RÉSUMÉ: Dans cet article, je distingue deux familles théoriques qui conçoivent les normes morales comme des «intrants» (inputs) ou des «extrants» (outputs). Je soutiens que l’on peut ultimement unifier la meilleure version de ces deux modèles en un seul modèle théorique que je nomme l’Innéisme Modéré. La différence entre ces deux modèles apparemment antagonistes en est une de perspective plutôt que de contenu : alors que le modèle des intrants analyse l’impact de dispositions émotionnelles sur l’évolution historique des normes morales, (...) le modèle des extrants s’intéresse plutôt au rôle de ces mêmes dispositions dans le développement de jugements moraux individuels. (shrink)

The adequacy of currently popular accounts of the genetic basis for psychological altruism, including inclusive fitness, reciprocal altruism, sociality, and group selection, is questioned. Problems exist both with the evidence cited as supporting these accounts and with the relevance of the accounts to what is being explained. Based on the empathy-altruism hypothesis, a more plausible account is proposed: generalized parental nurturance. It is suggested that four evolutionary developments combined to provide a genetic basis for psychological altruism. First is the evolution (...) in mammals of parental nurturance. Second is the evolution in humans of the ability to see others as sentient, intentional agents and, thereby, to recognize other's needs, even subtle ones. Third is the evolution in humans of tender, empathic emotions as an important component of parental nurturance. Fourth is the evolution in humans of cognitive capacities that make it possible to generalize tender, empathic feelings and, thereby, altruism beyond offspring. (shrink)

Shame is a painful emotion concerned with failure to live up to certain standards, norms, or ideals. The subject feels that she falls in the regard of others; she feels watched and exposed. As a result, she feels bad about the person that she is. The most popular view of shame is that someone only feels ashamed if she fails to live up to standards, norms, or ideals that she, herself, accepts. In this paper, I provide support for a different (...) view, according to which shame is about failure to live up to public expectations. Such a view of shame has difficulties explaining why an audience is central to shame, why shame concerns the self as a whole, and why the social rank of someone affects their ability to shame others. These features, I argue, are best explained by reference to the descent of shame in the emotion connected with submission in nonhuman animals. The function of submission—to appease relevant social others—also throws light on the sort of emotion that shame is. From the point of view of other people, a subject who experiences shame at her own failing is someone who is committed to living together with others in a socially sanctioned way. The argument is not that we must understand the nature of shame in terms of what it evolved for, but that its heritage is important to understanding the emotion that shame has become. (shrink)

In metaethics, evolutionary debunking arguments combine empirical and epistemological premises to purportedly show that our moral judgments are unjustified. One objection to these arguments has been to distinguish between those judgments that evolutionary influence might undermine versus those that it does not. This response is powerful but not well understood. In this paper I flesh out the response by drawing upon a familiar distinction in the natural sciences, where it is common to distinguish folk judgments from theoretical judgments. I argue (...) that this in turn illuminates the proper scope of the evolutionary debunking argument, but not in an obvious way: it is a very specific type of undermining argument that targets those theories where theoretical judgments are inferred merely from folk judgments. One upshot of this conclusion is that it reveals a verboten methodology in metaethics. The evolutionary debunking argument is therefore much less powerful than its proponents have supposed, but it nevertheless rules out what is perhaps a common way of attempting to justify moral judgments. (shrink)

Are there nonhuman animals who behave morally? In this paper I answer this question in the affirmative by applying the framework of care ethics to the animal morality debate. According to care ethics, empathic care is the wellspring of morality in humans. While there have been several suggestive analyses of nonhuman animals as empathic, much of the literature within the animal morality debate has marginalized analyses from the perspective of care ethics. In this paper I examine care ethics to extract (...) its core commitments to what is required for moral care: emotional motivation that enables the intentional meeting of another’s needs, and forward-looking responsibility in particular relationships. What is not required, I argue, are metarepresentational capacities or the ability to scrutinize one’s reasons for action, and thus being retrospectively accountable. This minimal account of moral care is illustrated by moral practices of parental care seen in many nonhuman animal species. In response to the worry that parental care in nonhuman animals lacks all evaluation and is therefore nonmoral I point to cultural differences in human parenting and to normativity in nonhuman animals. (shrink)

In her article "Animals and Moral Agency: The Recent Debate and Its Implications," Grace Clement provides a lucid overview of the debate concerning the possibility of moral action in animals and a suggestive proposal for how to advance this debate. This article takes up certain themes from Clement’s article, themes that, it is argued, are either problematic or insufficiently developed.

