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  1. The Evolution of Morality.Richard Joyce - 2005 - Bradford.
    Moral thinking pervades our practical lives, but where did this way of thinking come from, and what purpose does it serve? Is it to be explained by environmental pressures on our ancestors a million years ago, or is it a cultural invention of more recent origin? In The Evolution of Morality, Richard Joyce takes up these controversial questions, finding that the evidence supports an innate basis to human morality. As a moral philosopher, Joyce is interested in whether any implications follow (...)
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  • A Darwinian dilemma for realist theories of value.Sharon Street - 2006 - Philosophical Studies 127 (1):109-166.
    Contemporary realist theories of value claim to be compatible with natural science. In this paper, I call this claim into question by arguing that Darwinian considerations pose a dilemma for these theories. The main thrust of my argument is this. Evolutionary forces have played a tremendous role in shaping the content of human evaluative attitudes. The challenge for realist theories of value is to explain the relation between these evolutionary influences on our evaluative attitudes, on the one hand, and the (...)
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  • The ethical project.Philip Kitcher - 2011 - Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
    Instead of conceiving ethical commands as divine revelations or as the discoveries of brilliant thinkers, we should see our ethical practices as evolving over tens of thousands of years, as members of our species have worked out how to live together and prosper. Here, Kitcher elaborates his radical vision of this millennia-long ethical project.
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  • Ideal vs. Non-ideal Theory: A Conceptual Map.Laura Valentini - 2012 - Philosophy Compass 7 (9):654–664.
    This article provides a conceptual map of the debate on ideal and non‐ideal theory. It argues that this debate encompasses a number of different questions, which have not been kept sufficiently separate in the literature. In particular, the article distinguishes between the following three interpretations of the ‘ideal vs. non‐ideal theory’ contrast: (i) full compliance vs. partial compliance theory; (ii) utopian vs. realistic theory; (iii) end‐state vs. transitional theory. The article advances critical reflections on each of these sub‐debates, and highlights (...)
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  • (1 other version)Evolution of the Social Contract.Brian Skyrms - 1996 - New York: Cambridge University Press.
    In this pithy and highly readable book, Brian Skyrms, a recognised authority on game and decision theory, investigates traditional problems of the social contract in terms of evolutionary dynamics. Game theory is skilfully employed to offer new interpretations of a wide variety of social phenomena, including justice, mutual aid, commitment, convention and meaning. The author eschews any grand, unified theory. Rather, he presents the reader with tools drawn from evolutionary game theory for the purpose of analysing and coming to understand (...)
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  • The Stag Hunt and the Evolution of Social Structure.Brian Skyrms - 2003 - Cambridge University Press.
    Brian Skyrms, author of the successful Evolution of the Social Contract has written a sequel. The book is a study of ideas of cooperation and collective action. The point of departure is a prototypical story found in Rousseau's A Discourse on Inequality. Rousseau contrasts the pay-off of hunting hare where the risk of non-cooperation is small but the reward is equally small, against the pay-off of hunting the stag where maximum cooperation is required but where the reward is so much (...)
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  • Three Kinds of Idealization.Michael Weisberg - 2007 - Journal of Philosophy 104 (12):639-659.
    Philosophers of science increasingly recognize the importance of idealization: the intentional introduction of distortion into scientific theories. Yet this recognition has not yielded consensus about the nature of idealization. e literature of the past thirty years contains disparate characterizations and justifications, but little evidence of convergence towards a common position.
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  • Minimal Model Explanations.Robert W. Batterman & Collin C. Rice - 2014 - Philosophy of Science 81 (3):349-376.
    This article discusses minimal model explanations, which we argue are distinct from various causal, mechanical, difference-making, and so on, strategies prominent in the philosophical literature. We contend that what accounts for the explanatory power of these models is not that they have certain features in common with real systems. Rather, the models are explanatory because of a story about why a class of systems will all display the same large-scale behavior because the details that distinguish them are irrelevant. This story (...)
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  • Why Not Socialism?Gerald Allan Cohen - 2009 - Princeton University Press.
    Is socialism desirable? Is it even possible? In this concise book, one of the world's leading political philosophers presents with clarity and wit a compelling moral case for socialism and argues that the obstacles in its way are exaggerated. There are times, G. A. Cohen notes, when we all behave like socialists. On a camping trip, for example, campers wouldn't dream of charging each other to use a soccer ball or for fish that they happened to catch. Campers do not (...)
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  • Natural justice.Ken Binmore - 2005 - New York: Oxford University Press.
    Natural Justice is a bold attempt to lay the foundations for a genuine science of morals using the theory of games. Since human morality is no less a product of evolution than any other human characteristic, the book takes the view that we need to explore its origins in the food-sharing social contracts of our prehuman ancestors. It is argued that the deep structure of our current fairness norms continues to reflect the logic of these primeval social contracts, but the (...)
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  • Human Nature and the Limits (If Any) of Political Philosophy.David Estlund - 2011 - Philosophy and Public Affairs 39 (3):207-237.
