Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book describes the scientific understandings of morality including examinations of primates, ancestral hominins, and contemporary humans from evolutionary and psychological perspectives. Joan Silk starts at the beginning, by asking what kind of characteristics were present in our last common ancestor with other primates, which gave rise to the most empathic and cooperative organism on earth. After Silk's examination of ancestral characteristics that laid the groundwork and Boehm's analysis of the process that generated human empathy and altruism, Daniel Batson explores the psychological dispositions that mediate them. The philosophical contributions explore presuppositions that fuel both Darwinian understanding of morality and objections to it, and propose authors and traditions that would form valuable additions or correctives to evolutionary explanations of morality. David Lahti proposes a rapprochement between evolutionary thinkers and moral philosophers.