Steve Clarke, James Martin Research Fellow, Institute for Science and Ethics, Oxford Martin School, Oxford gives a talk for the Ian Ramsey Centre for Science and Religion. Joshua Greene argues that ordinary moral judgment results from the interaction of two distinct neural subsystems which generate competing moral intuitions. One subsystem generates consequentialist intuitions and the other generates deontological intuitions. Greene suggests that our faculty for generating deontological intuitions developed in response to an evolutionary need to suppress 'up close and personal' harmful acts within communities and when such acts are under consideration deontological intuitions tend to predominate in moral judgment. When 'up close and personal harms' are not under consideration consequentialist intuitions tend to predominate. A key problem with this account is that many deontological strictures (e.g. 'though shalt not lie') are meant to apply beyond the range of the 'up close and personal'. Here, the speaker seeks to defend Greene's account of the evolutionary origins of deontological moral intuition in the face of this problem, showing how it can be supplemented with an account of the ways in which social organisations can expand the scope of deontological moral judgment. The social organisations that are most effective in expanding the scope of deontological moral judgment are religious institutions. The speaker tries to show why this is so, drawing on Durkheim's account of the sacred. The speaker also considers the consequentialist normative arguments that Greene and Peter Singer build on Greene's descriptive account of moral judgment. Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/
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Steve Clarke, James Martin Research Fellow, Institute for Science and Ethics, Oxford Martin School, Oxford gives a talk for the Ian Ramsey Centre for Science and Religion. Joshua Greene argues that ordinary moral judgment results from the interaction of two distinct neural subsystems which generate competing moral intuitions. One subsystem generates consequentialist intuitions and the other generates deontological intuitions. Greene suggests that our faculty for generating deontological intuitions developed in response to an evolutionary need to suppress 'up close and personal' harmful acts within communities and when such acts are under consideration deontological intuitions tend to predominate in moral judgment. When 'up close and personal harms' are not under consideration consequentialist intuitions tend to predominate. A key problem with this account is that many deontological strictures (e.g. 'though shalt not lie') are meant to apply beyond the range of the 'up close and personal'. Here, the speaker seeks to defend Greene's account of the evolutionary origins of deontological moral intuition in the face of this problem, showing how it can be supplemented with an account of the ways in which social organisations can expand the scope of deontological moral judgment. The social organisations that are most effective in expanding the scope of deontological moral judgment are religious institutions. The speaker tries to show why this is so, drawing on Durkheim's account of the sacred. The speaker also considers the consequentialist normative arguments that Greene and Peter Singer build on Greene's descriptive account of moral judgment. Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/
Evolutionary Theology Without the Concept of Progress
Ian Ramsey Centre for Science and Religion
50 minutes
14 years ago
Evolutionary Theology Without the Concept of Progress
Fraser Watts, Cambridghe, gives a talk for the Ian Ramsey Centre for Science and Religion Seminar series. Integrations of evolutionary theory and Christian theology have often been built around the concept of progress. However, it will be argued that 'progress' is an unsatisfactory concept in both evolutionary and theological thought. Watts' proposal is that evolutionary theology does not require the concept of progress, and is better off without it. That theme is developed first in relation to human evolution and distinctiveness, where it is argued that there is no need to make the assumption that human beings are 'better than other species, just that they have distinctive capacities that were a necessary precursor to the incarnation. It is further argued that the 'Fall' is ambiguous in relation to progress, and represents a heightened capacity for both good and evil. Though Christ has often been seen as the culmination of evolution, it is suggested that an adequate evolutionary account of the work of Christ needs to be more concerned with the qualitative changes in human and cultural evolution introduced by Christ.
Ian Ramsey Centre for Science and Religion
Steve Clarke, James Martin Research Fellow, Institute for Science and Ethics, Oxford Martin School, Oxford gives a talk for the Ian Ramsey Centre for Science and Religion. Joshua Greene argues that ordinary moral judgment results from the interaction of two distinct neural subsystems which generate competing moral intuitions. One subsystem generates consequentialist intuitions and the other generates deontological intuitions. Greene suggests that our faculty for generating deontological intuitions developed in response to an evolutionary need to suppress 'up close and personal' harmful acts within communities and when such acts are under consideration deontological intuitions tend to predominate in moral judgment. When 'up close and personal harms' are not under consideration consequentialist intuitions tend to predominate. A key problem with this account is that many deontological strictures (e.g. 'though shalt not lie') are meant to apply beyond the range of the 'up close and personal'. Here, the speaker seeks to defend Greene's account of the evolutionary origins of deontological moral intuition in the face of this problem, showing how it can be supplemented with an account of the ways in which social organisations can expand the scope of deontological moral judgment. The social organisations that are most effective in expanding the scope of deontological moral judgment are religious institutions. The speaker tries to show why this is so, drawing on Durkheim's account of the sacred. The speaker also considers the consequentialist normative arguments that Greene and Peter Singer build on Greene's descriptive account of moral judgment. Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/
