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quick note for future inquiry: utilitarian genetic psychology of virtue questioned

This post is still being edited... it's pretty unclear as written... hopefully editing will clarify

This has to do with the problems with a utilitarian understanding of motivation when it is used in evolutionary psychology. 

Utilitarians look at human actions have genuine desirability solely in terms of the expected consequences. No inherently desirable actions. But they grant that repeated action can cause one fuse (or better, confuse) the desirability of the action with that of the outcome. Hence the admiration we have for virtues such as courage.

Replace "repeated action" with "repeated generations" and you have at least one explanation of the origin of virtue quoted with approval by Darwin in the Descent of Man. And you are not far from today's evolutionary psychology.

The problem is, why would any animal act courageously to protect kin in the first place?

The initial answer, it seems to me must be that we should be asking a related question about similar behavior in non-humans. They take risks and endure pain for the sake of others without the help (or hindrance) of reflection. It must be that they desire to do so non-reflectively. But even non-reflective awareness of how to act in a dangerous situation involves an awareness of danger: but how could an instinctive awareness of that come about?

One possible answer is that he might be encouraged to do so by others, who praise such an action with the hopes that others will practice it. But such duping could occur only if the action was already a possibility.  And it is a possibility only if it can seem intrinsically desirable to at least one person. In other words, duping presupposes the desire to act courageously.  But such admiration doesn't arise in a utilitarian system. Or rather, it is subsequent to the practice of courage.  So social duping or the like cannot explain how the practice of courage arises in the first place. What we need to explain is how the action could look admirable, good, even apart from its utility to others. But if it can appear that way even prior to group utility, then utilitarianism's account of motivation has a big gap in it and is possibly superfluous. And to argue that the social shaping or duping motivates us to act courageously is to explain in a circle.

So if one is to have an evolutionary account of virtue, one must explain how virtues seem admirable WITHOUT relying on circular explanations (such as social shaping) offered by utilitarianism.
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