The Evolution of Morality

Front Cover
MIT Press, Aug 24, 2007 - Philosophy - 288 pages
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 from this hypothesis. Might the fact that the human brain has been biologically prepared by natural selection to engage in moral judgment serve in some sense to vindicate this way of thinking—staving off the threat of moral skepticism, or even undergirding some version of moral realism? Or if morality has an adaptive explanation in genetic terms—if it is, as Joyce writes, "just something that helped our ancestors make more babies"—might such an explanation actually undermine morality's central role in our lives? He carefully examines both the evolutionary "vindication of morality" and the evolutionary "debunking of morality," considering the skeptical view more seriously than have others who have treated the subject.

Interdisciplinary and combining the latest results from the empirical sciences with philosophical discussion, The Evolution of Morality is one of the few books in this area written from the perspective of moral philosophy. Concise and without technical jargon, the arguments are rigorous but accessible to readers from different academic backgrounds. Joyce discusses complex issues in plain language while advocating subtle and sometimes radical views. The Evolution of Morality lays the philosophical foundations for further research into the biological understanding of human morality.

From inside the book

Contents

Human Nature
1
1 The Natural Selection of Helping
13
2 The Nature of Morality
45
3 Moral Language and Moral Emotions
75
4 The Moral Sense
107
5 The Evolutionary Vindication of Morality
143
6 The Evolutionary Debunking of Morality
179
Living with an Adapted Mind
221
Notes
231
Bibliography
247
Index
269
Copyright

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Page 148 - Quadruped. Graminivorous. Forty teeth, namely twenty-four grinders, four eye-teeth, and twelve incisive. Sheds coat in the spring; in marshy countries, sheds hoofs, too. Hoofs hard, but requiring to be shod with iron. Age known by marks in mouth.
Page 101 - The following proposition seems to me in a high degree probable — namely, that any animal whatever, endowed with well-marked social instincts, the parental and filial affections being here included, would inevitably acquire a moral sense or conscience, as soon as its intellectual powers had become as well, or nearly as well developed, as in man.
Page 156 - Plenty of blank leaves, I see!" the Tortoise cheerily remarked. "We shall need them ALL!" (Achilles shuddered.) "Now write as I dictate: "(A) Things that are equal to the same are equal to each other.
Page 147 - I shall, therefore, use the word in the sense in which I think it is ordinarily used; but at the same time I am not anxious to discuss whether I am right in thinking that it is so used. My business is solely with that object or idea, which I hold, rightly or wrongly, that the word is generally used to stand for. What I want to discover is the nature of that object or idea, and about this I am extremely anxious to arrive at an agreement. But, if we understand the question in this sense, my answer...
Page 7 - I think I may say, that of all the men we meet with, nine parts of ten are what they are, good or evil, useful or not, by their education.
Page 157 - Achilles joyfully exclaimed, as he ran the pencil into its sheath. "And at last we've got to the end of this ideal race-course! Now that you accept A and B and C and D, of course you accept Z." "Do I?" said the Tortoise innocently. "Let's make that quite clear. I accept A and B and C and D. Suppose I still refuse to accept Z?" "Then Logic would take you by the throat, and force you to do it!
Page 221 - Why, sir, if the fellow does not think as he speaks, he is lying : and I see not what honour he can propose to himself from having the character of a liar. But if he does really think that there is no distinction between virtue and vice, why, sir, when he leaves our houses let us count our spoons.
Page 52 - CAN you tell me, Socrates, whether virtue is acquired by teaching or by practice; or if neither by teaching nor practice, then whether it comes to man by nature, or in what other way ? Socrates.
Page 156 - That's another Hypothetical, isn't it? And, if I failed to see its truth, I might accept A and B and C, and still not accept Z, mightn't I?" "You might," the candid hero admitted; "though such obtuseness would certainly be phenomenal.

About the author (2007)

Richard Joyce is Professor of Philosophy at Victoria University of Wellington and author of The Evolution of Morality (MIT Press, 2006) and The Myth of Morality (Cambridge University Press, 2001).

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