Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gxg78 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T09:53:54.349Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
Series:   Elements in the Philosophy of Biology

Evolution, Morality and the Fabric of Society

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 April 2022

R. Paul Thompson
R. Paul Thompson
Affiliation:
University of Toronto

Summary

Recent interest in the evolution of the social contract is extended by providing a throughly naturalistic, evolutionary account of the biological underpinnings of a social contract theory of morality. This social contract theory of morality (contractevolism) provides an evolutionary justification of the primacy of a moral principle of maximisation of the opportunities for evolutionary reproductive success (ERS), where maximising opportunities does not entail an obligation on individuals to choose to maximise their ERS. From that primary principle, the moral principles of inclusion, individual sovereignty (liberty) and equality can be derived. The implications of these principles, within contractevolism, are explored through an examination of patriarchy, individual sovereignty and copulatory choices, and overpopulation and extinction. Contractevolism is grounded in evolutionary dynamics that resulted in humans and human societies. The most important behavioural consequences of evolution to contractevolism are reciprocity, cooperation, empathy, and the most important cognitive consequences are reason and behavioural modification.
Get access

Keywords

social contractethicsmoralitysociobiologynaturalism
Type
Element
Information
Series: Elements in the Philosophy of Biology
Online ISBN: 9781108680752
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication: 19 May 2022

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Aarøe, Lene, Petersen, Michael Bang and Arceneaux, Kevin (2017) ‘The Behavioral Immune System Shapes Political Intuitions: Why and How Individual Differences in Disgust Sensitivity Underlie Opposition to Immigration’, American Political Science Review 111 (2): 277–94.Google Scholar
Abramowitz, Lara K. and Bartolomei, Marisa S. (2012) ‘Genomic Imprinting: Recognition and Marking of Imprinted loci’, Current Opinion in Genetic Development 22 (2): 72–8.Google Scholar
Alexander, Richard D. (1974) ‘The Evolution of Social Behavior’, Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 5: 325–83.Google Scholar
Alexander, Richard D. (1987) The Biology of Moral Systems. New York: Aldine de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Andrade, M. C. B. (1996) ‘Sexual Selection for Male Sacrifice in the Australian Redback Spider’, Science 271 (5245): 70–2.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Andrade, M. C. B. (2003) ‘Risky Mate Search and Male Self-Sacrifice in Redback Spiders’, Behavioural Ecology 14 (4): 531–8.Google Scholar
Archer, John (2019) ‘The Reality and Evolutionary Significance of Human Psychological Sex Differences’, Biological Review 94 (4): 1381–415.Google Scholar
Axlerod, Robert M. (1984) The Evolution of Cooperation. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Axlerod, Robert M. and Hamilton, William. D. (1981) ‘The Evolution of Cooperation’, Science 211 (4489): 1390–6.Google Scholar
Baldwin, Thomas (1992) G. E. Moore. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Bam, J., Noakes, T. D. and Dennis, S. C. (1997) ‘Could Women Outrun Men in Ultramarathon Races?’, Medical Science of Sports Exercise 29 (2): 244–7.Google Scholar
Barry, Kathleen (1995) The Prostitution of Sexuality. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Beck, John H. (2007) ‘The Pelagian Controversy: An Economic Analysis’, The American Journal of Economics and Sociology 66 (4): 681–96.Google Scholar
Beissinger, Steven R. and McCullough, Dale R. (eds.) (2002) Population Viability Analysis. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Bekoff, Marc (1995) ‘Cognitive Ethology: The Comparative Study of Animal Minds’, in Bechtel, William and Graham, George (eds.), Blackwell Companion to Cognitive Science, pp. 371–9. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.Google Scholar
Bergstrom, Carl T. (2003) ‘The Algebra of Assortative Encounters and the Evolution of Co-operation’, International Game Theory Review 5: 2110228.Google Scholar
Binmore, Ken (1994) Game Theory and the Social Contract, Volume 1: Playing Fair. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Birch, Jonathan and Samir Okasha, (2015) ‘Kin Selection and Its Critics’, Bioscience 65: 22–32.Google Scholar
Bissonnette, Annie, Perry, Susan, Barrett, Louise et al. (2015) ‘Coalitions in Theory and Reality: A Review of Pertinent Variables and Processes’, Behaviour 152 (1): 1–56.Google Scholar
Blunk, Inga, Mayer, Manfred, Hamann, Henning and Reinsch, Norbert (2019) ‘Scanning the Genomes of Parents for Imprinted Loci Acting in Their Un-genotyped Progeny’, Science Reports 9 (1): 654–71.Google Scholar
