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Empirically Engaged Evolutionary EthicsThe Cultural Evolution of Extended Benevolence

Empirically Engaged Evolutionary Ethics: The Cultural Evolution of Extended Benevolence [In The Descent of Man (1879), Charles Darwin proposed a speculative evolutionary explanation of extended benevolence—a human sympathetic capacity that extends to all nations, races, and even to all sentient beings. This essay draws on twenty-first century social science to show that Darwin’s explanation is correct in its broad outlines. Extended benevolence is manifested in institutions such as legal human rights and democracy, in behaviors such as social movements for human rights and the protection of nonhuman animals, and in normative attitudes such as emancipative values and a commitment to promote the rights or welfare of animals. These phenomena can be substantially explained by cultural evolutionary forces that trace back to three components of what Darwin called the human “moral sense”: (1) sympathy, (2) our disposition to follow community rules or norms, and (3) our capacity to make normative judgments. Extended benevolence likely emerged with “workarounds,” including political ideologies, that established an inclusive sympathetic concern for sentient life. It likely became as widespread as it is now due to recently arisen socio-economic conditions that have created more opportunities for people to have contact with and take the perspective of a broader cross-section of humanity, as well as other species.] http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png

Empirically Engaged Evolutionary EthicsThe Cultural Evolution of Extended Benevolence

Part of the Synthese Library Book Series (volume 437)
Editors: De Smedt, Johan; De Cruz, Helen
Luco, Andrés
Empirically Engaged Evolutionary Ethics — May 5, 2021
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Publisher
Springer International Publishing
Copyright
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
ISBN
978-3-030-68801-1
Pages
153 –177
DOI
10.1007/978-3-030-68802-8_8
Publisher site
See Chapter on Publisher Site

Abstract

[In The Descent of Man (1879), Charles Darwin proposed a speculative evolutionary explanation of extended benevolence—a human sympathetic capacity that extends to all nations, races, and even to all sentient beings. This essay draws on twenty-first century social science to show that Darwin’s explanation is correct in its broad outlines. Extended benevolence is manifested in institutions such as legal human rights and democracy, in behaviors such as social movements for human rights and the protection of nonhuman animals, and in normative attitudes such as emancipative values and a commitment to promote the rights or welfare of animals. These phenomena can be substantially explained by cultural evolutionary forces that trace back to three components of what Darwin called the human “moral sense”: (1) sympathy, (2) our disposition to follow community rules or norms, and (3) our capacity to make normative judgments. Extended benevolence likely emerged with “workarounds,” including political ideologies, that established an inclusive sympathetic concern for sentient life. It likely became as widespread as it is now due to recently arisen socio-economic conditions that have created more opportunities for people to have contact with and take the perspective of a broader cross-section of humanity, as well as other species.]

Published: May 5, 2021

Keywords: Contact Contacts; Cultural evolution Cultural evolution; Cultural variants Cultural variants; Democracy Democracies; Emancipative values Emancipative values; Extended benevolence Extended benevolence; Human rights Human rights; Moral sense Moral sense; Norms Norms; Norm psychology Norm psychology; “Objective” morality; Perspective-taking Perspective-taking; Second-personal morality Second-personal morality; Sympathy Sympathies; Transmission bias Transmission bias; Workarounds Workarounds

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