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  • I Ought, Therefore I Can.Peter B. M. Vranas - 2007 - Philosophical Studies 136 (2):167-216.
    I defend the following version of the ought-implies-can principle: (OIC) by virtue of conceptual necessity, an agent at a given time has an (objective, pro tanto) obligation to do only what the agent at that time has the ability and opportunity to do. In short, obligations correspond to ability plus opportunity. My argument has three premises: (1) obligations correspond to reasons for action; (2) reasons for action correspond to potential actions; (3) potential actions correspond to ability plus opportunity. In the (...)
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  • The epistemological challenge to metanormative realism: how best to understand it, and how to cope with it.David Enoch - 2009 - Philosophical Studies 148 (3):413-438.
    Metaethical—or, more generally, metanormative— realism faces a serious epistemological challenge. Realists owe us—very roughly speaking—an account of how it is that we can have epistemic access to the normative truths about which they are realists. This much is, it seems, uncontroversial among metaethicists, myself included. But this is as far as the agreement goes, for it is not clear—nor uncontroversial—how best to understand the challenge, what the best realist way of coping with it is, and how successful this attempt is. (...)
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  • Robustness, Reliability, and Overdetermination (1981).William C. Wimsatt - 2012 - In Lena Soler (ed.), Characterizing the robustness of science: after the practice turn in philosophy of science. New York: Springer Verlag. pp. 61-78.
    The use of multiple means of determination to “triangulate” on the existence and character of a common phenomenon, object, or result has had a long tradition in science but has seldom been a matter of primary focus. As with many traditions, it is traceable to Aristotle, who valued having multiple explanations of a phenomenon, and it may also be involved in his distinction between special objects of sense and common sensibles. It is implicit though not emphasized in the distinction between (...)
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  • Understanding Political Feasibility.Holly Lawford-Smith - 2012 - Journal of Political Philosophy 21 (3):243-259.
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  • (1 other version)Evolution of the Social Contract.Brian Skyrms - 1997 - Philosophy 72 (282):604-606.
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  • Robustness Analysis.Michael Weisberg - 2006 - Philosophy of Science 73 (5):730-742.
    Modelers often rely on robustness analysis, the search for predictions common to several independent models. Robustness analysis has been characterized and championed by Richard Levins and William Wimsatt, who see it as central to modern theoretical practice. The practice has also been severely criticized by Steven Orzack and Elliott Sober, who claim that it is a nonempirical form of confirmation, effective only under unusual circumstances. This paper addresses Orzack and Sober's criticisms by giving a new account of robustness analysis and (...)
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  • Political Feasibility. A Conceptual Exploration.Pablo Gilabert & Holly Lawford-Smith - 2012 - Political Studies 60 (4):809-825.
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  • (1 other version)Why Political Liberalism?: On John Rawls's Political Turn.Paul Weithman - 2010 - , US: Oxford University Press.
    In this work, Paul Weithman offers a fresh, rigorous and compelling interpretation of John Rawls' reasons for taking his so-called 'political turn'.
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  • (2 other versions)Moral Philosophy as Applied Science.Michael Ruse & Edward O. Wilson - 1986 - Philosophy 61 (236):173-192.
    (1) For much of this century, moral philosophy has been constrained by the supposed absolute gap between is andought, and the consequent belief that the facts of life cannot of themselves yield an ethical blueprint for future action. For this reason, ethics has sustained an eerie existence largely apart from science. Its most respected interpreters still believe that reasoning about right and wrong can be successful without a knowledge of the brain, the human organ where all the decisions about right (...)
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  • Justice and Feasibility: A Dynamic Approach.Pablo Gilabert - 2017 - In Kevin Vallier & Michael Weber (eds.), Political Utopias: Contemporary Debates. New York, NY: Oup Usa. pp. 95-126.
    It is common in political theory and practice to challenge normatively ambitious proposals by saying that their fulfillment is not feasible. But there has been insufficient conceptual exploration of what feasibility is, and very little substantive inquiry into why and how it matters for thinking about social justice. This paper provides one of the first systematic treatments of these issues, and proposes a dynamic approach to the relation between justice and feasibility that illuminates the importance of political imagination and dynamic (...)
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  • Does “Ought” Imply “Feasible”?Nicholas Southwood - 2016 - Philosophy and Public Affairs 44 (1):7-45.
    Many of us feel internally conflicted in the face of certain normative claims that make infeasible demands: say, normative claims that demand that agents do what, given deeply entrenched objectionable character traits, they cannot bring themselves to do. On the one hand, such claims may seem false on account of demanding the infeasible, and insisting otherwise may seem to amount to objectionable unworldliness – to chasing “pies in the sky.” On the other hand, such claims may seem true in spite (...)
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  • Idealization and abstraction: refining the distinction.Arnon Levy - 2018 - Synthese 198 (Suppl 24):5855-5872.
