This chapter discusses the philosophical relevance of empirical research on moral cognition. It distinguishes three central aims of normative ethical theory: understanding the nature of moral agency, identifying morally right actions, and determining the justification of moral beliefs. For each of these aims, the chapter considers and rejects arguments against employing cognitive scientific research in normative inquiry. It concludes by suggesting that, whichever of the central aims one begins from, normative ethics is improved by engaging with the science of moral (...) cognition. (shrink)

The debate between proponents and opponents of a role for empirical psychology in ethical theory seems to be deadlocked. This paper aims to clarify the terms of that debate, and to defend a principled middle position. I argue against extreme views, which see empirical psychology either as irrelevant to, or as wholly displacing, reflective moral inquiry. Instead, I argue that moral theorists of all stripes are committed to a certain conception of moral thought—as aimed at abstracting away from individual inclinations (...) and toward interpersonal norms—and that this conception tells against both extremes. Since we cannot always know introspectively whether our particular moral judgments achieve this interpersonal standard, we must seek the sort of self-knowledge offered by empirical psychology. Yet reflective assessment of this new information remains a matter of substantive normative theorizing, rather than an immediate consequence of empirical findings themselves. (shrink)

In his article, “Wittgenstein and Basic Moral Certainty,” Nigel Pleasants argues that killing an innocent, non-threatening person is wrong. It is, he argues, “a basic moral certainty.” He believes our basic moral certainties play the “same kind of foundational role as [our] basic empirical certaint[ies] do.” I believe this is mistaken. There is not “simply one kind of foundational role” that certainty plays. While I think Pleasants is right to affiliate his proposition with a Wittgensteinian form of certainty, he exposes (...) himself to a tension that exists in On Certainty regarding how we acquire it: is certainty natural, is it social? In this paper, I present two ways in which we come to possess certainty: a bottom-up approach, where certainty is part of our instinctual predisposition, and a top-down approach, where certainty is acquired through positive reinforcement by family and culture. (shrink)

Evolutionary ethics, the idea that the evolutionary process contains the basis for a full and adequate understanding of human moral nature, is an old and disreputable notion. It was popularized in the 19th century by the English general man of science, Herbert Spencer, who began advocating an evolutionary approach to ethical understanding, even before Charles Darwin published hisOrigin of Speciesin 1859 (Spencer 1857, 1892). Although it was never regarded with much enthusiasm by professional philosophers, thanks to Spencer’s advocacy the evolutionary (...) approach to ethics soon gained wide popularity, both in Britain and towards the end of the century, even more in the United States of America (Ruse 1986; Russett 1976). It became transformed into a whole sociopolitical doctrine, known somewhat inaccurately as ‘Social Darwinism.’ (Scholars have long debated as to whether Darwin himself was truly a Social Darwinian, and the answer seems to depend on which of his works you read. If you look at theOrigin of Species, he certainly is not. On the other hand, if you look at theDescent of Man, there are good reasons for thinking that he was not unsympathetic to the idea. (shrink)

One reason for the widespread resistance to evolutionary accounts of the origins of humanity is the fear that they undermine morality: if morality is based on nothing more than evolved dispositions, it would be shown to be illusory, many people suspect. This view is shared by some philosophers who take their work on the evolutionary origins of morality to undermine moral realism. If they are right, we are faced with an unpalatable choice: to reject morality on scientific grounds, or to (...) reject our best- confirmed scientific explanation of our origins in order to save morality. Fortunately, as I show, we have no reason to accept the deflationary claims of some evolutionary ethicists: morality, as we ordinarily understand it, is fully compatible with evolution. (shrink)

Moral emotions are evolved mechanisms that function in part to optimize social relationships. We discuss two moral emotions— disgust and the “cuteness response”—which modulate social-engagement motives in opposite directions, changing the degree to which the eliciting entity is imbued with mental states (i.e., mentalized). Disgust-inducing entities are hypo-mentalized (i.e., dehumanized); cute entities are hyper-mentalized (i.e., “humanized”). This view of cuteness—which challenges the prevailing view that cuteness is a releaser of parental instincts (Lorenz, 1950/1971)—explains (a) the broad range of affiliative behaviors (...) elicited by cuteness, (b) the marketing of cuteness to children (by toy makers and animators) to elicit play, and (c) the apparent ease and frequency with which cute things are anthropomorphized. (shrink)