Recent advances in evolutionary biology and ethology suggest that humans are not the only species capable of empathy and possibly morality. These findings are of no little consequence for theology, given that a nonhuman animal as a free moral agent would beg the question if human beings are indeed uniquely created in God's image. I argue that apes and some other mammals have moral agency and that a traditional interpretation of the imago Dei is incorrectly equating specialness with exclusivity. By (...) framing the problem in terms of metaphor, following the work of Paul Ricoeur and Sallie McFague, I propose that the concept of the imago Dei could be extended to accommodate moral species other than our own. (shrink)

This paper addresses the question of whether animals have souls and the ability to experience God after death within the limitations of their nature. Plausible explanations for the natural origin of life and for the development of subsequent complexity are increasingly being advanced by molecular biologists. Christian tradition and scholasticism teach that the human body is animated by the soul which is the agent of vital activities. This teaching is incompatible with the claim for a natural origin for life. At (...) some stage in the evolution of chordates and cephalopods a sense of self-awareness and an ability to distinguish between pleasure and the absence of pleasure would have arisen permitting the potential for ensoulment. The premise that evolution was gradual but ensoulment was discontinuous predicates the irrational conclusion that for one generation the parents were animals without souls and their children humans, made in the image of God, and with souls. Biological gradualism is incompatible with a sudden ensoulment dichotomy both in the evolutionary history of humans and for a maturing foetus, human or animal. Gradualism must apply to both body and soul. A Christian interpretation of physicalism, however, provides an alternative to dualism and resolves the paradoxes and difficulties relating to animals. (shrink)

There has been recent speculation that some animals are moral agents. Using a retributivist framework, I argue that if some animals are moral agents, then there are circumstances in which some of them deserve punishment. But who is best situated to punish animal wrongdoers? This paper explores the idea that the answer to this question is humans.

A general feature of our moral psychology is that we feel that some moral demands are motivated externally. Stanford explains this feature with an evolutionary account, such that moral externalism was selected for its ability to facilitate prosocial interactions. Alternatively, I argue that a cognitive, non-selectionist account of moral externalism is a more parsimonious explanation.

Although Longino and Solomon are interested in what social conditions will produce better science, neither philosopher has provided a sufficient analysis of the social character of science. For instance, neither considers the social character of discovery as well as that of justification, or that an individual scientist’s social status and social relations may be important for understanding her role in both processes. The contributors to Schmitt’s volume are interested in whether the terms that refer to social entities can be reduced (...) to or eliminated in favor of terms referring to individuals. Their analyses, which proceed largely by testing their intuitions against imaginary examples, could benefit from paying more attention to actual social science and real-world social problems. Ideally, these social metaphysicians should be engaged with philosophers of science in a joint effort to investigate whether a social account of scientific knowledge can explain something that an individualist account leaves out. (shrink)

Dennett (1995) argues that memes or cultural replicators are largely autonomous of genes, and that they are fairly efficacious in determining who we are and what we do. I argue that Dennett's arguments are wrong in several aspects, which we can see by analyzing processes at appropriate levels. Specifically, I argue that it is not true that we as persons are created largely by memes, that our memes are not largely independent of our genes, and that we can use the (...) universality of memes to make inferences about genetic predispositions. Finally, by suggesting an innate psychological mechanism for morality, I argue that morality may be largely the effect of genetic predispositions rather than autonomous. (shrink)

Appeals to human nature are ubiquitous, yet historically many have proven ill-founded. Why? How might frequent errors be remedied towards building a more robust and reliable scientific study of human nature? Our aim is neither to advance specific scientific or philosophical claims about human nature, nor to proscribe or eliminate such claims. Rather, we articulate through examples the types of errors that frequently arise in this field, towards improving the rigor of the scientific and social studies. We seek to analyze (...) such claims rhetorically, cognitively, and epistemically. Namely, how do we think about human nature? Claims about human nature, we show, are susceptible to widely exhibited deficits in cognitive tendencies such as framing, confirmation bias, satisficing, and teleological perspectives, as well as motivated reasoning. Such missteps foster methodological, empirical, and psychological mistakes and biases. Specifically, they promote the naturalizing error, whereby cultural ideology and values are projected onto an apparently objective description of nature. Concrete remedies are offered to aid scientists in conducting and reporting their research goals and findings more responsibly and effectively (relevant also to educators and other communicators who convey these findings publicly). Recommendations include acknowledging that human nature claims are often context-dependent, seeking multiple critical perspectives, and explicitly labeling uncertainties. (shrink)

