Alan Gibbard's modern classic of metaethics, Wise Choices, Apt Feelings, attempts a Galilean reduction (explaining ultimately in terms of physics) of human normativity -- especially moral judgment. His tools are evolutionary theory and psychological speculation. His reduction, however, neither goes far enough (it illuminates proximate causes of human normativity, while a deeper look into evolutionary theory reveals the ultimate cause), nor qualifies as fully Galilean.

     This project examines Gibbard's Galilean pursuit, identifies some of its failures (with respect to both metaethical inquiry and general Galilean standards) and their likely causes, then extends its investigation of evolution to discover implications for value theory (upon which a superior explanation of normativity's origin and function rests), and expands its psychological speculation to include the evolutionary development of three functionally distinct, competing neuropsychological mechanisms that produce human moral judgments.

     Conflicts among these mechanisms account for a persistent and destructively subjective conception of value, for a mistakenly monolithic notion of judgment, for the confounding factual/normative dualism in human language (which Gibbard attempts to accommodate with his theory of norm-expressivism, rather than simply prescribing linguistic precision to eliminate the confusion), and for the various human propensities that cause us moral worries in the first place.

     The philosophy of biology quite directly suggests a metaethics that locates an objective, intrinsic value in the reflexive functionality of what is often described as the "tree" or "bush" of Life (and of the process of living pursued by organisms), opening the way for development of an axiological ethics.