Broadly speaking, there are two main projects for science as it relates to morality:
-
Explaining human behavior through the evolutionary process
-
Rationally determine behaviors we should follow or avoid for well-being
These projects should be considered distinct, and we should be careful not to conflate them. Conflating Project 1 and Project 2 risks committing the naturalistic fallacy: just because something is natural does not make it good, and just because something is unnatural does not make it bad.
Social Darwinism, for example, is in no way a moral ideal. But understanding the implications of natural selection is still deeply important for developing a serious science of morality.
Project 1: Evolution and the Roots of Moral Intuition
Let’s look at Project 1 more closely.
Evolution not only provides the basis for the physical structures of organisms, but also the foundations for their behavior. It can therefore provide powerful explanations regarding the origins of moral intuitions, emotions, and values—especially when we compare human behavior with that of other animals.
Before diving deeper into evolutionary explanations, it’s essential to understand something more basic: the material basis of reality and how brains perceive it.
A material reality exists external to the mind. However, we do not perceive this reality directly. What we experience is a model of reality constructed through the filters of our senses.
Consider the famous philosophical thought experiment:
If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?
In a strict sense, the answer is no. Without a conscious perceiver, there is no such thing as sound—only pressure waves moving through air. Sound itself is something brains create.
The same is true for color, taste, and smell. These sensations are not “out there” in the world in the same way matter is. They are experiences produced by nervous systems.
This matters because different organisms—and even different people—experience the same physical reality in radically different ways. Evolution shaped these perceptions because perception drives behavior.
Take the smell of human feces. Why does it smell bad to us?
It’s not because feces inherently stinks, it’s because human brains have evolved to perceive certain chemicals in feces negatively.
These chemicals emanate from feces and become airborne, where they are detected by our nose.
Human feces is a carrier of disease. Organisms that found feces repulsive were less likely to touch it, less likely to become ill, and more likely to survive and reproduce.
But flies experience those same chemicals differently. For them, feces is a food source. What disgusts humans may attract insects.
The important point is this:
Perception shapes behavior, and evolution shapes perception.
From this, we can begin to explain the origins of many moral intuitions. Evolution gives us a “natural morality” rooted in survival and reproduction—but that is not the same thing as an objective morality.
Project 2: Can Science Help Us Decide What We Ought to Do?
Project 2 is more controversial.
Project 1 is descriptive: it tells us what influences human behavior.
Project 2 is normative: it attempts to tell us what we ought to do.
Many critics argue that science cannot answer moral questions. And in one sense, this is correct: science alone cannot invent values from nothing.
However, this criticism often misses the deeper point.
Science may not create moral goals, but once we accept even the most basic moral premise—that suffering is bad and flourishing is good—science becomes highly relevant.
Values are not arbitrary. They are constrained by facts about the well-being of conscious creatures.
In that sense, moral claims can be understood as a specific kind of empirical claim:
X value produces more flourishing and less suffering than Y value.
For example:
Honesty creates more flourishing of conscious creatures than lying.
Often we already have strong intuitions about such claims. But a science of morality would allow us to test them systematically through psychology, neuroscience, economics, and real-world outcomes.
Of course, moral rules are rarely absolute. Honesty may promote flourishing in most cases, but there may be rare contexts where this is not the case.
This is why framing morality as a landscape is valuable:
Our world has many possible outcomes—some better, some worse. Peaks and valleys.
It contains a spectrum of competing values, and the moral question becomes:
Which values reliably move conscious creatures toward the peaks?
The Moral Landscape and the Future of Ethics
There is no doubt that a science of morality is still in its infancy.
Defining “flourishing” is difficult enough—how would we measure it?
-
Wealth?
-
Happiness surveys?
-
Physical health?
-
Brain scans?
-
AI simulations?
Our tools are limited, and the moral landscape is complex.
But early sciences were messy too. Medicine existed long before germ theory, and astronomy existed long before Newton. Progress came through refinement, measurement, and education.
Likewise, the foundations of a science of morality are forming. The purpose is not to replace moral debate, but to ground it more firmly in evidence rather than tradition, dogma, or power.
If morality is ultimately about the experiences of conscious creatures, then understanding those experiences scientifically is not optional.
It is something we ought to continue expanding, progressing, and teaching—like any other science.