We welcome Tomasello’s new book on the natural history of human morality as an important confirmation of the evolutionary approach, which sees adaptive behaviors and their psychological underpinnings as linked to a species’ socioecology (the package of subsistence, social, mating, and rearing systems). This perspective automatically leads to the conclusion that the basic set of moral preferences is a straightforward human adaptation to the derived cooperative foraging niche of nomadic foragers, which involves a high degree of interdependence. We provide more (...) background information in support of this evolutionary approach, call for work on defining the contents of the innate core of moral preferences it implies, and urge philosophers to pursue its implications more seriously. Tomasello also offers a historical reconstruction, but his scenario is not compatible with recent comparative data showing a surprising overlap with aspects of human morality, nor does it fit the currently best-supported evolutionary scenario of hominin foraging. We offer a better-fitting alternative, but also call for more behavioral work in child development and on nonhuman primates to improve this reconstruction. (shrink)

One of the central tenets of Christian theology is the denial of self for the benefit of another. However, many views on the evolution of altruism presume that natural selection inevitably leads to a self-seeking human nature and that altruism is merely a façade to cover underlying selfish motives. I argue that human altruism is an emergent characteristic that cannot be reduced to any one particular evolutionary explanation. The evolutionary processes at work in the formation of human nature are not (...) necessarily in conflict with the possibility of altruism; rather, aspects of human nature are uniquely directed toward the care and concern of others. The relationship between altruism, human nature, and evolution can be reimagined by adopting an emergent view of the hierarchy of science and a theological worldview that emphasizes self-renunciation. The investigation of altruism necessitates an approach that analyzes several aspects of altruistic behavior at different levels in the hierarchy of sciences. This research includes the study of evolutionary adaptations, neurological systems, cognitive functions, behavioral traits, and cultural influences. No one level is able to offer a full explanation, but each piece adds a unique dimension to a much larger puzzle. (shrink)

The neurological rewiring of the mammalian brain to activate a broader array of emotions was the critical breakthrough in the development of not only moral systems, but other features often considered unique to humans, such as the capacity to use language and to think abstractly and rationally. Data from African apes and from ethnographies of hunter‐gatherers provide the best clues as to the selection forces operating on the hominid line to produce an increasingly emotional and moral primate, Homo sapiens.

At the end of the most violent century in human history, it is good to take stock of our commitments to human and other life forms, as well as to examine the rights and the duties that might flow from their biological makeup. Professor Thomasma and Professor Loewy have held a long-standing dialogue on whether there are moral differences between animals and humans. This dialogue was occasioned by a presentation Thomasma made some years ago at Loewy's invitation at the University (...) of Illinois, Peoria, Medical Center. During that presentation, Thomasma argued that human beings are sufficiently distinct from other animals genetically and otherwise to justify a moral difference in rights and obligations. In effect, he argued that there are species-specific rights. This essay will pick up the threads of that dialogue. (shrink)

In this article I reevaluate Immanuel Kant's moral philosophy from a post–Darwinian perspective. Taking an evolutionary approach to human reasoning and incorporating some recent work on the science of the emotions, I argue that the Kantian bifurcation of reason and emotion, which underlies his moral philosophy, is no longer tenable. Kant's practical defense of his ethics as being the only option that can save morality from the dangers posed by naturalism is also considered and rejected. Instead, I argue that an (...) evolutionary view of reason and emotion can provide an adequate ground for morality and explore the possibility and advantages of such an ethics. (shrink)

Dans l'éthique d’Emmanuel Levinas, les animaux ne peuvent répondre à l’exigence éthique, pas plus qu’ils ne peuvent être l'Autre de qui l’exigence émane. La caractérisation de l’Autre en tant qu'humain opérée par Levinas semble être incompatible avec sa description d’Autrui comme infiniment transcendantal et avec sa conception du visage refusant d’être contenu. Un correctif peut être trouvé dans la version bidimensionnelle de la rencontre décrite par Martin Buber. Buber élargit le champ des entités avec lesquelles des rencontres moralement exigeantes sont (...) possibles. Compléter la version lévinassienne de la rencontre avec celle de Buber permet de reconnaître les animaux non humains en tant qu’Autres dans la rencontre morale. (shrink)

