Table Of ContentEvolutionary Moral Realism
Against standard approaches to evolution and ethics, this book develops the
idea that moral values may find their origin in regularly recurring features in the
cooperative environments of species of organisms that are social and intelligent.
Across a wide range of species that are social and intelligent, possibilities
arise for helping others, responding empathetically to the needs of others, and
playing fairly. The book identifies these underlying environmental regularities
as biological natural kinds and as natural moral values. As natural kinds, moral
values help to provide more complete explanations for the selection of traits that
arise in response to them. For example, helping in an aquatic environment is
quite different than helping in an arboreal environment, and so we can expect the
selection of traits for helping to reflect these underlying environmental differences.
With the human ability to name, talk, and reason about important features of our
environment, moral values become part of moral discourse and argument, helping
to produce coherent systems of moral thought.
C ombining a naturalistic approach to morality with an equal emphasis on moral
argument and truth, this book will be of interest to philosophers and historians of
biology, theoretical biologists, comparative psychologists, and moral philosophers.
John Collier (1950–2018) was Professor Emeritus at the University of KwaZulu-
Natal, South Africa.
Michael Stingl is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Lethbridge,
Canada.
History and Philosophy of Biology
Series Editor: Rasmus Grønfeldt Winther
Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of California,
Santa Cruz (UCSC)
This series explores significant developments in the life sciences from historical
and philosophical perspectives. Historical episodes include Aristotelian biology,
Greek and Islamic biology and medicine, Renaissance biology, natural history,
Darwinian evolution, Nineteenth-century physiology and cell theory, Twentieth-
century genetics, ecology, and systematics, and the biological theories and prac-
tices of non-Western perspectives. Philosophical topics include individuality,
reductionism and holism, fitness, levels of selection, mechanism and teleology,
and the nature-nurture debates, as well as explanation, confirmation, inference,
experiment, scientific practice, and models and theories vis-à-vis the biological
sciences.
Authors are also invited to inquire into the “and” of this series. How has, does,
and will the history of biology impact philosophical understandings of life? How
can philosophy help us analyze the historical contingency of, and structural con-
straints on, scientific knowledge about biological processes and systems? In prob-
ing the interweaving of history and philosophy of biology, scholarly investigation
could usefully turn to values, power, and potential future uses and abuses of bio-
logical knowledge.
T he scientific scope of the series includes evolutionary theory, environmental
sciences, genomics, molecular biology, systems biology, biotechnology, biomedi-
cine, race and ethnicity, and sex and gender. These areas of the biological sciences
are not silos, and tracking their impact on other sciences such as psychology, eco-
nomics, and sociology, and the behavioral and human sciences more generally, is
also within the purview of this series.
Ecological Investigations
A Phenomenology of Habitats
Adam C. Konopka
Evolutionary Moral Realism
John Collier and Michael Stingl
For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/
History-and-Philosophy-of-Biology/book-series/HAPB
Koson, Mother and baby reaching for the reflection of the moon. Permission
granted by the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington,
DC, Robert O. Muller Collection.
Evolutionary Moral Realism
John Collier and Michael Stingl
First published 2020
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2020 John Collier and Michael Stingl
The right of John Collier and Michael Stingl to be identified as authors of
this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78
of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Collier, John (Philosophy), author. | Stingl, Michael, 1955- author.
Title: Evolutionary moral realism / John Collier and Michael Stingl.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2020. |
Series: History and philosophy of biology | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019039353 (print) | LCCN 2019039354 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780367281304 (hbk) | ISBN 9780429299803 (ebk)
Subjects: LCSH: Ethics. | Evolution (Biology) | Evolutionary
developmental biology.
Classification: LCC BJ58 .C65 2020 (print) | LCC BJ58 (ebook) |
DDC 171/.7—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019039353
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019039354
ISBN: 978-0-367-28130-4 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-29980-3 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Apex CoVantage LLC
In memory of John
Contents
About the authors x
Acknowledgements xi
Preface xiii
1 Evolutionary moral realism 1
2 The moon in the water 17
3 Moral trajectories 39
4 Moral sense theories 60
5 Reason, rational contracts, and selfish genes 83
6 Natural moral values and moral progress 109
7 Partial and impartial moral reasons 129
8 Moving from is to ought 144
Conclusion 167
Index 171
