Did religion play a role in the evolution of morality?
The question of whether religion played a role in the evolution of morality can be interpreted in different ways. I consider three. On the first interpretation, “morality” is understood as an evolved faculty for making moral judgments, where moral judgments are a special category of normative judgme...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Interlibrary Loan: | Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany) |
| Published: |
[2020]
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| In: |
Religion, brain & behavior
Year: 2020, Volume: 10, Issue: 3, Pages: 292-302 |
| Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
Religion
/ Moral sense
/ Moral act
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| IxTheo Classification: | AB Philosophy of religion; criticism of religion; atheism AD Sociology of religion; religious policy AE Psychology of religion NCB Personal ethics NCC Social ethics |
| Further subjects: | B
moral-conventional task
B method of cases B Evolution of morality B Cultural Evolution B Social learning B norm psychology |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (Resolving-System) |
| Summary: | The question of whether religion played a role in the evolution of morality can be interpreted in different ways. I consider three. On the first interpretation, “morality” is understood as an evolved faculty for making moral judgments, where moral judgments are a special category of normative judgments. For seventy years, philosophers and psychologists have sought to characterize this special subset of normative judgments in a well-motivated way. But I maintain that these efforts have failed, and that the likely explanation is that there is no special subset of normative judgments of the sort that philosophers and psychologists have in mind. The upshot is that religion played no role in the evolution of the faculty for making moral judgments because there is no such faculty. A second interpretation of the question asks whether religion played a role in the evolution of norm psychology. I argue that the answer is probably no, because the evolution of norm psychology can be explained without appealing to religion. A third interpretation of the question asks whether religion played a role in the cultural (as opposed to biological) evolution of norms. Here, I contend, the answer is obviously yes. |
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| ISSN: | 2153-5981 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Religion, brain & behavior
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1080/2153599X.2019.1678511 |