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94Meat made us moral: a hypothesis on the nature and evolution of moral judgmentBiology and Philosophy 28 (6): 903-931. 2013.In the first part of the article, an account of moral judgment in terms of emotional dispositions is given. This account provides an expressivist explanation of three important features of moral demands: inescapability, authority independence and meriting. In the second part of the article, some ideas initially put forward by Christopher Boehm are developed and modified in order to provide a hypothesis about the evolution of the ability to token moral judgments. This hypothesis makes evolutionar…Read more
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37Evolution and psychology in philosophical perspectiveIn Robin Dunbar & Louise Barrett (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology, Oxford University Press. 2009.
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96The role of emotions in ecological and practical rationalityIn D. Evans & Pierre Cruse (eds.), Emotion, Evolution, and Rationality, Oxford University Press. pp. 159--178. 2004.
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555On Dennett and the natural sciences of free willBiology and Philosophy 18 (5): 731-742. 2003._Freedom Evolves _is an ambitious book. The aim is to show that free will is compatible with what physics, biology and the neurosciences tell us about the way we function and that, moreover, these sciences can help us clarify and vindicate the most important aspects of the common-sense conception of free will, those aspects that play a fundamental role in the way we live our lives and in the way we organize our society
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190Reproductive cloning, genetic engineering and the autonomy of the child: the moral agent and the open futureJournal of Medical Ethics 33 (2): 87-93. 2007.Some authors have argued that the human use of reproductive cloning and genetic engineering should be prohibited because these biotechnologies would undermine the autonomy of the resulting child. In this paper, two versions of this view are discussed. According to the first version, the autonomy of cloned and genetically engineered people would be undermined because knowledge of the method by which these people have been conceived would make them unable to assume full responsibility for their ac…Read more
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101Norms for emotions: Biological functions and representational contentsStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 37 (1): 101-121. 2006.Normative standards are often applied to emotions. Are there normative standards that apply to emotions in virtue solely of facts about their nature? I will argue that the answer is no. The psychological, behavioural, and neurological evidence suggests that emotions are representational brain states with various kinds of biological functions. Facts about biological functions are not (and do not by themselves entail) normative facts. Hence, there are no nor- mative standards that apply to emotion…Read more
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Evolution, Motivation, and Moral BeliefsIn Kim Sterelny, Richard Joyce, Brett Calcott & Ben Fraser (eds.), Cooperation and its Evolution, Mit Press. 2013.
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484Understanding culture: a commentary on Richerson and Boyd’s Not By Genes AloneBiology and Philosophy 23 (2): 269-281. 2008.(2) There is significant cultural variation in the way people reason, categorize, and react to various aspects of the world. A proper understanding of such variation has implications for theories about human nature – and cognitive architecture – and its malleability. In turn, these theories have implications for theories about the status and generalisability of psychological explanations (see Nisbett 2003), for theories about the extent to which social engineering and social reform is possible (s…Read more