Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

Accepted codes of conduct and established religions are features of human societies throughout the world. Why should this be? In this 2003 book, biologist Donald Broom argues that these aspects of human culture have evolved as a consequence of natural selection; that morally acceptable behaviour benefits the humans and other animals and that a principal function of religion is to underpin and encourage such behaviour. The author provides biological insights drawn especially from work on animal behaviour and presents ideas and information from the fields of philosophy and theology to produce a thought-provoking, interdisciplinary treatment. Scientists who read this book will gain an appreciation of the wider literature on morality and religion, and non-scientists will benefit from the author's extensive knowledge of the biological mechanisms underlying the behaviour of humans and other social animals.

Ethics, Evolutionary. --- Sociobiology --- Ethics, Naturalistic --- Evolutionary ethics --- Naturalistic ethics --- Ethics --- Ethical relativism --- Religious aspects.

Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

Principles of right and wrong guide the lives of almost all human beings, but we often see them as external to ourselves, outside our own control. In a revolutionary approach to the problems of moral philosophy, Philip Kitcher makes a provocative proposal: 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. Elaborating this radical new vision, Kitcher shows how the limited altruistic tendencies of our ancestors enabled a fragile social life, how our forebears learned to regulate their interactions with one another, and how human societies eventually grew into forms of previously unimaginable complexity. The most successful of the many millennia-old experiments in how to live, he contends, survive in our values today. Drawing on natural science, social science, and philosophy to develop an approach he calls “pragmatic naturalism,” Kitcher reveals the power of an evolving ethics built around a few core principles—including justice and cooperation—but leaving room for a diversity of communities and modes of self-expression. Ethics emerges as a beautifully human phenomenon—permanently unfinished, collectively refined and distorted generation by generation. Our human values, Kitcher shows, can be understood not as a final system but as a project—the ethical project—in which our species has engaged for most of its history, and which has been central to who we are.

Ethics, Evolutionary. --- Ethics, Naturalistic --- Evolutionary ethics --- Naturalistic ethics --- Ethics --- Ethical relativism --- Ethics, Evolutionary

Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

Ethics, Evolutionary. --- Ethics, Naturalistic --- Evolutionary ethics --- Naturalistic ethics --- Ethics --- Ethical relativism

Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

Professional ethics. Deontology --- Deontic logic --- Ethics, Evolutionary --- Ethics, Naturalistic --- Evolutionary ethics --- Naturalistic ethics --- Ethics --- Ethical relativism --- Logic, Deontic --- Duty --- Modality (Logic) --- Beroepsethiek. Deontologie

Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

It is certainly the case that morality governs the interactions that take place between individuals. But what if morality exists because of these interactions? This book, first published in 2007, argues for the claim that much of the behaviour we view as 'moral' exists because acting in that way benefits each of us to the greatest extent possible, given the socially structured nature of society. Drawing upon aspects of evolutionary game theory, the theory of bounded rationality, and computational models of social networks, it shows both how moral behaviour can emerge in socially structured environments, and how it can persist even when it is not typically viewed as 'rational' from a traditional economic perspective. This book also provides a theory of how moral principles and the moral sentiments play an indispensable role in effective choice, acting as 'fast and frugal heuristics' in social decision contexts.

Ethics, Evolutionary. --- Moral development. --- Ethics, Naturalistic --- Evolutionary ethics --- Naturalistic ethics --- Ethics --- Ethical relativism --- Ethical development --- Child psychology --- Moral education --- Faith development --- Arts and Humanities --- Philosophy