Evolutionism and morality
philosophical contributions
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.35699/2316-770X.2014.2647Keywords:
Evolutionism, morality, moral philosophyAbstract
Considering that, for moral philosophy, an evolutionary description of human psychology and behaviour can shed considerable light on the nature of morality and the importance that the moral phenomenon assumes in our lives, the following question is posed: assuming that morality is an adaptive product of our species, what can be inferred from the status of our moral judgements? Departing from the hypothesis that the evolutionary theory can explain, but not justify our moral judgements, different philosophical trends are investigated in an effort to find out what such an explanation would reveal in terms of ontological, semantic and epistemological commitments of the moral discourse.
Downloads
References
BARKOW, J. H., Cosmides, L. Tooby, J. The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Genera-tion of Culture, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992.
BRINK, D. Moral Realism and the Foundations of Ethics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.
FRANKENA, W. ‘The Naturalistic Fallacy’, Mind, 48, 1939.
JOYCE, R. The Evolution of Morality, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007. JOYCE, R. The Myth of Morality, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
MOORE, G.E. Principia Ethica. Moore, New York: Dover, 2004/1903.
NAGEL, T. ‘Ethics as an Autonomous Theoretical Subject’, in G. Stent, Morality as a Biological Phe-nomenon, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978.
RUSE, M. ‘The Morality of the Gene’, The Monist, 67 (2): 167-199, 1984.
RUSE, M. Levando Darwin a Sério, Belo Horizonte: Editora Itatiaia, 1995/1986a.
RUSE, M. ‘Evolutionary Ethics: a Phoenix Arisen’, Zygon, 21: 95-112, 1986b.
SYMONS, ‘On the Use and Misuse of Darwinism in the Study of Human Behavior’, in Barkow et al, 137-159, 1992.
SPENCER, H. The Data of Ethics, New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1882/1879.
TOOBY, J. ‘The Emergence of Evolutionary Psychology’, in D. Pines (ed.), Emerging Syntheses in Science, Santa Fe: Santa Fe Institute, 1985.
TOOBY, J., Cosmides, L. ‘Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture, Part I’, Ethology and Sociobiology, 10: 29-49, 1989.
TOOBY, J., Cosmides, L. ‘Knowing Thyself: The Evolutionary Psychology of Moral Reasoning and Moral Sentiments’, Society for Business Ethics, 91-127, 2004.
WILSON, E. O. Sociobiology: The New Synthesis, the abridged edition, MA: Harvard University Press, 1975.
WILSON, E. O. On Human Nature, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978.