ASEBL Journal – Volume 13 Issue 1, January 2018
From the Editors
In line with the mission and goals of the Evolutionary Studies Collaborative, St. Francis College held its third Moral Sense Colloquium on 2 June 2017 to mark the thirtieth anniversary of the publication of Richard Alexander’ s The Biology of Moral Systems. The Keynote speaker was legendary biologist Dr. Robert Trivers. The Plenary speaker was biologist and philosopher Dr. David Lahti. There was one morning panel and two afternoon panels on a range of subjects related to the moral sense. Importantly, the conference was truly interdisciplinary and brought together scholars from disciplines as divere as biology, communications, religious studies, philosophy, psychology, including a student panel respondent who is studying English and American literature. The full program is available on the Evolutionary Studies Collaborative page at the St. Francis College site, here.
Although all of the presentations and talks are not represented in this issue, we have tried to provide a good sample. Comments from other conference presenters on the papers are included to help give a flavor of the discussions that took place during the colloquium.
A key debate among some philosophers, natural scientists, and social scientists concerns the origins of morality, and much has been published on the topic. See, for example, the psychological perspective of Dennis Krebs( 2011) and the anthropological perspective of Christopher Boehm( 2012). As Trivers( 1971) notes, praise and blame“ enhance‘ fitness’” since these“ select for altruistic motivations, and thus for reliability in others”( 694). Fitness itself, of course, does not survive; rather, traits and characteristics that contribute to survival and reproduction persist and evolve. Morality is a behavior, and behaviors evolve. What we call our moral sentiments have equivalents in other species. Take, for instance, empathy, a subject of study by primatologists Jessica Flack and Frans de Waal( 2002). Even before human culture there were early forms of elevating or ostracizing one socially, as seen today across non-human primate species. However, we need the wisdom of philosophers to help us understand biology’ s implications.
Readers wishing to participate in the conversation should contact editor Gregory F. Tague for the possibility of a guest post on the ASEBL blog.
Sincerely, Gregory F. Tague, Ph. D.( English), Editor Clayton Shoppa, Ph. D.( Philosophy), Guest Co-Editor
Works Cited
Boehm, Christopher. 2012. Moral Origins: The Evolution of Virtue, Altruism, and Shame. NY: Basic Books.
Flack, Jessica C. and Frans B. M. de Waal. 2002.‘“ Any Animal Whatever’: Darwinian Building Blocks of Morality in Monkeys and Apes.” Evolutionary Origins of Morality: Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives. Leonard D. Katz, ed. Thorverton, UK: Imprint Academic. 1-29. Krebs, Dennis L. 2011. The Origins of Morality: An Evolutionary Account. Oxford: OUP. Trivers, Robert. 1971.“ The Evolution of Reciprocal Altruism.” The Quarterly Review of Biology 46( 1):
35-57.
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