The paper is concerned with whether the reductio of the natural-harm-argument can be avoided by disvaluing non-human suffering and death. According to the natural-harm-argument, alleviating the suffering of non-human animals is not a moral obligation for human beings because such an obligation would also morally prescribe human intervention in nature for the protection of non-human animal interests which, it claims, is absurd. It is possible to avoid the reductio by formulating the moral obligation to alleviate non-human suffering and death with (...) two constraints: The first concerns the practicability of intervention and establishes a moral obligation to intervene only in cases where this is humanly possible. The other constraint acknowledges that lack of competence in humans can risk producing more harm than good by intervening. A third way of avoiding the problematic version of the natural-harm-argument considers whether human and non-human suffering and death are sufficiently different to allow different types of responses. I argue that the attempt to avoid the reductio of the natural-harm-argument by disvaluing non-human death can only work with an anthropocentric bias, which accords to non-human suffering and death a fundamentally different value and that it fails to dismiss the moral obligation created by the harm that non-human animals face in the wild. (shrink)

It is a common assumption amongst theorists that the phenomenon of animal emotion supports the affect program theory of emotion. I argue that this assumption is mistaken by exploring two cases of animal emotion from studies in ethology: aggression in chimpanzees and fear in piping plovers. While the affect program theory fails to account for the cognitive complexity involved in each case, I do not argue for a cognitive theory of emotion. Instead, I suggest that paying attention to animal emotions (...) helps the emotion theorist avoid the dichotomy between the extreme versions of the affect program theory and cognitive theories. ‡My thanks to Bart Moffatt, Ben Schulz, Jessica Slind, Katie Plasiance, Ken Waters, Mark Borrello, Susan Hawthorne, and Toben Lafrancois for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper. †To contact the author, please write to: Department of Philosophy, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455; e-mail: [email protected]. (shrink)

The most prominent theories of rights, the Will Theory and the Interest Theory, notoriously fail to accommodate all and only rights-attributions that make sense to ordinary speakers. The Kind-Desire Theory, Leif Wenar’s recent contribution to the field, appears to fare better in this respect than any of its predecessors. The theory states that we attribute a right to an individual if she has a kind-based desire that a certain enforceable duty be fulfilled. A kind-based desire is a reason to want (...) something which one has simply in virtue of being a member of a certain kind. Rowan Cruft objects that this theory creates a puzzle about the relation between rights and respect. In particular, if rights are not grounded in aspects of the particular individuals whose rights they are, how can we sustain the intuitive notion that to violate a right is to disrespect the right-holder? I present a contractualist account of respect which reconciles the Kind-Desire Theory with the intuition that rights-violations are disrespectful. On this account, respect for a person is a matter of acknowledging her legitimate authority to make demands on the will and conduct of others. And I argue that kind-based desires authorize a person to make demands even if they do not correspond to that person’s well-being or other non-relational features. (shrink)

This paper scrutinizes two research programs that advocate respectively for the existence of a universal moral grammar and a predisposition to moralize behaviours with certain contents. It focuses on how the arguments commonly used to ground each program fare at relevant contemporary research in cognitive science and how well they meet constructivist arguments proposed by Jesse Prinz and Kim Sterelny, among others. We argue that there is little evidence that our moral judgements follow the model of principles and parameters. At (...) the same time, ‘ease of learning’ suggests that the human brain is somehow prepared to learn moral rules.Cet article analyse deux programmes de recherche qui soutiennent, respectivement, l’existence d’une grammaire morale universelle et d’une prédisposition à assigner des valeurs morales à des comportements liés à certains contenus. Nous proposons d’évaluer les arguments utilisés par chaque programme en regard de la recherche contemporaine en sciences cognitives, et aussi de vérifier s’ils répondent aux objections constructivistes proposées entre autres par Jesse Prinz et Kim Sterelny. Nous montrons qu’il n’y a pas de preuves suffisantes comme quoi nos jugements moraux suivent le modèle des principes et des paramètres. La «facilité d’apprentissage» suggère, néanmoins, que le cerveau humain est en quelque sorte préparé à apprendre les règles morales. (shrink)

