The Epistemological Dilemma of Evolutionary Debunking Arguments and the Transcendence through Ecological Moral Realism

Evolutionary Debunking Arguments (EDAs) maintain that our moral beliefs are products of natural selection, which tracks adaptive fitness rather than truth; consequently, moral realism—the view that there are objective moral truths—lacks epistemic justification. EDAs rest on four core presuppositions: a dichotomy between adaptation and truth, the thesis that origins determine epistemic status, the non-natural and independent status of moral truth, and a requirement of modal necessity. This paper critically examines these assumptions and proposes a layered epistemic justification model to explain how moral knowledge can achieve reliability through the systematic interaction of three relatively independent mechanisms: evolved moral emotions, cultural selection, and rational critique. The model shows that EDAs are fundamentally flawed in that they mistakenly equate the genetic origins of beliefs with their entire epistemic credentials. On this basis, the paper advances a revised form of moral realism—termed social-ecological moral realism—which construes moral truth as functional constraints within a social ecological niche. This account not only addresses the shortcomings of EDAs but also provides a grounding for objective moral knowledge.