The Department of Philosophy Colloquium Series Presents

Did Evolution Shape the Human Moral Mind?

Date: November 8, 2024
Location: Sakamaki C-308
Time: 2:30 – 4:30pm

Did evolution by natural selection shape our moral emotions, attitudes, and judgments? This talk assesses a prominent evolutionary proposal according to which our moral minds are adaptively plastic. On this proposal, morally inclusive and morally exclusive attitudes form as adaptively plastic responses to cues of out-group threat detected during development. Proponents of this proposal maintain that it illuminates our past moral gains, the current flexibility of our intergroup preferences, and our prospects for future moral progress. I criticize this proposal for conflicting with cross-cultural evidence on the formation of interracial and inter-ethnolinguistic preferences in young children. On this basis, I argue that more promising accounts of moral progress draw on developmental research about the formation and successful reduction of problematic childhood racial and ethnolinguistic biases.