comments on an earlier draft.

Richard Joyce covers a great deal of ground in his well-informed, insightful, and provocative book (Joyce, 2006), much of which we can agree with. But he also argues that any adequate evolutionary understanding of morality, and of the innate “moral sense ” that underlies it, will serve to undermine morality. Since we disagree with this claim, we propose to take it as the focus of our commentary. Joyce develops two main arguments, targeted on the form and the content of morality, respectively. The first is that no adequate evolutionary naturalism about morals can give an adequate account of what he calls the “practical clout ” of morality. This is Joyce’s term to cover both the inescapability and authority that (he thinks) form essential components of our beliefs about morality. In which case, whatever might be described by the evolutionary naturalist’s account of our moral sense will fail to count as a system of morality. It will be too weak and watery for that. Joyce’s second argument is that plausible theories of the evolution of our moral sense will fail to line up in the right sort of way with any adequate account of the content of our moral beliefs − in such a way, that is, as to give us the required confidence that our moral faculty has evolved to track moral truth. So it is much as if we were to discover that our belief that Napoleon lost the battle of Waterloo had actually been caused by taking some kind of pill, rather than by the facts and/or any sort of sensitivity to the evidence. Once we discover the historical origins of our belief in an episode of pill-taking, our belief that Napoleon lost is undermined, and should be suspended. So, too, Joyce claims, with morality, once we see its evolutionary origins. We will discuss these arguments in turn. 1 The order of the authors ’ names is alphabetical. We are grateful to Leland Saunders and Stephen Stich for thei