Bolton, Gary E. and Ockenfels, Axel (2000) ‘ERC: A Theory of Equity, Reciprocity, and Competition’, The American Economic Review 90 (1): 166–93.Google Scholar
Buchanan, James (1975) The Limits of Liberty: Between Anarchy and Leviathan. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press.Google Scholar
Buchanan, James and Tullock, Gordon (1962) The Calculus of Consent: Logical Foundations of Constitutional Democracy. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Buckle, Stephen and Castiglione, Dario (1991) ‘Hume’s Critique of the Social Contract’, History of Political Thought 12 (3): 457–80.Google Scholar
Buckner, Randy L. and Krienen, Fenna M. (2013) ‘The Evolution of Distributed Association Networks in the Human Brain’, Trends in Cognitive Science 17 (12): 648–65.Google Scholar
Bulmer, Michael (1994) Theoretical Evolutionary Ecology. Sunderland, MA: Sinauer Associates Publishers.Google Scholar
Buss, David M. (2016) The Evolution of Desire: Strategies of Human Mating (4th ed.). New York: Basic Books.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Buss, David M. (2017) ‘Sexual Conflict in Human Mating’, Current Directions in Psychological Science 26 (4): 307–13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Calmettes, Guillaume and Weiss, James N. (2017) ‘The Emergence of Egalitarianism in a Model of Early Human Societies’, Heliyon 3 (11): e00451.Google Scholar
Carroll, Lewis (1871/2001) Alice in Wonderland & Through the Looking Glass. Ware, UK: Wordsworth Editions.Google Scholar
Cauley, Jane A. (2015) ‘Estrogen and Bone Health in Men and Women’, Steroids 99 (Pt. A): 11–15.Google Scholar
Chapais, B. (2008) Primeval Kinship: How Pair-bonding Gave Birth to Human Society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Cheney, Dorothy L. (2011) ‘Extent and Limits of Cooperation in Animals’, Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences 108 (S2): 10902–9.Google Scholar
Chidi-Ogbolu, Nkechinyere and Baar, Keith (2019) ‘Effect of Estrogen on Musculoskeletal Performance and Injury Risk’, Frontiers in Physiology 9: 1834. https://doi.org/10.3389/fphys.2018.01834.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Clutton-Brock, Tim (2002) ‘Breeding Together: Kin Selection and Mutualism in Cooperative Vertebrates’, Science 296 (5565): 69–72.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Clutton-Brock, Tim H. and Parker, Geoff A. (1995) ‘Sexual Coercion in Animal Societies’, Animal Behavior 49 (5): 1345–65.Google Scholar
Clutton-Brock, T. H., O’Riain, M. J., Brotherton, P. N. et al. (1999) ‘Selfish Sentinels in Cooperative Mammals’, Science 284 (5420): 1640–4.Google Scholar
Clutton-Brock, T. H., Russell, A. F., Sharpe, L. L., McIlrath, G. M., White, S. and Cameron, E. Z. (2001) ‘Effects of Helpers on Juvenile Development and Survival in Meerkats’, Science 293 (5539): 2246–9.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Collier, John and Stingl, Michael (2020) Evolutionary Moral Realism. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Coyne, Jerry A., Barton, Nicholas H. and Turelli, Michael (1997) ‘Perspective: A Critique of Sewall Wright’s Shifting Balance Theory of Evolution’, Evolution 51 (3): 643–71.Google Scholar
Coyne, Jerry A., Barton, Nicholas H. and Turelli, Michael (2000) ‘Is Wright’s Shifting Balance Process Important in Evolution?’, Evolution 54 (1): 306–17.Google ScholarPubMed
Crisp, Roger (ed.) (2013) The Oxford Handbook of the History of Ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Darwin, Charles (1859) On the Origin of Species. London: John Murray.Google Scholar
Davies, Nicholas B., Krebs, John R. and West, Stuart A. (2012) An Introduction to Behavioral Ecology (4th ed.). Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Dawes, Christopher T., Fowler, James H., Johnson, Tim, McElreath, Richard and Smirnov, Oleg (2007) ‘Egalitarian Motives in Humans’, Nature 446 (7137): 794–6.Google Scholar
Deacon, Terrence W. (1997) The Symbolic Species: The Co-evolution of Language and the Brain. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.Google Scholar
Deie, Masataka, Sakamaki, Yukie, Sumen, Yoshio, Urabe, Yukio and Ikuta, Yoshikazu (2002) ‘Anterior Knee Laxity in Young Women Varies with Their Menstrual Cycle’, International Orthopaedics 26 (3): 154–6.Google Scholar
Dennett, Daniel C. (1995) Darwin’s Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life. New York: Simon & Schuster.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dewey, John (1898) ‘Evolution and Ethics.’ Reprinted in Nitecki, M. H. and Nitecki, D. V. (eds.) (1993) Evolutionary Ethics, pp. 95–110. Albany: State University of New York.Google Scholar
Dugatkin, Lee Alan (1997) Cooperation among Animals: An Evolutionary Perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Dugatkin, Lee Alan (1988) ’Do Guppies Play Tit for Tat during Predator Inspection Visits?’, Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology 23 (6): 395–9.Google Scholar
Dunbar, Robin I. M. and Sosis, Richard (2018) ‘Optimising Human Community Sizes’, Evolution and Human Behavior 39 (1): 106–11.Google Scholar
