ABSTRACT
Evolutionary ethics is one of those subjects with a bad philosophical smell. Everybody knows (or ‘knows’) that it has been the excuse for some of the worst kinds of fallacious arguments in the philosophical workbook, and that in addition it has been used as support for socio-economic policies of the most grotesque and hateful nature, all the way from cruel nineteenth-century capitalism to twentieth-century concentration camps (Jones 1980; Richards 1987; Russett 1976; Ruse 1986). It has been enough for the student to murmur the magical phrase ‘naturalistic fallacy’, and then he or she can move on to the next question, confident of having gained full marks thus far on the exam (Flew 1967; Raphael 1958; Singer 1981).
