PANTHEON
ExploreBuild My Library
© 2026 Pantheon — an atlas of the ideas that shaped how we think.
person2000s-present

Sharon Street

Disciplines:
ethics
ethics/metaethics

Summary

American philosopher who developed the Darwinian dilemma — evolutionary debunking of moral realism — and defends a constructivist metaethics.

Core Contribution

A Darwinian Dilemma for Realist Theories of Value (2006): natural selection shaped our evaluative attitudes for fitness, not for tracking mind-independent moral facts — either our moral beliefs are mostly wrong (tracking fitness not moral truth) or moral facts are explained by evolution (making moral realism collapse into naturalism). Humean constructivism: moral facts are constituted by the attitudes of ideally coherent agents.

Key Spikes & Highlights

  • The Darwinian dilemma is the most influential recent argument in metaethics: if you are a moral realist, you must explain why evolution would have given us accurate beliefs about mind-independent moral facts — since selection was for fitness, not truth, there is no reason to think our beliefs track moral reality.
  • Constructivism is her positive answer: moral facts are not mind-independent but constructed by ideal valuing agents — this avoids the Darwinian dilemma while preserving the normativity of ethics.

Notable Works & Achievements

A Darwinian Dilemma for Realist Theories of Value

Evolution and the Normativity of Epistemic Reasons

Historical Influences

John Rawls David Hume

Intellectual Lineage

Analytic Metaethics

Contemporaries & Peers

Derek Parfit Russ Shafer-Landau

Minds Influenced

Metaethics

Intellectual Posterity

Evolutionary DebunkingDarwinian Dilemma

Discussing

Sharon Street

Ask anything about Sharon Street — their ideas, influences, contradictions, legacy.

Sign in to start a conversation.