Dworkin, Andrea (1981) Pornography: Men Possessing Women. New York: Putnam.Google Scholar
Dworkin, Andrea (1997) Life and Death: Unapologetic Writings on the Continuing War Against Women. London: Virago Press.Google Scholar
Egerton, Frank N. (2016) ‘History of Ecological Sciences, Part 56: Ethology until 1973’, Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America 97 (1): 31–88.Google Scholar
Eshel, Ilan and Cavalli-Sforza, Luigi L. (1982) ‘Assortment of Encounters and Evolution of Cooperativeness’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 79 (4): 1331–5.Google Scholar
Fehr, Ernst and Schmidt, Klaus M. (1999) ‘A Theory of Fairness, Competition, and Cooperation’, Quarterly Journal of Economics 114 (3): 817–68.Google Scholar
Ferguson, John (1956) Pelagius: A Historical and Theological Study. Cambridge: W. Heffer & Sons.Google Scholar
Ferguson, John (1980) ‘In Defence of Pelagius’, Theology 83 (692): 114–19.Google Scholar
Fine, Cordelia (2010) Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.Google Scholar
Frances, Raelene and Gray, Alicia (2007) ’Unsatisfactory Discrimination, Unjust and Inviting Corruption: Feminists and Decrimilalisation of Street Prostitution in New South Wales’, Australian Feminist Studies 22 (53): 307–24.Google Scholar
Frank, Steven A. (2000) ‘Polymorphism of Attack and Defence’, Trends in Ecology and Evolution 15 (4): 167–71.Google Scholar
Freud, Sigmund (1971) The Complete Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, ed. and trans. Strachey, James. London: George Allen & Unwin. (Originally published in German, 1916–17.)Google Scholar
Frontera, Walter R., Hughes, Virginia A., Lutz, Karyn J. and Evans, William J. (1991) ‘A Cross-Sectional Study of Muscle Strength and Mass in 45- to 78-Yr-Old Men and Women’, Journal of Applied Physiology 71 (2): 644–50.Google Scholar
Gabovac, Igor, Smith, Lee, Yang, Lin et al. (2020) ‘The Relationship between Chronic Diseases and Number of Sexual Partners: An Exploratory Analysis’, British Medical Journal 46 (2): 100–7.Google Scholar
Gauthier, David (1979) ‘David Hume, Contractarian’, The Philosophical Review 88 (1): 3–38.Google Scholar
Gauthier, David (1986) Morals by Agreement. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Gavrilets, Sergey (2012a) ‘Human Origins and the Transition from Promiscuity to Pair-Bonding’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 109 (25): 9923–8.Google Scholar
Gavrilets, Sergey (2012b) ‘On the Evolutionary Origins of the Egalitarian Syndrome’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 109 (35): 14069–74.Google Scholar
Gavrilets, Sergey, Arnqvist, Göran and Friberg, Urban (2001) ‘The Evolution of Female Mate Choice by Sexual Conflict’, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences 268 (1466): 531–9.Google Scholar
Grafen, Alan (1985) ‘A Geometric View of Relatedness’, Oxford Surveys in Evolutionary Biology 2: 28–90.Google Scholar
Grafen, Alan (1991) ‘Modelling in Behavioural Ecology’, in Krebs, John R. and Davies, Nicholas B. (eds.), Behavioural Ecology, pp. 5–31. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Graur, Dan and Li Wen-Hsiung (2000) Fundamentals of Molecular Evolution (2nd ed.). Sunderland, MA: Sinauer Associates.Google Scholar
Haakonssen, Knud (1992) ‘Natural Law’, in Becker, Lawrence C. and Becker, Charlotte B. (eds.), Encyclopedia of Ethics, pp. 884–90. New York: Garland Press.Google Scholar
Haas, Randall (2020) ‘Female Hunters of the Early Americas’, Science Advances 6 (45): 1–10.Google Scholar
Haig, David (1993) ‘Genetic Conflicts in Human Pregnancy’, Quarterly Review of Biology 68 (4): 495–532.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Haig, David (2003) ‘Behavioural Genetics: Family Matters’, Nature 421 (6922): 491–2.Google Scholar
Haig, David (2019) ‘Cooperation and Conflict in Human Pregnancy’, Current Biology 29 (11): R455–8.Google Scholar
Häkkinen, K. and Pakarinen, A. (1993) ‘Muscle Strength and Serum Testosterone, Cortisol and SHBG Concentrations in Middle-Aged and Elderly Men and Women’, Acta Physiologica Scandinavia 148 (2): 199–207.Google Scholar
Hamilton, W. D. (1964a) ‘The Genetical Evolution of Social Behaviour I’, Journal of Theoretical Biology 7 (1): 1–16.Google Scholar
Hamilton, W. D. (1964b) ‘The Genetical Evolution of Social Behaviour II’, Journal of Theoretical Biology 7 (1): 17–52.Google Scholar
Hammerstein, Peter (ed.) (2003) Genetic and Cultural Evolution and Cooperation. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Hansen, Mette (2018) ‘Female Hormones: Do They Influence Muscle and Tendon Protein Metabolism?’ Proceedings of the Nutrition Society 77 (1): 32–41.Google Scholar
Harman, Oren (2011) ‘Birth of the First ESS: George Price, John Maynard Smith, and the Discovery of the Lost “Antlers” Paper’, Journal of Experimental Zoology Part B: Molecular and Developmental Evolution 316B (1): 1–9.Google Scholar
Hartl, Daniel L. and Clark, Andrew G. (2007) Principles of Population Genetics (4th ed.). Sunderland, MA: Sinauer Associates.Google Scholar
Havlicek, Jan and Craig Roberts, S. (2009) ‘MHC-Correlated Mate Choice in Humans: A Review’, Phychoneuroendocrinology 34 (4): 497–512.Google Scholar
