Evolutionary ethics

Abstract: With insight and wit, Robert J. Richards focuses on the development of evolutionary theories of mind and behavior from their first distinct appearance in the eighteenth century to their controversial state today. Particularly important in the nineteenth century were Charles Darwin's ideas about instinct, reason, and morality, which Richards considers against the background of Darwin's personality, training, scientific and cultural concerns, and intellectual community. Many critics have argued that the Darwinian revolution stripped nature of moral purpose and ethically neutered the human animal. Richards contends, however, that Darwin, Herbert Spencer, and their disciples attempted to reanimate moral life, believing that the evolutionary process gave heart to unselfish, altruistic behavior. "Richards's book is now the obvious introduction to the history of ideas about mind and behavior in the nineteenth century." Mark Ridley, Times Literary Supplement "Not since the publication of Michael Ghiselin's "The Triumph of the Darwinian Method "has there been such an ambitious, challenging, and methodologically self-conscious interpretation of the rise and development and evolutionary theories and Darwin's role therein." John C. Greene, "Science " "His book . . . triumphantly achieves the goal of all great scholarship: it not only informs us, but shows us why becoming thus informed is essential to understanding our own issues and projects." Daniel C. Dennett, "Philosophy of Science ""

Abstract: Preamble: Naturalism and Hume's Law PART I. MORALITY AND EMOTION 1. Emotionism 2. Emotions: Nonmoral and Moral 3. Sensibility Saved 4. Against Objectivity PART II. CONSTRUCTING MORALS 5. Dining with Cannibals 6. The Genealogy of Morals 7. The Limits of Evolutionary Ethics 8. Moral Progress: Beyond Good and Evil?

Abstract: IT MAY be safely assumed that, two thousand years ago, before Cæsar set foot in southern Britain, the whole country-side visible from the windows of the room in which I write, was in what is called "the state of nature". Except, it may be, by raising a few sepulchral mounds, such as those which still, here and there, break the flowing contours of the downs, man's hands had made no mark upon it; and the thin veil of vegetation which overspread the broad-backed heights and the shelving sides of the coombs was unaffected by his industry. The native grasses and weeds, the scattered patches of gorse, contended with one another for the possession of the scanty surface soil; they fought against the droughts of summer, the frosts of winter, and the furious gales which swept, with unbroken force, now from the Atlantic, and now from the North Sea, at all times of the year; they filled up, as they best might, the gaps made in their ranks by all sorts of underground and overground animal ravagers. One year with another, an average population, the floating balance of the unceasing struggle for existence among the indigenous plants, maintained itself. It is as little to be doubted, that an essentially similar state of nature prevailed, in this region, for many thousand years before the coming of Cæsar; and there is no assignable reason for denying that it might continue to exist through an equally prolonged futurity, except for the intervention of man.

Abstract: This study of moral intuitions used a questionnaire containing 2 moral dilemmas that were administered to university students. The dilemmas probed the underlying dimensions involved in moral intuitions. The results of both group- and individual-level analyses suggested that the most important dimensions were Speciesism, Abhorrent Political Philosophy (Nazism), and Inclusive Fitness, followed by Social Contract and Number of Individuals. The dimensions of Action-Inaction, Elite, and Endangered Species had significant but weak influences