misleading, however, to accept without qualifi-
cation the common distinction between the former sorts of rights
as “negative” and the latter as “positive.” It is not the case that
the former require only refraining on the part of the govern-
ment and citizens, while the latter require positive government
actions that involve taking resources from some citizens to secure
the rights for others. So-​called negative rights also require sub-
stantial, sometimes vast positive undertakings by government,
and these inevitably involve the redistribution of wealth among
citizens. For example, realizing the so-​called negative right to
freedom from assault and murder as well as the right to protec-
tion of one’s property requires a well-​functioning criminal justice
system, including the credentialing of lawyers; the selection of
judges; the training and monitoring of police; the building, ade-
quate resourcing, and supervision of courts and prisons; etc. And
at every stage, public funds—​that is, funds taken from citizens—​
will be required.

 A. Buchanan, D. Brock, N. Daniels, and D. Wikler, From Chance to

1

Choice: Genetics and Justice (Cambridge University Press, 2001, ­chapter 2).

 Moral Concepts and the Human Rights Movement   281
In other words, if we make the reasonable assumption that
governments ought not simply to refrain from killing, maiming,
or taking the property of their people but should also take ef-
fective measures to ensure that others do not engage in such
wrongdoing, then “negative” rights require “positive” actions on
the part of government, including the redistribution of wealth
through taxes. So, one must conclude either that the most basic
so-​called negative rights (e.g., rights against threats to physical
security) are not really rights, on the assumption that the duties
that correlate with “real” rights only require refraining from
acting, or that so-​called negative rights require “positive” actions
on the part of government but then abandon the claim that so-​
called positive rights aren’t real rights because they require more
than simply refraining from acting. The latter is surely the more
reasonable response.
The misleading distinction between “negative” and “positive”
rights is typically employed as part of a strategy to deny that there
are any genuine “positive” general moral rights (including human
rights) or to criticize the existence of “positive” legal rights on the
grounds that they necessarily involve forcible redistribution of
wealth from some citizens to others. But as we have seen, “neg-
ative” rights also require for their realization “positive” govern-
ment action, including forcible redistribution. Indeed, inadequate
public investment in security infrastructure, including a broad
range of institutional features and competencies that fall under
the general rubric of “the rule of law,” is a key factor perpetuating
unjust social conditions, poverty, and economic underdevelop-
ment in poorer countries. This is the vital message of an impor-
tant book, The Locust Effect: Why the End of Poverty Requires
the End of Violence.2
A very different objection to expanding the list of natural or
human rights to include some “positive” rights has been famously

  G. A. Haugen and V. Boutros, The Locust Effect: Why the End of Poverty
2

Requires the End of Violence (Oxford University Press, 2015).

282  The Path Traveled and the Way Forward
voiced by the philosopher Onora O’Neill. She states that gen-
uine rights have determinate addressees—​that is, that the identity
of the bearer of the correlative obligation is specified. But in the
case of supposed “positive” natural or human rights, this is not
the case. Take, for example, the supposed right to subsistence.
O’Neill says that it is simply unclear who is supposed to ensure
that all persons have access to resources for subsistence. In con-
trast, with “negative” rights, there is no unclarity as to the iden-
tity of the addressee: all individuals are obligated to refrain (from
killing, torturing, etc.). She concludes that while “negative” rights
are genuine rights, “positive” rights are not because their correla-
tive obligations lack clearly identified addressees.
To anyone in the least familiar with the modern human rights
movement, O’Neill’s claim that “positive” rights have no identi-
fiable addressee will seem exceedingly strange. The basic idea of
the modern human rights movement is that states are the primary
addressees of the obligations that correlate with human rights. So,
if there is a problem with the apparently progressive expansion
of the list of natural or human rights to include some “positive”
rights, it is not that the latter somehow don’t measure up as “real”
rights because their correlative obligations lack clearly identified
addressees. This point is even more obvious if one focuses on the
fact that it is international legal human rights that are the author-
itative standards in the modern human rights movement. As legal
rights, the primary addressees of the correlative obligations are
states; that is made clear in the legal doctrine of modern human
rights and in the wording of human rights treaties. Further, there
are very good moral reasons why all states should be held ac-
countable for fulfilling the obligations that correlate with legal
human rights, both “positive” and “negative.” It may be that
O’Neill is assuming that for something to be a human right, the
correlative obligation must fall on all human beings. That is one
understanding of a human right, but it is not the one that finds
expression in the modern human rights movement. Instead, that
movement, in its legal doctrine, its activism, and its institutional
 Moral Concepts and the Human Rights Movement   283
embodiment, assumes that states are the addressees of the obli-
gations that are correlative with human rights. That is compat-
ible, of course, with the view that some human rights (including
“negative” ones, like the right against torture) have correlative
obligations also falling on individuals.
Apart from the fact that these preceding two most common ar-
guments against “positive” rights fail, there are three good reasons
to conclude that the now widespread recognition of positive rights
is morally progressive. First, the same general considerations that
are adduced to make the case for “negative” rights—​the fact that
they are conducive to individual well-​being and autonomy and
to a society in which people can interact in predictably and in
mutually respectful ways—​are also reasons for recognizing “pos-
itive” rights. For example, lack of healthcare, basic education, in-
come support during periods of unemployment, and childcare
can undercut individual welfare, autonomy, and opportunity just
as seriously as interference with religious liberty, freedom of ex-
pression, or private property rights.
Second, attempts by what might be called “deep theory” lib-
ertarian or classical liberal thinkers to show that there is a basic
moral right to liberty or to private property or to self-​ownership
that rules out “positive” rights altogether have been dismal
failures. It is one thing to say that there is a natural (that is,
general moral) right to liberty, property, or self-​ownership but
quite another to say that the scope of such rights is so broad and
the correlative duties so immune to being outweighed by other
moral considerations that respecting them rules out any signifi-
cant system of “positive” rights whatsoever.
Third, some libertarians, including Friedrich Hayek and James
Buchanan, eschew “deep theory” concerning natural rights to
property, liberty, or self-​ownership and appeal instead to the fal-
libility and abuse of government bureaucracies and to the idea
that in recognizing “positive” rights the modern “welfare” state
stifles the economic prosperity that markets provide. They argue
that any significant attempt to realize a robust set of “positive”
284  The Path Traveled and the Way Forward
rights will at best be self-​defeating (in that most of the resources
involved will go to the administrative class or others who are not
truly in need), will be unacceptably cost-​inefficient, will undercut
market-​based prosperity, or, in Hayek’s dramatic phrase, will
propel us down “the road to serfdom.”3
Libertarian admonitions about the abuses and fallibility of am-
bitious government programs are extremely valuable as an anti-
dote to uncritical trust in government and overoptimistic beliefs
in its efficacy. But as empirical grounds for the rejection of any
system of government that takes “positive” rights seriously, they
fail conclusively because their dire predictions have been re-
futed by the facts. There are in fact a number of countries, in-
cluding most prominently Canada, Denmark, Norway, Sweden,
Germany, Switzerland, New Zealand, Japan, and Australia,
among others, that have fairly robust systems of “positive” rights
and which have achieved the highest standards of living, while
maintaining impressive records on individual civil and political
liberties and limited government. Further, some of these so-​called
welfare states currently score higher on credible measures of eco-
nomic freedoms than countries, including the United States, that
are much more restrained (some might say stingy) in the pro-
vision of “positive” rights.4 Of course, even the best so-​called
welfare states have serious problems, and all of them inevitably
make questionable trade-​offs among important moral values in
the pursuit of their complex policies. But that is not to say that
they are greasing the skids for a hair-​raising slide into serfdom.
On any reasonable measure, they are among the freest of soci-
eties and do not seem to be headed for collapse. In fact, some
of them—​Norway, Denmark, and Sweden in particular—​have
shown considerable adaptability in the face of the realities of an

3
  Friedrich von Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (University of Chicago Press,
1944).
4
  Index of Economic Freedom (Heritage Foundation and Wall Street
Journal, 2016).
 Moral Concepts and the Human Rights Movement   285
aging population and a consequent decline in tax revenues avail-
able for social programs.
So, contrary to libertarian doctrine, the broadening of the list
of basic rights to include so-​called positive rights can be viewed
as a genuine instance of moral progress; no good reason has been
adduced so far for believing that instituting some “positive” rights
always comes at too high a moral price. In effect, this particular
expansion of the territory of justice represents a revision in the
concept of rights, or at least a rejection of the narrower concep-
tion that features only “negative” rights. Natural or human rights,
understood as moral rights, as well as general legal rights are now
thought not only to involve constraints on actions toward right-​
holders (prohibitions on doing certain things to them) but also
requirements on governments to provide certain goods and serv-
ices and conditions for living beyond those necessary to support
a robust security infrastructure. Except in the ranks of the most
extreme libertarians, the debate has shifted from whether there
are any positive rights to which positive rights there are—​that is,
in which circumstances are positive rights morally desirable and
feasible—​and to the hard question of how to determine principled
priorities among various rights, both “positive” and “negative.”
None of this is to deny that there are important differences
between “negative” and “positive” rights. Perhaps the most sig-
nificant difference is that respecting “negative” rights is typically
straightforward and within the control of an agent, whether she
be private or institutional:  all she need to do is to refrain from
acting in order to fulfill the correlative obligation in the case of
“negative” rights. In contrast, in the case of “positive” rights,
such as the right to primary education or a right to some level
of healthcare, fulfilling the correlative obligation will generally
require the coordinated efforts of many people, which in turn
will depend upon some workable division of responsibilities as
well as the availability of appropriate resources. For that reason,
the judgment that there is such and such a positive right is more
epistemically ambitious and hence more disputable since such a
286  The Path Traveled and the Way Forward
right can exist only if it is possible—​in a sense more demanding
than mere logical or nomological possibility (compatibility with
laws of nature)—​for the correlative obligation to be fulfilled, and
this in turn will depend upon complex facts which may be dif-
ficult to ascertain. Nonetheless, it is important to re-​emphasize
that states are now expected not only to respect negative rights,
but to promote them and that this requires positive undertakings.
It was noted earlier that although the dominant view in con-
temporary political philosophy is that there are some “posi-
tive” general moral rights, unanimous consensus on that point
is lacking. Rather than pretending that anything said in the
preceding paragraphs refutes the minority view, it should suf-
fice to observe that even though there are, as we have just ac-
knowledged, significant differences between “negative” and
“positive” rights, the arguments given for saying that there are
no “positive” rights whatsoever are weak. For that reason, in
what follows we precede on the assumption that the recognition
that rights can be “positive” is a gain in moral understanding.
Diehard “negative” rights–​only thinkers, should feel free to
focus on the other changes we characterize and will presumably
not dissent from the assumption that they, at least, are genuinely
progressive.
The point we wish to emphasize is that the modern human
rights movement, both in its doctrine and increasingly in its
practice, recognizes so-​called positive rights and that in itself
this appears to be a good thing. Such rights figure prominently
in all of the three documents that compose The International
Bill of Rights: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the Covenant on
Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights. It is mistaken, therefore,
to refer to such rights as “second-​generation” human rights; they
were recognized from the very beginning of the modern human
rights movement. Furthermore, human rights activists, domestic
courts of countries that have ratified human rights treaties, re-
gional human rights courts, and international organizations are
 Moral Concepts and the Human Rights Movement   287
increasingly taking at least some “positive” human rights more
seriously.
There is, of course, an ongoing debate over whether this has
been too much of a good thing—​whether there has been “human
rights inflation” in the sense that the canonical lists of “posi-
tive” rights are too long. Elsewhere, one of the authors of this
volume has argued that, in some cases at least, human rights con-
ventions have not distinguished clearly between asserting a right
and offering “administrative directives” for how the right is to be
operationalized, thereby creating the appearance of a surfeit of
rights. That same author also has offered concrete suggestions for
how the risk of human rights inflation can be reduced.5 If that is
a feasible project, then the gain in recognizing that there are some
“positive” rights may outweigh whatever negative consequences
the supposed inflation is supposed to have. It is worth noting,
however, that even if some human rights conventions do include
as rights items that do not in fact belong there, it does not follow
that such “inflation” has any serious consequences, outside the
conceptual realm. That would only be the case if these doctrinal
mistakes were to lead to a misdirection of efforts away from the
realization of genuine rights or if they had some other significant
bad practical consequence. Those who decry “human rights in-
flation” have, to our knowledge, so far produced no evidence that
either of these negative consequences has occurred. We are aware
of no convincing evidence, for example, that human rights activ-
ists have dissipated their energies by focusing on dubiously “lux-
urious” positive rights to the neglect of more vital negative rights.
Philosophers may be far too ready to assume that the sloppy in-
clusion of some pseudo-​rights among genuine human rights must
have bad consequences in the world—​bad enough to negate the
gains of affirming genuine “positive” rights.

5
  Allen Buchanan, The Heart of Human Rights (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2013).
288  The Path Traveled and the Way Forward
Shifting the Boundary Between Charity and Justice
Earlier it was noted that one important instance of moral progress
is the recognition that all people are subjects of justice, not merely
objects of charity (or benevolence or generosity or humaneness
or pity). Even after that momentous conceptual improvement oc-
curred, a distinction between two quite different ways of relating
to people remained, based on a distinction between two types
of duties or moral “oughts.” Duties to aid the needy are tradi-
tionally said to be duties of charity, not justice. The distinction
between justice and charity has typically been drawn by three
contrasts:  the distinction between perfect and imperfect duties,
the distinction between duties that may properly be enforced and
those that may not, and the distinction between duties that are
correlatives of rights and those that are “mere duties.”
First, duties of justice are said to be perfect duties in that they
are determinate in two senses: there is an identified duty-​bearer
and the action or omission that is required is specified. Duties
of charity are imperfect in that they are indeterminate in both
respects: they are not owed to anyone in particular and what is
required of the duty-​bearer is only loosely characterized and in
such a way as to allow the duty-​bearer some choice as to how
the duty is discharged. Second, where there is a duty of justice,
there is a correlative right: duties of justice are always “directed,”
that is, owed to someone; in contrast, duties of charity are non-​
directed—​the duty-​bearer is obligated to do or refrain from doing
something, but she is not obligated to anyone in particular to do
or to refrain. Third, duties of justice are in principle enforceable
(though there may be practical or moral reasons not to enforce),
whereas duties of charity are supposed to be purely voluntary.
These three contrasts are thought to be related in the following
way. If one’s duties of charity are imperfect, that is, indeterminate
as to content and recipient, then it would seem to follow that no
one has a right to anything in particular due to my having these
duties. For example, if I  have a duty of charity or beneficence,
 Moral Concepts and the Human Rights Movement   289
then it is true that I  ought to help some of the needy in some
way or other or bestow some unreciprocated benefits or other
on someone; but it is not the case that I  must help this partic-
ular person in need by doing some particular thing or that I must
show benevolence toward anyone in particular in any specified
way. On the other hand, if, for example, I have made a promise to
you to do some particular thing, I have thereby generated a spe-
cial right that you now possess and I am obligated not just to do
that thing for somebody but to do it for you.
The indeterminacy of duties of charity is also supposed to ex-
plain their nonenforceability. Given that the use of coercion is mor-
ally problematic in any case and that clarity and predictability as
to what is to be enforced is a necessary condition for the use of
coercion to enforce moral requirements, enforcing duties that are
indeterminate in the way that duties of charity are seems prob-
lematic. There is perhaps another reason why duties of charity are
not thought to be properly enforceable:  given the discretion that
the duty-​bearer enjoys with respect to who among the needy she
chooses to act charitably toward and what sorts of acts of charity
she performs, it is hard to imagine how any authority could reason-
ably determine when to enforce a requirement of any particular act
of charity.
Suppose that any plausible morality will include something
like the distinction between justice and charity as we have just
characterized it. That is quite compatible with recognition of
the fact that where the line is drawn between justice and charity
should not be regarded as fixed, once and for all.6 One way in
which moral progress can occur is when people come to realize
that what they had until now regarded as a matter of charity is
in fact properly within the domain of justice. In particular, they
may come to realize that they should alter their institutional

6
  Allen Buchanan (1987), “Justice and Charity,” Ethics 97(3): 558–​575.
290  The Path Traveled and the Way Forward
arrangements so that imperfect duties can become perfected.7
On the other side of the coin, de-​collectivization in formerly so-
cialist and communist states may constitute a progressive shift in
the justice–​charity distinction, only in the opposite direction—​
where what were thought to be perfect duties become imperfect.
The modern welfare state can be seen as a device for converting
some imperfect duties into perfect ones and in that respect for
adjusting the boundary between justice and charity. A  thought
experiment will make this fundamental point clearer. Suppose all
duties to do anything to aid other people were duties of charity,
imperfect duties. To make matters concrete, consider imperfect
duties regarding the health of other people, especially people with
serious health needs. A  rational and reflective person who sin-
cerely wishes to render aid to people with health needs will rec-
ognize that if she and everyone else continues to treat this duty
as a duty of charity, an imperfect duty, there will be problems.
For one thing, the performance of imperfect duties predictably
results in uncoordinated beneficence since the choice of recip-
ients of aid and the form of aid is left to the discretion of the
individual charitable person.8 There will be redundancies as well
as gaps, and valuable economies of scale may not be realized be-
cause there will be a large number of different beneficent acts,
rather than a convergence of efforts on a smaller number of espe-
cially important large projects. In addition, the provision of some
of the most valuable kinds of healthcare benefits is characterized
by threshold effects: unless contributions rise to a certain level,
the good will not be achieved. In such cases, the individual who
wishes to be beneficent may refrain from contributing because
she has no assurance that enough other people will contribute to
reach the needed threshold of resources.

7
  Allen Buchanan (1996), “Perfecting Imperfect Duties: Collective Action to
Create Moral Obligations,” Business Ethics Quarterly 6(1): 27–​42.
8
  Allen Buchanan (1984), “The Right to a Decent Minimum of Health Care,”
Philosophy and Public Affairs 13(1): 55–​78.
 Moral Concepts and the Human Rights Movement   291
Further, some individuals may refrain from helping or from
helping as much as they otherwise would because they know or
suspect that others are not doing much. While not wishing to be
free-​riders, they may refuse to be suckers. Moreover, some indi-
viduals may suffer weakness of the will and provide less health-​
related aid to others than they know they should because their
own self-​interest dominates. So long as one can console oneself
with the thought that “I’ll do more later,” the tendency to weak-
ness of the will may be exacerbated. Imperfect duties are tailor-​
made for weakness of the will.
Finally, some important contributions to health take the form
of public goods, for example, the achievement of herd immu-
nity from infectious diseases through vaccinations. Here, as in
other cases, the desired outcome may not be achieved voluntarily
through the fulfillment of discretionary, imperfect duties, due
to the tendency to free-​ride. Without mandatory vaccination,
which can only be legitimately undertaken by a government,
major improvements in well-​being through the reduction of se-
rious diseases may not be possible. Other public goods condu-
cive to health, such as clean water, may also require enforcement
of norms and are unlikely to be adequately provided through in-
dividuals fulfilling duties of charity or beneficence through dis-
cretionary, voluntary acts.
All of these problems can be eliminated or at least amelio-
rated if society implements a legal right to healthcare (or more
broadly a right to some of the most important services and
conditions contributing to health). So suppose now that there
is a significant institutional change prompted by the wide-
spread acknowledgment that provision for health is not just
a matter of charity but instead a matter of justice: democrat-
ically elected legislators create a legal entitlement to some set
of healthcare services and to some basic public health con-
ditions, with the provision that this system of benefits is to
be funded through a predictable, progressive, and not overly
burdensome tax scheme. In effect, this new institutional
292  The Path Traveled and the Way Forward
arrangement perfects a previously imperfect legal duty; more
precisely, it creates a new legal duty that falls primarily on the
state but which also involves perfect legal duties on the part
of citizens to contribute in various ways to the realization of
the legal right. Such legislation achieves all of this without
eliminating the possibility of citizens engaging in charity with
regard to health beyond the fulfillment of their legal duties
to contribute resources (in the form of taxes). Human rights
treaties include rights to health-​related services, goods, and
conditions and make it clear that states are required to provide
them to all people under their jurisdiction. The attractions of
this partial conversion of charity to justice are significant: it
can provide coordination that reduces the redundancies and
gaps in aid that exclusive reliance on charity involves, it can
address the problem of weakness of the will by making con-
tributions enforceable, and, perhaps just as importantly, it can
ensure a fair distribution among all citizens of the costs and
burdens of helping those in need.
Understood as a device for converting imperfect duties into
perfect ones, the modern welfare state is a human creation
that achieves moral progress through embodying a significant
change in the conceptual terrain of morality—​an expansion of
the domain of justice into what had been previously thought to
be the domain of charity. The modern human rights movement
presupposes the existence of the modern welfare state, so far
as its authoritative documents include rights that can only be
realized through the operations of this institution. It also un-
ambiguously affirms that the benefits of the welfare state are to
be provided, without discrimination, to all individuals subject
to the state’s jurisdiction. In effect, the modern conception of
human rights implies that all states are to be welfare states, and
in doing so it both reflects and supports a momentous expan-
sion of the territory of justice into what had been the territory
of charity.
 Moral Concepts and the Human Rights Movement   293
The Transition to a Fully Subject-​Centered Conception
of Morality
In Chapter  2 we first encountered the distinction between co-
operative group reciprocity, or strategic conceptions of morality,
and subject-​ centered conceptions. We noted that cooperative
group reciprocity conceptions have a long pedigree, stretching
from the ancient Greeks through Hobbes and Hume to the con-
temporary philosopher David Gauthier. We also observed that
such “strategic” conceptions gel with the standard selectionist ex-
planations of the origins of morality. If morality originated as the
standard selection story says it did and if it has remained largely
unchanged ever since, then one would expect that morality would
now conform more or less to the strictures of cooperative group
reciprocity.
The distinction between strategic and subject-​centered moral
conceptions also applies more narrowly to conceptions of justice
and more specifically to rights. Cooperative group reciprocity
conceptions of justice hold that relations of justice obtain only
among those who can contribute to cooperation or disrupt it—​
that is to say, those who possess strategic capacities for benefiting
or harming some cooperative scheme. On this view, beings who
lack these strategic capacities are not subjects of justice: nothing
that can be done to them is unjust; they have no rights to violate.
Subject-​centered conceptions of justice hold that membership in
the community of subjects of justice depends not upon strategic
capacities but rather upon some inherent property of individuals,
such as sentience, rationality, or the ability to form, revise, and
pursue a conception of the good while participating in a prac-
tice of giving and accepting reasons for acting and refraining.
According to subject-​centered conceptions, being a subject of
justice does not depend upon one’s ability to contribute to or dis-
rupt cooperation or on one’s membership in this or that group.
The modern idea of human rights is clearly a rejection of co-
operative group reciprocity understandings of who qualifies as
294  The Path Traveled and the Way Forward
a subject of justice, that is, of the domain of justice. But it does
not follow that everyone who endorses the idea of human rights
embraces a subject-​centered conception of the domain of jus-
tice or, more generally, of the domain of morality. Some of the
founding participants of the modern human rights movement,
like many of the abolitionists who were their predecessors, were
motivated by their Christian religious beliefs. In some cases, they
believed that what conferred high moral status and grounded
human rights was a relational, rather than an inherent, property
of human beings: their being the children of God or being created
in his image. Arguably, that is not a subject-​centered conception.
If one believes that the only reason that slaves ought to be freed
or that all people ought to enjoy human rights is that they are
made in the image of God or are all his children, then there is
a sense in which one’s conception of moral status, though non-​
strategic, is relational or etiological rather than subject-​centered.
One believes that it is not simply by virtue of what human beings
are like that they possess rights; instead, they have rights because
God made them in his image or because they are all his children.
Some abolitionists, like many current supporters of human
rights, had an understanding of what makes an individual a being
with high moral status and of what grounds rights that makes no
reference to God. Following the lead of secular natural rights the-
orists, they believed that rationality matters for moral status and
rights, independently of whether being rational is part of what is
involved in being made in God’s image or being his children. For
them what mattered was that people, all people, are rational, not
their relationship to God, even if they believed that God made
them rational.
It is worth noting that there is something deeply problematic
about the idea that rationality confers moral status or grounds
rights only because being rational is part of what it is to be created
in God’s image. What makes the idea that rational creatures have
high moral standing and possess rights plausible is that there are
important connections between being rational and having high
 Moral Concepts and the Human Rights Movement   295
status and possessing rights, connections that in no way depend
on the assumption that we are created in God’s image.
For instance, one can argue that the lives of rational beings
are of great intrinsic value because they are able to form, revise,
and pursue a conception of the good and create value through
such pursuits, while engaging in mutually respectful, reciprocal
relationships with others in which all participants are regarded as
equally subject to the requirements of a practice of reason-​giving.
One can then argue that if human beings are to be reliably able
to live such a life, they require the benefits and protections that
certain rights provide. In other words, such rights are a necessary
condition for human beings to live morally, and they explain how
morality is possible. In rebuffing the criticism that rationality or
psychological personhood is an arbitrary basis of moral rights,
Joel Feinberg puts the point this way:

The characteristics that confer commonsense personhood are not

arbitrary bases for rights and duties, such as race, sex or species
membership; rather they are traits that make sense out of rights and
duties and without which those moral attributes would have no
point or function. It is because people are conscious; have a sense of
their personal identities; have plans, goals, and projects; experience
emotions; are liable to pains, anxieties, and frustrations; can reason
and bargain, and so on—​it is because of these attributes that people
have values and interests, desires and expectations of their own,
including a stake in their own futures, and a personal well-​being
of a sort we cannot ascribe to unconscious or nonrational beings.
Because of their developed capacities they can assume duties and
responsibilities and can have and make claims on one another. Only
because of their sense of self, their life plans, their value hierarchies,
and their stakes in their own futures can they be ascribed funda-
mental rights. There is nothing arbitrary about these linkages.9

  Joel Feinberg, “Abortion,” in Tom Regan et al. (eds.), Matters of Life and
9

Death, 2nd edition (McGraw-​Hill, 1986).

296  The Path Traveled and the Way Forward
Saying that it is because they are created in the image of God that
human beings are rational and hence are owed respect and protec-
tion adds nothing of substance to this line of argument. Indeed,
excluding some beings from the moral community who meet this
subject-​centered criterion (e.g., dolphins or intelligent extrater-
restrials) simply because they do not bear the relevant contingent
relation to God is a morally arbitrary exclusion, and to hold that
all beings that possess these morally relevant properties ipso facto
bear the relevant relation to God is ad hoc and has zero explan-
atory value. Further, and setting the Euthyphro problems aside,
if it were the supposed fact of being created in God’s image that
mattered, then it would be hard to explain why this fact confers
certain rights rather than others (or no rights at all). The best ex-
planation of why certain rights are appropriate for human beings
is that, given what humans are like—​and regardless of how they
came to be that way—​they need these rights to have a form of life
that is of exceptional intrinsic value, indeed the highest intrinsic
value there is.
Consider now the claim that human beings have human rights
because they are all the children of God. This view shares a lia-
bility of the view that what confers human rights is being made in
God’s image: namely, it is incapable of telling us which rights we
have by virtue of our fortunate parentage. Perhaps more impor-
tantly, there is something odd, indeed morally unseemly, about
thinking that one only has moral obligations to one’s siblings.
Cognitively and affectively, the “all of God’s children” appeal
functions in effect as a “fictitious kin” device that encourages the
extension of other-​regard beyond one’s family and ethnic group.
Nevertheless, it is one thing to say that one has special obliga-
tions to one’s siblings, quite another to say that one has obliga-
tions only to them. Thus, attempts to show that a commitment
to human rights is irrational unless there is a God with respect
to which all humans are uniquely related fail. So, they provide
no reason to believe that people whose understanding of human
 Moral Concepts and the Human Rights Movement   297
rights is rooted in a subject-​centered understanding of morality
are somehow deluded.
If this line of reasoning is sound, then it follows that a fully
subject-​centered conception of the domains of morality and jus-
tice is a case of conceptual change that counts as moral progress.
When people come to believe, as many now do, that human rights
are grounded in intrinsically valuable, respect-​worthy properties
of human beings, they have thereby gained a better understanding
of why people, all people, have rights. By coming to have this
understanding, humans have improved their ability to concep-
tualize morality and to reason more skillfully about some of its
most important features. That is moral progress.
Once again, the modern human rights movement both reflects
and affirms this momentous conceptual shift: it recognizes and
promotes certain rights for all people, without assuming that
the ascription of these rights depends upon the relationship be-
tween human beings and God. Instead, the preambles of some
of the key documents state that these rights are inherent in the
human person. In fact, the history of the human rights move-
ment includes several episodes in which representatives of some
countries attempted to tie human rights to God in the texts
of human rights documents, but these efforts were defeated.10
For these reasons, the modern conception of human rights
constitutes a remarkable break from the long-​standing tradition
of grounding moral standing and status in relational and genea-
logical properties.
It is important to caution against a misunderstanding of these
remarks about subject-​centered views of justice and morality. The
latter is a view about what makes one a subject of morality, a being
with moral standing; the former is a view about what makes one
a being to whom justice is owed. To espouse a subject-​centered

  Johannes Morsink, The Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Origins,

10

Drafting, and Intent (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000).

298  The Path Traveled and the Way Forward
view of morality is not to deny that reciprocity is important in
morality. Similarly, to embrace a subject-​centered view of justice
is not to deny that some obligations of justice, or some rights, are
grounded in relationships of reciprocity. Subject-​centered justice
is (only) a view about what makes one the kind of being to whom
justice can be owed and likewise subject-​centered morality is
(only) a view about what gives one moral standing. Both views
are compatible with a cheerful recognition that many moral ob-
ligations, including some obligations of justice, are grounded in
reciprocity.

