Ethical Animals in La Mettrie, Darwin, and de Waal

摘要

Much has been written during the last generation concerning the relation between evolution and ethics. Philosophers, biologists, and anthropologists have repeatedly considered whether human morality counters the workings of natural selection, or is an adaptive result of that process; how altruistic behavior that harms one's chances of reproduction could result from natural selection; whether a limited form of group selection can or must be admitted to have played a role in the process; and the extent of the evidence of moral or proto-moral behavior in nonhuman animals.1 Most of the arguments have examined evidence from animal behavior as secondary to the primary purpose of determining what implications it might carry for an understanding of human moral behavior.