Sorry for the late response. I don’t actually think that non-utilitarian intuitions/principles are necessarily more evolutionarily biased than utilitarian principles. I think certain deontological precepts (like Kant’s categorical imperative) could also be less vulnerable to evolutionary debunking arguments than ‘common-sense’ moral intuitions, for example. I don’t think it’s as easy to argue that something like this, or the principle of Universal Benevolence, is the product of natural selection. It could be, but it seems we have less reason to think it is. And if ethics is about how we ought (in a reason-implying sense) to live, then focusing on what we have most reason to do is sufficient.
Once we’ve reasoned about “who counts?”, we can then move on to “what counts?”
I think hedonism is the most defensible answer to “what counts?”, and when you combine that with plausible answers to “who counts?”, you arrive at hedonistic utilitarianism.
Sorry for the late response. I don’t actually think that non-utilitarian intuitions/principles are necessarily more evolutionarily biased than utilitarian principles. I think certain deontological precepts (like Kant’s categorical imperative) could also be less vulnerable to evolutionary debunking arguments than ‘common-sense’ moral intuitions, for example. I don’t think it’s as easy to argue that something like this, or the principle of Universal Benevolence, is the product of natural selection. It could be, but it seems we have less reason to think it is. And if ethics is about how we ought (in a reason-implying sense) to live, then focusing on what we have most reason to do is sufficient.
Once we’ve reasoned about “who counts?”, we can then move on to “what counts?”
I think hedonism is the most defensible answer to “what counts?”, and when you combine that with plausible answers to “who counts?”, you arrive at hedonistic utilitarianism.