The Deeper Significance of Disability Rights

The recognition of the rights of people with disabilities also has
a strong claim to be included in the list of important instances of
inclusivist moral progress. The idea of disability rights, which is
now an important part of the modern human rights movement,
can be understood not only as an implication of the shift to a
subject-​centered conception of justice but also as an expansion in
the territory of justice—​the domain of items that are subject to
evaluation as being just or unjust.
The idea that we have duties to those with disabilities is not
new, but the belief that we owe them duties of justice is. On its
deepest interpretation, the idea of disability rights amounts to
the claim that everyone who is a being of high moral status, and
hence a possessor of the commonly recognized human rights,
also has a right to access to effective participation in what might
be called the dominant cooperative scheme of their social world.11
The dominant cooperative scheme encompasses the totality of the
most important forms of social production, broadly conceived,
as well as the more significant social and political institutions,
whether they are concerned with production or not. With the
advent of the idea of disability rights, for the first time significant

11
  Buchanan et al., From Chance to Choice, supra note 1.
 Moral Concepts and the Human Rights Movement   299
numbers of human beings are coming to understand, if only im-
plicitly, that social justice pertains not just to fair terms of coop-
eration among participants in cooperation but also to effective
access to resources necessary to participate in cooperation, even
when the barriers to participation are due to individuals’ con-
genital cognitive or physical limitations. Understood in this
way, disability rights imply a major expansion of the territory
of justice:  judgments of justice or injustice now apply not just
to relations among cooperators but also to the terms of access to
participation in cooperation.
It is tempting to see disability rights as less revolutionary than
they are. One might view them as simply a matter of removing
obstacles to the effective exercise of the familiar civil and polit-
ical rights that many now regard as human rights. This reformist
understanding ignores a crucial motivation of the struggle for
disability rights—​the conviction that persons with disabilities,
because they are beings with the same high basic moral status as
the “abled,” have a “positive” right to be effective participants in
the dominant cooperative scheme—​something that may not be
achievable by the unhindered exercise of civil and political rights
alone. On its deepest interpretation, the notion of disability rights
is the radical idea that individuals who lack strategic capacities
have a right to develop them, even where their exclusion from the
dominant cooperative framework is not due to any individual or
social wrongdoing.
Being able to participate effectively in the dominant coopera-
tive scheme is extraordinarily important from the standpoint of
inclusion and human flourishing: it means that one can see one-
self and be seen by others as a reciprocating contributor to social
life, rather than as a dependent being, an object of charity or pity,
or a beneficiary of the largess of others. Instead of characterizing
social justice as being only concerned with achieving a fair dis-
tribution of the burdens and benefits of social cooperation, as
Rawls phrases it, the idea of disability rights recognizes that ac-
cess to effective participation is itself a matter of justice—​one that
300  The Path Traveled and the Way Forward
arises prior to the question of how to distribute the benefits and
burdens of cooperation fairly.
A related progressive development can be seen in some con-
temporary feminist understandings of what equal rights for
women entail. On these views, recognizing the equal high
moral status of women requires taking into account special
barriers to effective participation in the dominant cooperative
scheme that women face by virtue of their special situation.
For example, it is argued that because women bear children
and tend to play disproportionately large roles in caring for
them, equal rights for women require special social arrange-
ments, such as legal rights to maternity leave and childcare
support.
Of course, the idea of disability rights is complex and contains
more than the notion that a proper recognition of human moral
status mandates social efforts to ensure that all people have effec-
tive access to the dominant cooperative scheme in their society. It
also encompasses, among other things, the insight that individuals
should be seen as whole individuals, not viewed as “the blind” or
“the mobility-​impaired,” as if their disabilities were their only
or defining characteristics. In addition, it includes the recogni-
tion that, for some people, their disabilities are implicated in their
identities and in that sense are not viewed as misfortunes to be
lamented. Our key point, however, is that the disability rights
movement is also morally progressive in another way: it involves
nothing less than a radical revision in understandings of the ter-
ritory of justice. Access to the dominant cooperative scheme is
seen to be a matter of justice, not a matter of charity or “noblesse
oblige” on the part of the abled.
Until recently, disabilities were thought of as unalterable, nat-
ural limitations. Nowadays, thanks to the successes of the dis-
ability rights movement, people are beginning to realize that in
many cases being disabled is in fact a social artifact: a consequence
of contingent features of the dominant cooperative scheme that
pose obstacles to participation for some but not for others.
 Moral Concepts and the Human Rights Movement   301
In other words, there is a growing recognition that whether a
given cognitive or physical condition is a disability—​whether it
bars the individual from effective participation in some aspect of
the dominant cooperative scheme—​can depend upon the nature
of the cooperative scheme and the demands it places on partici-
pants. For example, in a preliterate society, dyslexia would not be
a disability because effective participation in the dominant coop-
erative scheme does not require the ability to read. Conversely, in
a literate society that lacked corrective eyeglasses, myopia would
be a serious disability. Within broad resource constraints, it is
human choices that constitute the particular features of dominant
cooperative schemes and thus constitute the contingent existence
of disability. These social choices will, in effect, determine who
is disabled (though, of course, there are some extreme cognitive
and physical conditions that would be disabling in virtually every
feasible dominant cooperative scheme).12 Further, as technologies
develop, obstacles to participation may be overcome without
changing the basic features of the cooperative scheme, as with
brain/​computer/​body interface technologies for “artificial” vi-
sion or the mental manipulation of robotic surrogate limbs.
Recognizing that “disabilities” are sometimes social artifacts
and can be removed either by enhancing the individual’s abilities
or by modifying the social environment is an important form of
moral progress. It is at once an expansion in our understanding
of the nature of rights and of what is involved in the recognition
of equal basic moral status and a further instance of the coloniza-
tion of the natural by the just. Only quite recently, through rati-
fication of the International Convention on the Rights of People
with Disabilities (2008), has the human rights movement incor-
porated this conceptual improvement.

12
 Allen Buchanan (1996), “Choosing Who Will Be Disabled:  Genetic
Intervention and the Morality of Inclusion,” Social Philosophy and Policy
13(2):18–​46.
302  The Path Traveled and the Way Forward
Justice to Future Generations
One final expansion of the territory of justice, noted in Chapter 1,
is worth mentioning here:  some people (though not nearly
enough) now understand that actions and omissions that will af-
fect future generations can be subject to evaluation in terms of
justice. The concept of justice to future generations is thus an ex-
pansion of the territory of justice. But it also includes an expan-
sion in the domain of justice, that is, an enlargement of the set of
beings to whom obligations of justice are owed—​namely, an ex-
pansion to include future generations of people who will come to
exist long after existing people are gone. This conceptual change
appears to be less widespread than the other inclusivist moral-​
conceptual changes we have described in this chapter—​and cer-
tainly less embodied in social practices and institutions. And in
its case the gap between conceptual change and change in moti-
vation seems especially wide. In particular, if the idea of justice to
future generations had been taken seriously, some of the most se-
rious environmental problems, including global climate change,
would not have occurred or at least would not have reached their
current state of apparent intractability. Either a conceptual change
has occurred but without significantly affecting people’s motiva-
tion and behavior or for many people the acknowledgment that
justice extends intergenerationally is merely a kind of epistemi-
cally empty and conatively idle social signal motivated by social
desirability effects, such as the desire to be viewed as politically
correct or morally enlightened—​not evidence of an actual con-
ceptual change. We suspect that the second alternative is more
plausible, but for present purposes it is not necessary to make
this case.

The Concept of Unforfeitable Rights

We have emphasized that moral progress often consists of in-
cluding those who previously were excluded from the class of
 Moral Concepts and the Human Rights Movement   303
beings thought to have basic equal moral status. That progressive
moral innovation is compatible with the belief that basic moral
status can be completely forfeited if the individual commits suf-
ficiently serious transgressions. The last conceptual change we
wish to consider is the shift to a nuanced understanding of basic
moral status that rejects the idea that all of the rights associated
with that status can be forfeited as a result of wrongdoing.
It appears that, until quite recently in human history, the
dominant view, at least as it was expressed in practices of pun-
ishment in many countries, was that by committing certain of-
fenses an individual could forfeit all of his or her rights—​even
those that define basic equal moral status—​and indeed could
become a being with no moral standing whatsoever. Further,
the list of offenses that were thought to result in the complete
loss of moral standing was not restricted to the most heinous
offenses. Thus, for example, individuals convicted of killing
members of the nobility or of attempting regicide or of blas-
phemy or apostasy were not only deprived of their liberty and
condemned to death but also subjected to the cruellest pun-
ishments and to mutilation of their corpses, even deprived of
religiously sanctioned burial.
The idea that there are some basic rights—​including the right
not to be tortured—​that an individual cannot forfeit, no matter
how reprehensibly he behaves, is a relatively recent develop-
ment in the tradition of natural rights thinking. For many people
today, the belief that certain basic rights are immune to forfeiture
extends not only to the right not to be tortured or mutilated or
deprived of proper burial but also to the right not to be subjected
to capital punishment, even in the case of those who participate
in or instigate war crimes, genocide, or mass-​scale terrorism. It
is true that much opposition to the death penalty, especially in
the United States, is motivated by concerns about the error rate
(wrongful convictions) or racial disparity in sentencing, rather
than by the notion that the right to life can under no circum-
stances be forfeited. But many people seeking the abrogation of
304  The Path Traveled and the Way Forward
the death penalty, especially in Europe, would include among
their reasons the non-​forfeiture rationale.
Whether or not capital punishment is ever justified is a matter
of debate and perhaps of reasonable disagreement, so perhaps the
rejection of capital punishment cannot serve as an uncontrover-
sial candidate for moral progress—​though reducing the error rate
and racial disparities in its application would seem to count as
moral progress. The more basic idea that not all rights can be
forfeited is a less problematic candidate for moral-​conceptual
improvement—​a progressive change in how the concept of moral
status is to be understood. In effect, the idea that certain basic
rights cannot be forfeited amounts to the claim that one cannot
wholly lose one’s basic equal moral status:  that although one
may forfeit some rights (such as the right to complete freedom
of movement when one is imprisoned for a crime or, on some
views, the right to vote), there are other rights, other elements of
basic equal status, that remain intact. Of course, there remains
considerable disagreement over the circumstances in which cer-
tain rights may or may not be forfeited. The point, however, is
that the persistence of certain unforfeitable rights means that
the individual still has moral standing, even if it is of a partially
diminished sort.
The modern human rights movement embodies this signifi-
cant conceptual change. At least those human rights that have
the status of jus cogens, including the right against torture and
enslavement, are understood to be constituents of a basic moral
status that no human being can forfeit and which, consequently,
must always be respected. The modern human rights movement
therefore includes a significant refinement of the concept of basic
moral status, not only extending it to all human beings but also
proclaiming that no human individual is ever to be treated as if he
or she lacked any moral standing whatsoever.
Recent debates about the ethical status of torture have called
into question the assumption that nothing an individual could
do could ever result in forfeiture of the right not to be tortured.
 Moral Concepts and the Human Rights Movement   305
Some philosophers have argued that there could be circumstances
in which it would be permissible to torture an individual, if there
were sufficient certainty that doing so would prevent many deaths
for which that individual would be responsible and if torturing
him were the only way to avert those deaths. Even those who
find such arguments compelling would presumably agree that
rejecting the previously widely held belief that moral standing
can be completely forfeited by much less serious offenses is a
moral improvement.

Conclusion
This chapter has identified several momentous instances of con-
ceptual moral progress in the dimension of inclusion and has
shown that all of them are embodied in the modern human rights
movement—​not just in the ways in which people think and talk
about human rights but also in human rights practice and its in-
stitutional manifestations. The next chapter shows how the nat-
uralistic theory of moral progress outlined in Chapter 6 helps to
explain how the human rights movement and its forerunner, abo-
litionism, could have been created by beings whose fundamental
moral capacities evolved in the environment of evolutionary ad-
aptation. Applying our naturalistic theory to core aspects of the
modern human rights movement will help not only to confirm
the theory’s explanatory power but also to clarify the theory
itself.
 CHAPTER 10

Human Rights Naturalized

The preceding chapter identified and explained six momentous

conceptual improvements that are arguably instances of moral
progress and showed that the modern human rights movement
incorporates all of them. The objective of the present chapter is
to draw upon the naturalized theory of moral progress sketched
in Part II to explain how these progressive developments came
about and achieved concrete expression in a powerful political
movement that resulted in the modern system of human rights—​
and to explain why they came about when they did. We do not
attempt to provide a comprehensive explanation of the rise and
development of the human rights movement, much less to pro-
vide sufficient conditions for its emergence. Instead, the goal is
to show how our theory sheds some light on the conditions that
made the movement possible and that contributed to both its
successes and its setbacks.

What Is the Modern Human Rights Movement?

Before beginning, it is important to clarify the explanandum. By
“the modern human rights movement,” we mean both the doctrine
and the underlying conceptualization of modern human rights
practice and the practice itself, in all its manifold dimensions, in-
cluding human rights institutions and organizations. The core of
the authoritative formulation of the doctrine of the movement
 Human Rights Naturalized  307
is the three documents that comprise what is sometimes called
the International Bill of Rights:  the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political
Rights, and the International Covenant on Economic, Social,
and Cultural Rights. The authoritative doctrine also includes a
number of specialized human rights conventions (treaties), in-
cluding the Women’s Convention, the Child’s Convention, the
Convention on the Rights of Migrants and Their Families, the
Torture Convention, the Convention on Ending Apartheid and
Racial Discrimination, the Convention on the Rights of People
with Disabilities, the Convention on the Rights of Indigenous
Peoples, and the Genocide Convention.
The practice of human rights, which is importantly though im-
perfectly guided by the doctrine and which includes a political dis-
course that draws heavily on it, encompasses all of the following
and more: the processes by which human rights enter customary
international law; the activities of international and regional or-
ganizations that monitor compliance with the treaties; the actions
of international, regional, and national courts when they adjudi-
cate human rights disputes or make reference to human rights in
their decisions; the work of nongovernmental human rights or-
ganizations; the efforts of individual citizens, various civil society
groups, and “whistle-​blowing” government officials to hold their
governments accountable for fulfilling their human rights obliga-
tions under international or regional law; the creation or amend-
ment of national constitutions to reflect international or regional
human rights legal obligations; efforts by legislatures to bring na-
tional law into conformity with human rights treaty obligations;
policies that make a state’s membership in valued multilateral
organizations (such as the European Union) or access to loans
and credits from the International Monetary Fund, the World
Bank, or other funding sources conditional on human rights per-
formance; the imposition of sanctions on states by the United
Nations Security Council in response to their human rights vi-
olations; military interventions in the name of protecting basic
308  The Path Traveled and the Way Forward
human rights; and the recourse to human rights norms by do-
mestic, regional, and international organizations in formulating
their goals, mission, and policies. The doctrinal compass for all
these variegated aspects of human rights practice is the propo-
sition that there is to be a universal standard, framed largely in
terms of individual rights, that all states are to live up to in their
treatment of all of those under their jurisdiction.

Why Is the Modern Human Rights

Movement Revolutionary?
Apart from its rich complexity, what is perhaps most striking
about the modern human rights movement is that, like the aboli-
tionist movement that was its progenitor, it was not a top-​down
creation imposed by a hegemonic state or world government.
Instead, as Mary Ann Glendon and other historians of the move-
ment have shown, the most powerful states were at best reluc-
tant participants in a founding process initiated by less powerful
states and civil society groups.1 The very existence and successes
of the human rights movement are therefore evidence of a robust,
broad-​based moral consensus, rather than the result of weaker
nations being browbeaten by more powerful ones into merely
“assenting” rather than consenting to a system of human rights.
At the highest level of generality, the consensus that created and
has subsequently guided the modern human rights movement is
agreement on a simple but revolutionary proposition: that there
should be a single standard, ultimately formulated in interna-
tional law, prescribing how all states are to treat those under their
jurisdiction. As will become clear shortly, the assumption that
the standard should largely consist of a list of individual rights
is, while extremely important, nonetheless in a sense a secondary
idea. This consensus that there should be a universal standard is

1
 Mary Ann Glendon, A World Made New:  Eleanor Roosevelt and the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Random House, 2002).
 Human Rights Naturalized  309
revolutionary because it is a direct repudiation of the traditional
notions of international law and state sovereignty, according to
which international law should remain silent on how states con-
duct themselves in their “domestic affairs” and any attempt to
interfere in the latter is a violation of state sovereignty.
The traditional state-​centric view of the norms governing in-
ternational relations parallels the patterns of moral norms in
hunter–​ gatherer groups discussed in Chapter  2—​ where basic
moral norms are confined primarily to male group members and
are rarely extended to family units within the group. This par-
allel may not be coincidental: it may reflect a deep tendency of
human morality that the human rights regime has begun to chal-
lenge. Traditional views of the norms governing tribes and states
may in essence be a “scaled-​up” version of hunter–​gatherer mo-
rality, with states substituting for males and domestic citizenry
substituting for family units. This speculation is strengthened by
the fact that parental metaphors (e.g., king-​as-​father and country-​
as-​fatherland) and fictive kinship (fellow citizens conceived as
brothers and sisters) play a significant role in sustaining the cohe-
sion of states, encouraging within-​group altruism and motivating
collective action.
The revolutionary consensus on human rights not only called
the traditional state-​centric view into question but also quickly
ripened into a much more specific widespread agreement that the
standard for how all states should treat those under their juris-
diction should largely take the form of a list of individual rights.
This specification was not by any means a foregone conclusion.
The universal standards that all states were to follow could have
taken the form of mere duties on the part of states or that of
group rights. Even more surprisingly, there was very widespread
agreement on what the initial list of individual rights should be.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which set forth this
initial list and which to this day remains the single most impor-
tant authoritative articulation of the doctrine of human rights,
has been ratified by almost all states, as has the International
310  The Path Traveled and the Way Forward
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Most other human rights
treaties have been ratified by a supermajority of states.2

Human Rights Culture and the Moral

Degeneration Thesis
There is widespread agreement, then, on (1)  the basic idea that
there should be a universal standard that all states must satisfy,
(2) the idea that this standard should largely consist of individual
rights, and (3) the authoritative statements as to which rights are in
fact human rights. This three-​pronged consensus forms the core
of what might be called the human rights culture. Later in this
chapter we will ponder why this consensus came about and why
it came about when it did. For now, we want to point out that the
rise of human rights culture flies in the face of claims by degen-
eration theorists like MacIntyre (discussed in the Introduction)
that modern moral culture is hopelessly fragmented or incapable
of achieving the moral agreement needed for meaningful moral
guidance or for a coherent moral point of view.
It is true that there are some societies, or more accurately
some people in some societies, that reject some human rights—​
especially rights against gender and religious discrimination—​and
that some governments, most notably that of China, reject the
fundamental proposition on which the movement is grounded by
asserting that what a state does in its “domestic affairs” is not a
proper object of criticism by other states or international organ-
izations. But it is nonetheless a fact that the basic idea of human
rights, as well as most of the rights contained in the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights, enjoy a very wide, cross-​cultural
consensus and thus reflect substantial moral agreement. If
modern morality was as hopelessly fragmented and incoherent as

  See the interactive human rights treaty ratification map at http://​indicators.

2

ohchr.org/​
 Human Rights Naturalized  311
MacIntyre says it is, it is hard to see how it could have produced
the human rights culture.
This is not to say that the existence of the modern human rights
movement shows that there is a comprehensive modern moral
culture, one that provides a complete guide for all aspects of mo-
rality. The modern human rights culture, like liberalism, is not
and never purported to be a comprehensive morality. Properly
understood, it addresses only some moral issues and some dimen-
sions of moral life. But for the reasons just adduced, it stands as a
living refutation of the degeneration theorists’ claim that there is
no modern moral culture to speak of and instead only fragments
of an earlier, supposedly whole and wholesome premodern one.
Further, it is worth asking which moral culture (whether it is
comprehensive or not) provides a better guide to moral living
in our world:  the modern conception of human rights, which
requires us to recognize a substantial list of rights for all human
beings and includes the idea that the chief role of governments
and the basic condition of their legitimacy is the protection of
these rights, or a “traditional,” pre-​Enlightenment conception
of European Christian morality that views political authority as
bestowed by God and to that extent immune from human criti-
cism, that accepts slavery and various forms of hereditary dom-
ination, that relegates women to an inferior status and counsels
obedience even toward the most brutal of husbands, and that
encourages the poor and exploited to accept their condition as
a natural, inevitable fact, meekly consoling themselves in their
misery by contemplating the infinitely better existence they will
enjoy when they exit this vale of tears. Some other traditional
moralities may fair somewhat better in such a comparison, but
none of them includes a clear affirmation of the basic rights of all
human beings. In that respect, the modern human rights culture,
though it was never intended to be a comprehensive morality, is
clearly superior on one of the most important criteria for evalu-
ating moralities—​namely, the extent to which they acknowledge
the importance of the well-​being and freedom of all individuals.
312  The Path Traveled and the Way Forward
How Was Progress in Human Rights Possible,
and Why Did It Occur When It Did?
To answer both the “how?” and the “why at that time?” ques-
tions, it will be useful to begin by recapping the main proposi-
tions of the naturalistic theory we outlined in Part II:
(1) Key features of human morality originated in the environ-
ment of evolutionary adaptation (EEA), during the middle
to late Pleistocene, between one million and 100,000 years
ago, among scattered, genetically weakly related, small
groups of human beings, in the absence of social prac-
tices or institutions to enable mutually beneficial interac-
tions between groups competing for resources needed for
survival.
(2) Selective pressures in the EEA created a human psychology
that included an adaptively plastic capacity for exclusivist
or “tribalistic” moral responses and accompanying so-
cial practices, which was responsive to certain threat cues
detected in the course of individual and collective moral
development; this plasticity allowed for the possibility of
inclusivist responses and corresponding social practices if
threat cues diminished and there were opportunities for
beneficial cooperative relations with out-​groups (such as
exogamy, trade, and military alliances). In the EEA, the
threat cues that triggered exclusivist responses likely dom-
inated, resulting in cultural moral systems that inhibited
inclusivist responses—​though there were temporary and
local exceptions that relaxed constraints on inclusivity and
allowed for some peaceful relationships with out-​groups.
(3) If the capacity for responding to out-​groups is an adapt-
ively plastic trait, with inclusive or exclusive moral re-
sponses being conditional upon the detection of certain
EEA-​like threat cues, then it is a mistake to say that human
beings are hard-​wired for exclusivist moralities.
 Human Rights Naturalized  313
(4) At least throughout much of recorded human history, and
probably much earlier, cognitively normal human beings
have had the capacity for open-​ended normativity, the
ability to become conscious of the particular norms they
are following, to subject those norms to critical scrutiny,
to modify them in the light of their critical evaluations, and
to change their behavior accordingly. This capacity is only
exercised, at least by large numbers of people and in ways
that effect large-​scale social change, under certain condi-
tions. Generally speaking, the harsh conditions of the EEA
and similar conditions that exert strong pressures for un-
questioning compliance with existing norms, such as states
of actual or perceived emergency or war, are not conducive
to the widespread exercise of the capacity for open-​ended
normativity. Further, particular cultural factors, including
illiteracy, highly disciplined religious orthodoxy, and au-
thoritarian government, can inhibit the exercise of this
capacity.
(5) In favorable (luxurious) environments in which the harsh
conditions of the EEA are diminished, cultural innova-
tions can create opportunities for people to exercise the
capacity for open-​ended normativity in ways that help
activate the adaptively plastic potential for inclusivist
moral responses—​and which reinforce and stabilize these
inclusivist responses through the creation of new social
practices and institutions.
(6) However, if the social environment deteriorates, shifting
back toward the harsh conditions of the EEA or if suffi-
cient numbers of people believe that such harsh conditions
exist (for example, because they have accepted represen-
tations of certain human groups as socially or physically
dangerous), then cultural innovations for inclusiveness
may also deteriorate. When this occurs, exclusivist moral
responses will come to dominate.
314  The Path Traveled and the Way Forward
The two most important insights that the naturalistic theory
provides for understanding the rise and success of the modern
human rights movement are these: (1) that the development and
persistence of widespread inclusivist moral responses and social
practices generally requires certain environmental conditions—​
in particular, those that reduce the threat cues that were perva-
sive in the EEA and thus create opportunities and incentives for
inclusivist moral responses—​and (2)  that once these more fa-
vorable environmental conditions come into existence, cultural
innovations can (but do not inevitably) change the environment
in ways that make it more conducive to inclusivist morality. As
we noted in Chapter 3, there is a sense in which inclusivist mo-
rality is a luxury good: it is likely to be widespread and sustain-
able only where human beings have lifted themselves out of the
harsh conditions of the EEA. As we shall see, however, there is
no guarantee that even under such favorable conditions cultural
innovations will succeed in constructing inclusivist moralities.
Our modest goal, therefore, is to identify key necessary (if not
sufficient) conditions for the emergence of inclusivist moralities
such as the modern human rights system.
First and foremost, inclusivist morality on a large scale requires
physical security. Second, once a relatively safe space has been
created, social practices and institutions (along with accompa-
nying attitudes) that facilitate peaceful and mutually beneficial
relationships with strangers can develop. The “others” who pre-
viously were regarded chiefly as prey or predators can come to
be seen as potential cooperators or at least as worthy of basic
respect.
We noted in Chapter  7 that Hobbes gives pride of place to
physical security: without the freedom from physical harm and
coercive appropriation, he rightly observes, human life is awful,
in part because no one will have an incentive to invest in pro-
ductive activities if their fruits may be arbitrarily expropriated
by others. And we saw in Chapter  8 that Hobbes’s hypothesis
is supported by recent empirical work connecting the lack of
 Human Rights Naturalized  315
an effective security infrastructure to poverty and stymied eco-
nomic development.3 What has been overlooked, and what our
evolutionary model brings to the fore, is that the lack of an effec-
tive security infrastructure is likely to have detrimental effects on
inclusivist moral progress by allowing cues of out-​group threat to
pervade societies, resulting in the emergence of exclusivist moral-
ities that only enhance the social and biological factors standing
in the way of economic development. And this is true even when
exclusion is internalized, when groups within society are viewed
and treated with suspicion and hostility.
Norbert Elias adds a second big piece of the puzzle, em-
phasizing the importance of markets in creating incentives for
replacing xenophobia, hostility, and predation toward strangers
with a willingness to engage in mutually beneficial, peaceful rela-
tionships with them. Elias argues that once the modern state cre-
ated a relatively secure environment, the rise of markets and an
increasingly complex division of labor became possible. Selection
pressures then encouraged both the growth of markets and a
transformation of human psychology that facilitated the highly
coordinated, complex social interactions that market-​based social
organization demands. More specifically, a social environment in
which markets are developing under conditions of physical secu-
rity rewards individuals who develop better impulse control and
the ability to predict the future consequences of their actions and
refrainings. The development of these psychological characteris-
tics enhances the efficacy of the incentives for peaceful behavior
that the legal regime’s threat of punishment creates.
The insights of Hobbes and Elias, which Pinker eloquently
elaborates and deepens, confirm the naturalistic theory’s
hypothe­sis that inclusivist morality is a luxury good. Applied to
the project of understanding the human rights project, the luxury
good hypothesis implies that one should expect the origins of

 See G.  A. Haugen and V. Boutros, The Locust Effect:  Why the End of
3

Poverty Requires the End of Violence (Oxford University Press, 2013).

316  The Path Traveled and the Way Forward
the modern human rights movement to be found in societies that
had succeeded in escaping the harsh conditions of the EEA, at
least for many of their members. And, in fact, that is the case,
not just for the modern human rights movement and its prede-
cessor, abolitionism, but for virtually all of the major historically
well-​documented improvements we have highlighted, from the
abolition of extremely cruel punishments to the beginning of the
recognition of the rights of women to the acknowledgment that
non-​human animals have moral standing. All of these instances
of progress occurred on a large scale only within the last two
hundred and fifty years and were either initiated or first became
pervasive in societies that had attained unprecedented levels of
productivity, physical security, and health—​societies that had
distanced themselves from the harsh conditions of the EEA.

British Abolitionism and the Origins of the Human

Rights Movement
The changes Hobbes and Elias highlight—​the imposition of the
king’s peace and the introduction of incentives for peaceful in-
teractions and mutually beneficial cooperation through the de-
velopment of markets and an increasing division of labor—​were
contingent necessary conditions for the rise of modern human
rights culture, but they were not sufficient. The key to under-
standing the rest of the story lies in the wealth of excellent schol-
arship now available on the British abolitionist movement, which
arguably was not only the first social movement in the modern
sense but also the most robust embryonic form of the modern
human rights movement.
This literature demonstrates that although there were aboli-
tionist movements in other countries, none became as powerful
and successful as the British movement. Preeminent scholars of
slavery and emancipation such as Ira Berlin, Seymour Dresher,
and David Brion Davis have emphasized that the peculiar suc-
cess of the British abolitionist movement did not depend solely
 Human Rights Naturalized  317
on material prosperity, increased productive capacity, or the es-
tablishment of physical security—​since these levels of “luxury”
were achieved in other countries in which abolitionist movements
were much less efficacious.
Britain in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries
also had other characteristics that apparently were needed for the
success of abolitionism. In particular, there were relatively well-​
developed civil society organizations, operating under conditions
of considerable freedom of expression and association, in a so-
ciety with unprecedented literacy rates and a multitude of printing
presses not subject to government control. The most important
of these civil society groups were the highly organized religious
groups at the forefront of abolitionist activity—​mainly noncon-
formist, that is, non-​Anglican, Protestant sects and preeminently
Quakers. Because, as nonconformists, they were not dependent
for resources on the government (as the slave-​holding Anglican
Church was), and hence were freer of government control, these
groups were able to take positions the government did not ini-
tially support and exert pressure on it to change. Perhaps most
importantly of all, government in Britain was becoming more
democratic and increasingly responsive to public opinion, and
civil society groups were exploiting the relative freedom of British
society to develop sophisticated techniques, including petitions
to Parliament to exert pressure on government to end slavery in
the empire. To use a philosophical term that historians of aboli-
tionism do not apply but which aptly characterizes their analyses
of what made British abolitionism distinctive and distinctively
successful, the movement depended not just upon sound moral
thinking but upon a complex social-​epistemic environment—​a set
of conditions under which such thinking could become not only
pervasive but also politically effective.
As we have already noted, the techniques British abolitionists
used to mobilize public opinion against slavery included appeals
to both emotions and reason, and in particular to consistency
in moral reasoning. Abolitionists sent artists, operating under
318  The Path Traveled and the Way Forward
false pretenses, on Middle Passage voyages to covertly sketch the
horrific conditions they witnessed, including the dense packing
of slaves in ships’ holds that were filled with human effluent,
breeding diseases that caused dreadful suffering and mortality.
These drawings were then mass-​reproduced and widely circu-
lated, triggering emotional responses not just of pity and horror
but also of indignation that Britain, a country whose citizens
prided themselves on the liberties they enjoyed, should be the
dominant country in a trade so unspeakably vile.
Abolitionists also appealed directly to reason. To convince
people that Africans were fully human—​that is, beings endowed
with reason and hence possessors of natural rights—​they printed
and circulated biographies of freed slaves (perhaps the most fa-
mous being that of Equiano) and supported speaking tours for
the liberated so that they could demonstrate their rationality in
person. They impressed upon people that if Africans were human
beings endowed with natural rights, it was no more acceptable
to enslave them than to enslave Europeans—​a practice that had
largely ceased in England around 1000 C.E. In other words, they
utilized moral consistency reasoning as well as direct appeals to
the moral sentiments.
Other techniques of mobilization included a highly successful
boycott of slave-​produced sugar and massive petitions stitched
together into huge rolls requiring the efforts of several men to
lay them at the feet of the members of Parliament.4 Without mass
literacy, a multitude of printing presses in private hands, freedom
of association and freedom of expression, and government-​
independent civil society groups, there could have been no ab-
olitionist movement in Britain to speak of. The major inclusivist
victory of emancipation in the British Empire was only possible,
therefore, thanks to the complex scaffolding of numerous prior
cultural moral innovations and institutions.

