<p>This dissertation seeks to bring together two philosophical literatures: the functions literature from the philosophy of biology, and the functionalist literature in naturalistic metaethics. Biological function suggests both objectivity and normativity: “the function of the heart is to pump blood” is an objective fact, and yet, hearts may malfunction—and malfunctioning is normative. Many ethicists wish to naturalize ethics—to help find a place for human normative lives in the objective natural world. In order to do so, they need tools to analyze humans as the products of evolutionary processes. Humans have a dual inheritance system involving both cultural and genetic inheritance that makes analysis of function for them particularly complex. In this dissertation, I develop a set of conceptual tools for those who wish to naturalize. I begin by developing an account of inheritance that can handle culture. Then, I elaborate the selected effects account of function so that it can handle all the evolutionary strangeness of culture. I then introduce the monolith fallacy—an error often committed by those studying human evolution—a tendency to oversimplify—to emphasize the high degree of complexity involved in any naturalizing project. Finally, I introduce the notion of value-guided functions—a kind of functioning not tied to our intentions, but to our values to round out the picture. I then apply the whole framework to the work of the functional metaethicists: Allan Gibbard, David Wong, Richard Joyce, and Philip Kitcher.</p> / Dissertation
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:DUKE/oai:dukespace.lib.duke.edu:10161/11384 |
| Date | January 2015 |
| Creators | Conrad, Aryn Ashley |
| Contributors | Neander, Karen L |
| Source Sets | Duke University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Dissertation |
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