Heath, K. M. and Hadley, C. (1998) ‘Dichotomous Male Reproductive Strategies in a Polygynous Human Society: Mating versus Parental Effort’, Current Anthropology 39 (3): 369–74.Google Scholar
Hobbes, Thomas (1642/1983) The Clarendon Edition of the Works of Thomas Hobbes, Volume 2: De Cive, ed. Warrender, Howard. Cambridge: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Hobbes, Thomas (1651) Leviathan: Or the Matter and Power of a Commonwealth Ecclesiastical and Civil. London: Andrew Crooke.Google Scholar
Hodge, Jonathan (2011) ‘Darwinism after Mendelism: The Case of Sewall Wright’s Intellectual Synthesis in His Shifting Balance Theory of Evolution (1931)’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 42 (1): 30–9.Google Scholar
Hoppensteadt, F. C. (1982) Mathematical Methods of Population Biology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hrdy, Sarah Blaffer (1979) ‘Infanticide among Animals: A Review, Classification, and Examination of the Implications for the Reproductive Strategies of Females’, Ethology and Sociobiology 1 (1): 13–40.Google Scholar
Hrdy, Sarah Blaffer (1981) The Women That Never Evolved. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Hrdy, Sarah Blaffer (1997) ‘Raising Darwin’s Consciousness: Female Sexuality and the Prehominid Origins of Patriarchy’, Human Nature 8 (1): 1–49.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hrdy, Sarah Blaffer (2000) Mother Nature: Maternal Instincts and How They Shape the Human Species. New York: Ballantine Books.Google Scholar
Hrdy, Sarah Blaffer (2011) Mothers and Others: The Evolutionary Origins of Mutual Understanding. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press.Google Scholar
Hume, David (1738/1960) Treatise of Human Nature, edited by Selby-Bigge, L. A.. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Hume, David (1748/1963) An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, edited by Mossner, Ernest C.. New York: Washington Square Press.Google Scholar
Hume, David (1772/1994) ‘Of the Original Contract’, in Political Essays, edited by Haakonssen, Knud, pp. 186–201. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hurst, Laurence D (1997) ‘Evolutionary Theories of Genomic Imprinting’, in Reik, Wolf and Surani, Azim (eds.), Genomic Imprinting, pp. 211–37. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Huxley, T. H. (1894/1989) Evolution and Ethics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Jeffreys, Sheila (1997) The Idea of Prostitution. North Melbourne: Spinifex.Google Scholar
Jelenkovic, Aline, Hur, Yoon-Mi, Sund, Reijo et al. (2016). ‘Genetic and Environmental Influences on Adult Human Height across Birth Cohorts from 1886 to 1994’, Elife 5.Google Scholar
Jorden-Young, Rebecca M. (2010) Brain Storm: The Flaws in the Science of Sex Differences. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Josephson, Anna Leigh, Ricker-Gilbert, Jacob and Florax, Raymond J. G. M. (2014) ‘How Does Population Density Influence Agricultural Intensification and Productivity? Evidence from Ethiopia’, Food Policy 48: 142–52.Google Scholar
Joyce, Richard (2007) The Evolution of Morality. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Kasper, Claudia, Vierbuchen, Maddalena, Ernst, Ulrich et al. (2017) ‘Genetics and Developmental Biology of Cooperation’, Molecular Ecology 26 (17): 4364–77.Google Scholar
Kavanagh, Patrick H., Vilela, Bruno, Haynie, Hannah J. et al. (2018) ‘Hindcasting Global Population Densities Reveals Forces Enabling the Origin of Agriculture’, Nature Human Behaviour 2 (7): 478–84.Google Scholar
Kingstone, Alan, Smilik, Daniel and Eastwood, John D. (2008) ‘Cognitive Ethology: A New Approach for Studying Human Cognition’, British Journal of Psychology 99 (3): 317–40.Google Scholar
Kitajima, Y. and Ono, Y. (2016) ‘Estrogens Maintain Skeletal Muscle and Satellite Cell Functions’, Journal of Endocrinology 229: 267–75.Google Scholar
Kitcher, Philip (1985) Vaulting Ambition: Soiobiology and the Quest for Human Nature. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Killian, J. Keith, Byrd, James C., Jirle, James V. et al. (2000) ‘M6P/IGF2 R Imprinting Evolution in Mammals’, Molecular Cell 5: 707–16.Google Scholar
Kokko, Hanna, Lopez-Sepulcre, Andrés, Morrell, Lesley J., DeAngelis, Donald L. and Perrin, Nicolas (2006) ‘From Hawks and Doves to Self-Consistent Games of Territorial Behavior’, The American Naturalist 167 (6): 901–12.Google Scholar
Kummer, Hans (1978) ‘On the Value of Social Relationships to Nonhuman Primates: A Heuristic Scheme’, Social Science Information 17 (4–5): 687–705.Google Scholar
Langergraber, Kevin E., Mitani, John C., Watts, David P. and Vigilant, Linda (2013) ‘Male–Female Socio-spatial Relationships and Reproduction in Wild Chimpanzees’, Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology 67 (6): 861–73.Google Scholar
Law-Smith, M. J., Perrett, D. I., Jones, B. C., Cornwell, R. E., Moore, F. R. and Feinberg, D. R. (2006) ‘Facial Appearance Is a Clue to Oestrogen Levels in Women’, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences 273 (1583): 135–40.Google Scholar