According to ‘global institutionalism,’ individuals who do not share a state have duties of justice to one another, and this is explained, in part, by the institutional connections that obtain between them. In this chapter, I defend this view against two challenges. First, I consider challenges raised by ‘non-institutionalists,’ who deny that facts about global institutional interaction bear on the nature of duties of justice that arise between particular individuals. Second, I address challenges posed by ‘domestic institutionalists,’ who accept the (...) claim that facts about institutional interaction bear upon the scope of justice but deny that the right sort of interaction necessary to ground duties of justice is found in the global domain. (shrink)

Evolutionary ethics has a bad reputation. But we must not remain prisoners of our past. Recent advances in Darwinian evolutionary biology pave the way for a linking of science and morality, at once more modest yet more profound than earlier excursions in this direction. There is no need to repudiate the insights of the great philosophers of the past, particularly David Hume. So humans’ simian origins really matter. The question is not whether evolution is to be linked to ethics, but (...) how. (shrink)

Michael Ruses Darwinian metaethics has come under just criticism from Peter Woolcock (1993). But with modification it remains defensible. Ruse (1986) holds that people ordinarily have a false belief that there are objective moral obligations. He argues that the evolutionary story should be taken as an error theory, i.e., as a theory which explains the belief that there are obligations as arising from non-rational causes, rather than from inference or evidential reasons. Woolcock quite rightly objects that this position entails moral (...) nihilism. However, I argue here that people generally have justified true beliefs about which acts promote their most coherent set of moral values, and hence, by definition, about which acts are right. What the evolutionary story explains is the existence of these values, but it is not an error theory for moral beliefs. Ordinary beliefs correspond to real moral properties, though these are not objective or absolute properties independent of anyones subjective states. On its best footing, therefore, a Darwinian metaethics of the type Ruse offers is not an error theory and does not entail moral nihilism. (shrink)

Michael Ruse has proposed in his recent book Taking Darwin Seriously and elsewhere a new Darwinian ethics distinct from traditional evolutionary ethics, one that avoids the latter's inadequate accounts of the nature of morality and its failed attempts to provide a naturalistic justification of morality. Ruse argues for a sociobiologically based account of moral sentiments, and an evolutionary based casual explanation of their function, rejecting the possibility of ultimate ethical justification. We find that Ruse's proposal distorts, overextends and weakens both (...) Darwinism and naturalism. So we propose an alternative Darwinian metaethics that both remedies the problems in Ruse's proposal and shows how a Darwinian naturalistic account of the moral good in terms of human fitness avoids the naturalistic fallacy and can provide genuine, even if limited, justifications for substantive ethical claims. Thus, we propose to really take Darwin seriously. (shrink)

Philosophical inquiries into morality are as old as philosophy, but it may turn out that morality itself is much, much older than that. At least, that is the main thesis of prima- tologist Frans De Waal, who in this short book based on his Tanner Lectures at Princeton, elaborates on what biologists have been hinting at since Darwin’s (1871) book The Descent of Man and Hamilton’s (1963) studies on the evolution of altruism: morality is yet another allegedly human characteristic that (...) turns out to be built over evolutionary time by natural. (shrink)

The inquiry into the moral status of artificial intelligence (AI) is leading to prolific theoretical discussions. A new entity that does not share the material substrate of human beings begins to show signs of a number of properties that are nuclear to the understanding of moral agency. It makes us wonder whether the properties we associate with moral status need to be revised or whether the new artificial entities deserve to enter within the circle of moral consideration. This raises the (...) foreboding that we are at the gates of an anthropological crisis: the properties bound to moral agency have been exclusively possessed in the past by human beings and have shaped the very definition of being human. In this article, I will argue that AI does not lead us to an anthropological crisis and that, if we adhere to the history and philosophy of technology, we will notice that the debate on the moral status of AI uncritically starts from an anthropology of properties and loses sight of the relational dimension of technology. First, I will articulate three criteria for analyzing different anthropological views in philosophy of technology. Second, I will propose six anthropological models: traditional, industrial, phenomenological, postphenomenological, symmetrical, and cyborg. Third, I will show how the emergence of AI breaks with the dynamics of increased relationality in the history and philosophy of technology. I will argue that this aspect is central to debates about the moral status of AI, since it sheds light on an aspect of moral consideration that has been obscured. Finally, I will reject entirely relational approaches to moral status and propose two hybrid possibilities for rethinking it. (shrink)

