METAPHILOSOPHY AND STREET'S DARWINIAN DILEMMA:

AN APORETIC ANALYSIS OF THE DEBATE BETWEEN REALISM AND ANTI-REALISM IN METAETHICS

Abstract

This paper analyses the discussion about the Darwinian Dilemma for metaethical realism, proposed by Sharon Street (2006), and understands its “debunking” as an aporetic cluster. Street develops a dilemma specific for metaethical realism in which the evaluative truths presupposed by it would be in disharmony with the Darwinian evolutionary perspective of morality. Street shows that realism cannot provide an explanation good enough about the relation between the evolutionary process and our true moral judgments. She provides an anti-realist metaethical alternative, coherent with the evolutionary explanation of morality. From Nicholas Rescher’s (1985) perspective, we will show that the Darwinian Dilemma for moral realism, pointed by Street, can be analyzed in an aporetic manner. According to Rescher, apories presents itself as inconsistencies inside a set of theoretical commitments, which will form aporetic clusters and will demand the rejection or justification of these theoretical commitments responsible for the apories in the total set. We will indicate that Street’s anti-realist perspective also engenders apories, as realism do, and that from the same bases can be rejected. Lastly we will propose a pluralist approach to metaethics, in which the explanatory merits of theories should be used to clarify moral phenomena.