Much good work has been done on the evolution of human morality by focusing on how “selfish genes” can give rise to altruistic human beings. A richer research program is needed, however, to take into account the ambivalence of naturally evolved biopsychological motivators and the historical pluralism of human morality in religious systems. Such a program is described here. A first step is to distinguish the ultimate cause of natural selection from proximate causes that are the results of natural selection. (...) Next, some proximate causes are suggested as possible conditions of biological and emotional valuing as well as of customary social morality and individual rational ethical thought. Finally, different moral perspectives of Confucianism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Christianity are briefly presented in order to illustrate how one might inquire about the selection of a variety of biopsychological and cultural proximate causes that enable the evolution of a plurality of religious moral systems. (shrink)

Flanagan (1991) was the first contemporary philosopher to suggest that a modularity of morals hypothesis (MMH) was worth consideration by cognitive science. There is now a serious empirically informed proposal that moral competence is best explained in terms of moral modules-evolutionarily ancient, fast-acting, automatic reactions to particular sociomoral experiences (Haidt & Joseph, 2007). MMH fleshes out an idea nascent in Aristotle, Mencius, and Darwin. We discuss the evidence for MMH, specifically an ancient version, “Mencian Moral Modularity,” which claims four innate (...) modules, and “Social Intuitionist Modularity,” which claims five innate modules. We compare these two moral modularity models, discuss whether the postulated modules are best conceived as perceptual/Fodorian or emotional/Darwinian, and consider whether assuming MMH true has any normative ethical consequences whatsoever. The discussion of MMH reconnects cognitive science with normative ethics in a way that involves the reassertion of the “is-ought” problem. We explain in a new way what this problem is and why it would not yield. The reason does not involve the logic of “ought,” but rather the plasticity of human nature and the realistic options to “grow” and “do” human nature in multifarious legitimate ways. (shrink)

To be intrinsically valuable means to be valuable for its own sake. Moral philosophy is often ethically anthropocentric, meaning that it locates intrinsic value within humans. This paper rejects ethical anthropocentrism and asks, in what ways might nonhumans be intrinsically valuable? The paper answers this question with a wide-ranging survey of theories of nonhuman intrinsic value. The survey includes both moral subjects and moral objects, and both natural and artificial nonhumans. Literatures from environmental ethics, philosophy of technology, philosophy of art, (...) moral psychology, and related fields are reviewed, and gaps in these literatures are identified. Although the gaps are significant and much work remains to be done, the survey nonetheless demonstrates that those who reject ethical anthropocentrism have considerable resources available to develop their moral views. Given the many very high-stakes issues involving both natural and artificial nonhumans, and the sensitivity of these issues to how nonhumans are intrinsically valued, this is a vital project to pursue. (shrink)

Natural selection generated a natural sense of justice. This natural sense of justice created a set of natural rights; rights humans accorded to each other in virtue of being members of the same tribe. Sharing the responsibility for natural rights between all members of the same tribe allowed humans to take advantage of all opportunities for cooperation. Human rights are the present day political emanation of natural rights. Theoretically, human rights are accorded by all humans to all humans in virtue (...) of being humans; however, the idea that the corresponding responsibility is now shared among all humans is not broadly accepted. The natural sense of justice creates an ambiguity: on the one hand humans consider the nation they belong to as the social system that should guarantee their human rights (and likewise they do not consider themselves as having responsibility for the human rights of inhabitants of other nations); on the other hand, as cooperation between nations intensifies, expectations of global mutual responsibility increase as well. As the West does not feel responsible for the human rights of humans in the rest of the world, not even for their most basic survival needs, the West is perceived as unworthy of cooperation. If human rights are understood as conditions for the well-functioning communities, lifting the responsibility for the human rights of all humans to the global level can be understood as a condition to take full advantage of all opportunities globalization presents, or as a condition to adequately address all challenges globalization presents. However, this would have to happen without disregarding the particular feelings of mutual responsibility nations embody; we need a sliding scale of responsibility. The first step would be an acknowledgement that all humans are responsible for meeting the very basis survival needs of all humans, which could be achieved through a Framework Convention on Global Health and a Global Health Fund. (shrink)