This is a defense of Rawls against recent criticism, ironically my own, though it is also a critique insofar as it addresses a problem that Rawls never does. As a defense, it is not a retraction of the original charges. As a critique, it is not more of the same op-position. In either capacity, it is not an afterthought. The charges were conceived from the outset with a specific solution in mind, which would have been too distracting to pursue in (...) the same article. This is that solution. It also highlights the problem. The original charges were that Rawls’s decision procedure for ethics does not justify his own moral principles, namely his principles of justice, and that the underlying problem may well keep the decision procedure from justifying any moral principles whatsoever, or at least any normatively useful ones. The underlying problem was, and still is, the model’s inherent universalism, which is built into the decision procedure through design specifications precluding relativism, yet only at the cost of limiting the relevant moral principles to generalities that are already widely accepted, thereby render-ing the procedure at best redundant and very likely vacuous as an ethical justification model. These difficulties are manifested in the work of Rawls as the dogmatism of champi-oning a distinctive conception of justice, a liberal one as he himself calls it, through a justification model that is too universalistic to permit such a bias and possibly also too universalistic to permit any substantive conclusions at all. The solution contemplated here is to position the decision procedure as a dynamic justification model responsive to moral progress, as opposed to a static one indifferent to such progress and equally open to all moral input, thus removing the inconsistency between the universalistic design and any distinctive or controversial principles, including the ones Rawls himself recommends, so long as they are consistent with moral progress. (shrink)

ABSTRACTMany rich countries are witnessing the rise of xenophobic political parties. The opposition to immigration and global redistributive policies is high. How can we pursue global justice in such non-ideal circumstances? Whatever the way we want to pursue global justice, it seems that a change in the political ethos of citizens from rich countries will be necessary. They must come to internalize some genuine concern for foreigners and relativize national identities. Can education contribute to the promotion of such cosmopolitan ethos? (...) An overtly cosmopolitan educational agenda is not likely to be endorsed in these societies where national ties and national priority may be considered fully legitimate by the majority. Nevertheless, this paper argues, some more achievable educational aims may have desirable cosmopolitan spillover effects although it is not their primary purpose. Decentration, empathy, critical thinking, understanding of social reality and social mix can be defended as necessary for a better domestic society. Yet these aims also make the widespread development of a cosmopolitan ethos more likely. This paper thus considers the arguments that can be made for these educational aims and their potential effects on citizens’ attitudes towards foreigners. Then, it discusses a possible tension with another aspect of national civic education: national integration. (shrink)

Over the past decade, there has been an explosion of scientific research into the nature of our moral psychology that demonstrates that human morality is fully grounded in the natural world and, thus, part of our evolved nature. Yet, many, if not most, scholars in the social sciences and humanities remain sceptical or pessimistic. Looking at a number of these recurrent concerns, I identify the source of this resistance as ‘moral creationism’: a set of beliefs, grounded in relativism and romanticism, (...) about morality as irreducibly complex, holistic and non-decomposable, and that, therefore, implicates the scientific approach to morality as irrelevant, misguided, or in the extreme, itself somehow taboo or unethical. I demonstrate that moral creationism is intellectually unfounded by examining evidence on moral diversity and universality, moral and conventional norms, emotion and reasoning in moral judgment, moral conflict, moral progress and religion and morality. I argue that rejecting moral creationism not only prevents an inaccurate view of our moral psychology, but also has implications for the plausibility and justification of various normative theories, for reforming the practice of moral philosophy and can inform applied ethical areas. Without the protective strategy of moral creationism as a default position, humanists as well as scientists will both benefit as already fruitful inquiry, constructive engagement, collaboration and incorporation of novel investigative methods across disciplines can continue to grow. (shrink)

This paper explores early Australasian philosophy in some detail. Two approaches have dominated Western philosophy in Australia: idealism and materialism. Idealism was prevalent between the 1880s and the 1930s, but dissipated thereafter. Idealism in Australia often reflected Kantian themes, but it also reflected the revival of interest in Hegel through the work of ‘absolute idealists’ such as T. H. Green, F. H. Bradley, and Henry Jones. A number of the early New Zealand philosophers were also educated in the idealist tradition (...) and were influential in their communities, but produced relatively little. In Australia, materialism gained prominence through the work of John Anderson, who arrived in Australia in 1927, and continues to be influential. John Anderson had been a student of Henry Jones, who might therefore be said to have influenced both main strands of Australian philosophical thought. (shrink)

