ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the scientific and philosophical developments that make it plausible to reason in the manner. The connection between social behavior and morality is established in large part by observing the behavior of social animals. Since it would be philosophically difficult to prove that animals behave morally, the sociobiologist points instead to the seemingly altruistic behavior of social animals and then tries to explain how morality could have arisen from that altruism. Reciprocal altruism expands the circle of individuals which an animal benefits at some cost to itself. Eternal moral truths and ‘objective’ values existing independently of living creatures would be very mysterious entities. The success of the performance that results, both at the level of moral perception and at the level of moral theorizing, is to be evaluated with respect to a social context, and thus the truth that may be ‘revealed’ to us will also depend on that context.
