Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

What Makes Us Human? Evolution, Intentionality and Moral Progress

  • Editorial
  • Published:
Jus Cogens Aims and scope Submit manuscript

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. Fuentes (2013), 91 ff.

  2. Laland (2017), 315.

  3. Buchanan (2020), Tomasello (1999), Sterelny (2012).

  4. “The 1.5% represents about 35 million nucleotide differences between the two species. Most of these do not affect the gene’s function at all, but some have big effects. Even a single change can affect how a gene operates, which means that a human and chimpanzee gene could be virtually identical and yet function differently”. In, Laland (2017), 16.

  5. See here De Waal (1996), 210 ff.

  6. Tomasello (2019).

  7. Laland (2017) thinks that they do not, whereas De Waal considers that “Field primatologists have noticed differences in tool use and communication among populations of the same species. Thus, in one chimpanzee community all adults may crack nuts with stones, whereas another community totally lacks this technology. Group-specific signals and habits have been documented in bonobos as well as chimpanzees. Increasingly, primatologists explain these differences as learned traditions handed down from one generation to the next.” In, De Waal (1996), 210.

  8. Darwin [1859] (2008), 58.

  9. See Darwin [1871] (1981), Ch.3, 70–106.

  10. “The following proposition seems to me in a high degree probable, namely, that any animal whatever, endowed with well-marked social instincts, would inevitably acquire a moral sense or conscience, as soon as its intellectual powers had become as we as developed, as in man”. Darwin [1871] (1981), 71–71.

  11. Street (2006), 121 ff.

  12. Consider for instance Smith (1994), Darwall et al. (1992), Nagel (2012).

  13. “In fact, in The Origin of Species Darwin did not mention human evolution at all, except to say in the final pages that “light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history”. Darwin took a long time, well over a decade, to elaborate on this enigmatic statement, but he eventually brought forth two huge books on the topic: The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex (1871) and The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872). Strikingly, in these books, Darwin says rather little about human anatomy, but instead concentrates on the question of the evolution of “the mental powers of Man”. This focus is highly significant. To Victorian readers, as to us, there seemed to be a far greater divide between the mental abilities of human beings and other animals than between their bodies”. In, Laland (2017), 12.

  14. Darwin [1871] (1981), 160.

  15. Id.

  16. Darwin [1871] (1981), 327.

  17. Sterelny (2012), XIV ff.

  18. Laland (2017), 10.

  19. Tomasello (2016).

  20. Sterelny (2012), 8.

  21. Sterelny (2012), 12 ff.

  22. Sterelny (2012), XV. The author synthesizes his point in the following way: “The story of hominin evolution is not the story of the evolution of specialized, innately structured modules. Nor is it a story of a key innovation and its consequences”, Sterelny (2012), 20.

  23. Sterelny (2007), 719.

  24. Sterelny (2012), 29.

  25. Sterelny (2012), 29.

  26. Odling-Smee et al. (2003).

  27. Laland (2017), 125.

  28. Odling-Smee et al. (2003), 2.

  29. Odling-Smee et al. (2003), 3.

  30. Laland (2017), 19.

  31. Tomasello (1999, 2014, 2016, 2019).

  32. Tomasello (2014), 82.

  33. Tomasello (2014), 5.

  34. Tomasello (2014), 6.

  35. Tomasello (2014), 136.

  36. Id.

  37. Tomasello (2014), 47.

  38. Tomasello (2014), 48.

  39. Tomasello (2014), 99–100.

  40. Tomasello (2014), 109.

  41. Humans are not “hardwired to think in these new ways […] A modern child raised on a desert island would not automatically construct fully human processes of thinking on its own. Quite the contrary. Children are born with adaptations for collaborating and communicating and learning from others…”. In, Tomasello (2014), 6.

  42. Tomasello (2016), Ch.5.

  43. See De Waal’s TEDx Peachtree (2011), accessed on 26.12.2020.

  44. Id.

  45. This remark seems confirmed by de Waal when he admits “Even if animals other than ourselves act in ways tantamount to moral behavior, their behavior does not necessarily rest on deliberations of the kind we engage in. It is hard to believe that animals weigh their own interests against the rights of others, that they develop a vision of the greater good of society, or that they feel lifelong guilt about something they should not have done.”. In, De Waal (1996), 209.

