Evolutionary, ecological and ethical studies are, at the same time, specific scientific disciplines and, from an historical point of view, structurally linked domains of research. In a context of environmental crisis, the need is increasingly emerging for a connecting epistemological framework able to express a common or convergent tendency of thought and practice aimed at building, among other things, an environmental policy management respectful of the planet’s biodiversity and its evolutionary potential.

The word ‘environment’ has a history. Before the mid-nineteenth century, the idea of a singular, abstract entity—the organism—interacting with another singular, abstract entity—the environment—was virtually unknown. In this paper I trace how the idea of a plurality of external conditions or circumstances was replaced by the idea of a singular environment. The central figure behind this shift, at least in Anglo-American intellectual life, was the philosopher Herbert Spencer. I examine Spencer’s work from 1840 to 1855, demonstrating that he was exposed (...) to a variety of discussions of the ‘force of circumstances’ in this period, and was decisively influenced by the ideas of Auguste Comte in the years preceding the publication of Principles of psychology (1855). It is this latter work that popularized the word ‘environment’ and the corresponding idea of organism–environment interaction—an idea with important metaphysical and methodological implications. Spencer introduced into the English-speaking world one of our most enduring dichotomies: organism and environment. (shrink)

The purpose of this study is to explore early Buddhist ethics in comparison with classical Confucianist ethics and to show similarities. The study suggests that the popular belief that the two ethical systems are radically different from each other needs to be reconsidered. When a focus is given to the development, transformation, and realization of the self, a similar framework is revealed in the two ethical systems. Furthermore, this study intends to reject the popular thesis: early Buddhism is only self-liberation-concerned (...) soteriology and classical Confucianism is only society-concerned thought requiring self-effacement. ;My understanding of the core virtue of self-transformation is as compassion in early Buddhism and benevolence in classical Confucianism. So this study is focused on the analysis of compassion and benevolence by examining their metaphysical grounds, their functional mechanisms, their applications, and their meta-ethical nature. ;The metaphysical groundworks of morals are explained in terms of the rebirth and kamma theory, and the theory of Mandate of Heaven. For a person to develop and achieve these core virtues, this study shows the significant role of self-restraining or self-overcoming, the principle of extension from near to far, self-oriented motivation for the core virtue, both-regarding position , and the important role of both sympathetic feeling and reason. In the domain of social interaction, compassion and benevolence appear in the area of education and politics as tools for achieving happiness for both oneself and others. In politics, the paradigmatic model is adopted: a ruler as an embodiment of the virtue rules a country by being a moral example to the people. ;The analysis of the core virtues in terms of moral objective shows the inseparability of factual knowledge from moral practice, the universal acceptability of the virtue, and the possibility of maintaining objectivity by taking both-regarding action. (shrink)

This review essay provides an analysis of the context and content of Trevor Pearce’s Pragmatism’s Evolution. The work highlights the bond between organisms and their environments.

Progress in neuroscience – notably, on the dynamic functions of neural networks – has deepened our understanding of decision‐making, acquisition of character and temperament, and the development of moral dispositions. The evolution of our cerebral architecture is both genetic and epigenetic: the nervous system develops in continuous interaction with the immediate physical and socio‐cultural environments. Each individual has a unique cerebral identity even in the relative absence of genetic distinction, and the development of this identity is strongly influenced by social (...) and cultural environments leaving major traces in the connectivity of the brain. This interaction introduces important elements of variability and plasticity. Synaptic epigenetic theories of cultural and social imprinting on our brain architecture suggest the possibility that we can be “epigenetically proactive” and adapt our social structures, in both the short and the long term, to benefit and constructively interact with the ever‐developing neuronal architecture of our brains. Epigenetic proaction can be described as a way to socially steer evolution by influencing the cultural imprints to be stored in our brains. The purpose of this article is to present, in a historical and ideological light, the idea that we may culturally shape the developing brain, and discuss some key risks and benefits of this endeavour. The article is a contribution to neuroethics. (shrink)

Since both modern moral theory and evolutionary theory arose in the shadow of Newtonian and Humean conceptions of nature, debates about evolutionary ethics have typically been vexed by deeper problems with the nature of evolution itself as well as meta-ethical questions about the link between facts and values. Humean skepticism and mechanistic selectionism have recently coincided in postmodern attacks on essentialism,on meta-narratives of progress, on models of human nature, and on moral collectivism. Against this most recent wave of skepticism, however, (...) contemporary reconstructions of evolution in light of complex systems science suggest useful ways of reinterpreting both evolutionary causation, the biology of human nature, and their implications for ethics. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

The significance of the discovery of half of Dewey’s most important China lecture series notes, “Social and Political Philosophy,” cannot be overestimated. These newly-discovered lecture notes provide us with a unique opportunity to conduct a translation case study in both directions: first, to check Hu Shi’s translation against Dewey’s lecture notes; and second, to check John Dewey: Lectures in China, 1919-1920, “back translations” in the terminology of translation studies, both against Hu’s translation and against Dewey’s original notes that the back (...) translators tried to reconstruct. More important, by treating translations as re-writes and as products of cultural and ideological manipulations, this case study enables us to analyze how Hu Shi appropriated Dewey’s ideas to advance his own cultural and political agenda while acting as the latter’s interpreter. (shrink)

The error theory of moral judgment says that moral judgments, though often believed to be objectively true, never are. The tendency to believe in the objectivity of our moral beliefs, like the beliefs themselves, is rooted in objective features of human psychology, and not in objective features of the natural world that might exist apart from human psychology. In naturalized epistemology, it is tempting to take this view as the default hypothesis. It appears to make the fewest assumptions in accounting (...) for the fact that humans not only make moral judgments, but believe them to be, at least some of the time, objectively true. In this paper I argue that from an evolutionary perspective, the error theory is not the most parsimonious alternative. It is simpler to suppose that mental representations with moral content arose as direct cognitive and motivational responses to independent moral facts. (shrink)

