Moral Psychology, Volume 1: The Evolution of Morality: ... (ISBN 0262693542)

A good place to start:
It is refreshing to know that in the last few decades musings over ethics and morality have entered into the scientific realm after being dominated for centuries by religious dogma and traditional philosophy. This is not to say that some philosophers have not entered into the arena that this book labels as `the naturalization of ethics' or `moral psychology'. They have, and with their rhetorical skills this makes the field of moral psychology a lively one, and certainly one that will increase in importance in years to come, in most part due to the advances in cognitive neuroscience. This volume is the first of three that consists of a collection of articles that are written by selected individuals who work in the field. The book reads more like a debate between the contributors, but it is packed full of interesting information and will satisfy those readers who thirst for a more concrete, scientific approach to morals and ethics. It could also serve the needs of students who intend to pursue areas of research such as evolutionary psychology and cognitive neuroscience. Rule-based religious ethics has dominated ethical debate for centuries, if not millennia, but thankfully there are many scientists and philosophers who are seeking a different outlook on ethics that reject outright any constraints seemingly imposed by the `naturalistic fallacy.' The goal is to study not only on the origins of morality in human societies, but also find out whether or not morality is wired into the human brain in a manner that some say language is. These concerns lead to conceptions such as `naturalistic ethics' and `moral nativism', both of which are well represented by the articles in this book. But readers interested in topics such as artificial intelligence, natural law, and legal reasoning may also find this book of benefit. The discussions on domain-specific versus domain-general reasoning mechanisms in the brain, and also neurocomputational systems are of great interest to those working in artificial intelligence. In addition, the discussions on `deontic logic' and empirical logic will pique the interest of readers who are interested in the automation or formalization of legal reasoning. Another virtue of the book is that even though the debates are heated none of the authors are shouting at each other or engaging in any of the vituperation that you frequently find in contemporary political debates. The level of cordiality and professionalism "should" be adhered to in all fields of endeavor. Rule-based systems of ethics, such as those typically proposed by religious schools, have difficulty dealing with all the different contingencies faced by humans. Therefore humans who follow these kinds of systems are frequently faced with situations that almost if not completely encourage them to be hypocrites, or at least are judged as such by external observers. It would seem that rule-based ethics is not general enough to deal with the complexities of everyday life, or cannot adapt itself to novel situations. This leads some ethicists to consider whether such formulations of ethics should be completely abandoned in favor of ones that effective enough to confront complex, rapidly changing environments. Some of the articles in this book address these issues, particularly the ones that discuss whether a "domain-general" treatment of ethics should be completely abandoned. So the book as a whole is excellent, but it does have one weakness that is usually shared by nearly all conceptions of ethics, namely that a particular set of actions cannot be said to be moral if the agents do so out of their own self-interest. Such a bias towards what is good is shared by all of the authors in this book. They cannot seem to conceptualize, or do not find even credible, notions of morality that do not divorce the personal benefits one receives from the goodness of the acts themselves. Further a few of the authors implicitly or explicitly believe that morality is in fact a weakness, i.e. that in an evolutionary sense individuals who act morally will always have negative fitness advantages compared with those individuals who do not. This "morality = weakness" paradigm seems to be pervasive in modern society. It demands rigorous scientific scrutiny and empirical evidence, instead of being accepted blindly as some axiom. This would be a fascinating project on which to embark on, particularly for those individuals who do not accept the belief that morality is a sign of weakness rather than strength.