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What kind of moral objectivity does science provide and how might understanding morality as an evolutionary adaptation be culturally useful? Over the last 35 years, it has been becoming progressively clearer that social morality, morality dealing with other people and … Continue reading
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Imagine an emotional, highly willful elephant (representing our biology based moral intuitions, or, as David Hume might have called them, our moral passions) with a much less powerful rider, the rational part of human consciousness. This is Jonathon Haidt’s key … Continue reading
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I found Justin Clarke-Doane’s recent paper “Morality and Mathematics: The Evolutionary Challenge” in the journal Ethics refreshing in the way it argued that “Evolutionary Challenge” arguments against moral realism follow the same logic as arguments against mathematical realism. (In brief, “Evolutionary Challenge” … Continue reading
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Summary 1, without philosophy’s jargon The primary reason that people have almost always invented and enforced social moralities is that acting morally increases the synergistic benefits of cooperation within groups. “Altruistic acts that also increase the benefits of cooperation in … Continue reading
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I recently read that people are preferentially suited to understand ideas presented in the form of stories with beginnings, middles, ends with twists, and surprise characters. This certainly describes the evolutionary origins of enforced cultural norms (social morality). Perhaps some readers … Continue reading
Science and Morality 