Philosophy 107

Do humans possess an innate moral faculty that evolved to meet certain adaptive challenges? Is the innate equipment a single faculty or does the moral mind consist of several distinct modules, e.g., one for compassion, one for justice, and so on? Is the moral mind well-designed to meet the adaptive challenges modern people face? We will examine two distinct literatures to answer this question: (1) comparative work in philosophical anthropology, examining Greek, Chinese, Buddhist ethics; (2) recent work at the intersection of moral philosophy, psychology, and evolutionary biology.

Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics (Hackett) P. J. Ivanhoe & Brian Van Norden (eds) Readings from Classical Chinese Philosophy (Hackett) Walter Sinnott-Armstrong (ed) Moral Psychology vol. 1 (MIT Press)