Abstract

If the human mind was designed through Darwinian natural selection to be a highly intrinsically structured solver of predictable problems of human existence--so as to promote the individual's own reproductive success--then we may ask whether there are any significant implications for legal philosophy which flow from this vision of human nature. It is argued that: the pursuit of happiness; the "self-evidence" of certain categories of phenomena as being "good"; the ability of the individual to mentally abstract from personal sentiment so as to be objectively concerned for others' interests; the ability to perceive certain categories of problems as structured according to the forms of justice ; and the possession of a "sense of justice" that recognizes distortions in the forms of justice--are all the result of design features of the human mind that function, ultimately to promote individual reproductive success. It is proposed that these capacities, along with others, are the basic building blocks used to construct the forms of "social control". Law is a specialized form of "social control". As a type of biocultural adaptation, law functions to regulate the proximate pursuits of individuals and, ultimately, to regulate the pursuit of individual reproductive success. If this perspective is accepted, then we can ask, in different types of societies, whose reproductive interests are promoted through law, and whose reproductive interests ought to be promoted through law