Natural selection generated a natural sense of justice. This natural sense of justice created a set of natural rights; rights humans accorded to each other in virtue of being members of the same tribe. Sharing the responsibility for natural rights between all members of the same tribe allowed humans to take advantage of all opportunities for cooperation. Human rights are the present day political emanation of natural rights. Theoretically, human rights are accorded by all humans to all humans in virtue (...) of being humans; however, the idea that the corresponding responsibility is now shared among all humans is not broadly accepted. The natural sense of justice creates an ambiguity: on the one hand humans consider the nation they belong to as the social system that should guarantee their human rights ; on the other hand, as cooperation between nations intensifies, expectations of global mutual responsibility increase as well. (shrink)

Within the business and management literature, empathy has taken on increased importance as a central element to leadership, improving marketing strategies, corporate philanthropy, creating organizational connectedness, and as a strategy for preventing managerial wrongdoing. Although defining empathy is difficult, it is the identification with another’s thoughts and emotions through an imaginative process. This identification, ideally, will facilitate a wider connection with stakeholders beyond self-interest and motivate a better business environment. This article argues empathy is an overblown concept that is only (...) marginally supported by the philosophical and psychological research and, therefore, has limited application to business. Empathy is problematic because our inferences of mind are often inaccurate; not everyone is good at empathizing; it’s not necessary to understand action intention; doesn’t motivate helping behaviour; and could lead to immoral actions. My stance is definitively anti-empathy; perspective-taking is not sufficient or necessary as a management or business tool. Our understanding of people rests, not on empathy, but with our emotions, norms, and the social context in which we find ourselves. (shrink)

Greco-Roman philosophers and historians frequently attempted to define the human being vis-á-vis other animals by isolating capacities, intellectual, physical, and emotional, judged unique to humans. The Stoic claim that only humans have a sense of shame because only humans are rational and therefore capable of emotions, which entail reasoning, was contradicted by other philosophers and naturalists who argued that some animal behaviors were analogous to behavior in humans that indicate shame. Ancient debates on both sides of the issue of animal (...) emotions are paralleled in current philosophy and cognitive ethology employing anecdotal and anthropomorphizing arguments that mirror classical examples. (shrink)

Although a distinction between moral-personal and moral-impersonal dilemmas (Greene, Sommerville, Nystrom, Darley, & Cohen, 2001 Greene, J. D., Sommerville, R. B., Nystrom, L. E., Darley, J. M. and Cohen, J. D. 2001. An fMRI investigation of emotional engagement in moral judgement. Science, 293: 2105–2108. doi:10.1126/science.1062872.[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®], [Google Scholar]) has been widely accepted as an explanation for a difference between the trolley and footbridge dilemmas (Thomson, 1985 Thomson, J. J. 1985. “The trolley problem”. In Ethics: Problems and (...) principles, Edited by: Fischer, J. M. and Ravizza, M. Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. [Google Scholar]), its psychometric properties remain a mystery. In this study 219 participants completed 62 moral dilemma tasks used in Greene et al. (2001 Greene, J. D., Sommerville, R. B., Nystrom, L. E., Darley, J. M. and Cohen, J. D. 2001. An fMRI investigation of emotional engagement in moral judgement. Science, 293: 2105–2108. doi:10.1126/science.1062872.[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®], [Google Scholar]), and the correlation structure among the dilemmas was analysed through factor analysis and structural equation modelling. Findings suggest that, first, moral-personal dilemmas are composed of one factor, indicating that the assumption in Greene et al. (2001 Greene, J. D., Sommerville, R. B., Nystrom, L. E., Darley, J. M. and Cohen, J. D. 2001. An fMRI investigation of emotional engagement in moral judgement. Science, 293: 2105–2108. doi:10.1126/science.1062872.[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®], [Google Scholar]) was supported. Second, moral-impersonal dilemmas are explained by two factors that reflect procedural and consequential aspects of decision making. Third, the trolley and footbridge dilemmas fall under the same factor category; therefore the difference between the two dilemmas cannot be attributed to emotional involvement. Additionally, the results of the structural equation modelling suggest that they differ in the engagement of rational processing. (shrink)

This is a critique of Timothy Hsiao’s ‘A Moral Defense of Trophy Hunting.’ I argue that Hsiao’s arguments on pain, consciousness, behavior, cruelty, and necessity all fail. More importantly, I argue against his broader conclusion that non-human animals ‘do not have any inherent moral significance.’ My conclusion is that Hsiao’s moral defense of trophy hunting fails.

