Do advances in neuroscience and evolutionary psychology explain the development of human morality?

I am looking forward to reading Sam Harris' forthcoming "Moral Landscape" because he claims there is objective moral truth that science can tell us about, without there being a God--I want to know how he arrives at this truth without committing the is-ought fallacy (which he denies is a fallacy) and the fallacy of reification.

Neuroscience and evolutionary psychology may explain how we came to apprehend (or at least be capable of apprehending) moral truth, like it may explain how we came to (be able to) apprehend mathematical truth.

www.theswordandthesacrificephilosophy.blogspot.com

This is a bit of an odd question, so maybe we can pull out what this original poster is really trying to pose as a debate. As the question stands now, the answer is a simple and undeniable, “Yes”. Asking about the development of human morality is what I’ll call a “descriptive” question. In other words, it’s asking about how things are in the world (or in this case, how they were). So if you’re asking a descriptive question about how human morality developed, then no matter your religious affiliations, your personal convictions, etc, it should be clear that scientific investigations which seek to discover how things are in the world will help lead to an understanding of questions about how things are the world (descriptive question). Now, you might think, “I don’t buy the current explanations that the evidence in (e.g. evolutionary psychology) points to”. But notice that this is a disagreement with the state of evidence in the specific field. This doesn’t mean that the field can’t ever get at the best explanation – just that you don’t like the available evidence right now. So in summary, since the question of the development of human morality is merely a descriptive question, it is obvious that neuroscience and evolutionary psychology can *in principle* explain it. It’s really just a matter of determining how we have came to have a capacity to think morally, how we came to conceive of morality, how moral systems are implemented in our society, etc.

Now we can contrast a descriptive question with a "normative" question. A normative question is one in which you might think can’t be answered by mere empirical investigation – normative questions deal with content such as “What is it to act morally?” or “What is the moral good?” or “Is there an objective morality?”. Science, which utilizes empirical evidence, can provide great insights to these questions, but ultimately one might argue that the conclusions need to be drawn in some other way, perhaps by a knock-down a priori argument.

Notice this distinction I have made is tracking what the previous author called a “is/ought fallacy”. The previous author, however, wrongly assumes that using empirical evidence automatically commits this fallacy. As I’ve pointed out, there are two questions (the descriptive or “is” question, and the normative or “ought” question), and whether or not science can fully explain the normative side of things is up in the air. So I think to have a nice debate, the best question would be to ask the following:


“To what extent can advances in neuroscience and evolutionary psychology help explain what it means to be moral?”

Refused,

So sorry for the delayed reply :). I think if you ask:

To what does a real ought correspond?

...or...

What does a real ought describe?

...you will notice that science will have as easy a time answering that as answering:

What began the universe?

...or...

Why is there something rather than nothing?