Morality as an Evolutionarily Stable Strategy: A Naturalistic Account of Libertarianism

If a putative moral principle cannot be ‘universalized’ in the appropriate sense, then it must be rejected. The contemporary debate concerns precisely what is required by the universalizability criterion, given that many variants and strengths of universalizability are conceptually possible. ¹ 1 maintain that the sense in which moral principles must be universalizable is that morality must be an evolutionarily stable strategy (ESS).