This essay is part of an attempt to reconcile two extreme views in economics: the (neglected) subjective, apriorist approach and the (standard) objective, scientific (i.e., falsifiable) approach. The Austrian subjective view of value, building on Carl Menger’s theory of value, was developed into a theory of economics as being entirely an a priori theory of action. This probably finds its most extreme statement in Ludwig von Mises’ Human Action (1949). In contrast, the standard economic view has developed into making falsifiable (...) predictions about economic phenomena whereby the truth of the assumptions, especially about economic agents, is relatively unimportant: predictive fecundity is all. This finds an extreme statement in Milton Friedman’s introductory essay in his Essays in Positive Economics (1953). However, many economists fall somewhere between the two extremes, such as McKenzie and Tullock (1978). (shrink)

The expanding moral circle lends coherence to the usual hodge-podge of canonical RCR topics. As it is in a person’s own interest to report falsification, understand fabrication, avoid plagiarism, beware of intuition, and justify one’s decisions, it is useful to begin RCR discussions with the principle that we ought to do what is in our own long-term best interests. As it is in the interest of a person’s research group to articulate their reasons for their conclusions, to write cooperatively, review (...) manuscripts professionally, and report statistics transparently, one can introduce the principle that we ought to keep our promises and contracts. As it is a basic matter of rights to respect human subjects, mentor inclusively, recognize intellectual property, and reveal both conflicts of interests and collaborations with private industry, an RCR instructor can introduce the idea that we ought to respect each individual’s moral rights. Finally, as many animals can feel pain, are subjects of their own lives, and have interests of their own, we must take seriously our role in their welfare as research subjects. In this last step, we expand the circle fully, considering animal experimentation, duties to future generations and the natural environment, and the larger social responsibilities of researchers while adopting a utilitarian principle: We ought to do what will maximize aggregate happiness. (shrink)

We can distinguish two kinds of moral universalization tests for practical principles. One requires that the universal practice of the principle, i.e., universal conformity to it by all agents in a given world, satisfies some condition. The other requires that conformity to the principle by any possible agent, in any situation and at any time, satisfies some condition. We can call these universal practice and universal applicability tests respectively. The logical distinction between these tests is rarely appreciated, and many philosophers (...) systematically confuse them with each other. In practice, UP tests are more frequently used to defend deontological norms, while UA tests are used to defend consequentialist norms. Both conceptual argument and practical examples of their applications will show that UA tests are decisively superior to UP tests for grounding moral norms, casting greater doubt upon deontological theories which rely upon the latter unless they can reformulate their arguments using some version of a UA test. (shrink)

Two distinct approaches to the incorporation of animal interests within democratic theory are identified. The first, anthropocentric, account suggests that animal interests ought to be considered within a democratic polity if and when enough humans desire this to be the case. Within this anthropocentric account, the relationship between democracy and the protection of animal interests remains contingent. An alternative account holds that the interests of animals ought to be taken into account because they have a democratic right that their interests (...) are considered. This alternative account is defended in this article by utilising democratic theory and, in particular, the all-affected principle. The interests of animals are affected by collective decisions and, therefore, they, or – more specifically – their representatives, have a democratic right to have some say in the making of those decisions. This approach is favourably contrasted with an alternative, citizenship, account which relies on contested, capacity-oriented, claims current within the field of animal ethics. (shrink)

Essentially everyone agrees that the outlawing of slavery, or the beginning of women’s suffrage, or the defeat of Nazism constitute paradigmatic examples of moral progress in human history. But this consensus belies a deep division about the nature of moral progress more generally, a consequence of the foundational differences among and within normative traditions regarding the nature and scope of the ‘moral’ in moral progress. This essay proposes that philosophers might nonetheless converge on a working definition of moral progress by (...) identifying a proxy property that reliably tracks moral progress, but which does not purport to be coextensive with the philosophically-relevant property. The aim of this essay is to identify this proxy property with emerging empirical measures of population welfare, and to show why this indicator of moral progress can garner overlapping consensus from a variety of normative traditions. (shrink)