4
 Seymour Dresher, Abolition:  A History of Slavery and Antislavery
(Cambridge University Press, 2009, p. 250).
 Human Rights Naturalized  319
Appreciating the social-​epistemic conditions of British aboli-
tionism enables us to avoid a problematic inference that Kwame
Anthony Appiah makes. Appiah correctly notes that the moral
case against slavery had been well known before abolitionism’s
successes. But then he mistakenly infers from this that what re-
ally drove abolitionism was honor—​a concern to be worthy of
respect—​not moral consistency reasoning. That conclusion does
not follow. First of all, no one could plausibly think that moral
reasoning on its own, regardless of the social and political cir-
cumstances and independently of organized political action,
could defeat slavery or for that matter affect any significant moral
change. The deficiencies of accounts of moral progress that repose
primarily on moral reasoning were documented in Chapter  4.
Second, instead of following the careful work of the best histo-
rians of slavery in emphasizing the peculiar social and political
conditions of British society in the late eighteenth century, in-
cluding its unique social-​epistemic environment, Appiah declares
that honor was the major determinant of success. Moreover, the
evidence he provides for thinking that honor was of much sig-
nificance at all is extremely scanty.5 Appiah simply does not take
seriously the plausible hypothesis that moral reasoning did play a
central role in British abolitionist success but was only able to do
so under certain conditions that had only recently come to exist.
This is not to deny that the quest for honor played some role,
but it avoids the extreme and implausible assertion that honor, as
Appiah suggests, is the central explanatory factor.
As noted above, other countries enjoyed similar levels of
material prosperity and physical security and had access to
Enlightenment thought, including the belief that all human

5
  See Kwame Anthony Appiah, The Honor Code: How Moral Revolutions
Occur (W.W. Norton & Company, 2010) . Dresher argues against the view that
British concern for national honor was heightened at the time of the aboli-
tionist movement due to shocks to self-​esteem resulting from the loss of the
North American colonies. Ibid.
320  The Path Traveled and the Way Forward
beings had certain natural rights. And though these countries had
abolitionist movements, they were never as efficacious as that of
Britain. The best explanation of why this is so is that none of
them had the full suite of conditions that were present in the case
of Britain and that served as difference-​making causes.6 So, al-
though physical security and material prosperity may be impor-
tant, indeed necessary, conditions for inclusivist gains, including
those of abolitionism, they are not the only necessary conditions.
More technically, they are causes but not “difference-​making”
causes—​ that is, they do not explain differential inclusivist
outcomes across well-​developed societies, even though they do
serve as difference-​makers and form part of the explanation of
differential inclusivist outcomes when we compare weakly devel-
oped societies with developed ones. Our assertion that inclusivist
morality, when widely distributed and stable, is a “luxury good”
must be interpreted broadly, then, to include other factors, such
as the difference-​making cultural innovations listed above.
What went right in British abolitionism? How did the dis-
tinctive features of British society work together to foster an
inclusivist moral outlook that regarded slavery as unacceptable
and mobilized people so effectively to end it? Here we can only
sketch in broad outlines the complex answer to this question,
drawing heavily on the work of Hobbes, Elias, and Pinker, as
well as Dresher and other historians of abolitionism.
In the last quarter of the eighteenth century, Britain achieved
unprecedented levels of physical security for many members of
its population. A relatively safe zone was created by the prepon-
derance of the “king’s peace” within a constitutional monarchy
in which the rule of law (including the protection of property
rights and habeas corpus) was taken seriously, making possible
the proliferation of markets and robust and stable property

6
 Seymour Dresher, From Slavery to Freedom:  Comparative Studies in
the Rise and Fall of Atlantic Slavery (New  York University Press, 1999, pp.
216–​218).
 Human Rights Naturalized  321
rights, thereby increasing the opportunities for mutually bene-
ficial, peaceful cooperation with strangers. This situation created
strong selection pressures for a psychology that not only featured
increases in impulse control, drastically reducing homicide rates,
but also enabled people to think of strangers as objects of re-
spect and worthy of solicitous behavior, rather than as dangerous
predators or prey whose resources were to be coercively expro-
priated. Equally unprecedented levels of freedom and expression,
along with some of the highest literacy rates in the world at the
time, combined with a large number of private (i.e., nongovern-
mental) sources of print literature and with freedom of religion
(at least for Protestants), allowed for the formation of civil so-
ciety groups that government could not afford to ignore.
In other words, the environment of late eighteenth-​century
Britain improved sufficiently that people could afford to care
about strangers and had strong incentives to cater to their prefer-
ences in the market. Further, the market was increasingly global,
so it became possible—​and for economic success necessary—​to
think of people in distant lands as reciprocating participants in
cooperation. In addition, the Enlightenment idea that all human
beings have certain natural rights proliferated among people who
could now afford to take the rights of strangers seriously, and
those who absorbed these progressive ideas were able to change
government policy through political mobilization relying on
improved communication technologies relatively unhindered by
government control.
This sketch of the remarkable phenomenon of British aboli-
tionism accords well with the naturalistic theory of inclusivist
moral progress laid out in Chapter 3. The major gain in inclusive-
ness achieved by British abolitionists occurred when major threat
cues characteristic of the EEA—​in particular, the risk of violence
and predation by strangers as well as disease transmission—​
sufficiently diminished; quarantining and other measures for
curbing the spread of infectious diseases became more widely
used during this period, and vaccination against smallpox reduced
322  The Path Traveled and the Way Forward
the threat of one of the most serious diseases of the era. Only then
did it become less costly, and as markets flourished even benefi-
cial, for large numbers of people to think of out-​group members,
including individuals on other continents, as part of the basic
moral community of human beings.
At the same time, cultural innovations, including great ad-
vances in communication due to the spread of literacy and the
birth of civil society organizations in a society in which govern-
ment was becoming increasingly responsive to organized public
opinion, allowed and even incentivized the exercise of the capacity
for open-​ended normativity, especially in the form of improved
moral consistency reasoning. Increasing numbers of people came
to understand that Africans were rational beings and that if their
own rationality endowed them with natural rights, then Africans
must have natural rights, too. More people also came to believe
that united public opinion could prompt major social changes,
and acceptance of slavery as a natural fact or economic necessity
began to erode.
There is an important connection in this story between
literacy—​a good that remained “luxurious” (reserved for the
privileged few) until very recently in human history—​and im-
provements in moral consistency reasoning. Moral consistency
reasoning is often facilitated by perspective-​shifting techniques
available only to the literate. To understand what someone else
has written involves occupying that person’s perspective, or at
least recognizing his or her thoughts as coming from a different
center of consciousness from one’s own. It has also often been
noted that the period in which British abolitionism originated
and flourished witnessed the birth and wide dissemination of the
novel—​one of the greatest technologies ever invented for engaging
the human imagination and moral emotions in ways that allow us
to transcend the narrow confines of nationality, class, race, and
gender, through identification with fictional characters of di-
verse backgrounds. When perspective-​shifting techniques engage
belief through stimulating the imagination and the emotions, it
 Human Rights Naturalized  323
becomes easier to detect inconsistencies in one’s moral views and
harder to suppress awareness of them through cognitive disso-
nance reduction maneuvers that sacrifice truth for self-​satisfied
epistemic inertia.
One might object, at this point, that we have paid short shrift
to religion as a progressive force in British abolitionism. It cannot
be denied that religious organizations, especially nonconformist
Protestant groups, played a central role in the movement. But
it would be a mistake to confuse that statement with the more
dubious claim that Christianity was the main driving force of
the movement, if this means that changes in religious beliefs and
commitments were its primary cause. It is true that many abo-
litionists joined the movement at least in part because they had
come to a new understanding of what it was to be a Christian,
repudiating the traditional acquiescence of Christianity in
slavery. But it would be hard to make the case that this new un-
derstanding of what being a Christian required was an imma-
nent transformation—​a change that came about primarily if not
exclusively through the development of religious thought as a
phenomenon independent of the economic, cultural, social, and
political changes we have emphasized.
Instead, it is more likely that secular Enlightenment ideas, along
with selection for inclusivist moral responses prompted by the
favorable socioeconomic and political conditions of British so-
ciety noted above, prompted many Christians to reinterpret what
it was to be a Christian, focusing the exercise of the capacity for
open-​ended normativity on the character of their religious iden-
tity. Although we reserve a more comprehensive investigation of
the role of religion in moral progress for a future work, here we
will venture to agree with Norbert Elias, who held that the char-
acter of a religion at any given time, including its understanding
of human rights, is generally a reflection of the larger culture in
which the religion is embedded, not an exogenous cause of the
character of that culture. Regardless of whether Elias’s general-
ization about religion is exceptionless or statistically sound, it
324  The Path Traveled and the Way Forward
seems to be highly plausible in the case of British abolitionism.
To our knowledge, no credible contemporary historian of the
British abolitionist movement assigns the role of a primary cause
to internal developments in Christian thought.
To appreciate the accomplishments of British abolitionism,
it is important to remember that slavery was not a European
invention. It existed in most societies through most of human
history and continued to exist on a massive scale, especially in
Africa, parts of the Middle East, and India, long after the British
abolished slavery in their empire and used the British Navy to de-
molish the transatlantic slave trade. Indeed, chattel slavery existed
well into the twentieth century.7 But as Seymour Dresher notes,
the movement to abolish slavery originated in the West and more
specifically in a country that had only recently come to enjoy fa-
vorable conditions—​that is, greater distance from the harsh con-
ditions of the EEA—​than existed in the countries where slavery
persisted on a large scale. Further, the dismantling of the institu-
tion of slavery in other lands came about primarily through the
influence of Western countries. Although slavery (especially sex
slavery) still occurs in most, if not all, countries even today, the
highest concentrations of all forms of slavery at present are in
countries in which the rule of law is less developed, extreme pov-
erty is widespread, and physical security is still in short supply
for many people.
We have made no attempt to provide anything approaching
a comprehensive explanation of the origins and timing of the
modern human rights movement. Our more modest claim is that
the best explanation of the origin and timing of British aboli-
tionism and the modern human rights movement that followed
must include reference not only to Enlightenment ideas, moral
consistency reasoning, and new interpretations of Christianity
but also to the material, political, and social-​ epistemological

  For a comparative perspective on abolition and the history of slavery, see

7

Drescher, Abolition, supra note 4.

 Human Rights Naturalized  325
conditions—​in interaction with evolved components of human
moral psychology—​that translated these changes in thinking
into effective political action. We have not sought to substitute an
evolutionary explanation for a cultural one or vice versa. Instead,
we have tried to show how our naturalistic theory provides im-
portant links between evolved human moral nature and its inter-
action with scaffolded cultural conditions.
Our view is an attempt to avoid both simplistic, reductionist
biological explanations, on the one hand, and explanations that
regard moral reasoning as a kind of free-​floating, sui generis
force, on the other. We have also avoided the assumption that cul-
ture is independent of evolution. We have acknowledged that an
understanding of the evolutionary origins of human morality is
relevant to moral development—​and perhaps especially to moral
regression. But we have also identified a series of important con-
ceptual transformations and changing social–​environmental fac-
tors that must be taken into account in any attempt to understand
the origins and timing of the modern human rights movement.

Why Did the Human Rights Movement Stall?

As noted earlier, abolitionist movements generally, including the
British instance, have rightly been regarded as the forerunners of
the modern human rights movement. But it is important to realize
that the conception of human rights that animated abolitionism
was highly constrained: the moral justification for the liberation
of slaves presupposed only rights not to be enslaved or deprived
of the fruits of one’s labors—​not anything like the full panoply of
human rights that are recognized today in international, regional,
and domestic legal systems, as discussed in the previous chapter.
Nor is it true that abolitionism marked the beginning of steady,
ever-​advancing progress toward the modern human rights idea
and its institutional embodiments.
On the contrary, the greatest triumph of abolitionism—​the in-
stant emancipation of 800,0000 slaves from chattel slavery in the
326  The Path Traveled and the Way Forward
British Empire that occurred in 1834—​was soon followed by what
might be called the “century of scientific racism,” in the West,
beginning around 1840 and continuing until the destruction of
the racial inegalitarian Nazi and Japanese regimes in World War
II. In the United States, the end of slavery marked the advent of
Jim Crow—​a dense cluster of legal, institutional and social meas-
ures deliberately designed to undercut the inclusivist achieve-
ments (in particular, the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth
Amendments to the U.S. Constitution) that were instituted in the
wake of the Civil War. There was, in other words, a great discon-
tinuity and indeed a serious regression with regard to inclusion
that occurred after the major triumphs of abolitionism but before
the founding of the modern human rights system in 1948.
This raises a critical question for any naturalistic theory of
moral progress: why was the success of abolitionism followed by
stalling and regression? Is this moral sputtering in tension with
the naturalistic account of inclusivist moral progress developed
in this book? We do not believe that it is. Our naturalistic theory
finds nothing surprising in the fact of regression and stalling. It
denies the inevitability or normality of progress. Instead, its cen-
tral idea is that progress, like stalling and regression, is environ-
mentally conditioned and depends on cultural changes. And like
all theories that take evolution seriously, it recognizes that devel-
opmental environments change. Further, it rejects any suggestion
that when conditions favorable to inclusivist moralities manage
to emerge, they will be sustained. As we have emphasized, inclu-
siveness is the peculiar institution over the long sweep of history,
and the social and political conditions for it have only emerged
in the last two-​hundred and fifty years—​and then only in certain
locales. The harder question is not why stalling and regression
occurred after the promising start of abolitionism, but why prog-
ress resumed when it did, at the beginning of the human rights
movement.
Nonetheless, we will add some flesh to the skeletal explana-
tion of the brutal, massive exclusionary events of the twentieth
 Human Rights Naturalized  327
century that we offered in Chapter 3. The key to understanding
the broader stalling and regression that followed the partial
human rights victory of British and American abolitionism lies
in the burgeoning of racial thought in the second half of the nine-
teenth and the first half of the twentieth centuries.
Some prominent historians of British abolitionism have noted
something that students of American abolitionism may find sur-
prising:  British abolitionists did not focus their efforts exclu-
sively on refuting the idea that Africans were not rational beings
and therefore not human beings or proper subjects of justice.8
Instead, much of their effort was devoted to making vivid the
suffering of slaves, especially in the Middle Passage; documenting
the negative psychological and health effects suffered by those in-
volved in transporting slaves across the Atlantic; highlighting the
wrongness of stealing human beings; and rebutting arguments
that emancipation would bring violent reprisals by liberated
slaves and economic ruin to the British Empire. Considerable en-
ergy was also devoted to making people concretely aware that
they were being complicit in the operation of a system that was in
fact incompatible with their acknowledgment that Africans had
basic rights.
In contrast, by the time the American abolitionist move-
ment became powerful, during the twenty years preceding the
start of the Civil War, much of the national debate about slavery
consisted of claims and counterclaims about the supposed natural
inferiority of people of color. Abolitionist discourse changed,
most likely, in response to the growing prominence of racialized
thinking—​a prominence due in part to the increasing prestige of
what was believed to be science in a period in which science was
becoming ever more racialized.9 The more vigorous opposition
to American slavery became, the more pro-​slavery arguments
came to rely on pseudoscientific theories of biological racial

8
 Dresher, From Slavery to Freedom, supra note 6, p. 285.
9
  See D. Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics (Harvard University Press, 1995).
328  The Path Traveled and the Way Forward
differences. American abolitionists, therefore, unlike their British
predecessors, had to focus their attention almost exclusively on
rebutting racial arguments for slavery. During this period, the so-
cial and biological sciences became more explicitly racialized than
ever before. And the high regard in which science was held in the
nineteenth century made racialized science the most potent ally
of slavery apologists. Because science was widely regarded as ep-
istemically authoritative, its racialization had large social effects
beyond the community of scientists.

Racial Science and Moral Regression: From

Colonialism to Eugenics
Racist thinking, bolstered by racial science, was invoked to justify
European colonialism in the second half of the nineteenth and the
first third of the twentieth centuries. Ironically, as David Brion
Davis has brilliantly documented, the moral imperative of eman-
cipation from slavery was used to justify colonialism, especially
in Africa.10 Davis demonstrates that emancipation from slavery
was first invoked, during the initial abolitionist movements, in
the service of a genuinely progressive moral change but that later,
during the heyday of European colonialism, it was employed to
justify actions and policies that were anything but progressive—​
hence the title of his book, Slavery and Human Progress. In its
more coherent forms, the ideology of colonialism acknowledged
the moral truth that justified abolitionism—​namely that people
of color are genuine human beings entitled not to be enslaved—​
while at the same time denying that they had sufficient ration-
ality, discipline, and cultural development to govern themselves
or to be accorded the full set of rights that Europeans enjoyed.
The progress toward full recognition of human rights during
this period not only failed to advance beyond the partial gains

10
 David Brion Davis, Slavery and Human Progress (Oxford University
Press, 1984).
 Human Rights Naturalized  329
of abolitionism; it also exploited this shortfall to rationalize
brutally exclusionist behavior. Europeans justified colonizing
African territories as necessary for eliminating slavery there that
had persisted after its abolition in the British Empire and the
Americas.
The idea that there is a racial hierarchy among human beings,
given greater credibility by the pervasiveness of racial thought in
the social and biological sciences, remained popular up through
the period between the world wars. The League of Nations,
hailed at the time as a milestone of moral progress, rejected
Japan’s plea to commit the organization to a principle of racial
equality. Ironically, Japan then joined fascist Germany and Italy
in invoking the doctrine of racial inequality as part of the justifi-
cation for aggressive war and especially brutal forms of colonial
domination.
In the period between the world wars, a new “scientific” doc-
trine of inequality developed, combining flawed beliefs about
human genetics with a vulgarized version of the Darwinian idea of
the survival of the fittest: eugenics. Many varieties of thought are
often lumped together under the title “eugenics,” but, as we saw
in Chapter 7, all or at least most have something in common: the
belief that major social ills of modern, urbanized life are caused by
defective germplasm; that those individuals with defective genes
are outbreeding those with “good” genes; and that consequently,
unless there is some major change in reproductive behav­ior, so-
cial ills will worsen, and the human race will degenerate, even to
the point of the destruction of civilization.11
The idea of a dangerous class within society internalizes ex-
clusion:  the morally deficient, disease-​ bearing others are no
longer members of some alien society—​they dwell inside our
own society, and their existence threatens its very fabric. Inferior

11
  Diane Paul, “Darwin, Social Darwinism and Eugenics,” in J. Hodge and G.
Radick (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Darwin (Cambridge University
Press, 2003, pp. 214–​239).
330  The Path Traveled and the Way Forward
germplasm was thought to involve a bundle of undesirable char-
acteristics with ethno-​ racist overtones, including (inter alia)
dispositions to criminality, violence, indolence, disease, sexual
lasciviousness, and hyper-​fecundity—​thus triggering a number of
out-​group threat cues which, according to our model, drive dis-
gust and fear responses that result in moral exclusion. Margaret
Sanger, widely admired for her work promoting birth control,
likened those with defective germplasm to sewage flowing into
the municipal water supply.12 Indeed, her chief motivation for
trying to make birth control available was to stem the transmis-
sion of defective germplasm. She believed that many women of
the better sort were already using birth control and that because
the lower orders were not doing so, the result would be an in-
crease in the proportion of defective human beings and with it
a worsening of the social ills caused by their moral and physical
defects and ultimately their genes.
The exclusionist thinking of eugenicists in some cases reached
the limit: people with supposedly defective genes were to be ei-
ther murdered or prevented from being born. Compulsory, in-
voluntary eugenic sterilization programs were implemented not
just in Nazi Germany but also in the United States, Canada,
Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and other countries; and tens of
thousands of people were murdered in the inaptly termed “eu-
thanasia” (good death) program of the Nazis, which was a pre-
cursor to the Holocaust.
The radical collectivism and racial inegalitarianism of the Nazis
took the form of an extreme version of eugenics. But even in its
less extreme forms, eugenics represented a new way of character-
izing not just foreigners but also people of one’s own society, as
dangerous “others.” As a number of historians have noted, Hitler
brought back to Europe an extreme form of colonialism: “non-​
Aryan” Europeans were to be enslaved or exterminated, even if

 Margaret Sanger (1919), “Birth Control and Racial Betterment,” Birth

12

Control Review 3: 11–​12.

 Human Rights Naturalized  331
they were members of German society. Eugenic doctrine pro-
vided the ideological justification for the Nazis’ application of
the most extreme colonialist practices to European populations.
Here we have a striking example of how flexible the evolved ten-
dency to separate human beings into “our group” and “others”
is. The boundary between the included and excluded was shifted
from a national or geographical basis to a supposed biological
one. This demonstrates at once both the robustness and the flex-
ibility of the capacity for exclusivist responses. In-​group/​out-​
group dynamics are reliably triggered under the right sorts of
social and epistemic conditions, but there is a great deal of flex-
ibility and contingency as to how these groupings are drawn up
in any given case.
So, in the eugenics movement, racial thinking, dressed up in
scientific garb, brought modes of thinking and behavior prevalent
in colonialism back home to the societies that had engaged in co-
lonialism. Why did this redirection of exclusivist moral responses
occur? One plausible hypothesis is that eugenics was at least in
significant part an ideological response by the middle and upper
classes of advanced capitalist societies to two perceived threats.
The first was a perception of the emergence not just of increased
crime and immorality but of their concentration in the members
of a distinct and dangerous class, evident especially in the growing
urban centers of the modern manufacturing economy. The second
was a perception that the emerging capitalist social order and all
the benefits and privileges it conferred on the middle and upper
classes were threatened by social revolution. The great attraction
of eugenics for the middle and upper classes lay in the fact that it
provided both a diagnosis and a scientific cure for modern social
ills that did not concede the need to change the nature of the cap-
italist social order. Rather than having to admit that the crime and
immorality they were witnessing was the result of an unjust ec-
onomic system, believers in eugenics could conveniently “med-
icalize” these problems and in a way that exculpated themselves
and the system from which they disproportionately benefited.
332  The Path Traveled and the Way Forward
The problem, they were relieved to learn, did not lie in capitalism
and its ruling class but within the bodies of a certain subset of the
population.13 Change was needed not in the social system but in
the reproductive habits of the dangerous class. Whether or not
this explanation can be adequately fleshed out, it is clear that eu-
genics fits the naturalistic model of moral regression regarding in-
clusivity that our theory provides. In a future work on ideology
we hope to explore a critical issue that we can only flag here: the
extent to which socioeconomic inequalities within society en-
courage the phenomenon of “internal exclusion” exemplified by
the eugenics movement—​in particular, of the better off coming
to regard the worse off as dangerous or inferior “other” and as a
result having diminished sympathy for the poor and their plight.
A central focus of that work will be a biocultural account of ide-
ology that emphasizes the essentially exclusionary character of
ideological thinking and its social function within particular sorts
of environments.
The naturalistic theory of inclusivist moral progress outlined in
Part II makes perfectly explicable the fact that the initial human
rights gains of the abolitionist movement stalled and even suffered
regression, for that theory asserts that human beings always re-
tain the potential to develop exclusivist moral responses, even ex-
treme ones that withhold basic moral standing from some human
beings. Unlike earlier theories of moral progress, it denies that
there is anything natural or inevitable about the march of moral
progress; and unlike certain traditional theories in cultural an-
thropology, it denies that there is anything unnatural or even bi-
ologically pathological (in the descriptive, etiological–​functional
sense) about extreme forms of exclusion. Instead, it stresses that
human beings have evolved an adaptively plastic capacity for
moral responses that produces exclusion under certain envi-
ronmental conditions—​conditions that have characterized most

  This is not to deny that there were leftist eugenicists. There clearly were,
13

but they were in the minority (see discussion of reform eugenicists below).
 Human Rights Naturalized  333
human societies throughout most of human history and the es-
cape from which is both unusual and fragile. Further, the theory’s
focus on out-​group threat cues characteristic of the EEA explains
why exclusionary thinking and discourse takes a characteristic
shape, why it is replete with disease metaphors that overlap with
techniques of dehumanization, why it focuses on free-​riding, and
why it fosters exaggerated fears of violence or cultural disrup-
tions at the hands of the other. The eugenics movement, in partic-
ular, emphasized the dangers of free-​riding, branding those with
supposedly defective genes as parasites depleting the resources of
the fitter types through social welfare programs that catered to
their various flaws, pathologies, and disabilities.
In addition, as we suggested earlier, the naturalistic theory
coheres nicely with facts about the origins of the highly regressive
exclusionary Nazi and Japanese regimes. These regimes came to
power partly in response to a worldwide depression that greatly
decreased material prosperity and which (especially in Germany)
resulted in civil strife that eroded physical security (both actual
and perceived), prompting a significant dismantling of the global
economic order that had emerged in the early twentieth century.
Hence, there was a regression toward three exclusion-​promoting
features of the EEA:  first, a reduction of social surpluses that
made sharing with out-​groups costlier and heightened people’s
sensitivity to perceived free-​riding; second, a decrease in physical
security; and third, a breakdown of institutions for mutually ben-
eficial cooperation across groups.
We also emphasized that the leadership of Japanese milita-
rism and German fascism deliberately worked to destroy some
of the most progressive features of the international order. This
included dismantling the League of Nations and the treaty-​based
system of constraints on the means of waging war, thereby in-
creasing the belief that war was normal and peaceful coopera-
tion among nations was an illusion—​all the while creating a
structured social-​epistemic environment at home that inculcated
highly exclusivist norms.
334  The Path Traveled and the Way Forward
An Apparent Problem for the Naturalistic Theory
So far so good. But our naturalistic theory ought to help explain
not only the lack of human rights progress and regression during
the period leading up to the Second World War but also why the
modern human rights movement originated when it did, at the
end of the war. How can the theory help explain why progress in
human rights resumed and burgeoned after the period of stalling
and regression that followed the very limited, though impressive
victories of abolitionism? Given the fact that racist thinking in
Europe (and America) bloomed after the triumphs of abolition,
received credibility through scientific endorsement in an era in
which science enjoyed enormous prestige, and persisted in ex-
treme forms even in liberal constitutional democracies until the
end of World War II, how can one explain the sea change that
the founding of the modern human rights movement in 1948
represents? Why did the adaptively plastic toggle (or dial) move
toward inclusion at that moment rather than remain fixed in the
exclusion position?
This is not an idle question for our theory. Recall that the nat-
uralized theory of moral progress set out in Part II holds that,
generally speaking, the emergence and flourishing of widespread
inclusivist moralities is a “luxury good,” something that occurs
only under certain favorable conditions, including relative ma-
terial prosperity. If that is so, how do we explain the fact that
the modern human rights regime emerged at a point in history
at which the most destructive war of all time had eradicated so
much material wealth and devastated the economic infrastructure
of large portions of the globe?14 According to our theory, such
an environment should be ripe for the development of exclusivist
morality and hostile to inclusion.
In an earlier work on human rights, one author of the present
volume has argued that the best explanation of why the stalling

14
  We are grateful to Rainer Forst for urging us to consider this question.
 Human Rights Naturalized  335
and regression that afflicted the human rights project during the
century of scientific racism was followed by a revitalization of
the human rights project at the end of World War II lies chiefly
in the nature of a popular diagnosis at the time of why the war
had occurred and the prescription for change that was based on
that diagnosis. Amid the smoking, reeking ruins of this global
catastrophe, a politically potent consensus emerged on three
points. The first was that the primary cause of the catastrophe
was aggression perpetrated by Japanese militarism and German
and Italian fascism. The second was the idea that what these
two ideologies had in common, and what made them so horrif-
ically destructive, was radical collectivism combined with racial
inegalitarianism. These ideologies were radically collectivist so
far as they regarded individual human beings (even those of “su-
perior” races) as having little or no worth on their own account;
instead, the worth of the individual depended on her contribu-
tion to the good of the nation or the folk. The racial inegalitarian
element was the conviction that there is a biologically based hi-
erarchy of value among the world’s peoples—​a conviction that
was shared, though to a much lesser extent, by many people in
some non-​fascistic societies. The third point of agreement in the
aftermath of World War II was that something revolutionary had
to be done to ensure that the catastrophe should not recur, where
this meant taking unprecedented, deliberate measures to reduce
the chance that the ideologies that fueled the “hemoclysm,” as
Pinker calls it, would ever again become powerful. In a future
work, we will apply in detail our naturalistic theory to the phe-
nomena of ideology.
This explanation becomes more plausible if one adds two facts
about the world in 1948 that distinguishes it from standard EEA
conditions. First, while there was great destruction in much of
Europe and East and Southeast Asia, many countries, including
one of the two most powerful ones, the United States, emerged
from the war unscathed and indeed even more prosperous than
before. Second, the United States soon made credible pledges
336  The Path Traveled and the Way Forward
to restore European economies through the operation of the
Marshall Plan and other forms of economic aid and acted quickly
to create a new, functional, and more stable global economic and
financial order grounded in the Bretton Woods agreements. So
it was not the case that the prospect at the time of the founding
of the modern human rights project was one of universal and
persisting material deprivation. Third, the United States greatly
reduced the threat of physical security by extending a “security
umbrella” to cover western Europe, Japan, and South Korea, just
as the Soviet Union provided security to Warsaw Pact countries.
Just as importantly, it appears that by building on human rea-
soning skills that had developed in the more favorable conditions
that existed prior to the hemoclysm, as well as on the gains in
inclusivist moral thinking promoted by the abolitionist move-
ment, a broad consensus formed that it was in the interest of all
people to resurrect and amplify the discourse of human rights
and to ensure its institutional implementation. Further, major
gains in the development of inclusivist political institutions that
had occurred prior to the war survived the conflict—​in partic-
ular, constitutional democratic forms and cultural norms that
underpinned entrenched individual rights. The survival of these
constitutional democracies in some of the most powerful among
the victor nations (in particular the United States and the United
Kingdom), at the end of a period during which it had appeared to
many that democracy was doomed, provided a template for the
legal aspect of the new human rights project. Indeed, many of the
founders of the modern human rights project, as well as many
contemporary human rights lawyers, regard the international
legal human rights system as an extension of Western-​style dem-
ocratic constitutionalism to the global level. It is not an accident
that the three most important modern human rights documents
are called “The International Bill of Rights.”
Because of these favorable conditions, the loss of material
prosperity caused by the war did not prove to be an insurmount-
able obstacle to a resumption of progress in inclusion in the name
 Human Rights Naturalized  337
of human rights. Our naturalistic theory can thus accommodate
this fact. If the devastation of the Second World War had not been
followed by a miracle of reconstruction spearheaded by an excep-
tionally prosperous victor nation, if it had been quickly followed
by a new worldwide depression, or if the decades following the
conclusion of the Second World War had been followed by a se-
ries of other major wars rather than a remarkable period of peace,
then the emergence of the modern human rights movement at the
time would be highly anomalous for the naturalistic theory; but
thankfully things turned out much better.
Given the consensus diagnosis as to the primary causes of
World War II and the Holocaust, the founding of the modern
human rights project was a remarkably apt prescription for pre-
vention of a recurrence of these catastrophes. Establishing new
international standards as to how all states must treat those
under their jurisdictions, framed chiefly in terms of individual
human rights, kills two ideological birds with one stone. By as-
cribing certain rights to individuals—​as individuals, on their own
account—​the modern human rights idea unambiguously rejects
radical collectivism, affirming that individuals are bona fide moral
and legal subjects, rather than valuable only in virtue of their con-
nection or contribution to some group. By ascribing these rights
to all human beings, the modern human rights idea also unam-
biguously rejects radical inegalitarianism, including all its racial
variants; and as the human rights project developed, a special
treaty, the Racism Convention, drove the point home with even
greater force. So, our naturalistic theory can help explain the be-
ginning of the human rights project in British abolitionism, as
well as the stalling and reversals it suffered in the nineteenth to
mid-​twentieth centuries. It is also compatible with the timing of
the founding of the modern human rights movement.
If fleshed out in a more complex way, the theory might provide
an even more convincing explanation of the timing of the advent
of the modern human rights movement—​its emergence imme-
diately following the most destructive war in history. Suppose
338  The Path Traveled and the Way Forward
that one distinguishes between the environmental conditions
necessary for the first emergence of certain inclusivist ideas and
social practices and the environmental conditions necessary for
resurrecting them after a period of regression. Even if relatively
favorable environmental conditions were needed for the emer-
gence of the inclusivist ideas that eventually achieved robust ex-
pression in the human rights movement, it does not follow that
they could not be given new life in the less favorable environment
created by the Second World War. After all, even though certain
cultural innovations are only likely to originate in certain envi-
ronments, it is the distinctive nature—​indeed, the evolutionary
function—​of culture to preserve valuable ideas that have gained
traction in human beliefs and social practices—​even in the unfa-
vorable circumstances in which they most likely would not have
originated.

The Fragility of Human Rights

Our naturalistic theory not only helps explain the successes of
the human rights movement and the timing of its early mani-
festation in abolitionism and later more expansive development
after World War II. It also affirms the fragility of human rights.
It tells us that a human rights culture, and the inclusivist mo-
rality of which it is a shining example, can only flourish under
certain conditions—​peculiar conditions, given the broad expanse
of human history. It emphasizes that these peculiar conditions
must obtain if exclusivist moral dispositions that were selected
for in the EEA are not to dominate the moral thought and behav­
ior of modern humans. The theory also warns that human rights
culture, like other inclusivist moral orientations, can come under
threat not just by objective deterioration of the environment but
also if enough people come to believe that EEA-​like conditions
prevail—​since enculturated beliefs can serve as faulty cues of out-​
group threat. The same cultural resources that promote inclusion
can be co-​opted to foster exclusion.
 Human Rights Naturalized  339
A key message of the theory, therefore, is that it is a dangerous
mistake to assume that the only question is how to continue the
advances of the modern human rights movement. Instead, the
more fundamental question is how to sustain the conditions that
have made the progress already achieved possible. We there-
fore agree with Jonathan Glover’s prescription that the priority
should be on preventing major regressions regarding the protec-
tion of human rights.15 That is the first order of business. And
that is why we think our theory is valuable, even if it turns out to
do a more thorough job of explaining regression than progress.
Bluntly put, no one should assume that the human rights proj­
ect is locked in. The naturalistic theory that we propose identifies
a number of contingencies that could shift the world or parts of it
toward an environment that is hostile to human rights. In simplest
terms, any changes that either objectively drag us back toward
conditions of the EEA that promoted exclusivist responses
and any manipulations of belief that convince large numbers of
people that EEA-​like threat cues are present have the potential
to reverse the gains of the human rights movement. The increase
of objective threat cues that trigger exclusivist response includes
large-​scale, highly destructive wars, failed states, lethal global
pandemics, ethno-​racial conflicts within and between states, and
environmental deterioration that severely reduces material pros-
perity, engenders resource scarcity, and damages civil order. Much
of the Middle East deteriorated into these objectively inclusivist-​
hostile conditions after power (and hence security) vacuums were
created by the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the destabilizing
revolutions of the Arab Spring. Together, these events gave rise to
ISIS—​a group that operates in accordance with one of the most
brutally exclusivist ideologies in modern human history—​one in
which genocide, slavery, torture, and rape take center stage.