Scholars have often considered evolutionary social theories a product of Positivist scientism and the naturalization of ethics. Yet the theistic foundations of many evolutionary theories proposed between the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries bolstered the belief that following natural laws was morally desirable, if not vital, to guaranteeing social and moral progress. In the early twentieth century, American paleontologist and leading evolutionist Henry Fairfield Osborn represented one of the most authoritative advocates of this interpretation of natural normativity. Particularly during the (...) last years of his career, Osborn used theological arguments to reinforce his advocacy of evolutionary ethics and social control policies, which led him to challenge his “old master” Thomas Huxley regarding the separation between evolution and moral conduct. This article examines the development of Osborn’s evolutionary ethics, with particular regard to its bearing on the American debate on euthenics. I argue that theistic topics played a major rhetorical role in the attempt to justify normative conclusions drawn from ostensible laws of evolution. (shrink)

This article advocates a naturalist and realist ethics of solidarity. Specifically, it argues that human needs should be met; and that they should be met in harmony with the environment. Realism should include respect for existing cultures and the morals presently being practiced – with reasonable exceptions. Dignity must come in a form understood and appreciated by the person whose dignity is being respected. It is also argued that naturalist ethics are needed to combat liberal ethics, not least because the (...) latter supports today’s inflexible and dysfunctional institutions. In arguing for these positions, reference is made to the naturalist realist ethics of Georges Canguilhem, C.H. Waddington, John Dewey and David Sloan Wilson, all of whom embed the social order in the natural order. (shrink)

Historians of the Victorian period have begun to re-evaluate the general background and impact of Darwin's theory of the origin of species by means of natural selection. An emerging picture suggests that the Darwinian theory of evolution was only one aspect of a more general change in intellectual positions. It is possible to summarize two correlated developments in the second half of the nineteenth century: the seculariszation of majors areas of thought, and the increasing breakdown of a common intellectual milieu. (...) Studies in linguistics, historical criticism, socio-political theory, theologys, and anthropology, besides evolutionary theory, contributed to these developments. It has also been argued that the background of evolutionary thought lay within a relatively unified early Victorian intellectual context with shared religious, moral, and scientific concepts. Evolutionary theory contributed to the disintegration of this shared context, but it did not intrinsically assume a clear demarcation between value-laden ideas and scientific ideas. On the one hand, in the later Victorian period, religious and scientific intellectuals found it increasingly hard to share common ground. On the other hand, they did sometimes share an enthusiasm for applying biological models to social and ethical theory. It is necessary to look closely before ascribing any increased differentiation of positions to the impact of evolutionary biology. (shrink)

This review essay provides an analysis of the context and content of Trevor Pearce’s Pragmatism’s Evolution. The work highlights the bond between organisms and their environments.

This paper argues that philosophers should pay more attention to the idea of ecosystem engineering and to the scientific literature surrounding it. Ecosystem engineering is a broad but clearly delimited concept that is less subject to many of the “it encompasses too much” criticisms that philosophers have directed at niche construction . The limitations placed on the idea of ecosystem engineering point the way to a narrower idea of niche construction. Moreover, experimental studies in the ecosystem engineering literature provide detailed (...) accounts of particular empirical situations in which we cannot neglect the O term in dE /dt = g (O, E), which helps us get beyond verbal arguments and simple models purporting to show that niche construction must not be ignored as a factor in evolution. Finally, this literature demonstrates that while ecosystem engineering studies may not require us to embrace a new evolutionary process, as niche construction advocates have claimed, they do teach us that the myriad abiotic factors concealed by the abstract term ‘environment’ are often controlled in large part by organisms. (shrink)

John Dewey escreve um de seus primeiros trabalhos sobre ética em resposta às idéias de Thomas Huxley. Huxley, em seu artigo “Evolution and Ethics” , defendia uma oposição entre os processos naturais e os processos éticos. A ética, segundo ele, é contrária aos princípios que se observa na natureza. Para Dewey, por outro lado, não há dualismo entre as regularidades naturais e as regularidades sociais. Dewey pretende, em seu artigo homônimo ao de Huxley , reconstruir o sentido de noções fundamentais (...) ao pensamento evolutivo como “adaptado”, “luta pela vida” e “seleção natural”. Dando início a uma versão evolucionista da reflexão ética, Dewey supõe a continuidade entre o mundo natural e o mundo dos valores. Suas conclusões indicam não só uma abordagem evolutiva das questões éticas, mas a proposição de valores e condutas que estejam em conformidade com o crescimento e a mudança constante nos ambientes e nas funções adaptativas, tais como se observa no mundo natural.John Dewey wrote one of his first works on Ethics in response to Thomas Huxley ideas. Huxley, in his article “Evolution ad Ethics” , argues for an opposition between the natural and the ethic processes. Ethics, according to him, is contrary to the principles observed in nature. For Dewey, on the other hand, there is no dualism between natural and social regularities. Dewey intents, in an homonymous article , rebuild the meaning of fundamental notions in the evolutionary thought such as “fitted”, “struggle for life” and “natural selection”. Giving start to an evolutionary version of the ethical reflection, Dewey supposes continuity between the natural world and the world of values. His conclusions not just indicate an evolutionary approach to ethical questions, but also the proposal of values and conducts in conformity with growth and constant change of environments and adaptive functions, as observed in the natural world. (shrink)