The article scrutinises the complex relation between late twentieth century liberal and environmental thought. It concludes that if the key values of contemporary liberal and environmental thought are compared then the prognosis looks gloomy. There are implicit and deep tensions over most value questions. In order to provide a coherent focus for this analysis, the paper addresses the issue of liberal justice, namely, can liberal theories of justice be sensitively applied to environmental questions? The answer to this question is that (...) for much environmental thought, it is the very values and practices implicit within liberal justice theory which now constitute the key environmental danger. (shrink)

Many moral philosophers accept the Debunking Thesis, according to which facts about natural selection provide debunking explanations for certain of our moral beliefs. I argue that philosophers who accept the Debunking Thesis beg important questions in the philosophy of biology. They assume that past selection can explain why you or I hold certain of the moral beliefs we do. A position advanced by many prominent philosophers of biology implies that this assumption is false. According to the Negative View, natural selection (...) cannot explain the traits of individuals. Hence, facts about past selection cannot provide debunking explanations for any of our moral beliefs. The aim of this paper is to explore the conflict between the Debunking Thesis and the Negative View. (shrink)

Call the ethos understanding rightness in terms of spiritual purity and piety, and wrongness in terms of corruption and sacrilege, the “fetish ethic.” Jonathan Haidt and his colleagues suggest that this ethos is particularly salient to political conservatives and non-liberal cultures around the globe. In this essay, I point to numerous examples of moral fetishism in mainstream academic ethics. Once we see how deeply “infected” our ethical reasoning is by fetishistic intuitions, we can respond by 1) repudiating the fetishistic impulse, (...) by 2) “sublimating” our fetishism into liberal rationales, or by 3) accepting the fetishism on its own terms. Of these options, I argue that sublimating our fetishism is not advisable, and that embracing our ethical fetishism isn’t as obviously misguided as some suggest. (shrink)

Disability activists' redefinition of “disability” as a social, rather than a medical, problem attempts to reassign causality. We explicate the untenable implications of this approach and argue this definition is maleficent, unjust, and inconsistent. Thus, redefining disability as a socially caused phenomenon is, from a moral point of view, ill-advised.

This paper presents and criticizes. Alexander's evolutionary theory of morality (1987). Earlier research, on which Alexander's theory is based, is also reviewed. The propensity to create moral systems evolved because it allowed ancestral humans to limit conflict within cooperating groups and thus form larger groups, which were advantageous because of intense between-group competition. Alexander sees moral codes as contractual, and the primary criticism of his theory is that moral codes are not completely contractual but also coercive. Ways of evaluating Alexander's (...) theory as well as modified versions of it are discussed. (shrink)

E. O. Wilson argues that we must use scientifically based reason to solve the values dilemma created by the loss of a transcendent foundation for values. Peter Singer allows that sociobiology can help us understand the evolutionary origin of ethics, but denies the claim that sociobiology or any science can furnish us with ultimate ethical principles. We argue that Singer's critique of Wilson's attempt to bridge the gap between fact and value using empirical reason is unconvincing and that Singer's own (...) ethical principle of disinterestedness requires major support from empirical reason and is not sustainable by pure reason alone. (shrink)

Evolutionary ethics posits the evolution of dispositions to love self, kin, and friend. Christianity claims that God's ethical demand is to love one's neighbor. I argue that the distance between these two positions can be interpreted theologically as original sin, the disposition to disobey God's command and practice self-love and nepotism rather than neighbor-love. Original sin requires Incarnation and Atonement to unite God and humanity. The ancient doctrine of the Atonement as educative does not invoke the Fall. Its revival may (...) help reconcile Christianity and evolutionary ethics. (shrink)

This article is a defense of Michael Ruse's sociobiological account of the origins and nature of morality. In the piece, the author provides a summary explanation of Ruse's views and arguments. Then he goes on to explain and critically discuss a variety of objections that have been made against sociobiological accounts of morality. He argues that the criticisms that have been made often work against less sophisticated sociobiological theories but that Ruse's theory is immune to the criticisms. The author responds (...) to the arguments of the following critics of sociobiology: Kitcher, Flew, Flanagan, Nagel, Miles, Singer, and Jacquette. Key Words: Michael Ruse • E. O. Wilson • sociobiology • altruism • ethical naturalism. (shrink)