Leiu, Judith M. (2013) ‘What Did Women Do for the Early Church? The Recent History of a Question’, Studies in Church History 49: 261–81.Google Scholar
Lepers, Romuald (2019) ‘Sex Difference in Triathlon Performance’, Frontier in Physiology 10: 973.Google Scholar
Lessnoff, Michael (1986) Social Contract. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press International.Google Scholar
Levitzky, Susan and Cooper, Robyn (2000) ‘Infant Colic Syndrome: Maternal Fantasies of Aggression and Infanticide’, Clinical Pediatrics 39 (7): 395–400.Google Scholar
Leys, Sally P. (2015) ‘Elements of a “Nervous System” in Sponges’, The Journal of Experimental Biology 218 (Pt. 4): 581–91.Google Scholar
Locke, John (1690/1980) Second Treatise of Government, edited by Macpherson, C. B.. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett.Google Scholar
Lukas, D. and Clutton-Brock, T. H. (2013) ‘The Evolution of Social Monogamy in Mammals’, Science 341 (6145): 526–30.Google Scholar
Lumsden, Charles J. and Wilson, Edward O. (1981) Genes, Mind and Culture. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Lynch, Michael and Walsh, Bruce (1998) Genetics and Analysis of Quantitative Traits. Sunderland, MA: Sinauer Associates.Google Scholar
Martin, J. S., Ringen, E. J., Duda, P. and Jaeggi, A. V. (2020) ‘Harsh Environments Promote Alloparental Care Across Human Societies’, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 287 (1933): 1–9.Google Scholar
Maynard Smith, John (1964) ‘Group Selection and Kin Selection’, Nature 201 (4924): 1145–7.Google Scholar
Maynard Smith, John (1965) ‘Prof. J. B. S. Haldane, F.R.S.’, Nature 206 (4981): 239–40.Google Scholar
Maynard Smith, John (1974a) ‘The Theory of Games and the Evolution of Animal Conflicts’, Journal of Theoretical Biology 47 (1): 209–21.Google Scholar
Maynard Smith, John (1974b) Models in Ecology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Maynard Smith, John (1975) ‘Survival through Suicide’, New Scientist 67 (964): 496–7.Google Scholar
Maynard Smith, John (1982) Evolution and the Theory of Games. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Maynard Smith, John and Price, George R. (1973) ‘The Logic of Animal Conflict’, Nature 246 (5427): 15–18.Google Scholar
Maynard Smith, John and Szathmáry, Eörs (1995) Major Transitions in Evolution. New York: W. H. Freeman Spektrum.Google Scholar
McElreath, Richard and Boyd, Robert (2007) Mathematical Models of Social Evolution. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
McEvoy, Chad Joseph (2002) ‘A Consideration of Human Xenophobia and Ethnocentrism from a Sociobiological Perspective’, Human Rights Review 3 (3): 39–49.Google Scholar
McGee, Harold (2004) On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen. New York: Scribner.Google Scholar
MacKinnon, Catherine (1987) Feminism Unmodified. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
MacKinnon, Catherine (1989) Toward a Feminist Theory of the State. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
McNamara, John M. (2013) ‘Game Theory and Behavior’, in Losos, Jonathan B., Baum, David A., Futuyma, Douglas J. et al. (eds.), The Princeton Guide to Evolution, pp. 626–33. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Miller, Goeffrey F., Tyber, Joshua and Jordan, Brent (2007) ‘Ovulatory Cycle Effects on Tip Earnings by Lap-Dancers: Economic Evidence for Human Estrus?’, Evolution and Human Behavior 28 (6): 375–81.Google Scholar
Miller, Saul L. and Maner, Jon K. (2010) ‘Scent of a Woman: Men’s Testosterone Responses to Olfactory Ovulation Clues’, Psychological Science 21 (2): 267–83.Google Scholar
Mochizuki, Atsushi, Yasuhiko, Takeda and Yoh, Iwasa (1996) ‘The Evolution of Genomic Imprinting’, Genetics 144 (3): 1283–95.Google Scholar
Moore, G. E. (1903) Principia Ethica. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Mora-Garcia, Santiago and Goodrich, Justin (2000) ‘Genomic Imprinting: Seeds of Conflict’, Current Biology 10 (2): R71–4.Google Scholar
Muller, Martin N. and Wrangham, Richard W. (eds.) (2009) Sexual Coercion in Primates and Humans: An Evolutionary Perspective on Male Aggression Against Females. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Murphy, Mark, (2019) ‘The Natural Law Tradition in Ethics’, in Zalta, Edward N. (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2019/entries/natural-law-ethics/.Google Scholar
Narveson, Jan (1988) The Libertarian Idea. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
Nitecki, Doris V. and Nitecki, Matthew H. (eds.) (1993) Evolutionary Ethics. Albany: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Nowak, Martin and Sigmund, Karl (1993) ‘A Strategy of Win-Stay, Lose-Shift That Outperforms Tit-for-Tat in Prisoner’s Dilemma Game’, Nature 364 (6432): 56–8.Google Scholar
Nowak, Martin (1994) ‘The Alternating Prisoner’s Dilemma’, Journal of Theoretical Biology 168 (2): 219–26.Google Scholar