  Jonathan Glover, Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century

15

(Yale University Press, 2001).

340  The Path Traveled and the Way Forward
Meanwhile, in the United States extreme right-​wing dema-
gogues have manipulated people’s beliefs by creating false per-
ceptions of EEA-​like conditions, including existential out-​group
threat (both exogenous and home-​grown), resource scarcity, free-​
riding, and overall national doom and gloom with a xenophobic,
hyper-​ nationalistic, racialized, misogynistic gloss. Especially
during his campaign for the Presidency, Donald Trump has
proposed various measures to dismantle inclusivist gains, mar-
keting them as necessary to meet these supposed threats to the
safety and character of America: overtly discriminating travel and
immigration policies targeting Muslims, deportation of undocu-
mented persons who were brought to the United States as children
or infants, violation of international rules governing torture and
self-​defense, and dismantling key elements of the existing multi-
lateral framework for international cooperation that was devel-
oped after the Second World War. Poorly educated white men are
disproportionately represented among Trump supporters. This
demographic not only is sympathetic to authoritarianism but also
is among the most vulnerable to the recent economic downturn
(the so-​called Great Recession that began in 2008), exhibits poor
health outcomes, and is now being forced to come to terms with
the challenges that gains in racial and gender equality pose to the
traditional privileged status of white men. These are all character-
istics that, according to our naturalistic theory, make this demo-
graphic highly vulnerable to exclusivist belief manipulation—​in
this case, by a social media savant with a knack for political prop-
aganda and demagoguery. By the time this volume is published,
we may know whether Trump’s presidency is likely to deliver on
his most exclusionary promises. The key point, however, is that
even if Trump’s rise to political prominence in the run-​up to the
election of November 2016 was in many respects unprecedented,
the techniques he and some of his supporters have utilized and
the social psychological bases of his popularity are not: they are
disturbingly familiar and squarely in line with our naturalistic
theory.
 Human Rights Naturalized  341
Another risk is probably considerably greater:  oppressive
regimes that are hostile to human rights can restrict the diffusion
of inclusivist ideas, outlaw the civil society organizations that
were so important both for abolitionism and for current human
rights work, and utilize control over education, propaganda, and
censorship to stultify the development of moral consistency rea-
soning, while presenting foreigners, members of opposing alli-
ances, political opponents, and media critics as dangerous and
even less than fully human. If such regimes become powerful
enough to influence environments beyond their borders, they
can disable inclusivist achievements on a large scale. One fateful
question for the future of the human rights movement is whether
China, as it becomes a major player on the world stage, will per-
sist in its rejection of the foundational idea of the human rights
movement—​the conviction that how each state chooses to treat
its own people is a matter of international concern and a legiti-
mate subject for criticism by outsiders.
Further, if we take seriously the naturalistic theory’s thesis
that exclusivist moral responses can be prompted not only by
an objective deterioration of the environment toward EEA-​
like conditions but also by people’s perception that such harsh
conditions exist, then a criticism of the modern human rights
movement immediately follows:  insufficient energy and re-
sources have been devoted to preventing the manipulation of
belief that fosters exclusion. It is true that some human rights
treaties, including the International Covenant on Civil and
Political Rights, include prohibitions on propaganda for war
and ethnonational hate speech; and it is also true that some
human rights organizations have worked to improve tolerance
among groups in persisting conflict, such as Palestinians and
Israelis. But it is fair to say that much more needs to be done to
combat exclusionary propaganda and to reduce ordinary normal
cognitive biases that encourage exclusivist moral responses. It
is especially important to develop ways of combatting exclu-
sivist propaganda in the rapidly evolving and de-​personalized
342  The Path Traveled and the Way Forward
world of social media. For the first time, scientific information
about biases and de-​biasing techniques is being developed, and
the first rigorous scientific work on social information tech-
nologies and their psychological and political impacts is being
conducted. Such developments make the redirection of effort
toward the improvement of social moral-​epistemic resources
all the more cogent.
Even if the moral arc has bent (rather recently) toward justice
in some important respects, in particular in the dimension of in-
clusivity, this trajectory is not inevitable or perhaps even prob-
able. To think otherwise would be to dangerously underestimate
the amount of cultural and institutional scaffolding that is nec-
essary to bring about, sustain, and advance moral progress. We
explained at the beginning of this book that one peculiar feature
of moral progress is that over time it tends to become invisible.
Yet this invisibility can foster fragility as the inclusivist foun-
dations that we take for granted can suddenly be undermined
without anyone noticing until it is too late. If we wish to shore
up moral progress, it is crucial that we begin by bringing it out
into the light of day.
 CHAPTER 11

Biomedical Moral Enhancement

and Moral Progress

The Evolutionary Mismatch Problem, Again

Humans in the twenty-​first century are confronted with a daunting
array of moral problems, from climate change and poverty to the
prospects of nuclear war, terrorism, and genocide. These are all eth-
ical challenges that human moral psychology seems ill-​equipped to
address, given that it evolved to function under very different social
and technological circumstances: namely, in small, scattered hunter–​
gatherer groups packed full of kin, armed with primitive weaponry,
and possessing only a very limited capacity for ecological impact.
The high levels of cooperation and technological prowess achieved
by human hunter–​gatherer groups may have enabled them to wipe
out continental megafauna and carry on tribal blood feuds, but it
did not give them the capacity to destroy ecosystems on a planetary
scale and, with them, the human species itself.
The situation is very different for large post-​Neolithic societies
like the ones we inhabit today, with sophisticated divisions of labor,
powerful technologies, gigantic surpluses, and an energy share
rapidly rising to the level of a Type-​1 Kardashev civilization—​
one that controls a major share of all the energy found on planet
Earth.1 Humans now engage in niche construction on a truly

1
 In a well-​known paper in the Journal of Soviet Astronomy, the astro-
physicist Nicolai Kardashev classified civilizations into three types:  Type
344  The Path Traveled and the Way Forward
global order, and they have the ability to bring about the Earth’s
sixth mass extinction event, whether through nuclear annihilation
or the unintended side effects of modern economic development
and lifeways. Furthermore, modern nations and global markets
sustain levels of inequality that would have been inconceivable in
pre-​Neolithic societies. In the small hunter–​gatherer bands that
characterized the vast majority of human evolutionary history,
internal conflicts were solved through the evolution of a robust
egalitarian ethos (see Chapter 4). But our abilities to sustain co-
operative egalitarian social structures appear to break down when
it comes to massive, complex societies—​the circumstances in
which humans have lived ever since the advent of the agriculture
revolution some 10,000 years ago. Or at least human beings seem
not to have discovered, so far, how to combine post-​Neolithic
revolution social complexity with robust forms of egalitarianism.
In addition, over the last few millennia, and especially in the last
few hundred years, intergroup conflict has grown orders of mag-
nitude more destructive due both to the sheer size of the groups
involved and to the unprecedented power of the weaponry em-
ployed. So there is a profound evolutionary mismatch, so the
logic goes, between our prehistoric moral psychology, on the one
hand, and modern human moral ecology, on the other.

Aligning Human Moral Psychology with Modern

Moral Ecology
One way of realigning human moral psychology with modern
human moral ecology would be to radically alter our social and
technological environment so as to return to pre-​industrial—​
indeed, pre-​agricultural—​lifeways. Needless to say, this is neither

I  civilizations control most forms of planetary energy; a Type II civilization

is one that controls most of the energy output of its sun (Type I civilizations
control only about one-​billionth of stellar output); and a Type III civilization
is one that controls energy on a galactic scale.
 Biomedical Moral Enhancement and Moral Progress  345
plausible nor, on most moral accounts, desirable. It is implausible
because large, differentiated, hierarchical populations will inev-
itably supplant small, egalitarian, hunter–​gatherer populations
through technological and epidemiological interactions, as
documented in Jared Diamond’s magnum opus Guns, Germs
and Steel.2 It is undesirable because on any reasonable account of
well-​being, humans in modern developed societies (though per-
haps not in all post-​Neolithic or even industrial societies) enjoy
markedly improved well-​being as compared to that of prehistoric
hunter–​ gatherer populations, which suffered from exception-
ally high levels of homicide, disease, predation, starvation, and
child mortality, and hence lower life expectancies. Quite apart
from that, returning to hunter–​gatherer societies would mean a
drastic, indeed catastrophic, reduction in the human population.
Thus, returning to pre-​Neolithic modes of subsistence is clearly
a non-​starter.
And so, seeing no alternative solution to the evolutionary psy-
chological mismatch problem and in light of the seriousness of
the threats we now face, some liberal political philosophers—​
whom we call “evoliberals”—​have advocated directly altering
the biological underpinnings of human moral psychology to
meet the pressing ethical demands of the modern world.3 The
basic idea underlying the biomedical moral enhancement (BME)
enterprise is that we can use biomedical technologies, such as
neurological, pharmacological, and genetic interventions, to en-
hance human moral capacities, including moral emotions such as

2
 Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs and Steel:  The Fates of Human Societies
(W.W. Norton & Company, 1996).
3
  See Ingmar Persson and Julian Savulescu (2008), “The Perils of Cognitive
Enhancement and the Urgent Imperative to Enhance the Moral Character of
Humanity,” Journal of Applied Philosophy 25(3): 162–​167; Ingmar Persson and
Julian Savulescu (2012), “Moral Enhancement, Freedom and the God Machine,”
Monist 95(3):  399–​421; Ingmar Persson and Julian Savulescu, Unfit for the
Future: The Need for Moral Enhancement (Oxford University Press, 2014).
346  The Path Traveled and the Way Forward
empathy, cooperation, and trust,4 and morally relevant cognitive
abilities, such as the ability to understand the temporally distant
effects of present actions—​capacities that, evoliberals argue, are
severely limited by human evolutionary history. If the evoliberals
are right, we are on the brink of a revolution in how moral prog-
ress is to be achieved. A theory of moral progress ought to take
the possibility of this revolution seriously and attempt to assess
its prospects. That is the task to which this chapter is devoted.
A key framing assumption underlying the BME project so
conceived is that evolved human moral nature is a source of great,
if not insurmountable, resistance to solving the onerous moral
tasks that lie before humanity at present. In Chapter 4, we showed
that the evoliberal position reposes on the same evolutionary as-
sumption that undergirds the “evoconservative” view:  namely,
that there are strong evolutionary constraints on human nature,
especially in relation to the human capacity for moral inclusion.
Recall that evoconservatives conclude from the supposed fact
that evolution has produced parochial altruistic dispositions that
inclusivist moral norms are futile or unsuitable for beings like us
and that we should therefore revise our moral norms to better
reflect the limitations of human nature. While they start from
the same evolutionary proposition, evoliberals conclude instead
that these evolutionary “facts” justify substantial efforts to en-
hance the biological underpinnings of moral capacities in order
to bring prehistoric human moral nature in line with modern
moral judgments—​particularly given the urgency of the moral
problems that we face and the inability of culture to solve them.
This last clause is critical:  the evoliberal position rests on
the assumption that culture is quite feeble and only minimally

  Allen Buchanan, Beyond Humanity? The Ethics of Biomedical Enhancement

4

(Oxford University Press, 2011); John Harris, Enhancing Evolution:  The

Ethical Case for Making Better People (Princeton University Press, 2010);
Nicolas Agar, Truly Human Enhancement: A Philosophical Defense of Limits
(MIT Press, 2013).
 Biomedical Moral Enhancement and Moral Progress  347
shapes human moral norms and dispositions. Indeed, much of
the philosophical attention to BME has been motivated in part
by the belief that cultural forms of moral enhancement (e.g.,
moral education) have been only modestly effective and are
simply not up to the task of mitigating major anthropogenic
harms and existential risks. It is the evoliberals’ lack of confi-
dence in cultural innovations that leads them to advocate bio-
medical interventions.
The central question we wish to explore in this chapter is
this: how much moral progress is possible, and can major moral
regressions be avoided, without the biomedical enhancement of
human moral capacities? One way of approaching this ques-
tion is to look at the extent of moral progress that has already
been achieved as this may give us some idea as to the power
and limits of more “traditional” forms of cultural moral en-
hancement. A review of the impressive list of cases and types of
moral progress canvassed in Chapter 1 is by itself enough to call
this assumption into question. As noted in the Introduction,
major moral innovations tend to become invisible once our so-
cial moral lives are restructured around them, and thus it is easy
to gloss over the truly radical nature of moral progress that has
already been achieved. Beyond invisibility, some conservatives
might be loath to recognize the radical nature of moral prog-
ress because it is in tension with their views regarding moral
degeneration or because it is dissonant with their conceptions
of traditional society as a ubiquitously positive moral force;
evoliberals, on the other hand, might downplay the revolu-
tionary nature of moral progress out of concerns that such self-​
congratulatory recognition would take the wind, so to speak,
out of the reformists’ sails. In any case, the point is that the
strong evolutionary constraints assumption is belied by the very
substantial moral progress that has already occurred. As persua-
sive as this rebuttal is, it is only by connecting up our history of
moral achievements with empirically rigorous investigations of
human morality—​and, in particular, with the naturalistic theory
348  The Path Traveled and the Way Forward
of moral progress we have outlined—​that we can begin to make
meaningful projections about the ultimate scope of moral prog-
ress with, and without, BME.
In Part II of this book, we summarized the prevailing evolu-
tionary explanation of morality and explained why it is unable to
accommodate cases of sweeping, progressive moral change that
we referred to, collectively, as the “inclusivist anomaly.” We then
sketched an “adaptive plasticity” model of moral psychological
development that can accommodate this shift toward inclusivity.
This biocultural model, to recap, holds that exclusivist morality is
the result of a conditionally expressed moral response that is sen-
sitive to environmental cues that were historically indicative of
out-​group threat. Such cues, which are detected during the moral
development of individuals and feed back into the evolution of
cultural moral systems, include (inter alia) signs of infectious dis­
ease, indications of resource scarcity, and enculturated beliefs
about out-​groups.
The present chapter considers the implications of this nat-
uralistic theory of inclusivist moral progress for the plausi-
bility of BME as a solution to some of the most pressing moral
problems of our time. We argue that once these problems are
recast in terms of moral inclusivity, it becomes clear that BME
technology, at least as narrowly conceived by BME proponents,
is unlikely to be either necessary or particularly effective in
addressing them. On our naturalistic theory, efforts to achieve
major inclusivist moral progress and to avert reversions to cat-
astrophic exclusivist moralities do not go against the human
evolutionary grain tout court. Rather, they only go against the
evolutionary grain under certain environmental conditions,
and these conditions are both epistemically accessible and
within our practical powers to modify. We conclude that cul-
tural moral innovations that make use of our biocultural model
of moral progress stand the best chance of solving the evolu-
tionary mismatch problem.
 Biomedical Moral Enhancement and Moral Progress  349
The Evoconservative–​Evoliberal Convergence
In Chapter 4 we saw that some thinkers in the secular conserva-
tive tradition have appealed to evolutionary theory to lend scien-
tific credibility to long-​standing but historically under-​evidenced
suspicions about the limits of human altruism and the fragility of
non-​strategic moral relations between peoples. According signif-
icant weight to the evolved constraints on inclusivist moral re-
sponse is not unique to the evoconservative tradition, however.
Some liberal moral philosophers have likewise argued that the
legacies of human evolutionary history make it difficult to act
on the inclusivist moral norms we have come to endorse. Contra
evoconservatives, however, these evoliberals contend that rather
than giving us reason to trim back our norms, evolved constraints
on human morality suggest that a systematic program of BME
will be crucial in order to drive major moral progress and to
avert future moral catastrophes. Evoliberals conclude not only
that BME should be pursued but that in addition it should be
given relatively high priority in the allocation of limited social
resources.
In a passage worth quoting at length, Ingmar Persson and
Julian Savulescu sum up this line of argument, which they have
developed in a series of joint publications:

For most of the time the human species has existed, human beings
have lived in comparatively small and close-​knit societies, with
primitive technology that enabled them to affect only their most
immediate environment. Their moral psychology adapted to make
them fit to live in these conditions. This moral psychology is “my-
opic,” restricted to concern about people in the neighborhood and
the immediate future. But through science and technology, humans
have radically changed their living conditions, while their moral
psychology has remained fundamentally the same throughout this
technological and social evolution, which continues at an acceler-
ating speed. Human beings now live in societies with millions of
350  The Path Traveled and the Way Forward
citizens and with an advanced scientific technology which enables
them to exercise an influence that extends all over the world and
far into the future. This is leading to increasing environmental deg-
radation and to harmful climate change. The advanced scientific
technology has also equipped human beings with nuclear and bio-
logical weapons of mass destruction which might be used by states
in wars over dwindling natural resources or by terrorists. Liberal
democracies cannot overcome these problems by developing novel
technology. What is needed is an enhancement of the moral dis-
positions of their citizens, an extension of their moral concern be-
yond a small circle of personal acquaintances, including [to] those
existing further in the future. The expansion of our powers of ac-
tion as the result of technological progress must be balanced by a
moral enhancement on our part. Otherwise, our civilization, we
argued, is itself at risk. It is doubtful whether this moral enhance-
ment could be accomplished by means of traditional moral educa-
tion. There is therefore ample reason to explore the prospects of
moral enhancement by biomedical means.5

Presupposing the fixed nature of human moral psychology and

the feebleness of cultural moral reform, Persson and Savulescu
argue that the most effective means of transcending our inability
to extend moral concern beyond the group, including to individ-
uals of future generations, is by altering the biological bases of
our moral capacities—​faculties that evolved in and for a prehis-
toric world and are desperately in need of an update.
We might distinguish a weaker evoliberal claim, which holds
simply that our contemporary moral problems are so dire that
any technical means for reducing our parochial tendencies should
be on the table, BME included. It is difficult to fault the more
modest claim. Persson and Savulescu are right that the urgency of
the problems that humanity faces makes it irrational to rule out

5
  Persson and Savulescu, “Moral Enhancement,” supra note 3, pp. 399–​400.
 Biomedical Moral Enhancement and Moral Progress  351
investigating potential avenues of BME—​there is nothing wrong
with having another arrow in our quiver. But there is room for sig-
nificant disagreement over the relative emphasis that evoliberals
place on the biological versus the cultural underpinnings of moral
thought and behavior, over how important one believes BME is
likely to be relative to cultural reform, and over how BME should
be prioritized relative to cultural modes of moral enhancement.
Such relative importance claims are crucial for the evoliberal
case, for if BME is to provide effective solutions to pressing
global moral problems, it would have to be carried out rapidly
and on a global scale. Such a large-​scale program of biomedical
intervention comes with significant risks of unintended conse-
quences and raises ethical concerns surrounding enforcement
and coercion (more on this below). Thus, evoliberals must en-
vision the prospective payoff of BME as sufficiently great, and
the expected utility of traditional cultural moral enhancement as
sufficiently minimal, to outweigh these risks and concerns. For
present purposes, therefore, we will engage with the more sub-
stantive evoliberal assertion that BME will be critical for solving
our greatest moral problems and for ensuring that further moral
progress is achieved and sustained.

From Evolutionary Facts to Psychological Inferences

We have seen that the evoliberal, like the evoconservative, infers
from supposed facts about the evolution of morality that human
moral psychology is ill-​equipped to meet the moral challenges
of the modern world. However, one might reasonably question
whether evolutionary accounts of morality can tell us that human
psychology is hopelessly mismatched to the moral problems we
now face, given that evolutionary accounts are etiological and
thus do not speak to the current functionality of a trait or to its
range of phenotypic expression. The question of moral mallea-
bility turns on the nature of morality’s proximate (synchronic)
causes, not on its distal (diachronic) causes. In other words, what
352  The Path Traveled and the Way Forward
matters for purposes of gauging the plausibility and durability
of moral progress is the nature of the moral psychology we cur-
rently possess regardless of how or why morality originated.
Put more technically, synchronic properties, which determine
how moralities develop from a complex interaction of genetic,
epigenetic, and environmental causes, “screen off” diachronic
properties in relation to the alterability of human moral psy-
chology. This is not to say that the etiological properties of traits
provide no information whatsoever about the prospects of their
alterability. What it says is that, in principle, if we had full in-
formation about the synchronic causal structure of human moral
psychology, then we would know everything we needed to know
about its alterability—​and information about evolutionary ori-
gins would add nothing to our judgments about malleability.
If this is so, then how might the evoliberal reliance on evolu-
tionary history be justified? Even if synchronic facts about moral
psychology screen off diachronic facts with respect to moral
plasticity, the evoliberal appeal to evolutionary theory is not nec-
essarily superfluous. This is because although synchronic prop-
erties exhaust the facts that ultimately bear on the question of
human moral plasticity, the synchronic properties are precisely
what are at issue in these discussions. Where the synchronic
causal structure of human moral psychology is opaque, evolu-
tionary accounts can permit inferences about the nature of that
structure and what it implies for alterability.
What precise epistemic role, then, do evolutionary explanations
play in the evoliberal—​and, for that matter, evoconservative—​
logic? As we see it, evolutionary explanation is used to bridge
an implicit step in Persson and Savulescu’s argument, quoted at
length above. This step involves moving from a premise about
human moral psychology being adapted for small-​group living
with rudimentary technology to the claim that social and tech-
nological circumstances have changed radically while human
moral psychology has remained fundamentally the same. If the
latter partial premise concerning the fixed nature of human moral
 Biomedical Moral Enhancement and Moral Progress  353
psychology could be established independently of evolutionary
history, then the claims about evolutionary history would do no
logical work in the argument, given the screening-​off relation
described above.
Thus, it must be that facts about adaptation are taken to
warrant the inference of unchangeability, which is then taken
to imply the inability of culture to solve the evolutionary mis-
match problem, which then warrants the conclusion that BME
will be crucial for major moral progress and to avert global moral
catastrophes. Evoconservatives reason in a similar way, although
they reject the evoliberal idea that the inherent and unalterable
limitations of human nature warrant intervening in the biological
underpinnings of human moral capacities—​an enterprise they
take to be misguided, hubristic, and/​or insufficiently respectful
of our “given” human nature.6
It is worth noting that there are important similarities between
the evoliberal emphasis on the necessity of BME and the his-
torical arguments of “reform eugenics” in Scandinavian welfare
states. Although the architects of the social welfare state did not
subscribe to the biological and social degeneration views that
preoccupied conservative eugenicists (see Chapter 7), many re-
form eugenicists worried about the ability to create and sustain
a humane society with a robust social safety net in the absence of
substantial efforts to encourage the reproduction of positive so-
cial traits or at least a reduction in the incidence of negative ones.
Evoliberals, of course, do not make the same scientific mistakes
that old eugenicists made, and they do not believe that prosocial
traits are inherently possessed by some groups of individuals
and not by others; to the contrary, they argue that all humans
have the same moral psychological limitations because they all
share the same parochial moral psychology that evolved in the
Pleistocene. But like reform eugenicists, evoliberals believe that if

  Michael Sandel, The Case Against Perfection: Ethics in the Age of Genetic

6

Engineering (Harvard University Press, 2007).

354  The Path Traveled and the Way Forward
we are to create a significantly more just and inclusive world
and if we are to avoid moral catastrophes and reversions to ex-
clusivist moralities, then these limitations must be overcome.
And because these limitations are evolved limitations, they can
only be overcome through biological alteration. Moreover, like
the old eugenicists, evoliberals argue that because we are faced
with a supreme emergency—​in this case, nuclear terrorism and
climate change rather than social degeneration—​certain coer-
cive restrictions on individual freedom may be morally justified
in order to ensure the implementation of BMEs on a massive
scale.
Let us assume for the sake of argument that evoliberals (and
evoconservatives) are right that there are innate adaptive components
of human moral psychology that evolved in the EEA and that can
result in parochial or truncated moralities. The trouble with the
evoliberal line of reasoning is that the inference from innate ad-
aptation to developmental rigidity is not warranted, and without
this inference, their argument for the necessity of BME does not go
through. The concept of innateness as it applies to cognitive psy-
chological development is famously problematic, in part because of
its attendant pre-​theoretical associations and conceptual baggage.
As Paul Griffiths has shown, although people often associate in-
nateness with developmental rigidity and species natures, these as-
sociations are highly problematic.7
First, the concept of fixed species natures is indefensible on
current post-​essentialistic understandings of the evolving biolog-
ical world, in which blind variation and natural selection, and not
essences, are the casual-​explanatory foci of biology8; to the extent
that species natures have been given plausible formulations, these

7
  Paul Griffiths (2002), “What Is Innateness?” Monist 85(1): 70–​85.
8
 Ibid.
 Biomedical Moral Enhancement and Moral Progress  355
have been consistent with great plasticity in species traits.9 Thus,
if the idea of innate moral adaptation implies rigid species natures,
it runs the risk of generating fallacious inferences of inalterability.
Likewise, the fact that a trait is an instance of innate adaptive
design does not imply that it is developmentally rigid or that it
is insensitive to environmental inputs. In other words, develop-
mental rigidity is not a necessary component of natural selec-
tion explanations. It is true that a high degree of environmental
invariance—​such as the cross-​cultural robustness of a trait—​is
often taken to serve as evidence of innate adaptation. But how
invariant an adaptive trait is across developmental environments
is a question of contingency that is not answered by the question
of whether that trait is, or is not, an adaptation. Indeed, some
traits that are not adaptations may nonetheless be highly devel-
opmentally insensitive (such as genetic diseases with high pene-
trance). And likewise, as discussed in Chapter 6, some traits that
are culturally acquired (i.e., not innate) are often very difficult to
modify, both within an individual’s lifetime and over cultural ev-
olutionary time due to scaffolding and constraints that result in
substantial cultural inertia.
Equally problematic is the inference from the fact that a trait
is shared by all normal members of a reference class of a given
species to the conclusion that the trait is “hard-​wired” or devel-
opmentally rigid. Universally distributed traits could take a very
different form, or might not exist at all, if different developmental
environments became ubiquitous.10 The statistically normal en-
vironment in which humans currently find themselves (which
includes the modern state, powerful technologies, and highly de-
veloped global markets) is radically different from the “normal
environment” for humans during the vast expanse of their history.

9
  See Grant Ramsey (2013), “Human Nature in a Post-​Essentialist World,”
Proceedings of the Philosophy of Science Association 80(5): 983–​993.
10
 Tim Lewens (2010), “What Are Natural Inequalities?” Philosophical
Quarterly 60(239): 264–​285.
356  The Path Traveled and the Way Forward
It is hard to predict how long an environment we now consider
“normal” will endure and hence whether the responses we typi-
cally have in that environment will persist or be modified in the
future.
Likewise, the fact that a similar character state—​such as a sense
of fairness, parochial altruism, or out-​group aggression—​is pre-
sent in both humans and non-​human animals (e.g., other primates)
does not imply that the trait is ancestral to both lineages, that
it is genetically transmitted in humans, that it is culturally unal-
terable, or that it is even properly described as the same trait.11
Whether a given trait is universal in existing populations of a spe-
cies, whether it reflects adaptive design, whether it is genetic in
origin, and whether it is developmentally rigid are all contingent
severable questions consistent with any configuration of answers.
So, in short, we do not take issue with the evoliberal appeal to
evolutionary theory per se, but we do reject their assumption that
if the prevailing evolutionary account of morality is correct, this
implies that morality is developmentally rigid and has a “deep”
biological etiology. In fact, we too appeal to an evolutionary ac-
count of exclusivist morality in order to draw inferences about—​
and to make sense of—​the synchronic properties of human moral
psychology. But the evolutionary model we propose allows for
a wider range of moralities that can develop across cultural de-
velopmental environments. Morality may very well be afforded
in part an evolutionary explanation, but as we saw in Chapter 6,
it is not like a moth’s proboscis, a hyena’s clitoris, or a peacock’s
tail—​it is instead like a water flea’s armor, except infinitely more
open-​ended and subject to cultural shaping. Flexibility and cul-
tural sensitivity are built, as it were, into the adaptive design of
human morality.
The upshot of the naturalistic theory developed in this book is
that efforts to advance and sustain moral progress in the form of

  Russell Powell and Nicolas Shea (2014), “Homology Across Inheritance

11

Systems,” Biology and Philosophy 29(6): 781–​806.

 Biomedical Moral Enhancement and Moral Progress  357
inclusivity only go against the evolutionary grain under certain
conditions—​conditions that we can plausibly identify and delib-
erately modify. The thrust of our push back against the evoliberal
argument, therefore, is not that exclusivist morality is a set of
predispositions that can be overcome by cultural innovations and
moral education but, rather, that the exclusivist predisposition is
itself contingent on the presence of certain conditions that are cul-
turally modifiable. If this theory is correct in broad strokes, then
it calls into question the need for a systematic program of BME.

