Evolutionary Ethics

The discipline of evolutionary ethics has developed in response to the growth of scientific inquiry and the overlap between evolutionary theory and moral philosophy. The primary goal of evolutionary ethics is to arrive at conclusions by applying principles of evolutionary theory to clarify perplexing issues in moral philosophy or elaborate on previously debated issues with new insight. Evolutionary ethics can be divided into three distinct branches:

• Descriptive Evolutionary Ethics explores how certain moral capacities arose in human being by examining scientific claims. For example, how did human beings develop an understanding of fairness and reciprocity?
• Prescriptive Evolutionary Ethics uses evolutionary theory to undermine or support claims in normative ethics. For example, in developing a normative ethical theory, can we justify allocating lesser moral consideration to animals than human beings?

• Evolutionary Metaethics evaluates metaethical claims and theories with the aid of evolutionary theory. For example, evolutionary theory has generated some new sentiments about the origin of morality which have contributed to debate concerning moral skepticism.

Compared to other approaches to morality, evolutionary ethics is new and fairly underdeveloped. Nevertheless, with time and additional research, this interdisciplinary approach could produce a variety of interesting discoveries regarding the relationship between morality and evolutionary biology.