    Idealization and abstraction are central concepts in the philosophy of science and in science itself. My goal in this paper is suggest an account of these concepts, building on and refining an existing view due to Jones Idealization XII: correcting the model. Idealization and abstraction in the sciences, vol 86. Rodopi, Amsterdam, pp 173–217, 2005) and Godfrey-Smith Mapping the future of biology: evolving concepts and theories. Springer, Berlin, 2009). On this line of thought, abstraction—which I call, for reasons to be (...)
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  • 'Ought' and Ability.Peter A. Graham - 2011 - Philosophical Review 120 (3):337-382.
    A principle that many have found attractive is one that goes by the name “'Ought' Implies 'Can'.” According to this principle, one morally ought to do something only if one can do it. This essay has two goals: to show that the principle is false and to undermine the motivations that have been offered for it. Toward the end, a proposal about moral obligation according to which something like a restricted version of 'Ought' Implies 'Can' is true is floated. Though (...)
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  • Evolution and the Normativity of Epistemic Reasons.Sharon Street - 2009 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Supplementary Volume 35 (S1):213-248.
    Creatures inveterately wrong in their inductions have a pathetic but praiseworthy tendency to die before reproducing their kind.- Quine (1969)We think that some facts - for example, the fact that someone is suffering, or the fact that all previously encountered tigers were carnivorous – supply us with normative reasons for action and belief. The former fact, we think, is a reason to help the suffering person; the latter fact is a reason to believe that the next tiger we see will (...)
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  • Why idealize?David Enoch - 2005 - Ethics 115 (4):759-787.
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  • Cultural evolution.Tim Lewens - 2018 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
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  • (1 other version)Why Political Liberalism?: On John Rawls's Political Turn.Paul J. Weithman - 2010 - , US: Oxford University Press USA.
    Paul Weithman offers a fresh, rigorous, and compelling interpretation of John Rawls's reasons for taking his so-called "political turn.".
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  • (2 other versions)Moral Philosophy as Applied Science.Michael Ruse & Edward O. Wilson - 1994 - In Elliott Sober (ed.), Conceptual Issues in Evolutionary Biology. The Mit Press. Bradford Books. pp. 61--421.
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  • Utilitarianism.Ken Binmore - 2005 - In Natural justice. New York: Oxford University Press.
    If some external enforcement agency compels us to honor deals reached in the original position, then Harsanyi has shown that the outcome will be utilitarian. Under the same hypotheses, Rawls claims that the outcome will be egalitarian. This chapter confirms that Harsanyi is correct. It goes on to use the concept of an empathy equilibrium to predict the standard of interpersonal comparison needed to operate a utilitarian norm that will evolve in the medium run.
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  • Morality and Evolutionary Biology.William Fitzpatrick - 2008 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
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  • Game Theory, Indirect Modeling, and the Origin of Morality.Arnon Levy - 2011 - Journal of Philosophy 108 (4):171-187.
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  • Strategic Learning and its Limits.H. Peyton Young - 2004 - Oxford University Press UK.
    In this concise book based on his Arne Ryde Lectures in 2002, Young suggests a conceptual framework for studying strategic learning and highlights theoretical developments in the area. He discusses the interactive learning problem; reinforcement and regret; equilibrium; conditional no-regret learning; prediction, postdiction, and calibration; fictitious play and its variants; Bayesian learning; and hypothesis testing. Young's framework emphasizes the amount of information required to implement different types of learning rules, criteria for evaluating their performance, and alternative notions of equilibrium to (...)
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  • The instability of John Rawls's “stability for the right reasons”.Hun Chung - 2019 - Episteme 16 (1):1-17.
    John Rawls’s most mature notion of political order is “stability for the right reasons.” Stability for the right reasons is the kind of political order that Rawls hoped a well-ordered society could ideally achieve. In this paper, I demonstrate through the tools of modern game theory, the instability of “stability for the right reasons.” Specifically, I will show that a well-ordered society can completely destabilize by the introduction of an arbitrarily small number of non- compliers whenever individuals fail to achieve (...)
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  • Evolution of Moral Norms.William Harms & Brian Skyrms - unknown
    Moral norms are the rules of morality, those that people actually follow, and those that we feel people ought to follow, even when they don’t. Historically, the social sciences have been primarily concerned with describing the many forms that moral norms take in various cultures, with the emerging implication that moral norms are mere arbitrary products of culture. Philosophers, on the other hand, have been more concerned with trying to understand the nature and source of rules that all cultures ought (...)
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  • Review of Michael Ruse: Taking Darwin Seriously: A Naturalistic Approach to Philosophy[REVIEW]Michael Ruse - 1988 - Ethics 98 (2):400-402.
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  • Evolution and the Social Contract: Symposium on the Tanner Lecture on Human Values, Panel Discussion.Bryan Skyrms - unknown
    The Tanner Lectures are a collection of educational and scientific discussions relating to human values. Conducted by leaders in their fields, the lectures are presented at prestigious educational facilities around the world.
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