  46. Ferguson (2018), 76–81; Fry (2013), 6. The “hunter-gatherer” phase occupies 99% of the two million years of presence of a human animal on earth. See Bicchieri (1972), iii.

  47. Buchanan (2020), 157.

  48. Kitcher (2011), 2.

  49. Kitcher (2011), 3.

  50. Id.

References

  • Bicchieri M (ed) (1972) Hunters and gatherers today. Prospect Heights, Ill, Waveland

    Google Scholar 

  • Buchanan A (2020) Our moral fate. Evolution and the escape from Tribalism. MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., London, England

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Darwall S, Gibbard A, Railton P (1992) Toward Fin de Siècle Ethics: Some Trends. Philos Rev 101(1):115–189

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Darwin C [1871] (1981) The descent of man and selection in relation to sex. John Murray, London. First edition reprint. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ

  • Darwin C [1859] (2008) The origin of species, Oxford World’s Classic, Oxford University Press, Oxford

  • De Waal F (1996) Good natured. The origins of right and wrong in humans and other animals. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., London, England

    Google Scholar 

  • De Waal F (2011) Moral behaviour in animals, TEDxPeachtree https://www.ted.com/talks/frans_de_waal_moral_behavior_in_animals? Accessed on 26.11.2020

  • Ferguson RB (2018) Why we Fight. Sci Am 319(3):76–81

    Google Scholar 

  • Fry DP (ed) (2013) War, peace and human nature. The convergence of evolutionary and cultural views. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 1–22

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Fuentes A (2013) Cooperation, conflict and niche construction in the genus Homo. In: Fry DP (ed) War, Peace and Human Nature. The Convergence of Evolutionary and Cultural Views. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 78–94

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Kitcher P (2011) The ethical project. Harvard University Press, Cambridge Ma

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Laland KN (2017) Darwin’s unfinished symphony. How culture made the human mind. Princeton University Press, Princeton and Oxford

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Nagel T (2012) Mind and cosmos: why the materialist Neo-Darwinian conception of nature is almost certainly false. Oxford University Press, Oxford

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Odling-Smee FJ, Laland KN, Feldman MW (2003) Niche construction. The neglected process in evolution. Princeton University Press, Princeton and Oxford

    Google Scholar 

  • Pinker S (2011) The Better Angels of Our Nature. Viking, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Singer P (1981) The expanding circle: ethics and sociobiology. Clarendon, Oxford

    Google Scholar 

  • Smith M (1994) The Moral Problem, Blackwell Oxford

  • Sterelny K (2007) Social intelligence, human intelligence and niche construction. Philos Trans R Soc B 362:719–730

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sterelny K (2012) The evolved apprentice. How evolution made humans unique. The MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass, London, England

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Street S (2006) A Darwinian dilemma for realist theories of value. Philos Stud 127(1):109–166

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tomasello M (1999) The cultural origins of human cognition. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass, London, England

    Google Scholar 

  • Tomasello M (2014) A natural history of human thinking. Harvard University Press, Cambridge Mass, London, England

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Tomasello M (2016) A natural history of human morality. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge Mass, London, England

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Tomasello M (2019) Becoming human. A theory of ontogeny. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass, London, England

    Book  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Rome Tor Vergata, Rome, Italy

    Claudio Corradetti

Authors
  1. Claudio Corradetti
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Claudio Corradetti.

Additional information

Note on the Symposium

A. Buchanan’s Our Moral Fate. Evolution and the Escape from Tribalism, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., London, England 2020.

On 14 December 2020 under the sponsorship of Jus Cogens journal a webinar symposium on A. Buchanan’s Our Moral Fate. Evolution and the Escape from Tribalism (2020) was organized. Appointed discussants included M. Tomasello, S. Tiribelli, C. Murphy, C. Corradetti, K. Sterelny. The debate lasted for longer than 3 h, and it was followed by A. Buchanan’s replies. The discussion addressed in particular issues of evolutionary anthropology, cognitive sciences and moral and political philosophy. The contributions here collected are the follow-up reflections to that discussion.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Corradetti, C. What Makes Us Human? Evolution, Intentionality and Moral Progress. Jus Cogens 3, 1–10 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42439-021-00034-5

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42439-021-00034-5

Search

Navigation