This article analyzes the evolution of the land ethic re-presented by J. Baird Callicott over the last two decades under pressure from the charge of misanthropy and ecofascism. It also traces the development of Callicott?s own ethical system, and examines its most current phase both in itself and in relation to his other theoretical commitments, including his particular version of moral monism, and his communitarian critique of egalitarianism. It concludes that Callicott?s communitarianism is by itself insufficient to fund an adequate (...) environmental ethic, and that for the sake of self-consistency he should either discard his moral monism or else further revise his ethical system. (shrink)

There is an increasing awareness that we are living in a global village, which demands a global ethics. In this article, I shall explore what contributions Confucianism, particularly its conception of love, can make. It has often been claimed that Confucian love is love with distinction, as a natural feeling, and as merely human love and so it is inferior to the Christian love, which is universal, commanded, and based on divine love. Drawing on the resources of the Cheng brothers' (...) neo-Confucianism, I shall explore how Confucianism can make creative responses to such criticisms and thus make a unique Confucian contribution to the emerging global ethics. (shrink)

Changing values may give rise to intergenerational conflicts, like in the ongoing climate change and energy transition debate. This essay focuses on the interpretative question of how this value change can best be understood. To elucidate the interpretation of value change, two philosophical perspectives on value are introduced: Berlin’s value pluralism and Dworkin’s interpretivism. While both authors do not explicitly discuss value change, I argue that their perspectives can be used for interpreting value change in the case of climate change (...) and the energy transition. I claim that Berlin’s pluralistic account of value would understand the value change as an intergenerational conflict and therefore provide a too narrow and static ground for understanding ongoing value change. Instead, by exploring Dworkin’s standpoint in moral epistemology, this essay distills a more encompassing perspective on how values may relate, converge, overlap, and change, fulfilling their functions in the course of climate change and energy transition. This perspective is further detailed by taking inspiration from Shue’s work on the interpretation of equity in the climate change debate. I argue that the resulting perspective allows us to see value change as a gradual process rather than as a clash between generations and their values. (shrink)

A notable feature of recent philosophical work on climate ethics is that it makes practically no reference to ‘traditional’ environmental philosophy. There is some irony in this, since environmental ethics arose as part of a broader movement within philosophy, starting in the 1960s, aimed at developing different fields of applied philosophy, in order to show how everyday practice could be enriched through philosophical reflection and analysis. The major goal of this paper is to explain why this branch of practical ethics (...) has, for the most part, failed the test of practicability when it comes to formulating a response to global climate change. The central problem is that debates in environmental philosophy became absorbed by a set of metaphysical questions about the nature of value. The result has been a field dominated by views that provide unsuitable foundations for the development of public policy. (shrink)

According to “debunking arguments,” our moral beliefs are explained by evolutionary and cultural processes that do not track objective, mind-independent moral truth. Therefore (the debunkers say) we ought to be skeptics about moral realism. Huemer counters that “moral progress”—the cross-cultural convergence on liberalism—cannot be explained by debunking arguments. According to him, the best explanation for this phenomenon is that people have come to recognize the objective correctness of liberalism. Although Huemer may be the first philosopher to make this explicit empirical (...) argument for moral realism, the idea that societies will eventually converge on the same moral beliefs is a notable theme in realist thinking. Antirealists, on the other hand, often point to seemingly intractable cross-cultural moral disagreement as evidence against realism (the “argument from disagreement”). This paper argues that the trend toward liberalism is susceptible to a debunking explanation, being driven by two related non-truth-tracking processes. First, large numbers of people gravitate to liberal values for reasons of self-interest. Second, as societies become more prosperous and advanced, they become more effective at suppressing violence, and they create conditions where people are more likely to empathize with others, which encourages liberalism. The latter process is not truth tracking (or so this paper argues) because empathy-based moral beliefs are themselves susceptible to an evolutionary debunking argument. Cross-cultural convergence on liberalism per se does not support either realism or antirealism. (shrink)