Staving Off Moral Catastrophe: A Tale of Two

Solutions
Evoliberals propose BME as an antidote to potential moral
catastrophes, such as nuclear terrorism, genocide, and climate
change—​problems which, on their account, stem largely from
two factors:  the rapid proliferation of powerful new technol-
ogies, on the one hand, and evolved constraints on the human
capacity for other-​regard, on the other. In contrast, the evolu-
tionary model sketched in this book should lead to far greater
optimism about the prospects of finding cultural–​institutional
solutions to these problems. Many of the major moral concerns
that rightfully keep evoliberals up at night implicate constraints
on moral inclusivity. And both theory and evidence suggest that
cultural solutions will be far more effective than BME when it
comes to relaxing these constraints.
There is little evidence to think that BME will be capable in the
reasonably near future of reducing the incidence and intensity
of intergroup conflicts, whereas cultural innovations stand a far
better chance of doing so. Wars, ethnic cleansings, and genocides
have nearly always been waged between racial, ethnonational,
and religious groups.12 And as we saw in Chapter 7, such conflicts

12
 See Lawrence Keeley, War Before Civilization (Oxford University
Press, 1996).
358  The Path Traveled and the Way Forward
are often facilitated by social moral epistemologies that exclude
out-​group members from the moral community or assign them
a relatively low moral status. This is accomplished through cal-
culated dehumanization tactics and the cultural demarcation of
moral community boundaries, reinforced by normal cognitive
biases (such as essentializing tendencies and cognitive dissonance
mechanisms), which “justify” the marginalization, persecution,
or annihilation of out-​groups.
At the same time, we also know that institutional context
is an important modulator of intergroup conflict. Wars are far
more likely to occur when at least one of the states involved is
an autocracy, military junta, or monarchy, whereas war between
developed democracies is virtually nonexistent; and although
democracies may wage war as often as any other type of state,
the wars they do wage are significantly less severe than those
waged by non-​democratic states.13 Although the causal basis of
this robustly evidenced “democratic peace” is unclear and hotly
contested, it retains a near law-​like status in international rela-
tions. Intergroup conflicts are also more likely to occur, and to
occur in more severe forms, in the absence of institutions at the
international level to ensure that the motives for going to war are
legitimate and that the methods used to fight wars are just. All of
this gives us good reason to think that there are effective institu-
tional solutions to the problems of intergroup conflict that fuel
many of the moral catastrophes that rightfully worry evoliberals.
Furthermore, these institutional solutions instantiate inclusivist
norms. For instance, democracy in its contemporary forms is
premised on the principle that all people are entitled to partic-
ipate in the political processes of their society; it also protects
the freedom of expression, which helps prevent the proliferation
of severely defective epistemic practices that underpin exclusivist
moralities. Likewise, in the case of institutions for international

13
 R.  J. Rummel (1995), “Democracies Are Less Warlike than Other
Regimes,” European Journal of International Relations 1(4): 457–​479.
 Biomedical Moral Enhancement and Moral Progress  359
security, both just war norms and the humanitarian law of war
presuppose universalizable judgments about war acts and apply
the same standards to all parties.
Consider another major evoliberal concern:  the impending
moral disaster of climate change. Though not immediately ap-
parent, the problem of climate change also has inclusivist moral
dimensions, in at least two respects. First, there is empirical ev-
idence to suggest that environmental degradation wrought by
the activities of wealthy nations, on any plausible climate change
scenario, will fall disproportionately on the world’s worse-​off
populations both within and between nations, mainly because
poorer people tend to live at the higher temperatures of lower
latitudes.14 Consequently, the greatest harms of climate change
are likely to be morally discounted by the comparably well-​off
countries and individuals that disproportionately produce them,
unless something is done to ensure a more inclusivist response on
the part of the better off. Second, we tend to discount the interests
of future generations in deciding how we will interact with the
environment. If we are to honor our moral commitments to fu-
ture generations, our moral circle must expand to include not
only strangers but also persons who are not yet in existence; in
other words, our morality must become even more inclusive than
it presently is or than it even would be were morally arbitrary
discrimination against existing persons and sentient beings com-
pletely eliminated. Bringing future persons into the moral com-
munity would require yet further expansion of our capacity for
moral inclusiveness, which, according to evoliberals, is at or near
its evolutionary limits. This leads evoliberals to advocate BME as
a critical solution to climate change.
In contrast, the model proposed in this book indicates that
institutional solutions to climate change are far more likely to

14
 R. Mendelsohn, A. Dinar, and L. Williams (2006), “The Distributional
Impact of Climate Change on Rich and Poor Countries,” Environment and
Development Economics 11: 159–​178.
360  The Path Traveled and the Way Forward
be effective. There are several reasons for this conclusion. First,
the growing recognition that we have moral obligations to fu-
ture persons is an excellent illustration of our commitment to a
subject-​centered morality. Thanks to the arrow of time, future
generations can neither benefit us nor bite us back, and thus per-
sons of sufficiently distant future generations have no strategic
capacities vis-​à-​vis contemporary people. Nor do contemporary
people have sufficiently strong kin relations to distant future
generations. Our moral commitments to distant future persons,
therefore, must be grounded in a non-​strategic, non-​group-​based
conception of moral status.
Indeed, the last few centuries have witnessed a dramatic shift
toward subject-​centered theories of morality, as documented in
Chapters 5 and 9. This remarkable expansion of inclusivist moral
norms has, not accidentally, coincided with the amelioration of
conditions that foster exclusivist moral response. This began with
reduced rates of homicide and theft due to the state’s exercise of a
monopoly on violence; it continued with meaningful expansions
of the rule of law that permitted the peaceful resolution of in-
ternal disputes; it increased further with the rise of markets that
incentivized mutually beneficial cooperation between strangers
and nations; and it culminated in the robust system of interna-
tional human rights that we see today. It is not much of a stretch,
therefore, to think that our moral circle could expand yet further,
under the right social and epistemic conditions, to include anon-
ymous individuals who will come to exist long after all existing
people are gone. Indeed, this norm has spread quite rapidly over
the last decade, as evidenced by Pope Francis’s recent encyclical
calling for a swift international response to climate change.
Second, difficulties in responding effectively to climate change
stem not only from the power of self-​interest and the limits of
moral inclusivity but also from flaws in social moral-​epistemic
practices—​practices that, qua institutions, are candidates for cul-
tural modification. Few people nowadays believe that present
people have no moral obligations to future generations. Much of
 Biomedical Moral Enhancement and Moral Progress  361
the political opposition to meaningful action on climate change in
the United States, for example, stems not from a failure of other-​
regard but from false empirical beliefs—​namely, beliefs that the
evidence for anthropogenic climate change is nonexistent or am-
biguous or that the climate change “problem” is really a scientific
hoax or amounts to liberal propaganda. These moral-​epistemic
deficits can be attributed in part to an inability to identify appro-
priate expertise, which in the case of certain evangelical commu-
nities in the United States, translates into, and is motivated by, an
unwarranted skepticism of claims emanating from the scientific
community, whose work is often perceived to be in tension with
religious doctrine (e.g., special creation). Much of this skepticism
is enmeshed in a web of morally exclusivist beliefs, with the work
of liberal scientific communities often viewed as a threat to in-​
group identity and flourishing.
These social-​epistemic obstacles to progress on climate change
cannot be ameliorated through BME interventions. It is simply
not credible to suppose that any genetic or pharmacological inter-
vention could change these complex webs of belief and patterns
of epistemic deference. Climate change also poses a series of col-
lective action problems at the international level that only multi-
lateral agreements and institutions can solve in a timely fashion.
Collective action problems do emanate from self-​interest, but
they have time and time again been solved by institutional inno-
vations that create incentives for cooperation, which then foster
conditions that are conducive to the development of less selfish
moral norms and attitudes.
So far as we can tell, BME offers no promising ways of miti-
gating the in-​group/​out-​group psychological dynamics, let alone
the collective action problems, that engender most major moral
catastrophes, from war, terrorism, and genocide to climate
change and environmental degradation. In fact, BMEs may very
well exacerbate these effects. As Persson and Savulescu acknowl-
edge, the prosocial effects of potential BMEs, such as increases in
hormones like oxytocin or other factors that enhance empathy,
362  The Path Traveled and the Way Forward
tend to vanish when kin relations or intergroup psychology are
implicated.15 “Empathy,” as the term is usually defined, refers to
the combination of perspective-​taking and experiencing vicarious
emotions for others that are broadly in line with the emotions
other individuals are experiencing. Although empathy has been
shown to mediate altruism, the problem is that, as Jesse Prinz
puts it, “empathy is ineluctably local.”16 Empathy can lead to
prosocial behavior when experienced specifically for stigmatized
out-​groups.17 But enhanced empathy as a generalized capacity can
exacerbate negative intergroup attitudes when it is not specifically
directed toward out-​groups, such as in competitive intergroup
environments. In such cases, biomedical moral “enhancements”
that increase empathy can make moral decision-​making worse
because they can accentuate exclusivist moral response, strength-
ening positive attitudes and behaviors toward the in-​group, while
intensifying negatively valenced attitudes and behaviors toward
out-​groups.
In addition, because empathy is tightly bound to partiality, it
can lead to a wide range of poor moral decision-​making—​such
as unjustly favoring some individuals with whom we contin-
gently empathize over other individuals with whom, contin-
gently, we don’t or favoring the lives of concrete individuals
over “statistical” lives. Enhancing some of the biological un-
derpinnings of prosociality can therefore backfire in moral
decision-​making when group identity, locality, and concrete-
ness are at stake—​the very features of moral decision-​making

15
 See Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature (Viking, 2011,
c­hapter  9); C.  K.  W. De Dreu, et  al. (2010), “The Neuropeptide Oxytocin
Regulates Parochial Altruism in Intergroup Conflict Among Humans,” Science
328: 1408–​1422.
16
  Jesse Prinz (2011), “Against Empathy,” Southern Journal of Philosophy
49: 214–​233, p. 228.
17
 C.  D. Batson and N.  Y. Ahmad (2009), “Using Empathy to Improve
Intergroup Attitudes and Relations,” Social Issue and Policy Review
3(1): 141–​177.
 Biomedical Moral Enhancement and Moral Progress  363
that Persson and Savulescu propose BME to counteract in the
first place.
Thus, it appears that many of the great moral problems we face
stem not from a dearth of empathy per se but rather from the fact
that the adequate stores of existing empathy are easily manip-
ulated and misdirected in the service of intergroup conflict and
local spheres of concern. Prinz concludes that the most effective
way of promoting the general moral point of view on which, in-
cidentally, much of the evoliberal normative argument for BME
rests, may be to eradicate or reduce empathy in favor of a less
parochial and less vicariously emotional “concern” for others.18
Yet even a construct such as “concern” will not be a useful
target for BME since concern is only generated after an event has
already been appraised to constitute a wrong or at least an unde-
sirable state of affairs, and it is the appraisal in particular that we
must target if we are to drive moral progress along the dimension
of inclusivity. The key issue, once again, is not a general human
deficit of concern but rather that concern is not directed in the
right ways—​toward, for example, the ill-​treatment of culturally
demarcated out-​groups. It is the parochiality of empathy or con-
cern that should be the Schwerpunkt of our moral enhancement
efforts in the struggle to stave off intergroup moral catastrophes,
and BME as it has thus far been proposed fails to engage at this
critical locus of the battle.
In theory, if in-​group bias has biological roots, this suggests that,
again in theory, there may be biomedical interventions that could
ameliorate exclusivist response. It is unclear, however, whether
such interventions could be carried out without significant un-
intended costs. If parochialism was a necessary condition for the
evolvability of human altruism, as the prevailing evolutionary
explanation of morality would suggest, then we might expect al-
truism and parochialism to be mediated by common proximate

18
  Prinz, “Against Empathy,” supra note 16, p. 228.
364  The Path Traveled and the Way Forward
causes in human psychological development.19 Indeed, this is pre-
cisely what is suggested by studies showing that oxytocin and
empathy accentuate exclusivist moral response. Enhancing the
biological basis of altruism may thus amount to sharpening both
sides of a double-​edged sword:  by strengthening the biological
(hormonal, genetic, etc.) basis of altruism, we may unavoidably
exacerbate antisocial attitudes and behaviors toward out-​groups,
due to the causal developmental dependence of these phenomena.
If this is the case, then we must look to avenues for enhancing the
moral motivations and behaviors of humans or ways of ensuring
that people act as if they are so motivated, which are not causally
constrained in this way.
In short, the driving ideas behind the evoliberal argument are
(1)  that we are likely to discover BMEs that strengthen proso-
cial attitudes and behaviors toward strangers and out-​groups;
(2)  that these interventions could be carried out without un-
acceptable or self-​defeating costs that result from the develop-
mental interconnectedness of altruism and parochialism; (3) that
these interventions could be implemented with sufficient rapidity
on a sufficiently massive scale, with entire democratic, autocratic,
and theocratic nations, as well as subversive terrorist organiza-
tions, incentivized (despite their exclusivist moralities!) to ingest
empathy-​enhancing pills or to subject their embryos to genetic
selection; and (4) that these interventions could be implemented
with sufficient rapidity to address imminent catastrophic threats.
Each of these points seems dubious.
In contrast, the evolutionary model of moral psycholog-
ical development outlined in this book not only explains why
intergroup conflicts arise and why climate change, by reducing
arable land and triggering global refugee crises, can make these
conflicts worse. It also suggests a number of concrete avenues for
addressing the problem of intergroup conflict itself. In particular,

19
 Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, A Cooperative Species. Human
Reciprocity and Its Evolution (Princeton University Press, 2011).
 Biomedical Moral Enhancement and Moral Progress  365
it suggests that this can be accomplished through cultural in-
novations that ameliorate cues that trigger exclusivist moral re-
sponse, including faulty social moral epistemologies. Thus, in
addition to basic moral education, such as teaching individuals to
resist their natural proclivity toward essentialistic classifications
of human groups, concerted efforts must be made to ameliorate
environmental conditions that mimic the dangerous intergroup
conditions of early human evolution or create perceptions of the
same. For it is only under these “luxurious” circumstances that
inclusivist morality can take root, endure, and expand.

A Nontraditional Approach to Traditional

Moral Enhancement
The effort to modify conditions that trigger exclusivist moral
response involves several interrelated components. The first
involves creating an environment of physical and economic se-
curity, both internationally and in microenvironments within
otherwise secure nations. This can be accomplished by fos-
tering economic productivity and social surpluses by instituting
markets, effective property rights, and the rule of law more gen-
erally; by encouraging the genuine democratization of political
institutions; and by creating institutions that allow for mutually
beneficial intergroup cooperation and the peaceful resolution of
intergroup conflicts, as now exist at both domestic and (to a lesser
but still meaningful extent) international levels. These institu-
tional interventions can reduce and ultimately eliminate many of
the ancient trigger conditions that cue the development of exclu-
sivist response. Importantly, none of these cultural innovations
require intervening at the level of individual moral capacities, as
BME promises to do.
Second, by significantly reducing the incidence of infectious
disease and perhaps other diseases and disabilities that mimic in-
fectious disease outcomes, we can lessen the effects of yet an-
other major cue type—​namely, signs of parasite stress, which also
366  The Path Traveled and the Way Forward
signal the presence of intergroup threat and, consequently, mod-
ulate intergroup attitudes and behaviors. Although not all disease
and disability is infectious, and thus not all disease and disability
indicates the existence of parasite threat, the evolution of adapt­
ive plasticity is a heuristic process that is epistemically incapable
of precisely discriminating between disease cues based on their
etiology and epidemiology. Although there has been much exper-
imental work on the antisocial priming effects of parasite stress,
which has been shown to increase xenophobic and ethnocentric
response,20 the response parameters of the parasite stress cue re-
main unclear. A broad-​strokes approach to reducing general rates
of disease through sanitation, vaccination, and broader public
and private healthcare initiatives is likely to have a significant at-
tenuating effect on the development of exclusivist moralities.
Although such interventions are biomedical in nature, they
do not fall under the rubric of BME proper, insofar as the latter
refers to the direct modification of specifically moral capacities.
We might nevertheless think of attempts to reduce cues of par-
asite stress in the service of ameliorating exclusivist moral re-
sponse as “indirect” BME interventions, which are likely to be
more efficacious, cost-​effective, and logistically feasible than di-
rect BME interventions when it comes to tempering exclusivist
moral tendencies.
Third, we must ensure that inclusivist cultural innovations,
such as the protections afforded by the recognition and institu-
tionalization of human rights in the domestic and international
spheres, are not dismantled by social-​epistemic practices that
are designed to engender perceptions of out-​group threat condi-
tions, including, preeminently, propaganda designed to evoke ra-
cial or ethnonational violence. Enhancing social moral-​epistemic

20
  This literature is reviewed in Corey Fincher and Randy Thornhill (2012),
“Parasite-​Stress Promotes In-​Group Assortative Sociality: The Cases of Strong
Family Ties and Heightened Religiosity,” Behavioral and Brain Sciences
35: 61–​79.
 Biomedical Moral Enhancement and Moral Progress  367
practices so as to increase their reliability in producing correct,
morally relevant beliefs cannot be accomplished biomedically,
let alone through direct BME interventions that target the moral
capacities of individual people. In focusing on enhancing indi-
vidual cognitive and affective capabilities, BME has tended to
overlook the fact that morally relevant knowledge is the product
of social practices and that the potential for moral progress often
turns on the epistemic virtues of those social practices.
An important difference between our approach and that of
the evoliberal is that our approach targets population-​level sta-
tistical effects on the social development of morality, whereas
the evoliberal approach aims for immediate impact on individual
moral development. This difference in our respective approaches
bespeaks an important philosophical difference in our respective
conceptions of morality. On our view, morality is not an epiphe-
nomenon that supervenes on the aggregate of individual moral
capacities and judgments constrained by evolutionary history.
Rather, it is a dynamic social phenomenon that causally feeds
back into the processes of individual moral development that
produce it, which in turn serve as causal inputs into the social ev-
olution of moral systems.
This feedback process resembles the biological phenomenon
of “downstream niche construction,” wherein organismic adap-
tations shape the ecological environments in which they and their
adaptations continue to develop and evolve.21 In social moral ev-
olution, this feedback between exclusivist morality and environ-
mental conditions can drive both moral progression and moral
regression, depending on the direction of the changes to the in-
itial conditions of the system. In focusing on individual moral
response generated by a fixed prehistoric human moral nature,
BME proponents tend to overlook this dynamic causal structure

21
Smee, K.  N. Laland, and M.  W. Feldman, Niche
 F.  J. Odling-​
Construction:  The Neglected Process in Evolution (Princeton University
Press, 2003).
368  The Path Traveled and the Way Forward
of human morality—​and thus to underestimate the pivotal role of
culture in the evolution of morality and moral progress.

Objections
We envision several objections to our critique of the evoliberal
position.22 The first and weakest objection maintains that what we
have identified as the inclusivist anomaly is not really an anomaly
at all since there is a massive rift between what might be called the
“official moral declarations” of societies as expressed in attitudes,
international documents, and laws, on the one hand, and the ac-
tual practice of human beings in those societies, on the other. In
other words, inclusivist morality is essentially aspirational, and
the fact that it remains essentially aspirational demonstrates the
force of our “hard-​wired” psychological constraints on moral in-
clusivity. Perhaps there are only weak constraints on the shape
of theoretical, doxastic, or official morality—​but the actual lived
morality of human beings, so the objection goes, is strongly
shaped by our evolutionary history. We do not find this objec-
tion persuasive. Throughout this book, we have made the case
that the inclusivist shift is not merely aspirational, giving many
examples where inclusivist commitments have become embodied
in large-​scale institutional changes that are quite costly to the so-
cieties that implement them. The British abolition of the slave
trade and then of slavery in the British Empire and the regulatory
constraints on the use of animals in experimentation are two com-
pelling examples. The facts that some forms of slavery still exist
and that factory farming is still common are not objections to
our theory. Indeed, such an uneven implementation of inclusivist
norms is to be expected, given that inclusivist moral progress is
a late arrival in human history and only emerges under limited,
luxurious conditions.

  We are grateful to Ingmar Persson and Julian Savulescu for raising these
22

points.
 Biomedical Moral Enhancement and Moral Progress  369
A second, stronger objection holds that our critique falls
well short of a refutation of the evoliberal position since many
of the evolved psychological biases that the evoliberal argu-
ment identifies do not implicate moral inclusivity. For instance,
evoliberals argue that evolved preferences for short-​time ho-
rizon preferences—​or what they call a “bias toward the near fu-
ture”—​also undercuts a great deal of moral progress, especially
in relation to climate change and other global collective action
problems. Moreover, the objection continues, the adaptive plas-
ticity account of moral exclusivity developed in this book fails
to explain all major aspects of moral inclusivity. In particular, it
fails to account for an extra layer of altruism/​sympathy strati-
fication within the group, namely at the level of kin. Even if all
cues of out-​group threat were eliminated, we would still be stuck
with the moral parochialism that emanates from nepotism and
cronyism—​bias for family and friends, for the near over the far,
for the concrete over the statistical. To expect anything else from
unenhanced human beings would be utopic. The most plausible
way of overcoming these dimensions of exclusivity, the evoliberal
concludes, is through the biomedical enhancement of the funda-
mental moral motivations and dispositions of human beings.
It is true that some forms of exclusivity, such as favoritism
toward kin, are not a response to out-​group threat cues; it is
also true that some moral problems stem not from exclusivist
dispositions but rather from biases toward the near future, the
tendency to favor concrete lives over statistical lives, moral in-
tuition asymmetries between act and omission, and so forth—​
and thus one might be inclined to conclude that such biases
would be unaffected by creating environments in which out-​
group threat cues are absent. This conclusion would be mis-
taken. Part II argued that certain “luxurious” conditions must
exist in order for inclusivist norms to arise and take root. In
particular, it argued that such conditions are necessary for the
effective operation of the human capacity for open-​ended nor-
mativity on a social scale, which plays a crucial role in driving
370  The Path Traveled and the Way Forward
all types of moral progress. Importantly, open-​ended norma-
tivity can drive progressive shifts in any of the dimensions of
moral progress discussed in Chapter  1, not merely along the
dimension of increasing inclusivity.
For example, it is open-​ended normativity that allows for
the critical evaluation of norms concerning the proper subjects
and territory of justice, which enables us to come to view nep-
otism and cronyism as morally problematic and to attempt to
reduce these biases. Indeed, there are now many institutional
practices in government and in private organizations that are
explicitly designed to curb partiality and nepotism—​and some
of these inclusivity devices are quite successful. Again, while
progress on these fronts has been limited, such efforts have
only just begun, and it is far too early to opine on their ulti-
mate efficacy. Likewise, markets give individuals, both as per-
sonal decision-​makers and as agents of corporations, incentives
to take future consequences seriously, as do criminal and tort
laws. Also, constitutional design theorists have emphasized
that some features of sound constitutions function to mitigate
biases toward the near future. So, once again, it is hard to see
how evoliberals can conclude that non-​biomedical changes
are utterly incapable of coping with these evolved features of
human psychology.
Finally, the evoliberal might object that the lofty institu-
tional environments that we envision mitigating moral mega-​
problems are unrealistic, or worse utopian, goals. The aims of
the evoliberal project may be unrealistic and utopian as well,
the objection goes on, but the magnitude of the threats we face
justifies pursuing both of these projects. Our response to this
objection is that while the aims of both projects are indeed
daunting, there is an important asymmetry that should not be
overlooked:  namely, we already have actual examples of how
cultural innovations, especially the development of institutions,
have mitigated some of the damaging effects of some forms of
exclusivity. This is true, for example, with the modern state,
 Biomedical Moral Enhancement and Moral Progress  371
the rule of law, democratic governance, markets, the system of
human rights, and so on.
In contrast, we have no examples of how biomedical inter-
ventions of the sort evoliberals propose can help solve serious
social problems. In fact, we know that the threat of punish-
ment exerts a much stronger influence on prosocial behavior
than does oxytocin or other BME variables, and it does so
without reconfiguring the interests of the relevant actors. This
is confirmed by laboratory studies involving economic games,
as well as in the real world where legal institutions, such as
contract enforcement, property rights, tort law, and criminal
law exert a more profound and positive influence on promise-​
keeping, non-​exploitation, and non-​aggression than BMEs are
ever likely to do. And the introduction of these secure inter-
active environments created conditions under which moral
norms and motivations could begin to shift in the direction of
inclusivity.
Moreover, implementing BMEs with sufficient speed and on
a sufficiently massive scale would require momentous cultural
innovations in the form of unified international political will;
powerful enforcement mechanisms to ensure compliance and to
prevent free-​riding, which would presumably include state-​based
coercion and the attendant costs associated with substantial re-
strictions of personal and religious freedom; social consensus on
the permissibility and desirability of mandatory biomedical inter-
ventions, and so on. As noted above, evoliberals in effect appeal
to the “supreme emergency” exception discussed in Chapter  7
to justify these restrictions on individual freedom. Our point,
however, is that deploying BMEs in an efficacious way would
require robust cultural innovations—​the very power and pros-
pect of which evoliberals want to deny. If biomedical interven-
tions would only work if massive cultural innovations could be
achieved, then evoliberals cannot consistently argue that culture
is too feeble to cope with the problems to be solved by biomed-
ical interventions.
372  The Path Traveled and the Way Forward
Conclusion: From an Optimistic Induction to a
Pessimistic Conclusion
Persson and Savulescu make much of the fact that there has been
little moral progress in over 2500 years since the first great teachers
of morality.23 Not surprisingly, we disagree vehemently with this
historical assessment: there has indeed been monumental moral
progress over the last few centuries, as demonstrated throughout
this book, especially in Chapters 1, 5, 6, 7, and 8. Moreover, we
can make sense of the fact that most of this moral progress has
taken place roughly over the last two hundred and fifty years,
despite the ancient history of moral philosophizing, once our
focus shifts away from free-​floating moral reasoning and to-
ward the conditions and institutions that are necessary for sound
moral reasoning to flourish and become socially efficacious—​
conditions that have arisen only in the most recent eye blink of
human history. This leaves us cautiously optimistic that further
moral progress lies ahead and that we have the cultural resources
necessary to push it along.
In arguing that a nontraditional approach to traditional moral
enhancement is much more promising than BME, we do not
mean to understate the daunting nature of the task that lies before
us. Establishing lasting economic, political, healthcare, and secu-
rity infrastructures, as well as international institutions that suc-
cessfully prevent violent conflict within and between states, solve
collective action problems, and help ensure that basic human
rights are respected, is clearly a monumental undertaking. Indeed,
it might turn out that the needed cultural innovations will not be
achieved soon enough to avert catastrophe. Nevertheless, in light
of what we are coming to know about morality and its evolution,
we believe that cultural innovation is the best hope for preventing
moral catastrophes like genocide, nuclear war, terrorism, and cli-
mate change.

23
  Persson and Savulescu, Unfit for the Future, supra note 3, p. 106.
 Biomedical Moral Enhancement and Moral Progress  373
Research on BME is still in its infancy, however, and we think
it is reasonable to view biomedical intervention as one potential
instrument in our diverse moral enhancement toolkit. Like many
ethicists writing on this topic, we see no in-​principle objection to
using biomedical technologies in conjunction with cultural modes
of moral enhancement to bring moral motivations and behaviors
in line with the norms we have come to endorse. Nevertheless,
the foregoing analysis leads us to the pessimistic conclusion that
BME is unlikely to play a necessary or even major role in the fu-
ture of moral progress or in solving the greatest moral dilemmas
of the coming centuries. We agree with the evoliberal headline
that there is an “urgent need to enhance the moral character of
humanity,” but we do not think that BME is likely to be a very
effective and plausible means by which to do so.
 CONCLUSION
The Future of Human Morality

This volume has aimed to initiate an intellectual project as com-

plex and daunting as it is exciting:  the development of a natu-
ralized theory of moral progress. Whether there is a coherent,
illuminating characterization of what moral progress is, whether
significant moral progress has occurred, whether new moral
progress is feasible, and whether human beings can learn how to
increase the probability of moral progress and reduce the risk of
moral regression are among the most important questions that
humanity can pose for itself. Yet the project of theorizing moral
progress has suffered unjustified neglect in recent philosophical
literature, and naturalistic approaches to such theorizing are vir-
tually nonexistent.
We have tried to breathe new life into the topic by articulating
the fundamental ideas of a naturalistic theory of moral progress
that satisfies the chief desiderata for such a theory and avoids the
flaws that have afflicted earlier theories. To do this, we have delin-
eated the main contours of a naturalistic account of one important
type of moral progress: the development of more inclusive moral
responses, concepts, beliefs, and corresponding social practices
and institutions. This is a fitting initial focus for the theoretical
enterprise because the forms of inclusivity we have examined—​
especially the extension of basic equal moral status to all human
beings and the recognition that non-​human animals have moral
standing—​are arguably the most significant instances of moral
progress that have so far occurred. The naturalistic theory we
have begun to develop may also shed considerable light on other
 Conclusion  375
types of moral progress as well, at least so far as they depend on
gains in inclusivity and more generally on the effective exercise of
the capacity for open-​ended normativity.

Summing Up
Part I  set out the analytic core of our naturalistic theory. The
Introduction explained why a theory of moral progress is needed,
documented the poverty of current theorizing on the subject, de-
veloped a set of desiderata for a naturalized theory of moral prog-
ress, and argued that the moral degeneration thesis (as espoused,
for example, by Rousseau and MacIntyre) is deeply flawed and
offers no good reason to refrain from trying to devise a theory of
moral progress. Chapter 1 distinguished between progress from
a moral point of view and moral progress properly conceived,
explained the difference between global and local moral prog-
ress assessments, and constructed a provisional list of types of
moral progress that includes better compliance with valid moral
norms, better moral concepts, better moral motivation, better
moral reasoning, better understandings of moral status and
moral standing, and improvements in understandings of morality
itself. Chapter  2 identified and critically evaluated prominent
contemporary work on moral progress, distinguishing between
reductionist and nonreductionist views, determinate versus inde-
terminate reductionist views, functionalist accounts, and views
that define moral progress as movement toward some ideal state
of affairs that supposedly can be meaningfully characterized and
judged to be optimal at present. None of these proto-​theories,
we argued, is capable of encompassing all of the types of moral
progress identified in Chapter 1, and all of them exhibit epistemic
arrogance about both morality and moral progress. Taking to
heart the defects of the conceptions of moral progress critiqued
in Chapter  2, Chapter  3 advanced an understanding of moral
progress that is pluralistic in that it does not reduce all types
of moral progress to one type and dynamic in that it explicitly
376 Conclusion
characterizes moral progress in an open-​ended, provisional, ep-
istemically modest fashion, taking seriously the idea that there
can be and should be progress in how moral progress itself is
conceived. This chapter also introduced the notion of meta-​moral
progress and explored the possibility that current understand-
ings of moral progress might become much more demanding,
requiring not just moral improvement but moral improvement
achieved exclusively or at least largely by moral means.
Part II explored the ways in which evolved human nature is
both an obstacle to and an enabler of inclusivist moral prog-
ress. Chapter  4 articulated the evoconservative thesis that be-
cause human beings are “hard-​wired” for tribalistic, exclusivist
moralities, evolved human nature seriously limits the prospects
for durable moral progress in the dimension of inclusiveness.
The evoconservative appeal to evolutionary biology appears to
avoid the Achilles heel of conservative pessimism about moral
reform, namely the lack of scientific support for its assumptions
about the limitations of human nature and society. However,
Chapter 5 highlighted a set of moral phenomena that are highly
anomalous—​ indeed inexplicable—​ on the strong evolutionary
psychological constraints view that evoconservatives presup-
pose. This “inclusivist anomaly” encompasses the recognition
that non-​human animals have moral standing and the costly ef-
forts to treat them accordingly, the pervasiveness of “universal-
izing” moral judgments, the existence of a human rights culture
that includes significant institutional and legal manifestations,
and an implicit shift from a strategic conception of morality as
cooperative group reciprocity to a subject-​centered one in which
individuals who have no strategic capacities are recognized to
have moral standing and, in the case of human beings, to have
the highest moral status. We then went on to show that none
of these inclusivist features of contemporary morality can be
accounted for by selectionist, sexual selectionist, or byproduct
evolutionary explanations. Any successful explanation of such
phenomena, we argued, would have to advert to the capacity for
 Conclusion  377
open-​ended normativity—​the ability, in certain environments, to
identify, scrutinize, and modify the norms we are following and
the concepts we are employing and to become effectively moti-
vated to realize these alterations in our behavior.
The next task was to lay out in greater detail the environ-
mental conditions in which open-​ended normativity can flourish
and to explain how these environments interact with evolved
components of human moral psychology to produce more
inclusivist moralities. Thus, in Chapter 6 we sketched an evolu-
tionary account of moral psychological development that can ac-
commodate the inclusivist anomaly. This model argued that it is
a mistake to think of exclusivist dispositions as “hard-​wired,” or
robust across all environments in which human beings are likely
to find themselves. It is more accurate, rather, to say that human
beings have an “adaptively plastic” capacity for exclusivist re-
sponses in environments that resemble the harsh conditions of
their prehistoric environments but that humans are also capable
of inclusivist responses in more favorable environments. Morality,
on this view, is more like the water flea’s armor—​a condition-
ally expressed trait whose development depends on the presence
or absence of predatory threat cues in the environment—​than it
is like either the moth’s proboscis (a standard adaptation), the
peacock’s tail (an adaptation resulting from sexual selection),
or the spotted hyena’s large clitoris (a byproduct of selection).
We showed that it is a mistake to say that inclusivist morality
goes against the evolutionary grain of humanity; instead, it goes
against the grain in certain moral development environments, and
we identified necessary (if not sufficient) conditions for the de-
velopment of inclusivist morality that are within human control.
Chapter  7 began the task of advancing a naturalistic theory
of moral regression by drawing on the key insight of the pre-
vious chapters: the idea that whether exclusivist moral responses
dominate generally depends upon whether a sufficient number of
people detect threat cues of the sort that were pervasive in the en-
vironment of evolutionary adaptation (EEA). “Detection” here
378 Conclusion
is not a success term; it can be veridical or not. The chief point
was that the adaptively plastic “toggle” can flip toward exclusion
not only if EEA-​like conditions actually exist but also if people
come to believe that they do. Further, we showed in this chapter
how the same resources employed to build bridges of inclusion
can be used to dismantle them, through the social manipulation
of morally relevant beliefs. Another significant conclusion of this
chapter, and one which we intend to exploit in future work on a
naturalistic account of ideology, is that exclusivity can be “inter-
nalized”: the perception of out-​groups as threatening is not lim-
ited to foreigners or groups of other societies; the manipulation
of belief can also result in the perception that some groups within
society pose the sorts of threats that trigger exclusivist responses.
This point was illustrated by several historical case studies, in-
cluding the eugenics movement. This account of moral regres-
sion emphasized how specific normal cognitive biases, including
the tendency to essentialize human groups, along with defective
social-​epistemic practices, including misplaced epistemic defer-
ence, can work together to create unjustified perceptions of out-​
group threat and dismantle the cultural innovations that have
promoted inclusion. The account of moral progress and moral
regression fleshed out in Part II was thoroughly biocultural:  it
avoided both biological determinism and the view that culture
operates without significant biological constraints.
Chapter 8 showed how evolutionary processes also constrain
and enable moral progress in the form of proper de-​moralization.
Proper de-​moralization consists in emancipation from invalid
moral norms, which improperly constrain human liberty through
a combination of external and internal moral pressures. Standard
conservative arguments against this type of moral reform under-
score epistemic problems with reliably identifying invalid moral
norms and stress the risk of unintended negative consequences
that could flow from modifying norms that are embedded in a
causally complex sociocultural web. Evoconservative attempts to
ground this conservative pessimism in evolutionary theory were
 Conclusion  379
found wanting, however. In particular, the various ways in which
biocultural evolutionary processes allow for the proliferation and
preservation of invalid moral norms were shown to undercut a
key conservative assertion: namely, the claim that the mere fact
that a moral norm has been preserved in a cultural system is prima
facie evidence that the norm is valid.
Part III began by exploring what is arguably the most robust in-
stance of progress in inclusivity: the modern human rights move-
ment. Chapter  9 identified six momentous conceptual changes
that are instances of moral progress in the dimension of inclusion
and argued that all of them are embodied in the modern human
rights movement that began with the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights in 1948. The chief conceptual advances in inclu-
sivity were (1) expansions in the domain of justice to include in
the set of those thought to be subjects of justice beings who were
previously thought at best to be objects of charity; (2)  expan-
sions of the territory of justice, that is, enlargement of the class
of actions, refrainings, policies, and social structures thought to
be proper subjects of assessments in terms of justice or injustice;
(3) progressive shifts in how the boundary between justice and
charity is drawn, often prompted by a recognition that certain
features of the social world are human creations, subject to mod-
ification by human efforts; (4) the idea that certain basic natural
rights cannot be forfeited, even by the worst behavior; (5) a mod-
ification of the concept of equal basic moral status, achieved by
an enlargement of the list of rights thought to be owed to all per-
sons, beyond the lean set of natural rights to which proponents of
abolitionism acknowledged Africans to have; and (6) the implicit
shift from a strategic conception of morality and moral standing
as cooperative group reciprocity to a thoroughly subject-​centered
conception. The modern conception of human rights was then
shown to incorporate all of these conceptual changes.
Chapter 10 employed our naturalized theory to help to explain
how the modern human rights movement came about, why it
came about when it did, and why the period between the triumph
380 Conclusion
of British abolitionism and the founding of the modern human
rights movement immediately after the end of World War II was
one of moral regression regarding inclusivity. We showed that
the inclusivist gains of the abolitionist movement were incom-
plete because while it vindicated the assumption that Africans
had certain basic natural rights—​in particular, the right not to be
enslaved and the right to the fruits of their own labor—​it stopped
short of affirming that they had the full set of natural rights that
white people (or western Europeans) were thought to possess.
We also explained how the partial inclusivist success of aboli-
tionism, in the context of the century of scientific racism and the
burgeoning of European colonialism, co-​opted the idea of moral
progress to rationalize exclusivist attitudes and policies. Finally,
this chapter offered a hypothesis about why the founding of the
modern human rights movement followed this regressive inter-
lude at the particular time it did. In each instance, our interpreta-
tions of the path from the rise of British abolitionism through the
regressive period to the resumption of inclusivist progress was
shown to fit the main outlines of our naturalized theory.
Chapter  11 shifted the focus away from the past and on to
the future, exploring a new and bold proposal for how moral
progress is to be achieved. It examined the thesis, advanced by
moral philosophers Ingmar Persson and Julian Savulescu, that
the most serious problems now facing humanity are unlikely to
be solved by cultural innovations, requiring instead biomedical
interventions that alter the biological underpinnings of human
moral capacities. Advocates of a biomedical path to moral prog-
ress, whom we call “evoliberals,” share with evoconservatives an
assumption that we have shown to be incorrect—​namely, that
human beings are hard-​wired by evolution for exclusivist mo-
ralities. If that assumption is false—​if, as we have argued, human
beings can produce and have produced cultural innovations that
build bridges toward inclusion when they occupy “inclusivist-​
friendly” environments and if they can exert control over the
character of the environment in which moralities develop—​then
 Conclusion  381
the evoliberal thesis that progress requires “rewiring” is not well
founded. Further, we also argued in this chapter that evoliberals
are committed to an inconsistent view about the power of cul-
ture:  on the one hand, they think cultural innovations are too
feeble to solve the major problems humanity now faces; on the
other, major cultural innovations—​including unified political will
and agreement on the propriety of biomedical interventions for
moral improvement—​would be necessary if the biomedical in-
terventions they propose were to be achieved on a sufficient scale
to make a difference. The chapter concludes that although bio-
medical interventions might conceivably play a supporting role
in the achievement of future moral progress, a cultural path to
improvement is much more likely and reliable. We also acknowl-
edged, however, that there is no assurance that the needed cul-
tural changes will occur in time to avert some of the catastrophes
that preoccupy evoliberals, but then there is even less assurance
that biomedical intervention would solve these problems.
Having recapitulated the preceding chapters, we now turn to
two questions that the foregoing discussion prompts but has left
unanswered. The first is whether the naturalistic approach to
moral progress that we have advanced allows for global, as op-
posed to merely local, moral progress assessments. The second is
whether the ethical ground upon which paradigmatic examples
of moral progress rest is solid enough for the uses to which we
have put them.

