The Biology of Moral Systems (Evolutionary Foundations of Human Behavior) Book

Despite wide acceptance that the attributes of living creatures have appeared through a cumulative evolutionary process guided chiefly by natural selection, many human activities have seemed analytically inaccessible from such an approach. Morality, for example, has been described by prominent evolutionary biologists as contrary to the direction of biological evolution, and moral philosophers rarely regard evolution as relevant to their discussions. This book adopts the argument that moral questions arise out of conflicts of interest, and that moral systems are ways of using confluences of interest at lower levels of social organization to deal with conflicts of interest at higher levels. Moral systems are described as systems of indirect reciprocity: humans gain and lose socially (and reproductively) not only by direct transactions, but also by the reputations they gain from the everyday flow of social interactions. The author develops a general theory of human interests, using senescence and effort theory from biology to help analyze the patterning of human lifetimes. He argues that the ultimate interests of humans are reproductive, and that the concept of morality has arisen within groups because of its contribution to unity, in the context, ultimately, of success in intergroup competition. He contends that morality is not easily relatable to universals, and he carries this argument into a discussion of what he calls the greatest of all moral problems, the nuclear arms race. CONTENTS Preface. Acknowledgments. 1. Biology and the Background of Moral Systems. The Evolutionary Approach. Human Interests and Their Conflicts: What Lifetimes are About. Reproduction and Senescence: Why Lifetimes are Finite. Reproduction and Cooperation: Special Cases. 2. A Biological View of Morality. Conflicts and Confluences of Interest: A Theory of Moral Systems. Morality and the Human Psyche. Life History Theory and the Ontogeny of Moral Behavior. General Conclusions. 3. Morality as Seen by Philosophers and Biologists. The Moral Philosophers. The Biologist-Philosophers. The Philosophers of Biology. Morality and Law. Morality and Democracy. The Goal of Universal Beneficence. Summary . Conclusions. 4. Applying the Biological View of Morality. Morality and Openness in the Pursuit of Truth: Science, Law, and God as the Models. Modelling Value Systems and Maintaining Indirect Reciprocity . Arms Races, Human and Otherwise. 5. Conclusions. References. IndexRead More