by Hendricus Van Wilgenburg

For some philosophers such as like Michael Ruse, natural selection explains all we need to know about morality. Evolutionary forces have caused us to look to some non-natural ground (e.g., religious grounds) as a principle that serves as objective justification for morality, when in fact objective morality is an illusion. The causal laws of evolution set the standards of right action that apply directly to humans thus undermining any objective justification for morality.

As an alternative, I propose that Kantian social contract theory offers objective justification of morality. I maintain that social contract theory is parallel to the Darwinian explanation. Our genetically based behavioral and cognitive dispositions are our internally regulated patterns of belief, feeling, and thought that have a certain causal history. The biological story is as Ruse argues an essential part of the genesis of our moral beliefs. Darwinism gives a causal story for believing as we do and the Kantian contract provides the justification for our beliefs. Inasmuch as moral beliefs exist (as part of social practices), they do so in combination with natural selection that favors the refinement and preservation of these features because they are fitness enhancing. I see Kantian social contractarianism as an objective justification of morality, since it displays morality as being the most rational way of achieving our ends by providing the actual details in the form of practical principles. Those principles, as moral norms, have authority that pressure(s) us to change our ways of believing and thinking and to bring our behavior in line with the norms of ‘right’ and 'wrong'.