Book Description
Certain to engage scholars, students, and general readers alike, Evolution and Ethics offers a balanced, levelheaded, constructive approach to an often divisive debate.
Author : Philip Clayton
Publisher : Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
Page : 354 pages
File Size : 25,37 MB
Release : 2004-08-04
Category : Medical
ISBN : 9780802826954
Certain to engage scholars, students, and general readers alike, Evolution and Ethics offers a balanced, levelheaded, constructive approach to an often divisive debate.
Author : Richard Joyce
Publisher : MIT Press
Page : 285 pages
File Size : 41,96 MB
Release : 2007-08-24
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 0262263254
Moral thinking pervades our practical lives, but where did this way of thinking come from, and what purpose does it serve? Is it to be explained by environmental pressures on our ancestors a million years ago, or is it a cultural invention of more recent origin? In The Evolution of Morality, Richard Joyce takes up these controversial questions, finding that the evidence supports an innate basis to human morality. As a moral philosopher, Joyce is interested in whether any implications follow from this hypothesis. Might the fact that the human brain has been biologically prepared by natural selection to engage in moral judgment serve in some sense to vindicate this way of thinking—staving off the threat of moral skepticism, or even undergirding some version of moral realism? Or if morality has an adaptive explanation in genetic terms—if it is, as Joyce writes, "just something that helped our ancestors make more babies"—might such an explanation actually undermine morality's central role in our lives? He carefully examines both the evolutionary "vindication of morality" and the evolutionary "debunking of morality," considering the skeptical view more seriously than have others who have treated the subject. Interdisciplinary and combining the latest results from the empirical sciences with philosophical discussion, The Evolution of Morality is one of the few books in this area written from the perspective of moral philosophy. Concise and without technical jargon, the arguments are rigorous but accessible to readers from different academic backgrounds. Joyce discusses complex issues in plain language while advocating subtle and sometimes radical views. The Evolution of Morality lays the philosophical foundations for further research into the biological understanding of human morality.
Author : Michael Ruse
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 343 pages
File Size : 44,16 MB
Release : 2017-08-24
Category : History
ISBN : 1107132959
This book introduces readers to the application of evolutionary ideas to moral thinking and justification, presenting contrasting perspectives on controversial issues.
Author : Johan De Smedt
Publisher : Springer Nature
Page : 223 pages
File Size : 47,45 MB
Release : 2021-05-04
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 303068802X
A growing body of evidence from the sciences suggests that our moral beliefs have an evolutionary basis. To explain how human morality evolved, some philosophers have called for the study of morality to be naturalized, i.e., to explain it in terms of natural causes by looking at its historical and biological origins. The present literature has focused on the link between evolution and moral realism: if our moral beliefs enhance fitness, does this mean they track moral truths? In spite of the growing empirical evidence, these discussions tend to remain high-level: the mere fact that morality has evolved is often deemed enough to decide questions in normative and meta-ethics. This volume starts from the assumption that the details about the evolution of morality do make a difference, and asks how. It presents original essays by authors from various disciplines, including philosophy, anthropology, developmental psychology, and primatology, who write in conversation with neuroscience, sociology, and cognitive psychology.
Author : Scott M. James
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
Page : 229 pages
File Size : 34,70 MB
Release : 2010-11-23
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 1444329529
Offering the first general introductory text to this subject, the timely Introduction to Evolutionary Ethics reflects the most up-to-date research and current issues being debated in both psychology and philosophy. The book presents students to the areas of cognitive psychology, normative ethics, and metaethics. The first general introduction to evolutionary ethics Provides a comprehensive survey of work in three distinct areas of research: cognitive psychology, normative ethics, and metaethics Presents the most up-to-date research available in both psychology and philosophy Written in an engaging and accessible style for undergraduates and the interested general reader Discusses the evolution of morality, broadening its relevance to those studying psychology
Author : Thomas Henry Huxley
Publisher : ReadHowYouWant.com
Page : 72 pages
File Size : 14,46 MB
Release : 1893
Category : Bible and evolution
ISBN :
Author : Thomas Henry Huxley
Publisher : London : Macmillan
Page : 380 pages
File Size : 23,52 MB
Release : 1894
Category : Capital
ISBN :
Author : Matthew H. Nitecki
Publisher : SUNY Press
Page : 382 pages
File Size : 21,44 MB
Release : 1993-07-16
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780791415009
This volume analyzes the biological and philosophical disagreements in evolutionary ethics and points out difficulties with the interpretations. The book is divided into four sections. The first is an historical introduction to the origin of evolutionary ethics, showing how different evolutionary ethics was a hundred years ago, and how distant Huxley is from most of us now. The second section argues for a sociobiological interpretation of evolutionary ethics. The third section presents the view opposite to that of the second section and rejects the sociobiological interpretation. The fourth section deals objectively with many complex and fundamental issues from diverse perspectives.
Author : Sarah Bromberg
Publisher :
Page : pages
File Size : 35,85 MB
Release : 2021-03-08
Category :
ISBN : 9780578246284
The Evolution of Ethics constructs a conceptual bridge between biology and human behavior. This is accomplished by examining the cultural and biological feedback systems that inspires the evolution of social rules. In theory, a cybernetic process is at the heart of developing ethical systems. This process occurs when biology and culture collide."
Author : Paul Lawrence Farber
Publisher : Univ of California Press
Page : 228 pages
File Size : 48,37 MB
Release : 1994-10-11
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780520920972
Evolutionary theory tells us about our biological past; can it also guide us to a moral future? Paul Farber's compelling book describes a century-old philosophical hope held by many biologists, anthropologists, psychologists, and social thinkers: that universal ethical and social imperatives are built into human nature and can be discovered through knowledge of evolutionary theory. Farber describes three upsurges of enthusiasm for evolutionary ethics. The first came in the early years of mid-nineteenth century evolutionary theories; the second in the 1920s and '30s, in the years after the cultural catastrophe of World War I; and the third arrived with the recent grand claims of sociobiology to offer a sound biological basis for a theory of human culture. Unlike many who have written on evolutionary ethics, Farber considers the responses made by philosophers over the years. He maintains that their devastating criticisms have been forgotten—thus the history of evolutionary ethics is essentially one of oft-repeated philosophical mistakes. Historians, scientists, social scientists, and anyone concerned about the elusive basis of selflessness, altruism, and morality will welcome Farber's enlightening book.