Artikel

Onze morele natuur: over de oorsprong van het vermogen tot moraliteit in een natuurwetenschappelijke

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Samenvatting

Our Moral Nature. On the origin of the moral sense in a scientific interdisciplinary context-Centuries of debate concerning the origins of morality have amounted to a vast literature on the subject. However, since the arrival of evolutionary theory, another perspective can be taken into account. This perspective, obtained by uniting theories and results of evolutionary biologists, psychologists, neurologists, primatologists and moral philosophers, looks at morality in an entirely different way. First, we'll look at some of the main features of morality. We'll see that they are in an important degree universal. This suggests that the ability to be moral lies in our biological origin. The idea is that morality is founded on what can be called 'a moral sense', and this moral sense is explained as an adaptation of human beings shaped by their evolutionary history. Evidence from all of these above-mentioned fields supports this hypothesis. The conclusion of this article is that morality can be seen as a social regulatory mechanism that has evolved by means of natural selection.

Hoe citeren:

Tom, S., (1999) “Onze morele natuur: over de oorsprong van het vermogen tot moraliteit in een natuurwetenschappelijke”, Ethiek en Maatschappij 2(4), 62–96. doi: https://doi.org/10.21825/em.94225