Global Versus Local Moral Progress Assessments

At the outset of this inquiry, we adopted a modest stance, con-
fining our reflections to judgments about moral progress that
were local rather than global. For example, we explored the con-
ditions under which the British abolitionist movement achieved
the institutional recognition of the basic natural rights of African
slaves. No attempt was made, in this case or any of the other in-
stances of inclusivist moral progress that we considered, to make
382 Conclusion
global, all-​things-​considered judgments. In particular, though we
argued that momentous gains in inclusivity have been made since
the late eighteenth century, we did not go further to proclaim
that the world today is morally better than it was prior to that
period—​though we did offer initial reasons for thinking that the
moral degeneration thesis, as a global thesis about moral regres-
sion, is implausible and misguided. Nor did we venture the judg-
ment that this or that particular society is now morally better than
it was at some earlier period. Instead, we tread a more cautious
path in recognition of two facts that make global moral progress
assessments problematic. The first is that, as we argued in Part
I, there are a number of irreducibly distinct—​and conceptually
quite different—​types of moral progress, from improvements
in moral reasoning and in understandings of moral standing and
status to better concepts of the virtues and of moral responsibility
to sea changes in the definition of morality itself. In other words,
the project of reducing all types of moral progress to one or even
a small number of types looks unpromising. If that is right, then
it looks like a global moral progress assessment must distinguish
all the various types of moral progress, rank them in importance
or moral weight, determine whether there has been net progress
in each of them (which requires ascertaining whether for each
type there has been regression at any particular time and whether
gains have compensated for regressions), and then aggregate the
weighted net progress “scores” across all types of moral progress
to yield a judgment about whether there has been net moral prog-
ress overall. That is an exceedingly tall order, even if one assumes
that all advances and regressions are commensurable. The second
complicating fact is that commensurability appears doubtful.
It is far beyond the scope of this volume to provide a thorough
consideration of the question of whether reliable global moral
progress judgments are feasible or are likely to become feasible.
Perhaps this much can be said, however: it is rather unlikely that
the current state of affairs is overall morally worse than that of
preceding periods; in fact, it is likely that the current state of
 Conclusion  383
affairs is better. This hopeful, tentative prognosis rests on three
assumptions: (1) that moral progress in the form of improved un-
derstandings of moral standing and moral status, as well as im-
provements in various dimensions of the concept of justice, is
of such great importance as to plausibly outweigh considerable
moral deficiencies in other areas (such as in the virtues); (2) that
at this point in human history, there is reason to be confident
that there has indeed been much sustained progress with respect
to understandings of moral standing and moral status (and, to
the extent that such progress has occurred before, it has tended
to be lost through regression); and (3) that whatever moral defi-
ciencies disfigure the world at present are not likely to be on the
whole worse than those that have been present in earlier eras, in
which the sorts of gains in inclusivity we now take for granted
were lacking. In other words, if there is no good reason to believe
that in the past things were so much morally better than they are
now in enough other dimensions of moral progress so as to offset
recent gains vis-​à-​vis moral standing and moral status and with
respect to justice, then there is reason to believe that the current
state, overall, is an improvement, or at least not a deterioration.
The first assumption is plausible because one’s judgments
about a being’s moral standing and moral status have profound
implications for what might be called one’s moral orientation to-
ward that being, in all of its complexity. To put the same point
in different terms:  moral standing and moral status judgments
are especially powerful determinants of moral responses across
a wider range of contexts and with respect to the application of a
wide range of moral concepts, including central concepts like jus-
tice. If that is so, then improvements regarding the recognition of
moral standing and moral status will be especially weighty, other
things being equal, in determinations of whether things are get-
ting better overall. So, if we can confidently say that these sorts of
improvements have been made, we should have some confidence,
at least, that it is unlikely that there has been moral regression,
overall.
384 Conclusion
To be justified in concluding that the world today is morally
worse than the world prior to the achievement of these funda-
mental gains in inclusivity, one would have to show that the
earlier period scored very high on other moral indices—​high
enough to outweigh their gross deficiencies regarding moral
standing and moral status. But that would be a hard case to
make. Is it really plausible that a world in which gratuitous
cruelty to animals was routine; in which the idea of spousal
rape was considered a contradiction in terms because men had
an absolute right to the sexual use of their wives without their
consent; in which freedom, was the peculiar institution; in
which government was a brutal form of “macroparisitism” by
which the few dominated and exploited the many; in which
women and people of color were denied the rights of citizen-
ship accorded to men; in which extremely cruel punishments
were thought not only appropriate but also proper forms of
public entertainment; and in which material scarcity was so
great that the costs of altruism in the form of nonreciprocated
sharing of resources were exceedingly high was better overall
than our current world? Moral degeneration theorists like
McIntyre do not recognize just how momentous these concep-
tual and institutional changes in moral standing, moral status,
and justice have been; and thus, they fail to provide a weighted
balancing of moral progress types that could plausibly support
their bleak assessment.
The degeneration theorists’ lamentations about the supposed
loss of communal solidarity in modern society do not look so
very serious in comparison to the major inclusivist shifts we have
identified. For example, in the last two hundred and fifty years
many people have come to accord moral standing to some an-
imals, thereby reversing their unjust (arbitrary) exclusion and
prompting reforms in how they are treated; and the notion that
all human beings have an equal basic moral standing that requires
the recognition of certain human rights has gained considerable
traction in belief and in social practices and law. On any plausible
 Conclusion  385
ranking of moral progress types, these major inclusivist gains are
not outweighed by regressions in, for instance, certain laudable
virtues that were more commonplace in classical times. In some
cases, the virtues that have declined were previously of great im-
portance precisely because conditions were deplorable. For ex-
ample, where war is much less frequent, there is less reason to
lament the decline of the martial virtues.
In brief, there is some reason—​ though not conclusive
perhaps—​to think that there has been moral progress overall
or at least that it is unlikely that there has been moral deteri-
oration overall. Such solace is only well founded, of course, if
our current judgments about moral status and moral standing,
unlike those of most people at an earlier period of history, are
reliable—​that the understandings of these basic moral concepts
that have become widespread in recent times are actually im-
provements. Parts II and III have had a good deal to say about
what sorts of material and social conditions tend to be condu-
cive to accurate factual beliefs that are relevant for making judg-
ments about which beings have moral standing or possess the
highest moral status. Relying in part on historical case studies of
progress in the dimension of inclusion, we argued that broadly
liberal cultures provide relatively friendly environments for
the exercise of moral consistency reasoning and more generally
for the exercise of the capacity for open-​ended normativity. We
also emphasized that the achievement of better social-​epistemic
conditions is potentially within human control since it depends
largely on the existence of economic institutions that promote
general prosperity and political institutions that allow for “ex-
periments of living,” the free discussion of existing norms and
practices, and the development of genuinely scientific methods
and knowledge that are free of distorting government and cor-
porate influence. Individuals who occupy such favorable epi-
stemic conditions can be relatively confident in the reliability
of the judgment that great gains have been made regarding un-
derstandings of moral standing and moral status and that these
386 Conclusion
gains should be given especially great weight in any attempt to
make global moral progress assessments.

The Normative Ethical Grounding of Moral

Progress Assessments
The Introduction to this book emphasized that we were not
taking the most ambitious approach conceivable to theorizing
about moral progress: no attempt was made to set out and de-
fend a comprehensive normative ethical theory and then to
characterize moral progress in reference to that theory. Nor
have we offered a meta-​ethical theory—​though we have argued
that our pluralistic, open-​ended conception of moral progress
can be arrived at from various competing meta-​ethical stances.
Instead, our “bottom u ​ p” approach to moral progress has relied
mainly on what we take to be a broad and reasonable con-
sensus that certain social developments, such as the abolition
of slavery and of extremely cruel punishments, the recognition
of the equal civil and political rights of women, the acknowl-
edgment that the gratuitous infliction of pain on non-​human
animals is wrong (and not just because it negatively affects the
interests of humans), and the transition to a concept of criminal
responsibility that takes mental state into account are all moral
improvements.
Our reflections on moral progress do have some bearing,
however, on both normative and meta-​ethical theorizing. The
stance of epistemic humility we recommend suggests that nor-
mative ethical theorizing should be informed by both a sober
recognition that many people in the past, including some of the
most morally admirable human beings, have been seriously mis-
taken not only in their judgments about what is right and what
is wrong behavior but even about fundamental matters of moral
status and moral standing. From this it follows that one must
concede that the best normative perspective currently available
may be seriously flawed or at the very least incomplete. In other
 Conclusion  387
words, normative ethical theories should be wary of pretensions
to completeness and incorrigibility.
Although our naturalized theory is officially agnostic on some
major meta-​ethical issues, it does take a stand on perhaps the
single most important one: it assumes that some moral judgments
are true or at least justified (and that human beings can sometimes
know that they are). More specifically, the most natural reading
of our reflections on moral progress holds that there are moral
facts in a straightforward sense; for example, that it is a fact that
Atlantic chattel slavery was wrong and a fact that the abolition of
it was an instance of moral progress. But notice that nothing we
say or need to say commits us to taking sides in the dispute as to
whether moral facts involve the ascription of natural versus non-​
natural moral properties.
Nonetheless, our theory of moral progress has, as it were, an
affinity for a type of meta-​ethical theory that might be called “so-
cial constructivism.” Although we have argued that morality is
not constituted by any biological or social function, we do ac-
cept the thesis that whatever else it involves, morality includes
resources for coping with certain fundamental problems that any
human society is likely to face. To that extent, we agree with ev-
olutionary theorists’ claim that morality is—​but only in part—​
a functional “social technology” for meeting certain demands
that are ubiquitous in human ecology. Nonetheless, we have
emphasized that such functions are not constitutive of morality
even in its social dimension because under reasonably favorable
conditions human beings can, do, and should ask questions about
what is right and what is wrong that do not reduce to any func-
tional considerations.
Further, the appreciation of the human capacity for open-​
ended normativity that lies at the core of our theory of moral
progress suggests that it is a mistake to think of morality as an ex-
clusively social matter, whether largely functional or otherwise.
Even if the individual’s “moral identity” is first formed through
the development of moral responses that serve to manage social
388 Conclusion
interactions, the capacity for open-​ended normativity can be and
apparently is exercised, in certain environments at least, in ways
that allow the development of a conception of “personal mo-
rality.” In other words, individuals can, as it were, extend their
understanding of their moral identity to encompass moral obli-
gations or ideals that are independent of compliance with norms
of social morality (such as fairness norms, reciprocity norms,
norms prohibiting the harming of others, etc.). They can, for in-
stance, develop conceptions of individual excellence and of per-
sonal moral commitments that are not only distinct from but in
some cases even in tension with the reasonable demands of social
morality.
If this is so, then our theory points toward a meta-​ethical thesis,
even if it does not strictly entail it: morality is not now (solely)
a social technology of any sort. And moreover, it has a potential
for development which could make it even more different than
it already is from the simple interpersonal conflict management
device that many evolutionary theorists and evolutionarily in-
formed theorists of morality take it to be.
Even though morality is already not merely a social tech-
nology or a functional solution to a social coordination problem,
the label “social constructivism” may nonetheless still be appro-
priate. The “constructivist” part of the label fits because we have
emphasized that morality and moral progress evolve through
human efforts, develop over time, and cannot be specified a
priori by reference to some standard of value that is discover-
able by human reason regardless of the social-​epistemic condi-
tions under which it is acting. The “social” part of the label is
also apt because, even though we deny that morality is merely a
social technology, we have emphasized that the development of
human moral capacities depends crucially upon the material and
institutional environment; that large-​scale moral progress always
requires collective, coordinated social action if it is to go beyond
mere aspiration; and that some fundamental features of current
human moral capacities were shaped by the evolutionary origins
 Conclusion  389
of morality as a “social technology” in a Darwinian arena of com-
peting human groups.
So how, then, do we conceive of the nature of morality and
its evolution, given our naturalized theory of moral progress?
Morality first developed as an adaptation in the distant past for
coping with certain basic problems that all human societies faced
at that time. More specifically, there was selection for norm-​
following that helped groups to cope with conflicts of interest, to
achieve the coordination needed for successful foraging and other
subsistence activities within the group, and to compete success-
fully with other groups when there were conflicts over the appro-
priation of resources. But that was only the beginning of morality.
In the process of performing these basic functions of achieving
successful cooperation within the group and competition with
other groups, human morality produced solutions to the initial
problems that not only created new social practices and eventu-
ally what we would recognize as institutions; evolving morality
also created new problems and underwent further changes that
enabled people to cope with them. Through the exercise of their
moral capacities, human beings changed their environment—​
both their physical and their social environment—​ and those
changes brought about new demands on morality that resulted in
the further development of the original moral capacities.
Perhaps the first truly momentous change was the Neolithic
or agrarian revolution, the domestication of animals and crops
that enabled humans reliably to produce food in large quantities,
making it possible for much larger numbers of human beings to
live close to each other year-​round in the same location. This
change stimulated massive institutional innovations, in particular
the rise of governments along with pronounced inequalities of
social rank and material wealth, and a much more complex and
relatively fixed division of labor. Further, the reach of government
extended to much larger collections of human beings, imposing
coercive authority on many previously autonomous groups, and
eventually to the construction of empires that ruled culturally
390 Conclusion
and linguistically disparate human communities. This new envi-
ronment put stress on moral norms that had served well enough
in the earlier, simpler environment, leading to their modification
and replacement by new norms, at first chiefly through cultural
and biocultural selection, rather than through the explicit critique
and deliberate revision of existing norms. Assuming that the new
norms had to be more complex and perhaps more numerous,
successful internalization of the norms in each new generation
placed new demands on the exercise of the moral capacities.
At some point, for those societies that had made significant
progress in solving the basic problems to which morality in its
original form was an adaptation, other problems became salient
and new exercises of the moral capacities were prompted by
them. When achieving subsistence and physical security were no
longer the all-​consuming need and were no longer the dominant
if not the exclusive domain for the exercise of the moral capac-
ities, human beings came to develop increasingly explicit ideas of
human flourishing. And as contact with other societies increased,
it became easier to reflect on whether some social arrangements
were better than others. Just as important, in order to sustain the
norm-​enabled coordination that was required for coping with
the new social surpluses and the increasingly complex division
of social roles that enabled the large-​scale production of food,
human beings had to try to make moral sense of new forms of so-
cial interaction, including those grounded in political and social
stratification.
It would be a mistake to respond to this characterization of
morality as a historical, evolving phenomenon by saying that all
of these new developments can be explained in reference to the
original function of morality:  the achievement of coordination
and conflict management within the group and successful com-
petition with other groups in ways that were conducive to indi-
vidual and/​or cultural group fitness. Morality eventually became
untethered from these original functions, though of course such
open-​ended morality could not persist in a society if the original
 Conclusion  391
functions were not performed well enough to allow the society
to persist at a level of prosperity sufficient to allow the capacity
for open-​ended normativity to be focused on matters that lie be-
yond the securing of subsistence. As the exercise of the capacity
for open-​ended normativity came to play a larger role in human
life—​thanks to society’s growing success in allowing attention
to matters other than survival—​people came to require more of
their societies and of themselves. Saying that these developments
are nothing new, that they are all simply more efficient ways of
discharging the original function of morality, is at best extremely
misleading and utterly unilluminating. It would be equally inade-
quate to say that human societies haven’t changed because they are
what they have always been, namely arrangements for satisfying
human needs. Societies are now, and have been for some time,
much more than that. Similarly, morality is now and has been for
some time more than a social technology for underwriting in-​
group cooperation and successful competition with other groups.
Relationships between groups—​especially if the groups are terri-
torial nation-​states—​now feature a great deal of cooperation, as
the liberal theory of international relations critiques of realist the-
ories of international relations have shown. Relationships within
groups, at any scale, are much more fluid, more complex, and
more subject to being structured by more complex norms than
was the case with our hunter–​gatherer ancestors. Further, in the
contemporary world there is much more awareness of the pos-
sibility of changes in currently widespread norms, both because
more people have witnessed norm changes in their lifetimes than
was true for previous generations and because there are more
means and opportunities for contesting norms than there were
in the past.
Morality is not only dynamic and open-​ended in the sense that
it is no longer tethered to reproductive fitness; it has also become
increasingly self-​reflective, with morality itself an object for the
exercise of the capacity for open-​ended normativity. For many
humans, morality is no longer simply “how we do things” or
392 Conclusion
what God commands but rather a reason-​giving practice that is
essentially concerned with human flourishing and includes cease-
less argumentation over what human flourishing consists in and
what sort of society best facilitates human flourishing.
Our view is not that the capacity for open-​ended normativity,
regardless of the contexts in which it is exercised, somehow mag-
ically or inevitably discerns moral truths or yields reliable char-
acterizations of the moral facts. Rather, it is that under certain
favorable material and social-​epistemic conditions, this capacity
has come to be exercised in ways that contribute to more reli-
able judgments about what morality requires, in large part by
correcting mistaken judgments based on false empirical beliefs
about the natural capacities of various human groups, including
women, people of color, and more generally those regarded as
“foreigners” in the broadest sense. A  key idea here is that one
important source of indefensible moral judgments is a social ex-
perience of the “other” that is shaped (or rather misshaped) either
by EEA-​like conditions, by belief systems that trigger EEA-​like
threat cues, or by arbitrary inequalities within societies. On this
view, there is good reason to believe in the truth of moral beliefs
that are not tainted by a social experience that is distorted in these
ways and that are not rendered parochial by ignorance of the fact
that there is a plurality of ways of achieving human flourishing
and, accordingly, that there is more than one type of good so-
ciety. Put more positively, true moral beliefs are those that people
who understand that morality involves the giving and taking of
reasons would hold under conditions of information and social
experience that are conducive to making sound judgments in
general. And there is good reason to believe that those favorable
conditions are best exemplified—​so far—​in broadly liberal soci-
eties in which power is dispersed; in which there is freedom of
information and association; in which rights against racial, ethnic,
and gender discrimination and other forms of morally arbitrary
subordination are substantially realized; and in which moral ex-
periments can occur.
 Conclusion  393
The view just articulated is epistemic, not metaphysical: it is an
account, or the beginning of an account, of the conditions under
which moral judgments, or at least those that have to do with
moral status and moral standing or other important matters of
inclusion, are reasonably believed to be correct. On this view,
one important development in morality is an implicit improve-
ment in how the justification of moral judgments and norms is
conceived—​more specifically, the idea that it is often appropriate
to ask why it is the case that something is wrong or right, where
what counts as an answer is not that this is the way we have al-
ways done it or this is what God wills or what some supposed
authority says is right or wrong. In other words, our theory
recognizes that there has been progress in conceptions of moral
justification and that this has been internal to the development
of morality, through the exercise of the capacity for open-​ended
normativity. Our theory also is open to the possibility that this
may occur again, that there may be changes, and indeed improve-
ments, in understandings of moral justification and even of the
nature of moral truth.
Again, it bears emphasis that although it does assume moral
cognitivism—​the thesis that there is moral truth or moral facts—​
our theory is not committed to any particular view about what
moral truth consists in (apart from the rejection of the view that
it consists in what God wills or what is conducive to some bi-
ological function or to reproductive fitness). It is compatible,
nonetheless, with a constructivist meta-​ethics according to which
moral truths simply are moral judgments for which we have the
best reasons, on the assumption that the reasons in question are
those that meet familiar requirements of universalizability, that
is, that they are reasons for all agents, or at least all human agents,
who are capable of engaging as equals in a practice of interper-
sonal accountability for reasons.
The term “meta-​ethics” covers considerable territory. Some
theorists assume or argue that a meta-​ethical theory should specify
what morality is, take a stand on whether moral judgments can
394 Conclusion
properly be said to be true or false or at least justified or unjusti-
fied, decide whether moral properties are natural properties, and
supply an account of the meaning of basic ethical terms. Other
theorists, including some constructivists, have a less demanding
understanding of the requirements of a meta-​ethical theory, de-
nying (for example) that it must supply a semantics of ethical
terms. The naturalistic proto-​theory of moral progress developed
in this volume assumes that judgments about moral progress can
be evaluated at least in terms of their justification or lack thereof
and that at least those human individuals who now live under
relatively favorable material, political, and epistemic conditions
can sometimes be justified in making some local moral progress
assessments. Our assumptions about which social changes have
been morally progressive have relied mainly on very widespread
intuitions (about the wrongness of slavery, of cruel punishments,
etc.) that have remained stable under relatively favorable con-
ditions, including the epistemic advantages of liberal societies;
however, we have not offered an explicit defense of such judg-
ments. The important point to emphasize at this juncture is that
the judgments that the abolition of slavery was moral progress or
that the cessation of honor killings would be moral progress are
not different in kind, not inherently more problematic as moral
judgments, than the judgments that slavery and honor killings
are morally wrong. Our reflections on moral progress in this
volume, therefore, require that we affirm that moral judgments
can be true or at least justified; they do not require that we take
a stand on issues in meta-​ethics beyond that. If we turn out to be
wrong in thinking that our meta-​ethical commitments need be
no more robust than that, then perhaps we will at least have done
the service of stimulating those who try to think systematically
about moral progress to develop a cogent and more ambitious
meta-​ethical underpinning for their account.
The aim of the biocultural theory of moral change developed
over the course of this book has been to reconcile evolutionary
functional accounts of the origins of human morality, on the one
 Conclusion  395
hand, with the flexible and socially heterogeneous processes that
led to some of humanity’s greatest moral achievements so far, on
the other. We have shown that just as prehistoric components of
human moral nature both constrain and enable moral progress
in the modern world, so too do the cultural forces that interact
with those components in guiding moral development and ev-
olution. If this view is correct, then it suggests that moral sys-
tems, like other institutions, are not natural evolutionary givens
but rather active human constructions. This in turn gives us hope
that, with a full-​fledged biocultural theory of moral progress one
day in hand, human beings will be able to ensure that the arc of
the moral universe continues to bend steadily, if not inexorably,
toward progress.
 POSTSCRIPT
Moral Progress and Cultural Evolution

In this book, we have focused on the implications of alterna-

tive accounts of the biological evolutionary origins of morality
for inclusivist moral progress. We have not framed our reflec-
tions on the environmental conditions under which inclusivist
moralities are likely to emerge and be sustained in terms of
cultural evolutionary explanations. In fact, we have expressed
some skepticism that the emergence of inclusivist moralities
can be given a cultural evolutionary explanation—​or, at the
very least, we have questioned whether a fully adequate cul-
tural explanation would be “evolutionary,” in any meaningful
sense of that term.
Some cultural evolutionary theorists may be disappointed
with our stance. Peter Turchin, a rightly famous evolutionary
cultural anthropologist, has argued that war is the primary cause
of cultural evolution—​or has been until rather recently in human
history. In particular, he thinks that societies able to forge alli-
ances with out-​groups have an advantage in war-​making and that
this is an important explanation for the great increase of cooper-
ation that has occurred from the Neolithic revolution onward,
including the development of cooperative schemes that include
what were originally distinct tribal or ethnic groups (as in the
case of ancient Mesopotamian city-​based empires). Like other
cultural evolutionary theorists, such as Boyd and Richerson as
well as Joseph Henrich, Turchin thinks that whether a cultural
innovation spreads and persists depends chiefly on whether it
 Postscript  397
comports with evolved human learning mechanisms, whether it
is first adopted by successful or prestigious members of a group,
and whether, broadly speaking, it helps satisfy important human
physical and psychological needs.
To the extent that cultural evolutionary explanations of this sort
have taken a rigorous form, employing sophisticated mathematical
modeling techniques, they have been limited to “invisible hand”–​
type explanations: that is, they purport to show how new beha-
vior by individuals, often occurring randomly or accidentally or
through ad hoc experimentation, becomes emulated by others and
gradually brings about cultural changes that no one aimed at or
anticipated. They see cultural change as the unintended result of
many micro-​actions by individuals, actions which are themselves
explained by an account of how a very small number of features
of a behavior result in its being adopted by many people. Further,
they do not think of the first instances of the behavior that subse-
quently spreads to others as being the result of normative reflection
or any kinds of changes in normative beliefs. The first occurrence
of behavior that is a result of normative reflection or changes in
normative beliefs (what we have called exercises of the capacity
for open-​ended normativity) is much more complex—​and much
more in need of an explanation—​than the sorts of behavior that
the cultural anthropologists usually characterize as being “trans-
mitted” through imitation or borrowing. These cultural evolu-
tionary theorists tend to agree that the behaviors that spread have
a small number of features in common:  they comport well with
evolved human learning mechanisms (high learnability), and they
are the behavior of individuals who have prestige or of successful
individuals. Some theorists, including Turchin, add, rather com-
monsensically, that behaviors (and institutions) that satisfy human
needs or solve problems humans want satisfied tend to spread.
The first thing to note is that such “invisible hand” accounts
do not fit well with the account of demagoguery we sketch in this
book, in which a single individual (or a handful of individuals)
398 Postscript
at the apex of a social hierarchy can deliberately manipulate out-​
group threat cues and perceptions thereof, as well as the social
moral-​epistemic information space, in an effort to dramatically
transform moral norms and institutions in the service of power
consolidation.
Also conspicuously absent from evolutionary cultural ac-
counts is the possibility that, at least under conditions in which
adopting the behavior is not too costly (either in biological re-
productive terms or in terms of the interests of individuals or
groups that adopt them), sometimes the fact that a behavior is
perceived to be morally desirable or morally required (e.g., be-
cause it is linked to religious commitments) may also contribute
to its spreading. In our discussions of British abolitionism, we
noted that many abolitionists, perhaps the majority, came to a
new understanding of Christianity—​of what it means to be a
Christian:  they came to think that being a good Christian was
not only incompatible with owning slaves but also required ac-
tive efforts to put an end to slavery as an un-​Christian practice.
This kind of “mechanism” seems more plausible than prestige-​or
success-​based adoption of the behavior of the first abolitionists.
Further, the first abolitionists did not hit upon abolitionism ran-
domly, through experimenting with various stances on slavery;
instead, they came to abolitionism through reflection on what
it was like for slaves and for Europeans who participated in the
slave trade.
The phenomenon of the modern human rights movement,
which we have argued is the most complete institutional ex-
pression of inclusivist morality so far, may fit the standard cul-
tural evolutionary explanation template somewhat better. As we
noted in Chapter 5, there is something to be said, for example,
for the idea that the modern, post–​World War II human rights
movement was an extension of the adoption of constitutionalism
(where this features bills of rights) that first occurred in some of
the most powerful Western countries. Thus, one might think that
at least in part the spread of the commitment to human rights was
 Postscript  399
an example of adopting the behavior of prestigious individuals, in
this case the “individuals” being prestigious or successful coun-
tries. That notion does not fit the facts, however—​at least the
facts at the beginning of the modern human rights movement. As
Mary Ann Glendon and other historians of the movement have
conclusively documented, the impetus for the modern human
rights movement came from smaller countries, and the “Great
Powers” were reluctant participants in the movement. To say that
the weaker countries “copied” constitutionalism from prestig-
ious countries would be to undervalue and mischaracterize their
achievement:  they transformed the idea of constitutionalism as
limited to one country, by conceiving of an “International Bill
of Rights” that accorded rights not just to all the citizens of one
country but to all of humanity. To characterize this as “copying”
a legal-​political form from prestigious or successful countries
would be to ignore the fact that a transformation occurred—​a
transformation that apparently was the result of normative reflec-
tion on the horrors of the Second World War and the Holocaust.
As we argued in Chapter 10, the modern human rights move-
ment, and the particular list of rights included in its founding
documents, clearly reflect an understanding of the normative
roots of the catastrophic policies of the fascist and militarist na-
tionalist powers and are designed as an explicit rejection of the
key tenets of German fascism and Japanese militaristic nation-
alism. Standard cultural evolutionary explanations, so far, have
been inattentive to normative reflection or indeed changes in nor-
mative beliefs, either as causes of new behaviors or as causes of
their adoption by others.
So, our tentative conclusion is that the best versions of current
cultural evolutionary theorizing cannot tell us much of what we
want to know about the origins of some of the most momentous
cultural changes in the direction of greater inclusivity. Nor, as we
have suggested, can they tell us much about the major regressions
that have occurred and are occurring. This is not to say, however,
that cultural evolutionary theories are irrelevant to a theory of
400 Postscript
moral progress. They may be relevant in at least two ways. First,
as Turchin suggests, societies that were successful in forging al-
liances with out-​groups had an advantage in warfare; so perhaps
there was selection for suites of psychological characteristics that
allowed individuals to help forge and sustain alliances. Our ac-
count can easily accommodate this sort of story. We have rejected
the simple view of the environment of evolutionary adaptation
according to which our early prehistoric environments were uni-
formly hostile toward anything other than fear or hostility to-
ward out-​groups. And we have acknowledged that a psychology
which allowed the “toggle” to switch toward inclusivity would
have been more adaptive than one that was stuck in the exclu-
sivity mode. That is why we characterized the relevant psycho-
logical trait or cluster of traits as an adaptive plasticity.
We can agree, then, with Turchin that under the conditions in
which wars occur expanding the circle of cooperation, and hence
being able to relate to out-​group members in ways that make
that cooperation possible, are adaptive—​ that they can make
groups more successful in violent competition with other groups.
Further, it seems plausible that moral progress in the direction
of inclusiveness can only develop and be sustained if the cultural
groups that achieve it exist in a broader context of cultural prac-
tices and institutions that survive selectionist pressures.
Finally, perhaps cultural innovations in the direction of in-
clusivity do sometimes get “copied” along with other features
of societies that are prestigious or apparently successful but
not because those cultural innovations themselves are adapt­
ive. Cultural evolutionary theorists have emphasized that in-
dividuals often copy a whole range of behaviors of successful
or prestigious individuals, including behaviors that do not
themselves promote success (however defined). For example,
aspiring basketball players may copy the mannerisms and
hairstyles of basketball stars. So, it might be that some coun-
tries (or their leaders) either adopt human rights commitments,
or at least engage in social signaling that they expect others to
 Postscript  401
interpret as such commitments, not as the result of normative
reflections but for quite different reasons. Such an explanation
of non-​original adoptions may be plausible, but it is a far cry
from establishing that the standard cultural evolutionary tem-
plate explains most of what we want to understand about the
spread of human rights cultural innovations. The standard ac-
count of first-​adopters is too impoverished; it makes no place
for the obvious, namely that first-​adopters did not hit on the
idea of human rights accidentally, randomly, or in the process
of experimenting with different moralities, some inclusivist and
some exclusivist. The weaker countries that led the creation of
the modern human rights documents and institutions were not
like individuals hitting on new ways of extracting rodents from
their burrows while idly poking around with a stick.
 APPENDIX

