April 5, 2019 ALL

Today: Don Shula Chair in Philosophy Inaugural Lecture: The Evolution of Morality

You are invited to the Don Shula Chair in Philosophy inaugural lecture:

Dr Simon Fitzpatrick, “The Evolution of Morality”.

Friday, April 5th, 3-5pm, AD47. Refreshments Provided.

Abstract:
Philosophers have proposed a wide variety of different origin stories for human morality. These stories have variously been used to debunk or legitimate particular ethical theories, and/or motivate particular conceptions of the proper function or subject-matter of moral discourse. Recent decades have seen an ever-growing group of evolutionary biologists, primatologists, and cognitive scientists add their own stories about the evolutionary origins of human morality. In this talk, I provide an opinionated overview of some of the most important accounts that have been discussed in the recent literature, and develop some of my thoughts on the origin of our most basic normative concepts and the relationship between human normative cognition and that of our closest ape relatives.