Evolutionary Origins of Morality : Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives

Rating:
Summary: Exciting Overview of a Scientific Approach to Morality
Review: There are two virtually undiscussed background assumptions to this volume, which consists of four major papers, each with a set of ten or so expert, cross-disciplinary, commentaries. The first is that there is a characteristic human morality that is exhibited in almost all societies, from the simplest hunter-gatherer society to the most complex high-tech market society. The second is that one studies morality not by abstractly theorizing on the basis of logic and intuition alone, has has been the habit of philosophers, but by treating morality as a material force and studying it scientifically as an evolutionary and structural phenomenon.

The first paper, by Jessca Flack and Frans de Waal, argues that some basic elements of human morality are prefigured in primate behavior.

The second paper, by Chris Boehm, argues that the basis for our morality of cooperation and punishment come from the evolutionary history of humans in consciously egalitarian (though violent) foraging groups.

The third paper, by Eliot Sober and David Sloan Wilson, argues that human prosociality takes the form of evolutionary and psycholotical altruism that developed through a process of group selection over the history of hominid evolution.

The final paper, by Brian Skyrmes, studies evolutionary game theory, which underlies the arguments of each of the previous papers, contrasting this form of game theory from its classical counterpart.

Perhaps I am biased, since I contributed two of the commentaries, but I found the papers to be a fair reflection of the authors' often extensive writings on the subject, and I found the commentaries to be useful and at times extremely interesting in terms of their suggestions for future research.

This book is accessible to the general reader, while offering lots of interesting material for the professional researcher.

Rating:
Summary: State of the art
Review: This one is easy to review: If you want to know the state-of-the-art on scientifically-informed thinking about ethics, buy this book. It is superb.

Now, in one sense, science doesn't have a whole lot to say about ethics--science has to do with what is, while ethics has to do with what we ought to be and do. But to know what we ought to be and do, it helps to know something about what we are. If, for instance, we are all by nature altruistic and generous, we probably need a different kind of ethic than if we are rather more self-seeking.

By looking at the possible evolutionary and genetic bases of proto-ethical behaviors, these scientists and scholars help us get some intelligent orientation on the question of what we are, so far as our ethical proclivities go.

To understand ethics, you need to know more than our proto-moral genetic inclinations--you need to know a lot of history, cultural studies, and philosophy, for instance, not to mention religious studies. But in this day and age, you cannot rightly claim to understand the state of the art if you know less. This book is a treasure.