Evolutionary Moral Realism (History and Philosophy of Biology)

Synopsis

Against standard approaches to evolution and ethics, this book develops the idea that moral values may find their origin in regularly recurring features in the cooperative environments of species of organisms that are social and intelligent. Across a wide range of species that are social and intelligent, possibilities arise for helping others, responding empathetically to the needs of others, and playing fairly. The book identifies these underlying environmental regularities as biological natural kinds and as natural moral values. As natural kinds, moral values help to provide more complete explanations for the selection of traits that arise in response to them. For example, helping in an aquatic environment is quite different than helping in an arboreal environment, and so we can expect the selection of traits for helping to reflect these underlying environmental differences. With the human ability to name, talk, and reason about important features of our environment, moral values become part of moral discourse and argument, helping to produce coherent systems of moral thought. Combining a naturalistic approach to morality with an equal emphasis on moral argument and truth, this book will be of interest to philosophers and historians of biology, theoretical biologists, comparative psychologists, and moral philosophers.

Copyright:

2020

Book Details

Book Quality:

Publisher Quality

ISBN-13:

9781000761108

Related ISBNs:

9780429299803, 9780367281304, 9780367281304

Publisher:

Taylor and Francis

Date of Addition:

12/16/19

Copyrighted By:

John Collier and Michael Stingl. The right of John Collier and Michael Stingl to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections

Adult content:

No

Language:

English

Has Image Descriptions:

No

Categories:

Nonfiction, Sociology

Submitted By:

Bookshare Staff

Usage Restrictions:

This is a copyrighted book.