Suchergebnisse

1. Situating empirically engaged evolutionary ethics (Johan De Smedt and Helen De Cruz) -- Part I. The nuts and bolts of evolutionary ethics. 2. Dual-process theories, cognitive decoupling and the outcome-to-intent shift: A developmental perspective on evolutionary ethics (Gordon P. D. Ingram and Camilo Moreno-Romero) -- 3. Not so hypocritical after all: Belief revision is adaptive and often unnoticed (Neil Levy) -- 4. The chimpanzee stone accumulation ritual and the evolution of moral behavior (James B. Harrod) -- Part II. The evolution of moral cognition . 5. Morality as an Evolutionary Exaptation (Marcus Arvan) -- 6. Social animals and the potential for morality: On the cultural exaptation of behavioral capacities required for normativity (Estelle Palao) -- 7. Against the evolutionary debunking of morality: Deconstructing a philosophical myth (Alejandro Rosas) -- Part III. The cultural evolution of morality. 8. The cultural evolution of extended benevolence (Andrés Carlos Luco) -- 9. The contingency of the cultural evolution of morality, debunking, and theism vs. naturalism (Matthew Braddock) -- 10. Morality as cognitive scaffolding in the nucleus of the Mesoamerican cosmovision (Alfredo Robles-Zamora).

A growing body of evidence from the sciences suggests that our moral beliefs have an evolutionary basis. To explain how human morality evolved, some philosophers have called for the study of morality to be naturalized, i.e., to explain it in terms of natural causes by looking at its historical and biological origins. The present literature has focused on the link between evolution and moral realism: if our moral beliefs enhance fitness, does this mean they track moral truths? In spite of the growing empirical evidence, these discussions tend to remain high-level: the mere fact that morality has evolved is often deemed enough to decide questions in normative and meta-ethics. This volume starts from the assumption that the details about the evolution of morality do make a difference, and asks how. It presents original essays by authors from various disciplines, including philosophy, anthropology, developmental psychology, and primatology, who write in conversation with neuroscience, sociology, and cognitive psychology.

This paper examines the cognitive foundations of natural theology: the intuitions that provide the raw materials for religious arguments, and the social context in which they are defended or challenged. We show that the premises on which natural theological arguments are based rely on intuitions that emerge early in development, and that underlie our expectations for everyday situations, e.g., about how causation works, or how design is recognized. In spite of the universality of these intuitions, the cogency of natural theological arguments remains a matter of continued debate. To understand why they are controversial, we draw on social theories of reasoning and argumentation.

Empirical research in the psychology of nature appreciation suggests that humans across cultures tend to evaluate nature in positive aesthetic terms, including a sense of beauty and awe. They also frequently engage in joint attention with other persons, whereby they are jointly aware of sharing attention to the same event or object. This paper examines how, from a natural theological perspective, delight in natural beauty can be conceptualized as a way of joining attention to creation. Drawing an analogy between art and creation, we propose that aesthetic appreciation of nature may provide theists with a unique phenomenological insight into God's creative intentions, which are embodied in the physical beauty of creation. We suggest two directions in which this way of looking at the natural world can be fleshed out: in a spontaneous way, that does not take into account background information, and with the help of science.