Nowak, Martin A., Tarnita, Corina E. and Antal, Tibor (2010) ‘Evolutionary Dynamics in Structured Populations’, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences 365 (1537): 19–30.Google Scholar
Öhman, Arne and Mineka, Susan (2001) ‘Fears, Phobias, and Preparedness: Toward an Evolved Module of Fear and Fear Learning’, Psychological Review 108 (3): 483–522.Google Scholar
O’Neill, Michael J., Ingram, Robert S., Vrana, Paul B. and Tilghman, Shirley M. (2000) ‘Allelic Expression of Igf2 in Marsupials and Birds’, Development Genes and Evolution 210 (1): 18–20.Google Scholar
Otto, Sarah P. and Day, Troy (2007) A Biologist’s Guide to Mathematical Modelling in Ecology and Evolution. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Otto, Sarah P., Servedio, Maria R. and Nuismer, Scott L. (2008) ‘Frequency-Dependent Selection and the Evolution of Assortative Mating’, Genetics 179 (4): 2091–112.Google Scholar
Pagels, Elaine (1989) Adam, Eve, and the Serpent: Sex and Politics in Early Christianity. New York: Vintage Press.Google Scholar
Parfit, D. (2011) On What Matters. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Peck, Steven L., Ellner, Stephen P. and Gould, Fred (1998) A Spatially Explicit Stochastic Model Demonstrates the Feasibility of Wright’s Shifting Balance Theory’, Evolution 52 (6): 1834–9.Google Scholar
Perkins, Jessica M., Subramanian, S. V., Smith, George Davey and Özaltin, Emre (2016) ‘Adult Height, Nutrition and Population Health’, Nutrition Reviews 74 (3): 149–65.Google Scholar
Perry, Gretchen and Daly, Martin (2017) ‘A Model Explaining the Matrilateral Bias in Alloparental Investment’, Proceeding of the National Academy of Science 114 (35): 9290–5.Google Scholar
Pettitt, Paul (2018) ‘The Rise of Modern Humans’, in Scarre, Chris (ed.), The Human Past: World Prehistory and the Development of Human Societies (4th ed.), pp. 108–48. London: Thames & Hudson.Google Scholar
Pigeon, Charles (2019) ‘No-Ought-From-Is, the Naturalistic Fallacy, and the Fact/Value Distinction: The History of a Mistake’, in Sinclair, Neil (ed.), The Naturalistic Fallacy, pp. 71–95. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Price, George (1969) ‘Antlers, Intraspecific Combat, and Altruism’ (Unpublished paper, British Library, George Price Correspondence, 1–32).Google Scholar
Rabin, Matthew (1993) ‘Incorporating Fairness into Game Theory and Economics’, American Economic Review 83 (5): 1281–302.Google Scholar
Ramsey, Grant (2013) ‘Human Nature in a Post-essentialist World’, Philosophy of Science 80 (5): 983–93.Google Scholar
Rawls, John (1958) ‘Justice As Fairness’, The Philosophical Review 67 (2): 164–94.Google Scholar
Rawls, John (1971) A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Renshaw, Eric (1993) Modelling Biological Populations in Space and Time. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Richards, Richard A. (2005) ‘Evolutionary Naturalism and the Logical Structure of Valuation: The Other Side of Error Theory’, Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy 1 (2): 270–94.Google Scholar
Richerson, Peter J., Boyd, Robert T. and Henrich, Joseph (2003) ‘Cultural Evolution of Human Cooperation’, in Hammerstein, Peter (ed.), Genetic and Cultural Evolution of Cooperation, pp. 357–88. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Riedman, Marianne L. (1982) ‘The Evolution of Alloparental Care and Adoption in Mammals and Birds’, The Quarterly Review of Biology 57 (4): 405–35.Google Scholar
Ripstein, Arthur (2004) ‘Authority and Coercion’, Philosophy and Public Affairs 31 (1): 1–34.Google Scholar
Ripstein, Arthur (2006) ‘Beyond the Harm Principle’, Philosophy and Public Affairs 34 (3): 215–45.Google Scholar
Rood, Jon P. (1990) ‘Group Size, Survival, Reproduction, and Routes to Breeding in Dwarf Mongooses’, Animal Behavior 39 (3): 566–72.Google Scholar
Rowe, Locke, Cameron, Erin and Day, Troy (2005) ‘Escalation, Retreat, and Female Indifference As Alternative Outcomes of Sexually Antagonistic Coevolution’, in Hosken, David and Snook, Rhonda (eds.), How Important Is Sexual Conflict? Special Issue, The American Naturalist 165 (S5): S5–S18.Google Scholar
Ruse, Michael and Wilson, Edward O. (1986) ‘Moral Philosophy As Applied Science’, Philosophy 61 (236): 173–92.Google Scholar
Russell, Andrew M. (2004) ‘Mammals: Comparisons and Contrasts’, in Koenig, Walter D. and Dickinson, Janis L. (eds.), Ecology and Evolution of Cooperative Breeding in Birds, pp. 210–27. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Ryan, Joseph F. and Chiodin, Marta (2015) ‘Where Is My Mind? How Sponges and Placozoans May Have Lost Neural Cell Types’, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 370 (1684): 1–6.Google Scholar
Ryan, Joseph F., Pang, Kevin, Schnitzler, Christine E. et al. (2013) ‘The Genome of the Ctenophore Mnemiopsis leidyi and Its Implications for Cell Type Evolution’, Science 342 (6164): 1336–44.Google Scholar
Sahlins, Marshall. (1976) The Uses and Abuses of Biology. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Sayre-McCord, Geoffrey (2013) ‘Hume and Smith on Sympathy, Approbation, and Moral Judgment’, Social Philosophy and Policy 30 (1-2): 208–36.Google Scholar
