Natural law, biological knowledge, and the claims of evolutionary ethics

• Authors: Liptay John
• Conference: Ethics of Moral Absolutes
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

This paper investigates the claim that developments in biological sciences require us to abandon the account of moral norms advanced by natural law theory and to embrace some version of evolutionary ethics. A brief sketch of a contemporary statement of evolutionary ethics is followed by a consideration of the two fundamental ways in which it opposes the natural law account. Both of these objections are shown to misfire: first, positing a sceptical position fails to attend to what is implicitly affirmed in the critique of ethical objectivity, and, second, the criticism of natural law’s account of marital sexual acts proceeds by way of misunderstanding. While the natural law account of moral norms is not undermined, evolutionary ethics itself is found to be untenable.

Keywords

EN

natural law; evolutionary ethics; ethical naturalism; ethical objectivity; is-ought fallacy; ethical scepticism; moral absolutes; sexual ethics

PL

prawo naturalne; etyka ewolucyjna; naturalizm etyczny; obiektywność etyczna; sceptycyzm etyczny; absoluty moralne; etyka seksualna

• Publisher: Uniwersytet Kardynała Stefana Wyszyńskiego w Warszawie
• Journal: Studia Philosophiae Christianae
• Year: 2015
• Volume: 51
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 69-83

Contributors

author

Liptay John

• University of Saskatchewan, St. Thomas More College, 1437 College Drive, S7N 0W6 Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada