Biases for Evil and Moral Perfection

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The author of the article "Do biases for evil render moral perfection impossible?" argues that deeply ingrained dispositions to do evil do not render moral perfection impossible. The author presents various definitions of moral perfection and presents evidence of neuroscience that points towards a strong disposition for evil. As a response, he presents three strategies that enable people to overcome their inclination towards evil: cognitive enhancement, avoiding triggering situations and structural solutions. The author's intuitions are very interesting. However, in order to improve the quality and a stronger basis in the literature, I propose a broader view of the issue of evolution in general, as well as of the evolutionary explanation of religion and the content of religious beliefs. A number of interesting articles can be found, for example, in "Scientia et Fides": Vol 8, No 2 (2020): Philosophical and Theological Aspects of Evolution.

Author Response

I added some brief remarks on evolution and evolutionary psychology and additional references.

Reviewer 2 Report

The author presents a classic problem - the problem of evil - from a contemporary perspective. Certainly, reflection on moral perfection is most commonly carried out as part of the project of philosophical theology and ethics.

The article is based on a classic study (Conee, Earl. 1994. “The Nature and the Impossibility of Moral Perfection.”) and its consequences. Especially the thesis is discussed: Doing everything that is morally right and nothing that is morally wrong.

The author approaches the issue from a cognitive point of view with competence.
Perhaps it would have been interesting to critique the positions of Coney and evolutionary psychologists from the point of view of freedom and the importance of will. The question also calls for a reflection on the ontological foundations of the person. But these are open questions that call for further reflection and do not affect the validity of the work.

In this respect, the discussion with the neurological evolutionary psychologist's views is interesting.

Author Response

Questions about freedom and the will with regards to cognitive science are interesting but fall outside the scope of my paper. That being said, I added a brief remark on this topic.

Reviewer 3 Report

I appreciate the submitted article as an original approach to an intriguing issue: to what extent humans can achieve moral perfection or at least can improve in a steady way towards that goal.

The argument is well presented and the approach is suggestive, but it needs clearly more elaboration after considering much more data and studies.

In the first place, the author takes for granted the very discussed views of Boyer, Norenzayan and other scholars in the so called cognitive science of religion. These views have suffered strong criticism, and I still wonder each time I read a paper in which such theories are taken at face value. Far from the true understanding about how religion works. See for instance the critical engagement in Brain and Behavioural Sciences years ago with the Norenzayan  thesis of "Big Gods"; Boyer theory does not convince much more in academic circles.

The second  issue is more serious: if the author is looking for empirical evidence regarding moral perfection, he or she should have paid more attention to the extensive research on altruism. A recent systematic review found more than 200 articles and studies published in the last 20 years, most of them empirical or experimental. The point is  that this is the research we need to account when trying to assess how good humans might be.

A third issue arises after a related research and publication line is considered. I mean the many essays that recently point to the prosocial dimension in human evolution. After Pinker and his acclaimed book The Better Angels of Our Nature, several others try to explore a similar path, like Rutger Bregman, Humankind; Richard Wrangham, The Goodness Paradox; Nicholas Christakis, Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of Good Society. In my opinion, the submitted article would accommplish a much better job engaging with these books and with their thesis on the evolutionary goodness of human kind, and its expected future orientation.

From my own perspective, the article makes a good point and offers an excellent research question, but it needs absolutely to engage much more with the more relevant literature and studies, and possibly to note that the quoted authors and their theories suffer rather because of the limited evidence they exhibit, especially regarding the historical record.

Author Response

• I added some remarks on and references to criticisms of the theories I discuss. I do not solely discuss Norenzayan's theory but also related theories (e.g. Dominic Johnson). As I noted, I cannot do a complete survey of criticisms. I also did not find criticisms of Boyer's theory on out-group hostility but only criticisms on his older theories on religious belief.
• I also added some general remarks on the lack of evidence for the theories I discuss.
• The paper is not aimed at discussing the ramifications of evolutionary theories of altruism in general, but only those of a small number of theories that point to dispositions for morally bad behavior. The former project is much too broad for a paper length discussion and is also a different research question since these theories tend to discuss dispositions for morally good behavior. I added some remarks in the introduction to section 3 to explain my approach better.

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

I think the article is greatly improved in this new version. I still complain that the author could engage more with thee issue of altruism, since it is very relevant for his/her thesis.