Precis of Vaulting Ambition: Sociobiology and the Quest for Human Nature

The debate about the credentials of sociobiology has persisted because scholars have failed to distinguish the varieties of sociobiology and because too little attention has been paid to the details of the arguments that are supposed to support the provocative claims about human social behavior. I seek to remedy both dcfieieneies. After analysis of the relationships among different kinds of sociobiology and contemporary evolutionary theory, I attempt to show how some of the studies of the behavior of nonhuman animals meet the methodological standards appropriate to evolutionary research. I contend that the efforts of E. O. Wilson, Richard Alexander, Charles Lumsden, and others to generate conclusions about human nature are flawed, both because they apply evolutionary ideas in an unrigorous fashion and because they use dubious assumptions to connect their evolutionary analyses with their conclusions. This contention rests on analyses of many of the major sociobiological proposals about human social behavior, including: differences in sex roles, racial hostility, homosexuality, conflict between parents and adolescent offspring, incest avoidance, the avunculate, alliances in combat, female infanticide, and gene-culture coevolution. Vaulting Ambition thus seeks to identify what is good in sociobiology, to expose the errors of premature speculations about human nature, and to prepare the way for serious study of the evolution of human social behavior

Braintrust: What Neuroscience Tells Us About Morality

Webcast sponsored by Irving K. Barber Learning Centre and hosted by Green College. An honoured tradition in moral philosophy depicts human moral behaviour as unrelated to social behaviour in nonhuman animals, and as relying on a uniquely human capacity to reason. Recent developments in the neuroscience of social bonding, the psychology of problem-solving, and the role of imitation in social behaviour jointly suggest instead an approach to morality that meshes with evolutionary biology. Contrary to the conventional wisdom that rules are essential to moral behaviour, rule-application is only occasionally a factor. According to the hypothesis on offer, the basic platform for morality is attachment and bonding, and the caring behavior motivated by such attachment. This hypothesis connects to a different, but currently unfashionable tradition, beginning with Aristotle’s ideas about social virtues, and David Hume’s 18th century ideas concerning “the moral sentiment”. One surprising outcome of the convergence of scientific approaches is that the revered dictum—you cannot infer an ‘ought’ from an ‘is’—looks dubious as a general rule restricting moral (practical) problem solving.Graduate and Postdoctoral StudiesOther UBCUnreviewedFacult

Morality and the Brain

Non UBCUnreviewedFacult

The significance of neuroscience for philosophy

The ground is shifting under the traditional approaches to problems in the philosophy of mind. Earlier doctrines concerning the independence of cognition from the brain now appear untenable. As neuroscience uncovers more about the organization and dynamics of the brain, it becomes increasingly evident that theories about our nature must be informed by neuroscientific data. Consistent with this progress, we may expect that philosophical problems about the mind will be productively addressed and perhaps radically transformed by a convergence of neuroscientific, psychological and computational researc