In a field often dominated by abstract metaphysics, Jimmy Alfonso Licon delivers a strikingly practical intervention: the very evolution that made us human may have wired us to believe moral truths that don't exist. This isn't just a philosophical puzzle for the academy; it's a challenge to the foundation of how we justify our deepest convictions about right and wrong. Licon argues that if our moral instincts are merely survival tools, then our confidence in objective morality might be a biological accident rather than a discovery of truth.
The Evolutionary Trap
Licon, a philosophy professor at Arizona State University, frames his dissertation as a conditional argument: if moral facts are real and independent of us, yet our minds evolved for survival, how can we trust our moral beliefs? He targets "robust moral realism," the view that moral truths exist like physical laws, independent of human opinion. The problem, as Licon explains, is that these supposed facts are "causally inert," meaning they don't actually cause our beliefs. Instead, our beliefs are caused by evolutionary pressures that favor cooperation and survival, not truth.
Jimmy Alfonso Licon writes, "If moral facts are causally inert, and if our moral psychology is the product of evolutionary forces that are indifferent to moral truth, then it becomes unclear why we should expect our moral beliefs to bear any reliable relation to those facts." This observation strikes at the heart of moral confidence. If our ancestors survived because they were cooperative, not because they perceived objective moral truths, then our current moral intuitions might just be useful fictions.
The author dismantles the idea that we can simply "think our way out" of this problem through logic or reflection. He notes that if our starting point is contaminated by evolutionary biases like in-group favoritism, then seeking consistency only refines those distortions. "The problem is not inconsistency but contaminated input," Licon argues. This is a sobering thought for anyone who believes their moral compass is purely rational. It suggests that our deepest convictions might be the result of ancient survival algorithms rather than a connection to a higher moral order.
Critics might argue that this line of reasoning is too skeptical, potentially undermining all human knowledge, not just morality. However, Licon anticipates this by distinguishing between domains where we have independent reasons to trust our faculties, like perception, and morality, where such independent confirmation is elusive.
If our moral faculties were shaped by forces that are indifferent to moral truth, and if moral facts themselves play no causal role in shaping those faculties, then the reliability of our moral beliefs looks like a coincidence at best.
Beyond Specific Beliefs: The Capacity Problem
Licon moves beyond the standard argument that evolution shaped specific moral beliefs to a more radical claim: evolution shaped the very capacity to think in moral terms. While other philosophers focus on whether we evolved to believe specific things (like "kin are valuable"), Licon follows Richard Joyce in arguing that we evolved a cognitive framework that treats norms as categorical and authoritative.
He writes, "What mattered from an evolutionary standpoint was not whether our ancestors believed this or that moral proposition, but whether they possessed a way of representing certain actions as categorically required, forbidden, or deserving of punishment." This distinction is crucial. If the machinery itself is the evolutionary artifact, then every moral belief generated by that machinery inherits the same epistemic liability. There is no safe harbor for "pure" moral truths that escaped evolutionary influence.
This "capacity debunking" strategy is more devastating than previous arguments because it closes the door on the realist's hope that some moral principles are immune to evolutionary distortion. As Licon puts it, "If the very conceptual machinery through which we form moral beliefs is an evolutionary artifact designed to promote coordination and compliance rather than truth, then every moral belief inherits the same epistemic liability." The implication is profound: our entire moral vocabulary might be a tool for social cohesion, not a map of reality.
The Practical Consequence: Keep Believing?
If the arguments hold, what should we do? Licon rejects the popular philosophical solution of "moral fictionalism," the idea that we should pretend moral claims are true because they are useful. He argues that belief is not a switch we can flip; it is deeply integrated into our emotions and actions. "Belief is not a thin, voluntary attitude that can be neatly bracketed while leaving behavior unchanged," he writes.
Instead, Licon proposes "moral conservationism." Even if we suspect our moral beliefs are evolutionarily contingent rather than objectively true, we have strong practical reasons to keep believing them. The psychological reality is that treating moral claims as mere fiction would strip them of the emotional force and automaticity that make them effective for social regulation. "A community that genuinely treated moral claims as mere pretense would predictably lose much of what makes moral practice function," Licon warns.
This is a pragmatic pivot. It acknowledges the philosophical doubt while refusing to let it paralyze social life. However, one might question whether this approach is stable long-term. If we know our beliefs are likely false, can we truly maintain the conviction required for them to function? Licon seems to think the psychological integration of belief makes this a non-issue, but the tension remains.
States that guide reasoning, trigger affective responses, and structure expectations across contexts are, for all practical purposes, beliefs.
Bottom Line
Jimmy Alfonso Licon's work is a masterful dismantling of the assumption that our moral intuitions track objective truth, replacing it with a compelling case that they are survival tools. The strongest part of his argument is the shift from debunking specific beliefs to debunking the very capacity for moral thought, leaving realists with no easy escape. Its biggest vulnerability lies in the leap from "we can't prove our beliefs are true" to "we should keep believing them anyway," a pragmatic fix that may not satisfy those seeking genuine epistemic certainty. Readers should watch for how this evolutionary skepticism plays out in public debates where moral certainty is often used as a weapon.