Opt-In Morality

I was going to write some more comments on the discussion between Michael Ruse and Jason Rosenhouse, but all I could have said and more is covered in a terrific post by Tim Dean at Ockham's Beard. (Wish I'd thought of that blog name.) Tim seems to be espousing the same sort of solution I came to when reading Richard Joyce.

You can acknowledge that there is no binding, logically necessary or factually obligatory reason to be moral, but you can choose to be moral. And there are plenty of good non-moral or prudential reasons for doing so, such as that social living benefits us, and it’s a darn sight easier to live socially when there are rules of conduct. So you be moral.

Tim also has a review of Phillip Kitcher's new book, The Ethical Project. Kitcher apparently takes a similar approach, and grounds it in our evolutionary history. So there's another one for the reading list....