RationalWiki:Articles for deletion/Evolutionary ethics

Evolutionary ethics | Result: Hume decisively beats Darwin 5-1.

Evolutionary ethics (edit|talk|history|protect|delete|links|watch|logs) – (View log)

Delete

1. Violates Hume's law. Exact same pattern of thought that leads us to Social Darwinism and eugenics. Fails to account for facets of human culture that are irrelevant to reproductive fitness or population survival such as gender identity. Problem with evidential standards that lead to "just-so stories" that are more akin to mythology than science. All-in-all just a gigantic load of bullshit. I would be in favor of keeping it if someone were to do a critical overhaul of the article but I don't really see that happening. Feel free to prove me wrong though. Carthage (talk) 20:01, 28 September 2023 (UTC)
2. This article is all over the place. The lede rather misrepresents the significance of evolutionary ethics, which is primarily as descriptive ethics, with secondary relevance to metaethics and, as it stands, essentially no normative implications; the normative theory "what's good is what best promotes fitness" is generally considered implausible. It's not obvious that "in order to both survive and, more importantly, reproduce individuals must — at some level — learn to cooperate with members of their own species" is true on the ordinary notion of cooperation. Rather, the role of "at some level" here seems to be to so widen the sense of 'cooperation' as to void its meaning. The subsequent point that this is especially true for social species like humans is vacuous, amounting to saying, "cooperation is especially important within cooperative species". The reply the article makes to the Social Darwinist isn't very good, either. The Social Darwinist could simply move from arguing for the destruction of weak races to the destruction of weak individuals (to keep with the article's terminology). The point that we share 99.9% of our DNA is a non sequitur; the Social Darwinist will simply say that the last 0.1% makes a great deal of difference. The article ends with a link to an essay against a Conservapedia user. Also, "a claim frequently made by some religious theorists" is particularly glaring weaseling. Which religious theorists are saying this? Are their views representative of religious theorists, or do they only form a subgroup? Are they especially notable or influential? Altogether, since no section is particularly impressive, and since each section has significant problems, there seems to be little value to lose here. 𝒮𝑒𝓇𝑒𝓃𝑒 ^talk 00:11, 29 September 2023 (UTC)
3. One of the most confused articles on the site. I have made my arguments previously on the article talk page.Bob^{"Life is short and (insert adjective)"} 06:05, 30 September 2023 (UTC)
4. as per above and burn it. A somebody. (talk) 17:43, 30 September 2023 (UTC)
5. Yeah, I read other user’s comments on the talk page, and I agree this article doesn’t make any sense. Chef Moosolini’s Ristorante Italiano^{Make a Reservation} 18:18, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

Keep

1. "Promotes Social Darwinism", my foot. Carthage is wildly off the mark. This page is clearly intended to examine the origin of morality from an evolution-oriented, naturalistic point of view. Luigifan18 (talk) 20:10, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

   The article conflates cultural evolution with biological evolution. Morality, at least to some extent, is influenced by culture, which is an emergent property of human social relationships. Confucian ethics are very different from the ethics of liberalism. Evolutionary ethics has a problem with "just-so stories" that offer little in the way of evidence, and it's very easy to extrapolate evolutionary "ethics" as a sort of prescriptive norm as Social Darwinism and eugenics does/did. Carthage (talk) 20:17, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

   You don't explain how I'm off the mark. Assuming this article examines the evolutionary origins of morality, it does a piss-poor job of doing so and again fails to take into account cultural factors that play into how ethics manifests from society to society. Carthage (talk) 20:28, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

   …That's kind of the problem with studying the past. Barring human societies that meticulously recorded their activities in a manner that's still legible today, ultimately, the best we can do with the distant past is "just so stories", at least as far as the precise details of how and why certain things happened. We can certainly use available evidence to make extremely good guesses (such as geological evidence that very, very strongly suggests that the flood described in the Book of Genesis either outright didn't occur or at the very least didn't cover the entire planet and/or last for forty days), but the further back in time you go, the harder it becomes to say anything specific for certain, and if you go back to before the invention of writing and the start of history, well, then it gets nearly impossible, as the best we have are fossils. Now bear in mind that contemporary psychology has lots of debate and very few accepted hard facts, as the social sciences tend to have less hard data available than "hard" sciences like biology or physics. We just can't freaking know exactly what went through the heads of our caveman ancestors. "Just so stories" describing the most likely path to where we are today will have to suffice.

   And another thing, evolutionary ethics is very clearly a description of "how ethics developed", not "what ethics should look like". Luigifan18 (talk) 20:32, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

   Yeah, except it still conflates biological evolution with cultural evolution when the two are very distinct. This article is also all over the place, and just handwaves away the problem of applying evolutionary theory as a prescriptive norm. Something you're also doing. This article definitely deserves a critical overhaul and as it stands right now is garbage. Carthage (talk) 20:35, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

Goat

Though now I think about this some more the article could be edited to why "Evolutionary ethics" is dumb idea. This might be better than deletion, and most editors who are interested seem of a similar mind about the concept.Bob^{"Life is short and (insert adjective)"} 14:16, 30 September 2023 (UTC)