Evolutionary accounts of the origin of human morality may be speculative to some extent, but they contain some very plausible claims, such as the claim that ethics evolved as a response to the demands of group living. Regarding the phenomenon of moral progress, it has been argued both that it is ruled out by an evolutionary approach, and that it can be explained by it. It has even been claimed that an evolutionary account has the potential to advance progress in (...) the moral domain. This paper explores the complex relationship between evolutionary explanations of morality and the possibility of moral progress. It seeks to answer the question as to what these explanations are able to tell us about the possibility of moral progress and the ways in which such progress can be achieved. It is argued that evolutionary explanations can inform moral education and other forms of moral enhancement, and that increased evolutionary knowledge figures among the changes in the circumstances of morality that can lead to moral progress. Evolutionary explanations can show us certain limits to the possibility for humans of progressing morally as well as certain enabling conditions. It is argued that both aspects – enhancement and changes in the circumstances – are equally important for the achievement of moral progress. This is illustrated by means of two examples of areas in which moral progress seems possible: our relationship towards the distant poor and our relationship towards non-human animals. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Employing utilitarian criteria, Jones and Felps, in “Shareholder Wealth Maximization and Social Welfare: A Utilitarian Critique” (Business Ethics Quarterly23[2]: 207–38), examined the sequential logic leading from shareholder wealth maximization to maximal social welfare and uncovered several serious empirical and conceptual shortcomings. After rendering shareholder wealth maximization seriously compromised as an objective for corporate operations, they provided a set of criteria regarding what a replacement corporate objective would look like, but do not offer a specific alternative. In this article, we draw (...) on neo-utilitarian thought to advance a refined version of normative stakeholder theory that we believe addresses a major remaining criticism of extant versions, their lack of specificity. More particularly, we provide a single-valued objective function for the corporation—stakeholder happiness enhancement—that would allow managers to make principled choices between/among policy options when stakeholder interests conflict. (shrink)

Se analizan las bases hermenéuticas de toda decisión ética. La normatividad moral exige una comprensión de las circunstancias, porque solo desde su intelección se puede realizar un buen juicio ético. Si, para Peter Singer, las herramientas para tal aprehensión son de tipo racional, Mauricio Beuchot las amplía por medio de la intuición y la sutileza. Se discute si las pretensiones argumentales de Singer se actualizan en sus obras.

Philosophers and social scientists have recently turned to game theory and agent-based models to better understand social contract formation. The stag hunt game is an idealization of social contract formation. Using the stag hunt game, we attempt to determine what, if any, barrier diversity is to the formation of an efficient social contract. We uncover a deep connection between tolerance, diversity, and the social contract. We investigate a simple model in which individuals possess salient traits and behave cooperatively when the (...) difference between their trait and the trait of their counterpart is less than their ‘tolerance level’. If traits are fixed and correspond to permanent or semipermanent features of the individual, such as religion or race, social contract formation is a remote possibility. If traits are malleable, social contract formation is possible but comes at the steep cost of diversity and tolerance, that is, individuals are unwilling to cooperate with those much different from themselves. Yet homogeneity and intolerance are not a long-term feature of the population. Over time mutations allow for increasingly tolerant agents to prosper, thereby ushering in trait diversity. In the end, all reap the benefits of cooperation. (shrink)

Se analizan las bases hermenéuticas de toda decisión ética. La normatividad moral exige una comprensión de las circunstancias, porque solo desde su intelección se puede realizar un buen juicio ético. Si, para Peter Singer, las herramientas para tal aprehensión son de tipo racional, Mauricio Beuchot las amplía por medio de la intuición y la sutileza. Se discute si las pretensiones argumentales de Singer se actualizan en sus obras. The article analyzes the hermeneutical bases of all ethical decisions. Moral norms require (...) an understanding of the circumstances, since good ethical judgments can only be made on that basis. While for Peter Singer, the tools for that understanding are rational, Mauricio Beuchot expands them through intuition and subtlety. The paper discusses whether Singer's claims are substantiated in his works. Neste artigo, analisam-se as bases hermenêuticas de toda decisão ética. A normatividade moral exige uma compreensão das circunstâncias, porque só a partir de seu entendimento se pode realizar um bom juízo ético. Se, para Peter Singer, as ferramentas para a apreensão são de tipo racional, Mauricio Beuchot as amplia por meio da intuição e da sutileza. Discute-se se as pretensões argumentais de Singer se atualizam em suas obras. (shrink)