Topics for Future Research

Although we have focused on the inclusivist dimension of moral

progress, we believe that the approach outlined in this book can
be fruitfully applied to other types of moral progress as well. In
future work, we aim to show how our naturalistic theory of moral
progress can help explain the additional types of moral progress
identified in Chapter 1. With respect to each type, we will also ex-
plore instances of moral regression and show how the theory can
shed light on them as well. In particular, the following research
questions arise out of the present project.
(1) What explains improvements in moral concepts that
do not implicate inclusivity? Here we will focus on improve-
ments in moral concepts that do not have to do, directly at least,
with gains in inclusiveness, and we will consider whether the
biocultural account of moral progress developed in this book
can account for these instances of moral conceptual progress as
well. For instance, we will explore morally progressive changes
in conceptions of moral responsibility, such as the shift toward
a focus on mental states as the basis of civil and criminal cul-
pability, and show how such shifts both reflect and foster more
adequate conceptions of human moral capacities. What environ-
mental and in particular social moral-​epistemic conditions made
these progressive changes possible? As with moral improvements
examined in the present volume, including shifts toward proper
inclusion and de-​moralization, the emphasis in this future project
404 Appendix
will be on providing a naturalistic explanation of other crucial
moral changes that likewise takes seriously the malleability of
human morality in the face of certain environmental conditions
and cultural innovations.
(2) What role do ideologies play in driving both moral re-
gression and moral progress? We believe that ideologies func-
tion as evaluative social maps that orient individuals in their
social world by fostering and being used to signal an entrenched
group-​based identity and that the shared characteristics of the
members of one’s group are not only thought of as valuable but
also importantly connected with the existence and preservation
of valuable features of society. For example, nationalist ideologies
typically portray the members of the nation as having certain dis-
tinctive virtues or as being especially virtuous and hold that the
nation’s greatness is due to this being so. According to this func-
tionalist conception of ideology, ideologies are systems of be-
lief that allow for an expansion of the social identity-​group well
beyond the usual feasible size for empathetic identification and
strongly altruistic behavior. At the same time, ideologies draw
a line around the expanded group, demarcating the moral com-
munity in ways that exclude other groups. This demarcation is
accomplished in part by refusing to ascribe to out-​groups the
valuable characteristics that members of the identity-​group sup-
posedly share and by conceiving of supposed characteristics of
the out-​group as serious threats to valued social arrangements.
Thus, we conceive of ideology as far more than simply a set of
beliefs that serves to justify existing inequality or the sociopo-
litical status quo. Indeed, we will make the case that ideologies
can sometimes foster moral progress and sometimes moral re-
gression, depending upon the character of the ideology and the
environment in which it operates.
(3) What is the relationship between individual moral prog-
ress and moral progress writ large? Here the focus would be on
three questions. First, to what extent does the lack of social moral
progress inhibit or constrain individual moral development, how
 Appendix  405
does individual moral development feed back into social moral
evolution, and what do these respective causal pathways look
like? Second, how are moral pioneers to be explained (natural-
istically)—​that is, given the importance of environment in our
theory of social moral progress, how does one account for the
fact that some individuals manage to transcend the moral limi-
tations under which most members of their society operate and
which systemically constrain morally progressive trends at the
population level? And third, how and under what conditions do
some subset of these moral pioneers become moral leaders who
drive progressive moral trajectories at the population level?
(4) Is moral progress usually an intentional or rather an
emergent phenomenon? Some cultural norms and institu-
tions, such as the principles of constitutional design, arise out
of a deliberate, foresighted evolutionary process; other institu-
tions, such as markets, appear to be the result of the aggrega-
tive, statistical effects of individual choices and actions, whether
through stochastic drift-​ like processes or directional “hidden
hand” mechanisms that drive population-​level cultural change.
To what extent and under what conditions does moral progress
come about in a foresighted and deliberate fashion, as opposed to
emerging, without human design, from a constellation of envi-
ronmental conditions and human actions directed to other ends?
If this question can be answered, what are the implications of the
answer for how moral progress can best be achieved?
(5) Is revolution sometimes necessary for moral progress,
and is it permissible? What light, if any, does our naturalized
theory shed on the question of whether, and if so under what
circumstances, radical political change—​and in particular vio-
lent revolutions—​is likely to bring about significant moral prog-
ress without offsetting regressions or prohibitive moral costs?
A  comparative case study between the successful American
Revolution and the failed French Revolution may be instructive
in this regard. Assuming that ideal theory correctly identifies a
high peak in a rugged moral progress landscape (an ideal), how
406 Appendix
can we determine which if any route to that peak is feasible and
morally permissible? This is a deceptively complex task, for given
the permissibility issue, progress toward an ideal does not boil
down to taking steps that more closely approximate the ideal or
that realize more of its necessary and sufficient conditions. This
is because the realization of some partial set of the conditions
that are necessary and sufficient for the ideal—​traversing a moral
valley, to continue with the landscape imagery—​may not pro-
duce a better state of affairs as judged from the desiderata of the
ideal state. In fact, partial realization of the ideal could make
things worse than the status quo—​and ideal theory does not tell
us whether this effective regression is morally justified. Thus,
a robust theory of transition—​in terms of both feasibility and
moral desirability—​will be a necessary component of any full-​
blown theory of moral progress.
(6) Could globalization be an impediment to moral progress
and experimentation? To what extent does globalization enable
or hinder significant moral progress regarding, for example, dis-
tributive justice? Chapter 8 showed that the ability to modify one
trait without disrupting other crucial components of an evolving
system is a necessary condition for cultural adaptation, as well as
for the prospect of carrying out moral reform without prohibi-
tive unintended consequences. In other words, selective shaping,
whether due to a natural or a foresighted selection process, requires
some degree of modularity and redundancy in system design.
Further, there are reasons, explored in Chapter  1, for thinking
that, as a generalization, efforts to achieve moral progress that in-
volve the attempt to achieve a radically different social order are
epistemically underfunded and that efforts at incremental (“in the
neighborhood”) improvements are generally more epistemically
responsible. Taken together, these considerations set the stage
for an interesting tension. On the one hand, it would seem that
integrating peoples and institutions now separated by national
boundaries is a good thing from the standpoint of morality as
inclusion, and therefore that increasing globalization is desirable
 Appendix  407
and will facilitate moral progress. Accordingly, some cosmopoli-
tans go so far as to argue that what is needed is a more thoroughly
integrated global political system, complete with a global con-
stitution, unified system of international law, and so on. On the
other hand, if reliable efforts to achieve moral progress should
be incremental and if incrementalism, at least so far as it involves
evolution through selection, requires a degree of modularity and
lack of “close-​knittedness” in social structures, then globaliza-
tion may impede moral progress.
In other words, although globalization seems to hold the
promise of greater opportunities for inclusivist advances, it
may make it increasingly difficult to modify interconnected
components of the global institutional world. It may well be that
some degree of fragmentation—​in, for example, international
law, international institutions, and more generally the political
and economic systems of states—​provides the threshold of mod-
ularity necessary for incremental change. What’s more, insofar
as the success of incremental moral reform requires the ability to
engage in controlled moral experimentation, globalization may
impose additional roadblocks to moral progress. The increasing
interconnectedness of institutions that globalization brings about
makes local experiments in alternative economic arrangements,
and hence moral progress in distributive justice that depends on
such experimentation, less feasible, other things being equal.
It may be no accident, then, that the most dramatic instances of
moral progress have occurred in liberal societies—​societies char-
acterized by the dispersal of power, disagreement, and a plurality
of contested values—​all of which are instances of fragmentation
of one sort or another. As discussed in the Introduction, degen-
eration theorists, such as MacIntyre, extoll societies that are more
like dense webs, in that they are characterized by a (supposed)
unity of belief and values—​but the great cost of great unity may
be a stagnant, nonprogressive society.
(7) How might efforts toward inclusive moral reform back-
fire? One lesson from the 2016 U.S. presidential election is that
408 Appendix
efforts to expand or even sustain moral inclusivity can backfire if
they are not inclusive enough. Secretary Clinton’s campaign right-
fully saw themselves up against the greatest threat to moral in-
clusivity in many decades—​especially with respect to historically
marginalized groups, such as blacks, Latinos, Muslims, women,
immigrants, and people with disabilities—​all of whom have been
targeted by Trump’s exclusivist rhetoric. Thus, the Clinton cam-
paign invested, quite reasonably, in the contrasting theme of an
inclusive America that is safer and stronger in its diversity—​an
America that is dedicated to building bridges, not walls, between
peoples of different faiths, ethnicities, and genders. But this
seemingly uncontroversial message of inclusivity was rejected by
a strong majority of the electoral college and only slightly less
than half of the voting public. Although there were many reasons
for the failure of Clinton’s (and thus the Democrats’) bid for the
White House, including factors that were both endogenous and
exogenous to the campaign (as well as to the country itself), it
appeared that many people of the United States in 2016 widely
rebuffed an inclusivist message in favor of a virulently exclusivist
one. A  post mortem on the election revealed that a collapse of
Democratic support in the predominantly white working-​class
populations of the rust belt states was one chief cause of Clinton’s
electoral defeat. One explanation for this collapse is that white
working-​class Americans, who have suffered for decades under
great economic strain and economic injustice, have felt excluded,
set aside, taken for granted, or in some cases affirmatively harmed
by the traditional Democratic almost exclusive focus on injus-
tices suffered by groups that have been traditional victims of dis-
crimination. By emphasizing justice for some groups (women,
people of color, and LGBT people) while giving insufficient at-
tention to the grievances of others, the Democratic Party may
have unintentionally caused a backlash. More specifically, it may
have conveyed the message that the problems of many citizens—​
and hence those people themselves—​don’t count. That message
deprives the hearer of something that virtually all people demand
 Appendix  409
and which, if withheld, is a potent source of rage: namely, recog-
nition. Trump, in contrast, offered recognition to these “forgotten
Americans” and offered it through the use of an exclusionary
rhetoric that unambiguously attributed their pain to the actions
of “the other”—​political elites, beneficiaries of affirmative action
and “welfare” policies, and foreigners who were supposedly de-
priving them of jobs. The moral of the story is that inclusivist
movements that are insufficiently inclusive can actually result
in exclusivist regressions. If this diagnosis is correct, it has large
implications for the strategy and morality of efforts to achieve
moral progress that are well worth exploring in further detail.
(8) To what extent can the discussions in this volume of the
role of cultural innovations in either promoting moral prog-
ress or contributing to regression be cast in terms of cultural
evolutionary explanations? Recent scholarship by theorists such
as Boyd, Richerson, and Henrich (whose work we have already
discussed) emphasizes how cultural changes can drive genetic
evolution. Such thinkers have also begun to argue that although
cultural change is in several important respects not like genetic
evolution, it is nonetheless amenable to something that can be
meaningfully called an evolutionary explanation. In particular,
they think that there are fruitful evolutionary explanations of the
emergence and modification of cultural phenomena in spite of the
fact that culture and culturally informed behavior is not a matter
of discrete, faithfully replicable units like genes. Some of the cul-
tural changes we have discussed, following the work of Norbert
Elias, like the development of a suite of psychological traits that
facilitate success in relatively peaceful market societies under
a complex division of labor, may be subject to such a broadly
“selectionist” explanatory framework. That is, one can see how
under those environmental conditions, possessing impulse con-
trol, foresight, and credible signaling of “prosocial” attitudes to
strangers who were potential trading partners might contribute
to the success of individuals and groups—​at least their social and
economic success. Whether the possession of such traits would
410 Appendix
contribute (or contribute for long) to biological reproductive
success is less obvious since the wealth that market societies pro-
duce leads to declines in fertility among those whose standard of
living rises beyond a certain point. However, the emergence and
diffusion of these psychological traits and signaling behaviors
also seem to be explainable using an economic vocabulary that is
not especially Darwinian in character. For example, we can say,
following Elias, that the rise of the modern state created relatively
safe spaces in which markets and a complex division of labor
could emerge and that in these environments individuals have in-
centives to develop the above traits. We can also say that the first
individuals in a particular cultural environment who developed
these “bourgeois virtues” would be likely to succeed and that be-
cause of their success their behavior would be imitated by others.
We can also see how market-​oriented social forms would drive
out pre-​market forms by outcompeting them. Finally, we could
go on to try to describe how more peaceful, inclusive behav­ior
toward strangers under these conditions might eventually be sus-
tained by internalized moral norms regarding the importance
of prudence, honesty, and faithfulness in keeping bargains. Yet
whether such explanations are close enough in their structure to
Darwinian genetic evolutionary explanations to warrant the title
“evolutionary explanations” is subject to doubt. Similarly, we
have argued that the capacity for open-​ended normativity plays
an important role in moral progress, but it is not obvious how
this fact could be accommodated within an explanatory frame-
work that is properly called evolutionary. Further research on
moral progress should examine the extent to which cultural evo-
lutionary explanations are a fruitful tool for understanding moral
progress and regression.
 INDEX

Aboud, Frances  131n25 Australia 284

Achilles heel  116, 376 autocracy 358
adaptively plastic  37, 135, 189, 191–92, autonomy  55–56, 69, 283
202, 204, 205, 207–08, 210, 245,
312–13, 332, 334, 377–78; plasticity  37, Bandura, Albert  227–28
41, 189–91, 199–204, 200–08, 210, bargain  57–58, 295, 410; bartering  191
223–24, 237n25, 245, 312, 348, 352, Bar-​Tal, D.  226n13
355, 366, 369, 400 basic norms  68, 109
Africa  324, 328; African  57, 181n41, 213, basic rights  39, 55, 80, 160, 274, 277, 285,
276–77, 318, 327, 329, 379–81 303–04, 311, 327
African American  20, 220 basic status  13–17, 40; moral status  12–17,
Ahmad, N.  362n17 57–58, 60, 62, 64–65, 71, 73, 110, 115,
Alexander, Richard  122n8, 145n52 145, 148, 154–55, 157–58, 173, 176, 180,
alienation 82–84, 242 181n41, 215, 226, 232, 245, 274, 275,
Allport, Gordon  191n1 277, 294, 298–301, 303–04, 358, 360,
all-​things-​considered  6–7, 382 374–76, 379, 383–86, 393; See also moral
Alter, K.  156n6 standing
altruism failures  77–80, 86, 160, 178 Bastian, Brock  221n2
American Revolution  405 Batson, C.  362n17
American South  150, 206 behavior  viii, ix, 23, 38, 48, 54–56, 58–59,
analytic 45, 375 63–65, 71, 75, 84–85, 87, 89, 117–18,
analytic philosophy  vii–viii, ix, 4, 32, 58 120–21, 125n13, 127–28, 133, 140, 145,
Anderson, Elizabeth  61n12, 99 147n57, 151n62, 156–57, 163, 164, 169,
Andrews, P.  223n7 171, 176–78, 180, 183–84, 188–89, 193,
Anglican 317 200–1, 203, 209, 214, 215, 220, 222, 224,
animal welfare  36, 139, 214 232, 234, 239, 241–42, 246–47, 259, 274,
anthropology  vii, 1, 32, 37, 77, 123n9, 171, 279, 302, 313, 315, 321, 329, 331, 338,
196–97, 200, 247, 332, 396–97 351, 362, 364, 366, 371, 373, 377, 379,
anti-​Semitism  25 386, 397–400, 404, 409–10;
anti-​vaxxers  259 behavioral  54, 75, 118, 124, 129–30,
Appiah, Kwame Anthony  55n5, 319 165, 168
Arab Spring  339 behavioral altruism  141, 160
archeology  127, 129–30, 196–98 beneficence  241, 276, 288, 290, 291
Aristotelian 76, 143 Berlin, Ira  316
armor  189–90, 192, 356, 377 Bernhard, Helen  130n23
Arnhart, Larry  140 bias  9, 10, 31, 99, 130–32, 175, 200, 202, 229,
artificial 168, 301 263, 363, 369; biases  10, 27n16, 37, 99,
Ashford, Elizabeth  177n34 100, 130–32, 138, 139, 174, 190, 201,
Asia 335; Asian 215 342, 369, 370; cognitive biases  27n16,
Asma, Stephen  138, 139n42, 178n35 28, 93–94, 99, 102, 147n56, 188, 218,
asymmetry 222–24, 370 221, 223, 225, 227, 228, 234, 237, 245,
attribution error  222 341, 358, 378; copying biases  175, 251,
Austin, W.  201n11 258, 259n24
412 Index
Bible  247; biblical  243, 246, 250
bigoted  243, 245, 259
binary 192
biocultural  xi, 37–39, 41, 208, 217, 240, 245,
266, 273, 332, 348, 378, 379, 390, 394,
395, 403
bioethics  vii; medical ethics  56
biomedical enhancement  347, 369
biomedical intervention  40, 146, 184, 347,
351, 363, 371, 373, 380–81
biomedical moral enhancement (BME)  40,
184, 345–51, 353–54, 357, 359, 361, 363,
364–67, 371–73
Blaire, R.  136n37
Bobo, Lawrence  155n5
Boehm, Chris  120n3, 121n4, 121n6, 123n9,
124n11, 127n14, 171n28, 172n29,
172n30, 197n7
bonobos  128, 194–97
bottom up  34, 45, 386
Boutros, Victor  254n19, 281n2, 315n3
Bowles, Samuel  79n14, 122n8, 123n9,
125n12, 125n13, 127n14, 128n19,
130n23, 130n24, 132, 172n29, 197n8,
209n21, 364n19
Boyd, Robert  122n8, 123n9, 124n11,
125n12, 130n23, 132, 138, 174, 175,
178, 197n7, 197n8, 201n14, 244n6, 258,
259n24, 265, 396, 409
Brady, Michael  99n6
Bramble, D.  128n18
Brandon, Robert  xiii, 119n2, 264n28
Bretton Woods  336
Brewer, Marilynn  131n27, 191
brinkmanship 221, 249
British abolition  2–3, 40, 47, 212, 213n23,
216, 316–17, 319–24, 327, 337, 368,
380–81, 398
Brown, Donald  118n1, 201n10
Buchanan, Allen  vii, 8n6, 30n19, 56n7,
57n8, 58n10, 65n16, 76n9, 79n15,
85n24, 85n25, 101n8, 156n7, 180n38,
225n11, 231n19, 232n20, 239n1, 241n3,
260n25, 264n26, 280n1, 287n5, 289n6,
290n7, 290n8, 301n12, 246n4
Buchanan, James  2n1, 283
Buddhist 215
Burden of proof  14
byproduct  30, 135, 164–70, 174–78, 181–82,
184, 196, 223, 376–77
Campbell, Richmond  xiii, 55n6, 87–90, 148–49
Canada 248, 330
capital punishment  303–04
capitalism 332; capitalist 24, 331
caste  13, 15, 225, 253, 257, 277
ceteris paribus  98–99, 193; all else being
equal 241
charity  39, 274, 276, 288–92, 299–300, 379
Child’s Convention  307
chimpanzee  121–22, 127, 129, 133n30,
194–97; chimp  121, 128, 168, 194–97
China 310, 341
Choi, Jung-​Kyoo  130n23
Christian  22–23, 294, 311, 323–24, 398;
Christianity  214, 323–24, 398
circumcision 246
civil rights  9, 36, 155, 220
Civil War, the  3n3, 97, 326, 327
Clark, Gregory  215n26
clean moral progress  98
climate change  x, 40, 302, 343, 350, 354, 357,
359, 360–61, 364, 369, 372
Clinton, Hillary  408
clitoris, hyena  165–67, 356, 377
coercion  65, 72n6, 175, 255, 257, 289,
351, 371; coercive  86, 232, 241, 314,
321, 354, 389
co-​evolution  131–32, 135, 137
Cohen, D.  206n18, 250n14
collective action  120, 255–58, 263, 309, 361,
369, 372
colonialism  8, 24, 48, 328, 330–31, 380;
colonial domination  7, 329;
imperialism 8
combatants 98
compliance  8, 10n8, 11, 35, 50, 54,
60, 62–63, 67–75, 92–94, 107, 135,
156, 246–47, 257, 260–61, 265,
268, 273, 307, 313, 371, 375, 388;
conformity  8, 54, 67–68, 75, 87, 93,
95, 110, 175, 307
comprehensive  18–19, 41, 55n5, 71, 82,
104–5, 212, 276, 306, 311, 323–24, 386
constitutional democracy  x, 156, 171, 254
constitutional monarchy  320
constructivism  95, 387; social
constructivism 388
contingent  39, 74, 95, 144, 154–55, 162, 245,
257, 263, 296, 300–01, 316, 356,
357, 362

Convention on Ending Apartheid and
Racial Discrimination  307
Convention on the Rights of Indigenous
Peoples 307
Convention on the Rights of Migrants and
Their Families  307
Convention on the Rights of People with
Disabilities 307
cooperative  2, 35, 49, 58, 62, 86, 89, 118, 121,
122, 123n9, 125, 132, 144–45, 156–62,
172, 180, 190–93, 198–99, 202, 207, 246,
255, 293, 298–301, 312, 344, 376, 379, 396
Cosmide, Leda  179
cosmopolitan  36, 64, 82, 84, 111, 138–140,
146, 155, 156, 161, 172, 177, 179,
205, 407
courts  156, 280, 286, 307
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights  286,
307, 310, 341
Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural
Rights 286, 307
criminal law  371
cultural innovation  34, 40, 151, 178, 198–99,
205, 207, 211–13, 215, 219, 225, 227–28,
234, 236, 240, 254, 256, 273, 313–14,
320, 322, 338, 347, 357, 365–66, 370–72,
378, 380–81, 396, 400–01, 404, 409
culturally entrenched  251
Cunningham, William  131n26
Currie, Adrian  194n3, 197n5
Dar-​Nimrod, Ilan  221n3
Darwin, Charles  76, 119, 147, 168–69,
180, 277; Darwinian  ix, 34, 76, 77,
116, 122, 126, 134, 229–30, 245, 329,
389, 410; Darwinian right  140; Social
Darwinism 228
Davis, David Brion  316, 328
Dawkins, Richard  252
De Dreu, C.  362n15
De Tocqueville, Alexis  100
defect  21, 27, 101–2, 375; defective  37, 101,
105, 188, 218, 231, 233, 240n2, 260, 279,
329, 330, 333, 358, 378
defecting 255–56; defection 255;
defectors 257
degeneration  21–24, 26, 233, 267, 347,
353–54; degeneration thesis  7, 23,
375, 382; degeneration theorists  21–25,
129, 310–11, 384, 407
Index  413
DeGrazia, David  154n1
dehumanize  133, 172, 225–27, 230, 232–33,
235, 333, 358
delegitimize 133, 226
demagogue  xi, 340, 397
democracy  x, 3, 22, 24, 25, 100, 156, 171,
230, 254, 291, 317, 334, 336, 350, 358,
364–65, 371
Democratic Party  408
de-​moralize  38–39, 56n7, 65, 84, 94n3,
239–43, 259, 260, 262, 266–69,
378, 403
Denmark 284, 330
design  vii, xi, 76, 80, 121, 124, 139,
158, 160, 171, 177, 186, 203, 244,
254, 264, 326, 355–56, 366, 370,
399, 405–06
detection  124, 189–90, 201, 223, 235, 236,
312, 377
DeVore, I. 235
diachronic 351–52
Diamond, Jared  345
difference-​maker  155, 167–69, 320
dignity  55, 69, 158
dilemma  103, 105, 108–9, 134,
195, 373
Dinar, A.  359n14
disability  83, 157, 160, 177, 234, 280,
298–301, 333, 365, 366, 408
disability rights  298–300
discrimination  6, 13, 15–17, 21, 25, 47, 101,
139, 155, 190, 193, 198–99, 245, 298,
310, 340, 359, 392, 408
disgust  136, 148, 164, 201, 204–5, 227, 232,
246, 330
disunity 109
divine command theory  59, 61, 71,
72n5, 392
domestic affairs  309–10
domestic law  156, 176
Dovidio, J.  155n4
downstream niche construction  367
Dresher, Seymour  316, 318n4, 319n5, 320,
324, 327n8
drift 30, 405
duel  57, 72, 242, 256, 257
duty  140, 145, 176, 180–81, 183–84, 241,
274, 277, 281, 283, 288–92,
295, 298, 309; imperfect duties
290–92; perfect duties  290, 292
414 Index
dynamic  35, 46, 220, 234, 367, 375, 391;
dynamics  84, 87, 98–99, 102, 107, 124,
175, 178, 179, 198, 201, 203, 249, 251,
258, 331, 361
Ebola 216
ecology  8, 121, 127, 130, 132, 196, 198, 206,
248, 251, 344, 387; ecological  8, 76, 77,
117, 123, 124, 128, 129, 133, 138, 158,
160–63, 170, 172, 174, 189, 191, 194–95,
202, 206, 208–9, 248–49, 251, 261, 264,
343, 367
efficacy  75, 146, 147n56, 150, 151, 211, 225,
284, 315, 370
egalitarian  17, 21, 83–84, 121–22, 124,
126, 155, 171–73, 177, 249, 345;
egalitarianism  13, 171, 344;
inegalitarian  161–62, 326, 330, 335,
337, 344
Eldredge, Niles  235n23
Elias, Norbert  6, 49, 75, 203, 247, 315,
323, 409
elites  25, 219, 238, 249, 253–57, 259,
263, 409
emancipation  2–3, 39, 213n23, 241, 257,
258, 266, 269, 316, 318, 325, 327,
328, 378
empathy  100, 130–31, 170–71, 173, 190, 209,
213n25, 346, 361–64
Emperor Caracalla  48–49, 51
empirical  5–6, 11, 16, 19, 24, 27–30, 37–38,
72, 76, 95n4, 108, 116, 120–21, 125, 140,
149, 150–51, 153, 162, 174, 183, 185,
186, 203, 221–22, 234, 256, 262, 284,
314, 347, 359, 361, 392
England 318
enlightenment  4, 22, 25–26, 27n16, 56,
147n56, 240, 277, 311, 319, 321, 323–24
environment of evolutionary adaptation
(EEA)  77, 80, 88, 90, 158, 162, 166, 170,
171, 184, 186, 187, 188, 192, 198–99,
202, 205, 207, 208, 211, 216, 218, 219,
221, 223, 229, 232–33, 236, 244–45,
247–49, 312–14, 316, 321, 324, 333, 335,
338–41, 354, 377–78, 392
Epicurus 58
epigenetic 352
epistemic  54, 92n1, 93–97, 99, 101–3, 105,
108, 109–10, 120, 197n5, 213, 220, 227,
234, 236, 244–45, 285, 302, 323, 328,
331, 348, 352, 358, 360, 361, 366, 367,
375–76, 378, 385, 393–94, 406. See also
epistemic humility; moral-​epistemic;
social-​epistemic
epistemic humility  87, 102–3, 386; epistemic
arrogance  90, 104, 107; epistemic
hubris  89; epistemic modesty  94
escape mechanisms  252
essentialism  245, 354, 265; essentialize  131,
198, 221–24, 358, 378
ethnocentric  130–31, 200, 366
ethnographic  121, 124, 127, 129, 130, 198
ethnonational 206, 366
etiology  119, 356, 366; etiological  78, 86,
88–90, 119, 294, 332, 351, 352
eugenics  225, 230–33, 260, 329, 330–33,
353, 378; eugenicists  13, 230–33, 330,
332n13, 353, 354
European Union  307
evangelical 361
evoconservative  35, 36, 37, 38, 40, 111, 117,
134, 137–38, 140–44, 146, 152–53, 162,
164, 166, 169, 173, 176, 177–78, 182–87,
192, 198–99, 239, 262, 263–66, 268, 276,
346, 349, 351–54, 376, 378, 380
evoliberal  40, 146, 184, 187, 345–47,
349, 350–59, 363–64, 367, 368–71,
373, 380–81
evolutionary hangovers  206, 247, 263;
Pleistocene hangover  248, 249
evolutionary leash  ix, 142, 178
exogamy  134, 198, 202, 312
explanation  5, 15, 33–34, 36, 38, 41, 76–78,
109–11, 117–18, 120, 123n9, 126,
133, 135, 137–38, 141, 144, 147, 149,
151–58, 163–75, 178–86, 188, 195,
203–4, 208, 217, 222, 234, 236–37,
244–45, 247, 256, 260, 293, 296, 306,
320, 324–26, 332, 334–35, 337–48,
352, 355, 356, 363, 376, 396–99, 401,
404, 408–10
factory farm  181n41, 214, 368
fairness  88, 117, 173, 276, 356, 388
false negatives  64, 223–24; faulty
inclusions 64
false positives  64, 223–24, 236
fascism  xi, 229–30, 329, 333, 335, 399
fear  x, 50, 54, 148, 154, 181n41, 201–2, 204,
205, 211, 214, 216, 220, 227, 233, 330,
333, 400
Feinberg, Joel  295