In this paper, we argue that scientists working on the animal morality debate have been operating with a narrow view of morality that prematurely limits the variety of moral practices that animals may be capable of. We show how this bias can be partially corrected by paying more attention to the touch behaviours of animals. We argue that a careful examination of the ways in which animals engage in and navigate touch interactions can shed new light on current debates on (...) animal morality, like the study of consolation behaviour, while also revealing further forms that animal morality may take and that have been neglected so far, like capacities of tolerance or trust. This defence is structured as an analysis of the three main functions of touch: the discriminative function, the affiliative function, and the vigilance function. (shrink)

I argue that the standard paradigm for understanding cognition—namely, that thoughts are representational, internal, and propositional—does not account for a large number of genuinely cognitive processes. Instead, if we adopt a more radical approach, one that treats cognition as a cooperative, dynamic, and interactive process, accounting for shared meaning making and embodied thought becomes much more plausible. To support this thesis, rather than turn to the debate as it has been ongoing among philosophers of mind pertaining solely to human thought, (...) I examine our interactions with other animals, and thus, I take a more biological approach to how thought evolves and emerges. Chiefly, I look at the ways in which human-canine interaction ought to count as producing genuinely cognitive phenomena that cannot be properly explicated under a standard model of cognition, and that these sorts of interactive and dynamic pairings between us and our dogs can serve as models for human minds, which I argue are much more shared and cooperative than competing accounts of cognition would have us believe. (shrink)

In recent years, a proliferation of books about empathy, cooperation and pro-social behaviours has significantly influenced the discourse of the life-sciences and reversed consolidated views of nature as a place only for competition and aggression. In this article I describe the recent contribution of three disciplines – moral psychology, primatology and the neuroscience of morality – to the present transformation of biology and evolution into direct sources of moral phenomena, a process here named the ‘moralization of biology’. I conclude by (...) addressing the ambivalent status of this constellation of authors, for whom today ‘morality comes naturally’: I explore both the attractiveness of their message, and the problematic epistemological assumptions of their research programmes in the light of new discoveries in developmental and molecular biology. (shrink)

In recent years, a proliferation of books about empathy, cooperation and pro-social behaviours (Brooks, 2011a) has significantly influenced the discourse of the life-sciences and reversed consolidated views of nature as a place only for competition and aggression. In this article I describe the recent contribution of three disciplines – moral psychology (Jonathan Haidt), primatology (Frans de Waal) and the neuroscience of morality – to the present transformation of biology and evolution into direct sources of moral phenomena, a process here named (...) the ‘moralization of biology’. I conclude by addressing the ambivalent status of this constellation of authors, for whom today ‘morality comes naturally’: I explore both the attractiveness of their message, and the problematic epistemological assumptions of their research programmes in the light of new discoveries in developmental and molecular biology. (shrink)

Shame is a painful emotion concerned with failure to live up to certain standards, norms, or ideals. The subject feels that she falls in the regard of others; she feels watched and exposed. As a result, she feels bad about the person that she is. The most popular view of shame is that someone only feels ashamed if she fails to live up to standards, norms, or ideals that she, herself, accepts. In this paper, I provide support for a different (...) view, according to which shame is about failure to live up to public expectations. Such a view of shame has difficulties explaining why an audience is central to shame, why shame concerns the self as a whole, and why the social rank of someone affects their ability to shame others. These features, I argue, are best explained by reference to the descent of shame in the emotion connected with submission in nonhuman animals. The function of submission—to appease relevant social others—also throws light on the sort of emotion that shame is. From the point of view of other people, a subject who experiences shame at her own failing is someone who is committed to living together with others in a socially sanctioned way. The argument is not that we must understand the nature of shame in terms of what it evolved for, but that its heritage is important to understanding the emotion that shame has become. (shrink)