Scanlon, Thomas M. (1998) What We Owe Each Other. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Scarre, Chris (ed.) (2018) The Human Past: World Prehistory and the Development of Human Societies (4th ed.). London: Thames & Hudson.Google Scholar
Schlegel, Rolf H. J. (2018) History of Plant Breeding. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Scott, George Ryley (2013) A History of Prostitution from Antiquity to the Present Day. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Silk, Joan B. (1980) ‘Adoption and Kinship in Oceania’, American Anthropologist 82 (4): 799–820.Google Scholar
Silk, Joan B. (2007) ‘The Adaptive Value of Sociality in Mammalian Groups’, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 362 (1480): 539–59.Google Scholar
Simpson, George Gaylord (1953) ‘The Baldwin Effect’, Evolution 7 (2): 110–17.Google Scholar
Sinclair, Neil (ed.) (2019) The Naturalistic Fallacy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Skidelsky, Robert (2020) What’s Wrong with Economics? A Primer for the Perplexed. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Skyrms, Brian (1996) Evolution of the Social Contract. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Smuts, Barbara (1992) ‘Male Aggression Against Women: An evolutionary Perspective’, Human Nature 3 (1): 1–44.Google Scholar
Smuts, Barbara (1995) ‘The Evolutionary Origins of Patriarchy’, Human Nature 6 (1): 1–32.Google Scholar
Smuts, Barbara and Smuts, Robert (1993) ‘Male Aggression and Sexual Coercion of Females in Nonhuman Primates and Other Mammals: Evidence and Theoretical Implications’, in Slater, Peter, Milinski, Manfred, Snowden, Charles and Rosenblatt, Jay (eds.), Advances in the Study of Behavior, Vol. 22, pp. 1–63. Cambridge, MA: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Sober, Elliott (1994) From a Biological Point of View. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Sober, Elliott and Wilson, David Sloan (1998) Unto Others: The Evolution and Psychology of Unselfish Behaviour. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Sousa, André M. M., Meyer, Kyle A., Santpere, Gabriel, Gulden, Forrest O. and Sestan, Nenad (2017) ‘Evolution of the Human Nervous System Function, Structure, and Development’, Cell 170 (2): 226–47.Google Scholar
Spencer, Hamish G., Feldman, Marcus W. and Clark, Andrew G. (1998) ‘Genetic Conflicts, Multiple Paternity and the Evolution of Genomic Imprinting’, Genetics 148 (2): 893–904.Google Scholar
Spencer, Herbert (1851) Social Statics: Or, the Conditions Essential to Human Happiness Specified, and the First of Them Developed. London: John Chapman.Google Scholar
Stephens, Christopher (1996) ‘Modelling Reciprocal Altruism’, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 47 (4): 533–51.Google Scholar
Stephensen, Charles B. (1999) ‘Burden of Infection on Growth Failure’, The Journal of Nutrition 129 (2): 534–8.Google Scholar
Stumpf, R. M. and Boesch, C. (2010) ‘Male Aggression and Sexual Coercion in Wild West African Chimpanzees, Pan troglodytes verus’, Animal Behaviour 79 (2): 333–42.Google Scholar
Sturgeon, Nicholas L. (2003) ‘Moore on Ethical Naturalism’, Ethics 113 (3): 528–56.Google Scholar
Sumner, L. Wayne (1989) The Moral Foundation of Rights. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Sumner, L. Wayne (2004) The Hateful and the Obscene: Studies in the Limits of Free Expression. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.Google Scholar
Swedell, Larissa, Leedom, Liane, Saunders, Julian and Pines, Mathew (2014) ‘Sexual Conflict in a Polygynous Primate: Costs and Benefits of a Male-Imposed Mating System’, Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology 68 (2): 263–73.Google Scholar
Tarnita, Corina E., Ohtsuki, Hisashi, Antal, Tibor, Fu, Feng and Nowak, Martin A. (2009) ‘Strategy Selection in Structured Populations’, Journal of Theoretical Biology 259 (3): 570–81.Google Scholar
Thompson, R. Paul (1990) ‘Evolutionary Ethics, Darwinian Ethics and Ethical Naturalism’, Human Evolution 5: 133–8.Google Scholar
Thompson, R. Paul (ed.) (1995) Issues in Evolutionary Ethics. Albany: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Thompson, R. Paul (1999) ‘Evolutionary Ethics: Its Origins and Contemporary Face’, Zygon 34 (3): 473–585.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thompson, R. Paul (2002) ‘The Evolutionary Biology of Evil’, The Monist 85 (2): 239–59.Google Scholar
Thompson, R. Paul (2007) ‘Formalisations of Evolutionary Biology’, in Matthen, Mohan and Stephens, Christopher (eds.), Handbook of the Philosophy of Science, Volume 2: Philosophy of Biology, pp. 485–523. New York: Elsevier.Google Scholar
Thompson, R. Paul (2011) ‘Theories and Models in Medicine’, in Gifford, Frederick (ed.), Handbook of the Philosophy of Science, Volume 4: Philosophy of Medicine, pp. 115–36. New York: Elsevier.Google Scholar