As we learn more about the human brain, novel biotechnological means to modulate human behaviour and emotional dispositions become possible. These technologies could be used to enhance our morality. Moral bioenhancement, an instance of human enhancement, alters a person’s dispositions, emotions or behaviour in order to make that person more moral. I will argue that moral bioenhancement could be carried out in three different ways. The first strategy, well known from science fiction, is behavioural enhancement. The second strategy, favoured by (...) prominent defenders of moral bioenhancement, is emotional enhancement. The third strategy is the enhancement of moral dispositions, such as empathy and inequity aversion. I will argue that we ought to implement a combination of the second and third strategies. Furthermore, I will argue that the usual arguments against other instances of human enhancement do not apply to moral bioenhancement, or apply only to the first strategy, behavioural enhancement. (shrink)

This article situates Darwin’s views on evolution and ethics into contemporary normative categories of moral theory by looking at Darwin’s treatment of ethics in The Descent of Man and discussing how Darwin’s approach to evolution and ethics fits with several representative normative ethical theories (virtue ethics, natural law ethics, social contract ethics, utilitarian ethics, deontological ethics, and care ethics). A close study of Darwin’s treatment of ethics that situates it among the ethical concepts and principles of the above normative theories (...) is interesting, and helpful and necessary as today we seek to understand ethics against the backdrop of an evolutionary perspective on human beings. Ethics and human nature are distinct, yet theories of ethics always come with an attendant view of human nature. The moral philosophers Aristotle, Aquinas, Hobbes, Kant, and Mill—who provide important forerunners of normative theories on offer today—view human beings differently: their ethical theories have distinctive contours because of the particular aspects of human beings they regard as most significant. The same is true of Darwin; yet Darwin’s evolutionary view of human beings, though admittedly quite unique among traditional moral theorists, does not lead him to an unfamiliar and eccentric view about the nature and content of ethics. (shrink)

The debate about the credentials of sociobiology has persisted because scholars have failed to distinguish the varieties of sociobiology and because too little attention has been paid to the details of the arguments that are supposed to support the provocative claims about human social behavior. I seek to remedy both deficiencies. After analysis of the relationships among different kinds of sociobiology and contemporary evolutionary theory, I attempt to show how some of the studies of the behavior of nonhuman animals meet (...) the methodological standards appropriate to evolutionary research. I contend that the efforts of E. O. Wilson, Richard Alexander, Charles Lumsden, and others to generate conclusions about human nature are flawed, both because they apply evolutionary ideas in an unrigorous fashion and because they use dubious assumptions to connect their evolutionary analyses with their conclusions. This contention rests on analyses of many of the major sociobiological proposals about human social behavior, including: differences in sex roles, racial hostility, homosexuality, conflict between parents and adolescent offspring, incest avoidance, the avunculate, alliances in combat, female infanticide, and gene–culture coevolution.Vaulting Ambitionthus seeks to identify what is good in sociobiology, to expose the errors of premature speculations about human nature, and to prepare the way for serious study of the evolution of human social behavior. (shrink)

In the present article, we argue that the constant pressure that leaders face may limit the willpower required to behave according to ethical norms and standards and may therefore lead to unethical behavior. Drawing upon the ego depletion and moral self-regulation literatures, we examined whether self-regulatory depletion that is contingent upon the moral identity of leaders may promote unethical leadership behavior. A laboratory experiment and a multisource field study revealed that regulatory resource depletion promotes unethical leader behaviors among leaders who (...) are low in moral identity. No such effect was found among leaders with a high moral identity. This study extends our knowledge on why organizational leaders do not always conform to organizational goals. Specifically, we argue that the hectic and fragmented workdays of leaders may increase the likelihood that they violate ethical norms. This highlights the necessity to carefully schedule tasks that may have ethical implications. Similarly, organizations should be aware that overloading their managers with work may increase the likelihood of their leaders transgressing ethical norms. (shrink)

One third of the human species is infested with worms. The World Health Organization estimates that worms account for 40 per cent of the global disease burden from tropical diseases excluding malaria. Worms cause a lot of misery.In this article I will focus on one particular type of infestation, which is hookworm. Approximately 740 million people suffer from hookworm infection in areas of rural poverty: more than one human in ten, a total greater than twenty-three times the population of Canada (...) or twice the population of the United States. The greatest numbers of cases occur in China, Southeast Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa- that is, mostly in the places in the world where poverty is most severe.Hookworm larvae pierce the skin, enter the bloodstream, work their way into the heart and then into the lungs, where they climb the bronchial tree into the throat and are swallowed. (shrink)