Pinker on morality

Jerry Coyne, the author of Why Evolution Is True, has posted an interesting comment from Steve Pinker on his blog (see Steven Pinker’s take on the material mind). I will just quote here the section where Pinker comments on the origins of human morality.

“Nor is morality any mystery. Abstract, universal morality (e.g., a Kantian categorical imperative) never evolved in the first place, but took millennia of debate and cultural experience, and doesn’t characterize the vast majority of humanity. More rudimentary moral sentiments that may have evolved – sympathy, trust, retribution, gratitude, guilt – are stable strategies in cooperation games, and emerge in computer simulations.”

A beautiful brief statement which encapsulates some of my own attempts to explain the sources of our morality (see Where do our morals come from?, Atheists not allowed to criticise Hitler! and A naturalistic approach to human morality).

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