female genital mutilation  256, 257
feminist 300
Fessler, Daniel  133n30, 136n38,
200n9, 246n8
Fincher, Corey  200, 201n12, 366n20
fitness  34, 76, 79–80, 119, 123n9, 129, 133,
147, 159–62, 164, 170, 174, 178, 180,
191–93, 198, 202, 208, 245–47, 254,
255n21, 256, 257, 259, 262, 390–91, 393
FitzPatrick, William  160n12, 180
Flanagan, Owen  183
flourishing  69, 72n6, 76, 86, 92n1, 104, 240,
243, 261, 299, 334, 361, 390, 392
Fogel, Robert  215n26
folk psychology  27
footbinding  57, 256, 257
foreign  79, 209, 220; foreigners  49, 179,
190, 213n25, 216, 219–20, 231, 330, 341,
378, 392, 409
Forst, Rainer  xiii, 334n14
Forsyth, D.  249n13
foundationalism 45, 87
fragmentation 23, 407
France 24, 100
free-​riding  x, 120, 125, 126, 133, 137, 209,
232, 233, 255, 291, 333, 371
French Revolution  100, 405
Fricker, Miranda  54n4, 99n6
Fukuyama, Francis  139
function  14, 28, 35, 38, 47, 75–81, 83, 85–93,
96, 107, 109, 117–20, 124, 131, 137, 138,
145, 149, 158, 160, 165, 177, 205, 227,
229, 246, 247, 254–59, 265, 268, 279–80,
295–96, 332, 336, 338, 343, 351, 370,
387–91, 393–94, 404
functionalist accounts  75, 89, 96, 107, 375
Gaertner, S.  155n4, 201n13
Gaus, Gerald  94n4, 103, 105, 106
Gauthier, David  58, 144n50, 145, 293
gay marriage  267. See also same-​sex
partnerships
GDP 176
Gelman, G.  221n3, 224n9
gender  6, 9, 13, 15, 17, 25, 31, 35, 62, 101,
155, 157, 251, 310, 322, 340, 392, 408
gene’s eye  252, 253
generic overgeneralization  224
genetic determinist  207
Germany  24, 206, 226, 229, 230, 284, 329,
330, 333
Index  415
germplasm  231, 260, 329, 330
Gibbard, Allan  120n3, 145n53
Gil-​White, F.  223n8
Gintis, Herbert  79n14, 122n8, 128n19, 132,
172n29, 209n21, 364n19
Glendon, Mary Ann  308, 399
global moral progress  6, 7, 24, 31, 53, 375,
382, 386. See also local moral progress
globalization 406, 407
Glover, Jonathan  52, 225n12, 339
God  4, 59, 62, 72, 278, 294, 295, 296, 297,
311, 392, 393
Godfrey-​Smith, Peter  123n9
Goethals, A.  249n13
Golden Rule  228
Goldsmith, Jack  139, 141, 146n54,
178, 179
Goodman, Ryan  156n6, 169n26, 175
Gould, Jay  165, 235n23
Great Depression  229
Great Recession  340
Griffiths, Paul  354
habeas corpus  320
Hague Conventions  230
Haidt, Jonathan  87–88, 120n3, 123n9, 139,
140, 141, 148n58, 169n26, 209n20
Haley, K.  136n38
handicap principle, the  163
hard-​wired  35, 134–35, 142, 187, 191, 194,
199, 202, 204–8, 273, 312, 355, 368,
376–77, 380
Hare, Brian  196n4
Haselton, M.  223n7
Haslam, Nick  221n2, 225n12, 228
hate speech  341
Haugen, Gary  254, 281n2, 315n3
Hayek, Friedrich  283, 284
health  22, 24, 248, 256, 290–92, 316,
327, 340; healthcare  210, 232, 283, 285,
290, 291, 366, 372; public health  210,
212, 219, 232, 280, 291
Heine, Steven  221n3
hemoclysm 335, 336
Henrich, Joseph  32, 34, 124n11, 203,
396, 409
heritable  118, 144, 174, 244, 253
heuristic  175, 193, 224, 259, 366
Hewston, Miles  131n27, 191n1, 201n14, 222n5
hierarchical  21, 122, 129, 171, 254, 345;
anti-​hierarchical  121
416 Index
Hirschfeld, Lawrence  221, 222, 226, 228
history  vii, 2–3, 5, 8, 20–21, 26–28, 36–37, 41,
58, 60, 68, 76, 94, 98, 116, 122, 126, 138,
140, 151n62, 166–67, 169, 173, 186, 190,
194, 197n5, 200, 203, 206–7, 210, 215, 217,
220, 228, 234, 238–39, 248, 251, 254, 278,
297, 303, 313, 316, 322, 324, 326, 333–34,
337–39, 344, 346–49, 352–53, 355, 367,
368, 372, 378, 383, 385, 390, 396, 408;
historian  2, 5, 18, 51, 212, 232–33, 308,
317, 319–20, 324, 327, 330, 399
hitchhiking 165
Hitler 330
Hobbes, Thomas  58, 293, 314, 315, 316, 320
Holmes, Stephen  21
Holocaust  1, 5, 233, 330, 337, 399;
genocide  1, 2, 40, 170, 225–26, 233,
303, 339, 343, 357, 361, 372
Holocene 127, 159
homicide  75; homicide rates  5, 7, 48–51,
54, 60, 129, 172, 321, 345, 360
homosexual  148, 241, 242, 250, 251, 267;
homosexuality  65, 242, 250
honor  55, 65, 71, 206, 242, 250, 256, 319
honor culture  206, 250
honor killings  25, 243, 394
Hoschild, Adam  213n24
house of cards  263, 264
Hoyt, C.  249n13
hubris  19, 38, 89, 97, 239, 263, 353
Hull, David  143n49, 354n8
human nature  ix, 2, 28, 29, 30, 36, 111, 115,
116, 117, 139–40, 143, 185, 187, 234–35,
279, 346, 353, 376
human rights inflation  287
human rights  x, 8, 22, 36, 39, 40, 58, 82,
101–02, 155–56, 158–59, 171–72, 175,
177–78, 225, 273, 275–78, 280–87,
292–93, 294, 296–99, 301, 304–11,
314–16, 323–28, 332–39, 341, 360, 366,
371–72, 376, 379, 380, 384, 398–401
humanitarian law of war  359
Hume, David  27n16, 58, 293
hunter-​gatherer  24, 117, 120, 121, 126–27,
129, 171–73, 191, 195, 198, 209, 229,
246, 248, 309, 343, 344, 345, 391
hyper-​inductions  222
hypothesis  35, 72, 78, 89, 90, 121, 132, 134,
189, 190, 194–95, 197, 200–204, 207–08,
210, 212, 215–16, 219, 221, 235, 314,
315, 319, 331, 380
ideology  97, 212, 228, 232, 255, 257–59,
276, 328, 332, 335, 339, 378, 404;
ideological 331–32, 337
ignorance 99, 392
in vitro fertilization  267
incommensurable 6, 53
incremental  105, 265, 106, 406, 407;
incrementalism  106, 264, 407
indeterminate  74–75, 90, 96, 107,
288–89, 375
India  255, 277, 324
Industrial Revolution  7, 22, 25
inequality  1, 13, 17, 99–102, 171, 329,
344, 404
infectious disease  48–49, 200–201, 210, 216,
226, 236, 291, 321, 348, 365
in-​group  x, 130–34, 137, 139, 140, 169n26,
171, 190, 198, 200–203, 209, 220,
222–23, 244, 331, 361–63
injustice  20, 28, 60, 74, 99, 102, 106, 299,
379, 408
innate  88, 118n1, 131, 136, 144, 169n26, 170,
173, 194, 198, 204, 224, 226, 248, 250,
354, 355
institutions  vii, x–xi, 2–3, 10, 11n9, 12,
16, 18, 25, 28, 38, 41, 46–47, 50, 55,
60, 68–69, 71, 73–74, 96, 100, 106–7,
117, 122, 124–26, 136, 139, 140–42,
146, 153–56, 161–62, 169n26, 171, 173,
176–79, 181, 183–86, 202, 204, 208–10,
212, 215–16, 219, 223, 225, 227, 230,
236, 242–43, 250, 254, 257, 259, 261,
267, 274–76, 278–79, 281–82, 285, 289,
291–92, 298, 302, 305, 306, 312–14, 318,
324–26, 333, 336, 342, 357–61, 365–66,
368, 370–74, 376, 381, 384–85, 388–89,
395, 397–98, 400–401, 405–7
instrumental  74, 121, 236. See also
non-​instrumental
interdisciplinary  vii, viii, 31, 126, 234
intergenerational  60, 256, 302
intergroup  79, 125, 127–34, 168, 170–72,
186, 191, 195, 196, 201–2, 208–9,
219–20, 222, 224, 226–27, 234, 249, 250,
344, 357–58, 362–66
International Bill of Rights  286, 307,
336, 399
International Convention on the Rights of
People with Disabilities  301
international law  58, 139, 307, 308,
309, 407
 Index  417
International Monetary Fund  307 liberal  vii, 4, 8n6, 25–28, 36, 38, 45, 64, 111,
international organizations  286, 308, 310 115, 146, 147n56, 151, 187, 230, 237n25,
intrinsic worth  69 238, 240, 241–42, 260, 283, 334–45,
invisible hand  397 349–50, 361, 385, 391–92, 394, 407;
Iraq 339 liberalism 311; See also evoliberal
irrational  56, 243, 246, 256, 259, 296, 350 libertarian 283–85
irreducible 92, 93 liberty  213, 240–43, 268–69, 283, 303, 378;
Islamic State  5, 339 liberties  261, 284, 318
Israel  170, 250, 341 Lieberman, Deborah  128n18,
Italy 229–30, 329 135n33, 164n19
Lincoln, Abraham  3n3, 277
Japan  229–30, 284, 326, 329, 333, linguistic 189, 390; ethnolinguistic 
335–36, 399 130, 132
Jervis, Robert  220, 221n1 Linquist, Stefan  206n19
Jim Crow  21, 326 literacy  147n56, 210, 213, 216, 317, 318,
Jinks, Derek  156n6, 169n26, 175 321, 322; illiteracy  313
Jost, John  211n22 Lloyd, Elizabeth  203
jurisdiction  267, 292, 308, 309, 337 local moral progress  6–7, 24, 31, 53,
jus cogens  304 375, 381, 394. See also global moral
justice  1, 10–11, 18–19, 39, 59–60, 65, 74, progress
85, 86, 140, 169n26, 241, 243, 254, luxurious  287, 313, 322, 365, 368, 369
267–68, 274, 276, 277, 279–80, 285, luxury good  188, 210–12, 215–16, 218–19,
288–94, 297–98, 299–300, 302, 327, 225, 314–15, 320, 334
342, 370, 379, 383–84, 406–8
Machery, Edouard  135n32, 136n38,
Kant, Immanuel  76; Kantian  58, 110 143n49, 354n8
Kardashev, Nicolai  343 MacIntyre, Alastair  1, 7, 21–23, 310–11,
Keeley, Lawrence  127n14, 129, 172n29, 375, 407
197n8, 357n12 Mackie, Gerry  256n22
Kelly, Raymond  128n16, 129, 132, 136n38 Macklin, Ruth  68, 69n2, 70, 72–74
Kershaw, Ian  229n17 maladaptive  174, 175, 245, 256, 258,
Kevles, D.  327n9 262, 263
Kinzey, Warren  235n24 Mania, E.  201n13
Kitcher, Philip  77–81, 83, 85, 87, 120n3, 138, manipulate  171, 201, 219–20, 225–26, 236,
160–61, 180n39 340, 363, 398; manipulation  x, xi, 173,
Koontz, Claudia  228n16 236, 301, 339–41, 378
Kumar, Victor  xiii, 55n6, 87–90, 147n57, marginalize  25, 84, 106, 125, 161,
149, 204, 205 358, 408
Kuran, Timur  243 Markel, H.  216n29
market economies  6, 7, 203, 204
Lahr, M. 130 market integration  204
lawyers 280, 336 market relations  22, 24, 49, 50, 204
Lazari-​Radek, K.  147n56, 163n16 Marshall Plan  336
League of Nations  333 Martin Luther King Jr.  1, 6, 342, 395
Lecky, William  62, 69 Maryanski, Alexandrea  197n6
legislation 292 Mathew, Sarah  124n11, 130n23, 197n8
Leslie, Sarah-​Jane  222, 228 Mayorga, M.  141n48
Levy, Arnon  194n3 McDonald, Melissa  130n23, 133n30
Lewens, Tim  143n49, 354n8, 355n10 McNeil, W.  255n20
Lewontin, Richard  124n10, 165, medical ethics  56
244n5, 264 medicine 212
418 Index
Mendelsohn, R.  359n14
Mesopotamia 396
meta-​ethics  95, 96, 108, 386, 387, 388,
393, 394
meta-​moral progress  35, 98, 376
metaphysics  94, 108, 393
Mexican 216
Michod, Richard  253n18
microenvironment 236, 365
Middle East  5, 243, 324, 339
Middle Passage  213–14, 318, 327
Mikhail, John  169n26
military alliances  134, 156, 191, 198,
202, 312
Mill, John Stuart  147n56
Miller, Geoffrey  164n18
minimal psychological realism, principle of
(PMPR)  183, 184, 185
misfire  170–72, 245, 262;
misfiring 170–72, 176
mismatch  248–51, 344–45, 348, 351, 353
misogynistic 340
Mitchell, F.  155n5
monarchy 358. See also constitutional
monarchy
monistic 92
monkey drill  247, 261
Moody-​Adams, Michele  61, 149
moral capacities  28, 34, 37, 45–46, 50, 52,
54, 60, 67, 107, 116, 135, 146, 167, 184,
188, 204, 207, 233, 237n25, 305, 345–47,
350, 353, 365–67, 380, 388–90, 403
moral concepts  9, 28, 39, 45, 50, 54–57, 60–63,
65, 67, 71, 86, 92n1, 93–94, 100, 207, 211,
273, 293, 304, 375, 383, 385, 403
moral consensus  22, 308
moral education  185, 228, 347, 350, 357, 365
moral emotions  28, 50, 52, 55, 56, 85n25,
117, 135, 138, 142, 151, 201, 209, 225,
226, 322, 345
moral exclusivity  192, 194, 217, 369;
exclusivity  135, 192, 194, 199, 210, 245,
369, 370, 378, 400
moral foundations  87–90
moral frameworks  12
moral identity  251, 387, 388
moral inclusivity  12, 17–18, 40, 162, 166,
179, 203, 211, 239, 266, 348, 357, 360,
368–69, 408; inclusivity  15, 17–20,
36, 40, 101, 145, 153, 188, 192, 199,
202, 212, 213n25, 215, 228, 237n25,
273, 312, 332, 342, 348, 357, 360, 363,
368–71, 374–75, 379–80, 382–84,
399–400, 403, 408; expanding circle  18,
62, 63n15; expanding the circle  55,
64–65, 69, 72, 400
moral pluralism  7–8; pluralism  88, 92n1
moral psychology  x, 24, 28–30, 35–38, 40,
63, 111, 116–17, 124, 130–31, 133–35,
141, 143–44, 152, 162, 171, 173, 187–88,
191–92, 195, 200–201, 202, 204, 217–18,
225, 244–45, 248–49, 273, 325, 343, 344,
345, 348–54, 356, 364, 377
moral realism  94
moral regression  x, xi, 1, 5, 7, 20, 25,
30, 33, 37, 40–41, 53, 64, 124, 148,
151, 214, 219–20, 233, 235, 325, 332,
347, 367, 374, 377–78, 380, 382,
383, 403–4; moral degeneration  23–24,
347, 375, 382, 384; See also
degeneration: degeneration thesis
moral rights  277, 279, 281, 283, 285,
286, 295
moral standing  12, 14–15, 57–58, 62–65,
69, 70, 72, 80, 115, 140, 144–45, 148,
156, 176–77, 180–81, 184, 245, 276, 294,
297–98, 303–5, 316, 332, 374–76, 379,
382–86, 393
moral-​epistemic  96, 102, 109, 225, 234, 342,
360, 361, 366, 398, 403
Morsink, Johannes  297n10
moth’s proboscis  118, 158, 356, 377
Muslim 340, 408
mutation 257, 192
Nagel, Thomas  183
Nash equilibrium  162; game theory  193
nationalism  x, 41, 230n18, 399;
nationalist  xi, 64, 228, 229, 230, 340,
399, 404; nativism  x
natural kinds  221, 224
natural rights  55, 181n41, 213, 274,
277–78, 283, 294, 303, 318, 320–22,
379, 380–81
natural selection  ix, 30, 80, 118–19, 158,
174, 176, 195, 196, 203, 244, 252,
354, 355
naturalism  viii; naturalistic  viii, xiii, 26–31,
37, 39, 41, 63, 76, 143, 151, 180, 182,
218, 219, 232–34, 238–39, 305, 312,
 Index  419
314–15, 321, 325–26, 332–35, 337–41, Packer, Dominic  131n26
347–48, 356, 374–75, 377–78, 381, Palestine 341
394, 403–05 parasite stress  200, 212, 227, 365, 366
Navarrete, Carlos  130n22, 133n30, 200n9 Parker, Theodore  1, 6
Nazis  13, 223, 330–31 parochial altruism  79, 130, 166, 173,
Neander, Karen  76n10 179, 356
negative rights  275, 280, 281, 282, 283, 285, patriarchal 243, 257
286, 287 peacock’s tail  163, 256, 377
neighborhood  103–4, 349, 406 people of color  55, 101, 327, 328, 384,
neolithic  24, 389, 396; post-​neolithic  132, 392, 408
159, 253, 343–44, 345; pre-​neolithic  345 perception  xi, 199, 205, 206, 219,
Netherlands 206 226, 228, 235, 236, 249, 331,
Nettle, D.  223n7 340–41, 365, 366, 378, 398;
neurotransmitter 209 misperception 220–21
New Zealand  284 personhood 295
Newton, Isaac  76 Persson, Ingmar  146n55, 345n3, 349, 350,
Nichols, Sean  136n34 352, 361, 363, 368n22, 372, 380
nihilist 12, 15, 17 Peters, E.  141n48
Nisbett, R.  206n18, 250n14 Peterson, Dale  127n14, 172n29
nomadic  117, 159, 171 phenotypic 196, 351
noncombatants 98 phylogenetic  127, 194, 195, 196, 197, 198
nongovernmental organizations  157 physical insecurity  186, 210, 216
non-​human animals  2, 13–15, 22, 47, 52, 55, 57, physician-​assisted suicide  267
62, 72–73, 80, 83–84, 89, 153–54, 157–59, Pinker, Stephen  5n5, 6, 12, 24, 32, 49,
161, 215, 226, 276, 316, 356, 374, 376, 386 50, 127n14, 133n30, 155n3, 167n27,
nonideal theory  10, 11 172n29, 247n9, 248, 315, 320,
non-​instrumental  12, 158 335, 362n15
norm acquisition  137 Plato 58
nuclear war  343, 372 Pleistocene  33, 38, 120, 123, 125, 127–28,
Nussbaum, Martha  213n25 129, 130, 132, 159, 179, 191, 197–98,
248–49, 312, 353
O’Neill, Onora  282 police  73, 206, 280
Obama, Barack  20, 21n12 political rights  155, 277, 299, 386; civil
Odling-​Smee, F.  367n21 rights  9, 36, 155, 220, 277, 299, 386
Okasha, Samir  123n9 political theory  115, 238
open-​ended normativity  85–86, 89, 93, 96, pollinating 118, 158
147, 149, 179–82, 207, 210, 214, 227, Pope Francis  360
237n25, 250, 313, 322–23, 369, 370, 375, positive rights  275, 280–87
377, 385, 388, 391–93, 397, 410 Posner, Eric  139, 141, 146n54, 178, 179
Opotow, S.  226n14 postcolonial 254
optimal  19, 69, 104, 106, 133, 162, 263, 265, 375 poverty  24, 131, 176, 231, 281, 315, 324,
orangutans 194, 197 343, 375
ostracism 121, 221 Powell, Russell  vii, xiii, 56n7, 65n16, 73n7,
out-​group  x, xi, 36–37, 79, 80, 130–34, 145, 76n9, 79n15, 85n24, 231n19, 239n1,
150n61, 159, 171–72, 184, 189–91, 195, 246n7, 264n26, 356n11
198, 200–203, 208, 210, 215–16, 220–24, practical reason  30, 94, 95, 158
226–27, 235, 245–46, 312, 315, 322, 330, primates 248, 356
333, 340, 348, 356, 358, 361–64, 366, printing press  213, 236, 317, 318
369, 378, 396, 400, 404 Prinz, Jesse  118n1, 164n19, 362, 363
oxytocin  209, 361, 364, 371 privilege  254, 257, 322, 331, 340
420 Index
profit-​seeking  56, 65, 84, 241, 242
progressive  x, xi, 1, 4, 6, 9, 25, 37, 41, 46,
48, 50–53, 60, 64–65, 71–72, 74, 83,
92n1, 94n3, 100, 102, 105, 107, 116, 146,
147n56, 162, 181, 212, 227, 230n18,
237n25, 240n2, 241, 261, 275, 278, 280,
282–83, 286, 290–91, 300, 303–4, 306,
321, 323, 328, 333, 348, 370, 379, 394,
403, 405
promiscuity  231; promiscuous  64, 193,
194, 198
propaganda  226, 230, 260, 340, 341, 361, 366
property rights  210, 254, 279, 280, 281, 283,
320, 365, 371
protestant  317, 321, 323
provisional  17, 29n18, 34–35, 46, 87, 93–94,
96, 97–99, 102, 107–9, 375–76
pseudoscientific 327
Quakers 317
quasi-​independence  264
Quillian, Lincoln  216n27
racism  213n23, 326, 335; racist  16, 150,
155, 212, 213n23, 215, 222, 276, 328,
330, 334; See also scientific racism
Racism Convention  337
Railton, Peter  81–87
Ramsey, Grant  143n49, 355n9
rape  135, 339, 384
rationality  16, 58, 83n23, 101, 181n41, 186,
213, 226, 277, 293–95, 318, 322, 328; See
also practical reason
Rawls, John  18, 299
reason-​giving  59, 62, 295, 392
reciprocity  59, 88, 122, 137, 144–45,
156, 158–61, 203, 245, 293, 298, 376,
379, 388; reciprocate  57, 122, 144, 145,
193, 210, 220, 295, 299, 321
recognition  2, 13, 14, 22, 39–40, 47, 49, 55,
57, 59–60, 69, 94, 96, 147, 161, 173,
215, 220, 227, 274, 276, 277, 278, 283,
286, 288–89, 298–301, 316, 328,
347, 360, 366, 374, 376, 379, 381–84,
386, 409
reform eugenics  353
reformist  230, 299, 347
refugees 25, 364
regicide 303
regression  ix–xi, 1, 5, 7, 19, 20, 24–25,
30–31, 33, 35, 37–38, 40–41, 53, 64, 124,
148, 151, 199, 214, 217–20, 230, 233,
234–36, 238, 325–27, 332–35, 338–39,
347, 367, 374, 377, 378, 380, 382–83,
385, 399, 403–6, 409–10
reincarnation 215
reliabilist 99
religion  13, 15, 155, 246, 321, 323;
religious  23, 25, 26, 48, 75, 214, 215,
246, 255, 260, 278, 280, 283, 294, 303,
310, 313, 317, 323, 357, 361, 371, 398
revision  14, 29n18, 87, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98,
99, 107, 147, 180, 181, 279, 285, 300, 390
Richerson, Peter  122n8, 125n12, 130n23, 132,
138, 138n41, 174–75, 178, 197n7, 201n14,
244n6, 258, 259n24, 265, 396, 409
Riek, B.  201n13
rigid  191, 198, 211, 221, 354, 355–56, 362
Risse, T.  156n6
Ropp, S.  156n6
Rousseau, Jean-​Jacques  1, 7, 21, 23, 375
Rubin, M.  131n27, 191n1, 201n14
rule of law  x, 48, 210, 254, 281, 320, 324,
360, 365, 371
Rummel, R.  358n13
same-​sex partnerships  251
Sandel, Michael  353n6
Sanger, Margaret  330
Savulescu, Julian  xiii, 146n55, 345n3, 349,
350, 352, 361, 363, 368n22, 372, 380
Scandinavia 353
scarcity  x, 127, 129, 219, 233–34, 239, 240,
348, 384
Schwerpunkt 363
scientific racism  326, 335, 380
scrutiny  187, 211, 250, 313, 61, 85, 99;
self-​scrutiny  149, 151
seamless web  263, 264, 266
Second World War  40, 228, 326, 334, 335,
337, 338, 340, 380, 398, 399
secular  25–29, 82, 241, 278, 279, 294,
323, 349
self-​defense  9, 73, 340
sentient beings  69, 70, 359
sentiments  xi, 126, 164, 169, 173, 179, 182,
214, 273, 274, 318
serfdom 279, 284
shame  3n3, 23, 242; guilt  14, 136, 242
Shea, Nicolas  356n11
Sherif, C.  201n13
Sherif, M.  201n13

Shermer, Michael  68–69, 70
Sikkink, K.  156n6
Simmons, B.  156n6
Singer, Peter  62–63, 65, 68–74, 87, 139,
147–49, 163
Sinnott Armstrong, Walter  109n10, 118n1,
135n33, 164n19
skepticism  2, 5–9, 35, 40, 361, 396
slavery  2–4, 6–7, 13, 17, 23, 47, 97, 212–15,
277, 279, 311, 316, 317, 319, 320,
322–29, 339, 368, 386–87, 394, 398
Sloan Wilson, David  123n9, 125n13, 133,
134n31, 141, 252n17
Slovic, P.  141n48
Smelser, N.  155n5
Sober, Elliott  123n9, 125n13, 133, 134n31,
141, 174, 252n17. See also behavioral
altruism
social constructivism  387, 388
social epistemology  213, 225, 227; social-​
epistemic  xi, 37, 94, 101, 102, 188, 200,
214, 216, 227–28, 236, 317–19, 333, 361,
366, 378, 385, 388, 392
social group  13, 82
social moral epistemology  28, 101, 108,
225, 237
social origins account  198
social parasites  x, 209, 232
social technology  33, 77–78, 81n17, 83n23,
87, 387, 388, 389, 391
social-​e pistemic  xi, 37, 94, 101–2, 188,
200, 214, 216, 218, 227–28, 236,
317, 319, 333, 361, 366, 378, 385,
388, 392
socioeconomic  215, 255n21, 279, 323, 332
sociology  vii, 9, 28, 37, 203;
sociologists 233
solitary origins account  198, 200
South Korea  336
Southwood, Nicolas  136n35
Soviet Union  336
species’ nature  143, 354, 355
Sripada, Chandra  135n32
state sovereignty  309
state-​centric  309
status quo  39, 46, 49, 101, 103, 105–06,
108–09, 220, 258, 262–63, 404, 406
stegosaurus 119
Sterelny, Kim  120n3, 121n6, 123n9, 126,
128–29, 132, 145n51, 197n7, 253n18,
256, 257
Index  421
stereotype  155, 235, 251
sterilization  225, 260, 330
Stern, A.  216n29
Stich, Stephen  135n32
strangers  49, 54, 79, 123, 133, 138, 141,
157, 170–71, 179, 184, 198, 202–7, 212,
223, 230n18, 314–15, 321, 359, 360,
364, 409–10
strategic capacities  58, 62, 79, 83, 145, 155,
157–59, 161, 173, 293, 299, 360, 376
Street, Sharon  33
subject-​centered  57–59, 154, 156–57, 160,
171, 173, 190, 274, 293–94, 296–98, 360,
376, 379
survival  69, 78, 86, 118–19, 159, 163, 164,
174, 244, 250–51, 253, 312, 329,
336, 391
Sweden 284, 330
Switzerland 284
synchronic  351, 352, 356
Tajfel, H.  201n11
teleological  ix, 29, 279; goal-​oriented  86;
telos 86
territory of justice  39, 60, 274, 279–80, 285,
292, 298–99, 300, 302, 370, 379
terrorism  1, 40, 162, 249, 303, 343, 354, 357,
361, 372
testimony 190
testosterone 165, 166
Third Reich  228. See also Nazis
Thornhill, Randy  200, 201n12, 366n20
threshold  16, 290, 407
time lag problem  166, 181
toggle  131, 189, 192, 207, 334, 378, 400
tolerance  8n6, 41, 68, 75, 106, 226, 341
Tomasello, Michael  120n3, 121n5, 122n7
Tooby, John  179, 235
top down  3n3, 45, 308
tort law  370, 371
torture  57, 65, 100, 275, 304, 305, 339, 340;
anti-​torture  156, 275, 283, 303, 304
Torture Convention  307
trade  156, 190, 191, 198, 202, 220, 229, 312
transmission  178, 189, 190, 201, 231, 232,
251, 258, 259n24, 263, 321, 330
tribalist  35, 36, 80, 115, 134, 187, 312, 376
trigger  x, 37, 127, 170, 189, 200–201,
210–11, 219, 221, 225–27, 234, 312, 318,
330–31, 339, 364–65, 378, 392
Trivers, Robert  122n8
422 Index
Tropp, Linda  216n29 water flea  188–89, 192, 356, 377
Trump, Donald  xi, 118, 340, 408, 409 welfare  36, 49, 70, 83n23, 104, 139, 231, 241,
Turchin, Peter  396–97, 400 243, 260, 269, 276, 283
Turiel, E.  136n36 welfare state  283, 284, 290, 292, 353; welfare
Turner, Jonathan  197n6 policies  409; welfare programs  333
Twitter 236 well-​being  4, 58, 62, 260, 261, 283, 291, 295,
typhus 216 311, 345
whistle-​blowing  307
ultimatum game  203 White House  408
uncertainty 211, 223 Willis, H.  131n27, 191n1, 201n14
United Kingdom  336 Wilson, David Sloan  123n9, 125n13, 133,
United Nations Security Council  307 134n31, 141
United States  xi, 3n3, 97, 155, 206, 260, 284, Wilson, Edward  123n9
303, 326, 330, 335–36, 340, 361, 408; Wilson, W.  155n5. See also behavioral
America  3n3, 13, 20–21, 52, 150, altruism
206, 220, 247, 250, 276, 327–29, 334, Wimsatt, William  251n15, 252. See also
340, 408–9; U.S.  xi, 20, 139, 154n2, 249, escape mechanisms
326, 339, 407 Wobber, Victoria  196n4
Universal Declaration of Human women  2, 13, 16, 22–23, 25, 47, 49, 55, 61,
Rights  286, 307, 309, 310, 379 94n3, 101, 133, 148, 154, 173, 213n25,
universality 90, 118n1 243, 250–51, 261, 300, 311, 316, 330,
utilitarian  58, 69, 70, 72, 87, 110 384, 386, 392, 408
utopian  10n8, 28, 146, 177, 370 Women’s Convention  307
Worchel, S.  201n11
vaccination  232, 259, 291, 321, 366 World Bank  307
Van Bavel, Jay  131n26 Wrangham, Richard  118n1, 127n14, 128n15,
Van Vugt, Mark  130n23, 133n30, 249n11, 249n12 172n29, 196n4
Vastfjall, D.  141n48 Wright, Robert  120n3
vegetarianism 215
veridical  201, 206, 219, 245, 378 xenophobia  x, 245, 315; xenophobic  200,
215, 245, 340, 366
Walzer, Michael  232
Warneken, Felix  121n5 Zahavi, A.  163n17
Warsaw Pact  336 Zanna, M.  155n4