The convergence between ethology and ethnography has significantly transformed studies of animal subjectivity and culture. The future of both fields lies in a cultural zoology that treats animals as subjects partaking in culture. Nonetheless, significant resistance to such an approach exists on each side of the dis- ciplinary divide. Biologists and social scientists content themselves with definitions of culture that prevent them from taking heed of crucial dimensions of it. Beyond that, the very organiz- ation of scholarly knowledge in university (...) disci- plines is predicated upon an absolute split between humans and other animals, with ethol- ogy charged with understanding non-human animal behavior and the social sciences directed almost exclusively to human cultures. The most promising approaches of the present and future rely on a mixture of methods and definitions that challenges and expands the disciplines involved as well as the very understanding of animal life. (shrink)

This article situates actor-network theory in the history of evolutionary anthropology. In the 1980s, this attempt at explaining the social through the mediation of nonhumans received important impulses from Bruno Latour’s conversations with primatologist Shirley Strum. In a re-articulation of social evolutionism, they proposed that the utilization of objects distinguished humans from baboons and that the use of a growing number of objects set industrialized human populations apart from hunter-gatherers, enabling the formation of larger collectives. While Strum’s and Latour’s early (...) work presented baboons as almost human and suggested that we moderns had never been modern, the Anthropocene has reawakened curiosity about the original question of anthropology: how do modern humans, including modern scientists, differ from premoderns and animals? This 18th-century question is gaining new significance and urgency as we recognize our transmutation into a super-dominant species. But the answer might not lie solely in the use of more objects. (shrink)

I offer a critical analysis of a view that has become a dominant aspect of recent thought on the relationship between evolution and morality, and propose an alternative. An ingredient in Michael Ruse's 'error theory' (Ruse 1995) is that belief in moral (prescriptive, universal, and nonsubjective) guidelines arose in humans because such belief results in the performance of adaptive cooperative behaviors. This statement relies on two particular connections: between ostensible and intentional types of altruism, and between intentional altruism and morality. (...) The latter connection is problematic because it makes morality redundant, its role having already been fulfilled by the psychological dispositions that constitute intentional altruism. Both behavioral ecology and moral psychology support this criticism, and neither human behavioral flexibility nor the self-regard / other-regard distinction can provide a defense of the error theory. I conclude that morality did not evolve to curb rampant selfishness; instead, the evolutionarily recent 'universal law' aspect of morality may function to update behavioral strategies which were adaptive in the paleolithic environment of our ancestors (to which our psychological dispositions are best adapted), by means of norms more appropriate to our novel social environment. (shrink)

Nurses find themselves in a unique position - between patient and physicians, and in close proximity to the patient. Moral sensitivity can help nurses to cope with the daily turmoil of demands and opinions while delivering care in concordance with the value system of the patient. This article aims to reconsider the concept of moral sensitivity by discussing the function of emotions in morality. We turn to the ideas of historic and contemporary authors on the function of emotions in morality (...) to expand our understanding of moral sensitivity. Ancient philosophers and contemporary psychologists uphold different strategies on the orientation of morality being (a) personal growth or (b) community living, and the primordial function of (c) reason and (d) emotions in the creation of judgements about good and bad. The theoretical discussion on the function of emotions in morality shows that by focusing on reason alone, one leaves out an essential part of morality. The concept of moral sensitivity should (1) include an initial judgment of good and bad based on emotions, (2) hold the ability to reflect on the initial judgement and the associated emotions, (3) include the ability to understand other stakeholders' perspectives based on the ideal-types and (4) include a personal decision on the right course of action. (shrink)

For a biological anthropologist interested in the prehistory of religion, J. Wentzel van Huyssteen's book is welcome and resonant. Van Huyssteen's central thesis is that humans' capacity for spirituality emerges from a transformation of cognition and emotions that takes place in the symbolic realm, within Homo sapiens and apart from biology. To his thesis I bring to bear three areas of response: the abundant cognitive and emotional capacities of living apes and extinct hominids; the role of symbolic ritual in the (...) evolutionary history of Homo sapiens; and the closely intertwined nature of biology and culture in the workings of evolutionary change. (shrink)

This article responds to a common criticism of Aristotelian naturalism known as the Pollyanna Problem, the objection that Aristotelian naturalism, when combined with recent empirical research, generates morally unacceptable conclusions. In developing a reply to this objection, I draw upon the conception of human nature developed by the ancient Chinese philosopher Mencius, and build up an account of ethical naturalism that provides a satisfying response to the Pollyanna Problem while also preserving what is most attractive about Aristotelian naturalism.