Thompson, R. Paul (2014) ‘Darwin’s Theory and the Value of Mathematical Formalisation’, in Thompson, R. Paul and Walsh, Denis (eds.), Evolutionary Biology: Conceptual, Ethical and Religious Issues, pp. 109–36. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Toth, Nicholas and Schick, Kathy (2018) ‘African Origins’, in Scarre, Chris (ed.), The Human Past: World Prehistory and the Development of Human Societies (4th ed.), pp. 46–70. London: Thames & Hudson.Google Scholar
Trigger, Bruce G. (2003) Understanding Early Civilizations, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Trivers, Robert, L. (1971) ‘The Evolution of Reciprocal Altruism’, Quarterly Review of Biology, 46 (1): 35–57.Google Scholar
Trivers, Robert, L. (1972) ‘Parental Investment and Sexual Selection’, in Campbell, B. (ed.), Sexual Selection and the Descent of Man, pp. 136–79. London: Heinemann.Google Scholar
Trivers, Robert, L. (1974) ‘Parent-Offspring Conflict’, American Zoologist 14 (1): 249–64.Google Scholar
Vannelli, Ron (2015) The Evolution of Human Sociability: Desires, Fears, Sex and Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Leigh, Van Valen (1973) ‘A New Evolutionary Law’, Evolutionary Theory 1: 1–30.Google Scholar
van Veelen, Matthijs, García, Julián, Rand, David G. and Nowak, Martin A. (2012) ‘Direct Reciprocity in Structured Populations’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 109 (25): 9929–34.Google Scholar
Vigne, Jean-Denis (2011) ‘The Origins of Animal Domestication and Husbandry: A Major Change in the History of Humanity and the Biosphere’, Comptes Rendus Biologies 334 (3): 171–81.Google Scholar
Vitzthum, Virginia J. (2008) ‘Evolutionary Models of Women’s Reproductive Functioning’, Annual Review of Anthropology 37 (1): 53–73.Google Scholar
von Neumann, John and Morgenstern, O. (1944) Theory of Games and Economic Behavior. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Voorhees, Burton, Read, Dwight and Gabora, Liane (2020) ‘Identity, Kinship, and the Evolution of Cooperation’, Current Anthropology 61 (2): 194–218.Google Scholar
Waal, Frans B. M. de (1997) Good Natured: The Origins of Right and Wrong in Humans and Other Animals. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Waddington, Conrad H. (1957) The Strategy of the Genes. London: Allen & Unwin.Google Scholar
Wade, Michael J., and Goodnight, Charles J. (1998) ‘The Theories of Fisher and Wright in the Context of Metapopulations: When Nature Does Many Small Experiments’, Evolution 52 (6): 1537–53.Google Scholar
Weitzer, Ronald (2012) Legalizing Prostitution: From Illicit Vice to Lawful Business. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Wetzel, James (2012) ‘Augustine on the Will’, in Vessey, Mark (ed.), A Companion to Augustine, pp. 337–52. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Williams, George C. (1966) Adaptation and Natural Selection: A Critique of Some Evolutionary Thought. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Wilson, Edward O. (1978) On Human Nature. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Wilson, Edward O. (1975) Sociobiology: The New Synthesis. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Wood, Anew R., Esko, Tonu, Yang, Jian et al. (2014) ‘Defining the Role of Common Variation in the Genomic and Biological Architecture of Adult Human Height’, Nature Genetics 46 (11): 1173.Google Scholar
Wood, W. Jay (2000) ‘What Would Augustine Say?’, Christian History 19 (3): 36–8.Google Scholar
Wright, Sewall (1922) ‘Coefficients of Inbreeding and Relationship’, The American Naturalist 56 (645): 330–8.Google Scholar
Wright, Sewall (1931) ‘Evolution in Mendelian Populations’, Genetics 16 (2): 97–159.Google Scholar
Wright, Sewall (1932) ‘The Roles of Mutation, Inbreeding, Crossbreeding and Selection in Evolution’, Proceedings of the Sixth Annual Congress of Genetics 1: 356–66.Google Scholar
Wright, Sewall (1969) Evolution and the Genetics of Populations, Volume 2: The Theory of Gene Frequencies. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Wright, Sewall (1977) Evolution and the Genetics of Populations, Volume 3: Experimental Results and Evolutionary Deductions. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Zeh, David W. and Zeh, Jeanne A. (2000) ‘Reproductive Mode and Speciation: The Viviparity-driven Conflict Hypothesis’, BioEssays 22 (10): 938–46.Google Scholar
Zeh, David W. and Zeh, Jeanne A. (2002) ‘Maternal-Fetal Conflict’, in , Mark (ed.), Encyclopedia of Evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acref/9780195122008.001.0001Google Scholar
Zhou, W.-X., Sornette, D., Hill, R. A. and Dunbar, R. I. M. (2005) ‘Discrete Hierarchical Organization of Social Group Sizes’, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, 272B (1561): 439–44.Google Scholar

Save element to Kindle

To save this element to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Evolution, Morality and the Fabric of Society
Available formats
×

Save element to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Evolution, Morality and the Fabric of Society
Available formats
×

Save element to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Evolution, Morality and the Fabric of Society
Available formats
×