The Selfish Gene And Origins Of Morality

Darwin attempts to explain the origin of morality from the perspective of the human animal, with the development of biology and genetics, people increasingly in-depth understanding the gene, there has been the idea of genetic determinism, the selfish gene determines the behavior of people, and thus become the source of morality. This lead to the traditional ethicists fierce criticism.Thesis is divided into six chapters. The first chapter introduces the topic of significance, to provide an explanation for the origin of morality from the naturalistic point of view, on the other hand is also trying to help digestion evolution of ethics that exists between traditional ethics of real Ought fracture. Analyze ethical issues with evolutionary theory from Chapter II officially started. First introduced traditional moral theories, including contract theory of the Scottish Enlightenment moral theory of naturalism representatives, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau and other representatives of human moral theory, deontological moral theory of Kant and Aristotle proposed virtue ethics, and then analyze the problems of traditional moral theory, on this basis, mainly for moral realism and naturalism Hume questioned the proposed fallacy faced accusations. The third chapter introduces the theory of evolution to explain the origin of moral ethics, including Darwin’s theory of group selection, mutual Kropotkin’s theory, theoretical biology Wilson and Dawkins and the social control theory attempts to introduce ethics. Darwin tried to explain the evolutionary theory of the origin of morality, but in order to avoid competition with the moral contradictions of individual survival altruism and group selection theory proposed. After Huxley, Kropotkin Waldo from altruistic aspects of Darwin’s theory of development, especially Kropotkin overstating the importance of mutual assistance. With the further development of biology, Wilson, Dawkins, who introduced game theory and other disciplines proposed biological theories of social, moral attributed to genetic breeding, while more explicit evolutionary ethics naturalistic style, facing criticism have started to discuss the role of culture in the evolution of morality. Cybernetic theories further use of mathematical methods, trying to extract the ethical principles as well as information from the system control feedback. Half of the third chapter introduces the features of naturalistic evolutionary doctrine and ethics function of moral theory. The fourth chapter focuses on the evolutionary advantages of ethics, the use of moral theory of evolution, trying to fight back the traditional ethics and moral theory faces questioned. The fifth chapter briefly discusses the ethical and moral shortcomings of the theory of evolution, including cultural factors explain the problem in terms of the plight and difficult to build a standardized system of ethics, and finally make a conclusion.Through discussion can be seen, the theory of evolution ethics has a unique advantage in explaining the origin of morality, although faced with heavy questioning normative ethics theory, but in large part to the moral dilemma of realism and is to be avoided between fracture, can provide a new angle cut explanation for the origin of morality.