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Unmasking Morality

1. Psychological Egoism
Psychological Egoism holds that ethics is just a facade put up by us to legitimize our fundamentally egotistical behavior: I only and always pursue my own self-interest; morality is just a cover. As Balckburn puts it on p. 30, morality "is just the whistle on the engine, not the steam that moves it." So, morality is just empty talk which needs unmasking.
Problem: What's the evidence that Psychological Egoism is true? After all, often people engage in altruistic behavior; so, the burden of proof is on the proponent of Psychological Egoism
Duplication: What seems altruistic behavior is just a cover for (often unconscious) egoistic behavior. The person who sacrifices his life for others does it for some (possibly unconscious) egoistic reason.
Triplication: But what's the evidence that such reasons are there? What explanatory power does such theory have? What types of behavior does it rule out?

2. Evolution

The true source of morality is its evolutionary value. Hence, morality is just an adaptation: we don't really behave morally since we just follow an evolution determined behavioral pattern. Again morality stands unmasked.

Problem: This is an ignoratio elenchi: it has nothing to do with the issue at hand. Compare: motherly love has evolutionary value; hence, mothers don't really love their offspring. This, of course, is absurd; mothers do love their offspring, since they do feel the emotion of love towards them. It's wrong to infer that our apparent concerns are not our real concerns from the fact that there's an evolutionary explanation for them.

In fact, evolution, by providing a biological basis for a common nature for humans and therefore for a shared set of needs and interests, gives a possible foundation for the existence of an objective set of ethical principles, understood as those that optimally satisfy those needs and interests.

Natural selection, the mechanism of evolution, favors "selfish" genes, or "the survival of the fittest", and therefore we must be essentially selfish or ruthless. So, morality is just a facade which needs unmasking.

Problem: From the fact that genes, which are selfish only in a metaphorical way, have different rates of reproductive success in different environments it doesn't follow that their carriers are selfish, since a reasonably altruistic principled carrier may have more chance of reproducing. The same applies to the "fittest". In general, societies made up of reasonably altruistic members are more successful that ones made up of ruthless ones always overtly or covertly at war with each other.

If the source of morality is evolutionary, then one can reasonably draw the following consequences:

There may not be any rational justification for the basis of morality apart from the fact that beings who believe and follow morality are overall more successful than unmoral ones. Hence, morality might be objective in the sense of being, to some large extent, innate, but not objective in the sense of being rationally compelling. Still, the existence of objective morality is compatible with the fact that our believing and acting on it is caused by evolution. Compare: the fact that I see the train coming and I believe it is coming is the result of evolution; however, the train is really coming; analogously, the fact that I believe in, and follow, morality is the result of evolution; however, there really are moral laws.

Since evolution often prefers quick and dirty solutions to slow and very refined ones, it may turn out that morality is an imperfect system unable to deal with some cases (apparently "unsolvable" moral problems), although overall is it successful. Compare with ants following each other by pheromones, which is generally successful but disastrous when it rains heavily.

3. Morality as Ideology
Morality is often an institution whose real function is other than it seems. For example, a feminist can reasonably analyze moral codes about reproduction as part of a system of oppression against women. Or, a Marxist may analyze bourgeois morality as the ideological counterpart of class oppression. Or, an atheist may analyze religious morality as an instrument of a power grabbing church. Or a follower of Nietzsche may perceive Christian morality as life-denying system relentlessly imposed by the weak over the strong. Hence, once again morality stands unmasked.
NOTES: The analysis need not entail that the male, the bourgeois, or the priestly moralist are insincere in their beliefs or even see their actual role in the oppressive system.
Problem: Although often these analyses are at least partially correct, at most they unmask and debunk only one aspect or one type of morality. So, they don't amount to overall attacks on morality.