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Evolution and Morality

NOMOS LII

James E. Fleming

Publication Year: 2012

<div>Can theories of evolution explain the development of our capacity for moral judgment and the content of morality itself? If bad behavior punished by the criminal law is attributable to physical causes, rather than being intentional or voluntary as traditionally assumed, what are the implications for rethinking the criminal justice system? Is evolutionary theory and &#8220;nature talk,&#8221; at least as practiced to date, inherently conservative and resistant to progressive and feminist proposals for social changes to counter subordination and secure equality? </div> <div>&nbsp;</div><div>In <em>Evolution and Morality</em>, a group of contributors from philosophy, law, political science, history, and genetics address many of the philosophical, legal, and political issues raised by such questions. This insightful interdisciplinary volume examines the possibilities of a naturalistic ethics, the implications of behavioral morality for reform of the criminal law, the prospects for a biopolitical science, and the relationship between nature, culture, and social engineering.</div>

Published by: NYU Press

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Preface

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pp. ix-x

This volume of NOMOS —the fifty-second in the series —emerged from papers and commentaries given at the annual meeting of the American Society for Political and Legal Philosophy (ASPLP) in Boston on August 28–29, 2008, held in conjunction with the annual meeting of the American Political...

Contributors

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pp. xi-xii

PART I: NATURALISTIC ETHICS

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1. Naturalistic Ethics without Fallacies

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pp. 3-30

Naturalism about ethics is a notoriously problematic position, possibly the worst of all, except for its available rivals. Naturalists, when they are not viewed as being so crude as to be beneath notice, are typically charged with committing well-known fallacies. I shall outline a version of naturalism that will...

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2. The Two Faces of Morality: How Evolutionary Theory Can Both Vindicate and Debunk Morality (with a Special Nod to the Growing Importance of Law)

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pp. 31-99

Charles Darwin was the first to propose that there might be an evolutionary explanation of the moral sentiments—which, on certain contemporary views, might plausibly include or even largely consist in an evolutionary explanation of our capacities for moral judgment as well. Although more than

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3. Missing Heritability: Hidden Environment in Genetic Studies of Human Behavior

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pp. 100-112

Philip Kitcher argues that the sciences of sociobiology and evolutionary psychology are severely limited in their utility for understanding human nature and contributing to the ethical project. He argues for a much broader set of approaches that would necessarily lessen the importance of biology in...

PART II: LAW AND BEHAVIORAL MORALITY

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4. Law and Behavioral Morality

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pp. 115-165

Behavioral morality is a new brand of moral philosophy with the central tenet that bad behavior attributable to a physical cause is either less blameworthy than intentional behavior or not at all morally blameworthy. As evolutionary biology, cognitive neuroscience, and moral philosophers meet on an...

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5. Rethinking Unreasonableness: A Comment on Nita Farahany’s “Law and Behavioral Morality”

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pp. 166-193

In her stimulating essay, Professor Nita Farahany defines the new movement of “behavioral morality” and situates it within a taxonomy of movements that relate human biology to moral capacities and content. As Farahany’s taxonomy illustrates, there are numerous branches of inquiry that tread this...

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6. A Case Study in Neuroscience and Responsibility

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pp. 194-211

Several prominent criminal law theorists argue vigorously and persistently that responsibility and excuses (which are denials of responsibility) should not be based on causation. Moore, for example, opposes “the causal theory of excuses,” which claims that “when an agent is caused to act by a factor...

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7. Science Fiction: Some Unexamined Assumptions of Nita Farahany’s “Law and Behavioral Morality”

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pp. 212-217

Nita Farahany’s essay “Law and Behavioral Morality” takes up several distinct but related topics concerning the application of science, specifically neuroscience, to matters of criminal law. My response to “Law and Behavioral Morality” focuses on what I take to be, at least at first glance, one of its...

PART III: BIOPOLITICAL SCIENCE

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8. Biopolitical Science

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pp. 221-265

Political science could become a true science by becoming a biopolitical science of political animals. This science would be both Aristotelian and Darwinian. It would be Aristotelian in fulfilling Aristotle’s original understanding of political science as the biological study of the political life of human...

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9. Comment on Larry Arnhart, “Biopolitical Science”

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pp. 266-276

On the eve of the invasion of Iraq in March of 2003, the faculty and students of Fordham University in the Bronx, where I was teaching at the time, came together for an evening forum to discuss the looming war. I have vivid memories of the atmosphere: walking through the gathering dusk to the...

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10. Arnhart’s Explanatory Pluralism

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pp. 277-290

Larry Arnhart, in his “Biopolitical Science,” argues for a comprehensive, integrative approach to political science. According to Arnhart, this “biopolitical” framework of a “science of political animals” moves through three main levels of “deep” political history —a universal political history of the human...

PART IV: NATURE, CONSERVATISM, AND PROGRESSIVISM

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11. Against Nature

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pp. 293-346

Progressive arguments on behalf of subordinated social groups often embrace social models of group identity. In other words, these arguments treat identity categories, based on race or sex or disability, as socially constructed. Relatedly, progressives tend to resist naturalizing models of group difference...

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12. Nature, Culture, and Social Engineering: Reflections on Evolution and Equality

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pp. 347-391

In the United States, evidence of the success of legal feminism’s equality project is visible in the constitutional commitment to equal opportunity and prohibitions against legislating based on fixed notions about gender roles, as well as in the move toward greater sex equality in family law and other...

Index

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pp. 393-399


E-ISBN-13: 9780814737828
E-ISBN-10: 081477122X
Print-ISBN-13: 9780814771228

Page Count: 400
Publication Year: 2012

Research Areas

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Subject Headings

  • Biopolitics.
  • Political ethics.
  • Science and law.
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