Evolutionary Psychology and Morality. Review Essay

Evolution has since the publication of The origin of species (1859) been a source of inspiration, and a bone of contention, not only for biology but also for philosophy and the sciences of man. The moral consequences of Darwinism have been a concern for ethicists since Herbert Spencer elevated the survival of the fittest to a norm underwriting cultural and societal progress—hard for the individual perhaps, but good for mankind. In contrast, Thomas Huxley saw evolution as a story of cruelty and ruthless selfishness (“nature, red in tooth and claw”), that a human moral society should combat rather than imitate. In the past 150 years several varieties of evolutionary ethics have been proposed. This review considers three books broadly concerned with meta-ethics. Meta-ethics is about the meaning of moral statements and the nature of moral judgments, about the specific characteristics of moral behaviour and moral attitudes, and about the nature of moral properties. If we want to understand how moral judgement works, we have to understand the mental architecture that produces such judgments, one might argue. That is why we should also look at psychology, in particular moral psychology (see e.g. Sinnott-Armstrong 2008), as a resource for meta-ethics. In psychology, evolutionary thinking has in recent years acquired a place, explaining emotions, cognition, etc, as biological adaptations (e.g., Buss 2007). So, we can see the big issue looming: can morality be explained as a biological adaptation, as an instinct, and most importantly, what does that mean for the status of moral judgments and moral facts? If what we do is not the result of a judgment about what is universally and objectively right or wrong, but of the blind instincts of our animal nature, designed to promote survival of Ethic Theory Moral Prac (2011) 14:117–125 DOI 10.1007/s10677-010-9223-1