Understanding Moral Sentiments

Darwinian Perspectives?

Hilary Putnam

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781412853965
• eBook ISBN: 9781351296267
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Ethics & Moral Philosophy

This volume brings together leading scholars to examine Darwinian perspectives on morality from widely ranging disciplines: evolutionary biology, anthropology, psychology, philosophy, and theology. They bring not only varied expertise, but also contrasting judgments about which, and to what extent, differing evolutionary accounts explain morality. They also consider the implications of these explanations for a range of religious and non-religious moral traditions.

The book first surveys scientific understandings of morality. Chapters by Joan Silk and Christopher Boehm ask what primatology and anthropology tell us about moral origins. Daniel Batson and Stephen Pinker provide contrasting accounts of how evolution shapes moral psychology, and Jeffrey Schloss assesses a range of biological proposals for morality and altruism. Turning to philosophical issues, Martha Nussbaum argues that recognizing our animal nature does not threaten morality. Stephen Pope and Timothy Jackson explore how Darwinian accounts of moral goodness both enrich and require understandings outside the sciences. Hilary Putnam and Susan Neiman ask whether Darwin is truly useful for helping us to understand what morality actually is and how it functions.

The book is a balanced effort to assess the scientific merits and philosophical significance of emerging Darwinian perspectives on morality.

Index

Advani, L. K., 150n45

adversary, 75

agape, 188

cooperation compared to, 189

developmental teleology, 190

Peirce on, 190–192

aggression

anthropodenial relating to, 141–145

shame relating to, 138–139

stress relating to, 14–15

agreeableness, 66

Alexander, Richard

on conscience, 34–35, 98–99

on reputation, 98–99, 105

on social selection, 36–37

alpha-males

Ancestral Pan, 31

hunting relating to, 29–31, 33

power in, 28

punishing, 29–31

altruism

in ancestors, 21–22

contingent reciprocity, 11–12

Corning on, 191–192

culture relating to, 91–93

Dawkins on, 92, 173–174, 176, 185

defining, 44–45, 90–91

empathy-induced, 47–49, 54

ethics relating to, 203

evolutionary, 45

evolutionary biology on, 92

fairness relating to, 69

food sharing relating to, 22

forms of, 10–11

through grooming, 10, 12

as moral behavior, 90–94, 217–218, 224–225

natural selection relating to, 11

nepotistic, 69

Peirce on, 190–191

Pinker on, 219

Pippin on, 223

in primates, 10–11, 21–22

prosocial preferences relating to, 10–12

psychological, 45

reciprocal, 11, 69, 72

Schloss on, 217

Simon on, 100

social selection relating to, 36, 38

terminological ambiguity, 90–91

Trivers on, 188–189

virtue ethics relating to, 204

Wilson on, 90–93

altruistic memes, 92–93

altruistic motivation, 44–45, 219–22...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• The Roots of Prosocial Preferences
• Defining the Evolutionary Conscience: Finishing a Job that Darwin Started
• Are the “Principles in His Nature, Which Interest Him in the Fortune of Others,” Moral?
• The Moral Instinct
• Darwinian Explanations of Morality: Accounting for the Normal but Not the Normative
• Compassion: Human and Animal
• Moral Decision Making: Interpreters of Darwin and Thomas Aquinas
• Thirty-Five Years among the Genes: A Twainian Take on Moral Anthropology and Reductive Biology
• Not Very Much
• Setting Aside Facts
• On the Partnership between Natural and Moral Philosophy
• List of Contributors
• Index