ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces the basic idea of a view we call evolutionary moral realism (EMR). EMR starts with the biological idea that moral values may originate as deep structural elements of certain kinds of social environments. Though a moral value like helping another might be realized differently in the environments of different species, EMR supposes that these multiple realizations are of the same general biological kind. EMR calls this sort of biological kind a moral kind, or a moral value, because it understands human arguments over moral values to be, at least some of the time, about exactly this kind of thing. EMR thus faces three immediate questions. First, what makes morally good things morally good, on this account of morality? Second, why does moral goodness, on this account, not simply reduce to what is good for our genes? And third, how exactly are natural moral goods supposed to be related to moral oughts? Does EMR commit the logical fallacy of inferring normative claims from factual claims?
