evolution~morality ⁽³⁰⁾

In the beginning was the tool, and the tool was the world. The world was with us and we were the world. Seeing the world was a tool, we said to each other, “Aren’t we clever?” and immediately forgot what we were doing. In case we got in trouble. Some say, to their credit, they remember themselves, but then, immediately…

Haworth, Alan. “Genes and Citizens: Can Moral Philosophy Learn From Evolutionary Biology?” Res Publica (2001): via academia.edu. Web. 10 Sept. 2024. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1011924516656 ABSTRACT: The claim that moral philosophers have something to learn from recent neo-Darwinian theory cannot be sustained -at least, not in the case of the three theses characteristic of the latter on which I concentrate. The first thesis,…

Korsgaard, Christine M. 2010. Reflections on the evolution of morality. Amherst Lecture in Philosophy. The Department of Philosophy at Amherst College. Published Version & Permanent link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:5141952 ABSTRACT: In recent years a number of biologists, anthropologists, and animal scientists have tried to explain the biological evolution of morality, and claim to have found the rudiments of morality in the altruistic…

Silvertown, Jonathan. Selfish Genes to Social Beings: A Cooperative History of Life. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2024. [https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198876397.001.0001] Good introductory text by Jonathan Silvertown to the science and history dealing with the idea of co-operation in our biological lives. Give it to your friends who need a break from Dostoevsky or Nietzsche. We have the usual suspects: Part 1: Kropotkin,…

A major thread running through The Ideological Brain, by Leor Zmigrod, a detail of Charles Darwin’s intellectual biography. His marriage to Emma provided Charles with a distinct contrast to his scientific work, and that emotional commitment provided much of the delay in the ideas of natural selection and its implications being published. For Charles had made an agnostic commitment to Emma not…

Woolcock, Peter G. “The Case against Evolutionary Ethics Today.” Chap 11 in Biology and the Foundation of Ethics, 276–306. Cambridge: Cambridge Uni Press, 1999. https://www.academia.edu/35875522/The_Case_against_Evolutionary_Ethics_Today Usually when I react to papers I like to remain behind my veil of ignorance (at all levels), partly because it is lazy, but also strangely in counter to that laziness, because I learn more,…