Please note that next week's STS Circle meeting will take place on
Wednesday, Feb. 13, from 12:00-2:00 pm, at Room 469, Science Center,
1 Oxford Street. Please RSVP to
<mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>[EMAIL PROTECTED]
by Feb. 10 (Sunday).
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STS Circle at Harvard: February 13 (Wednesday), 2008
Evolving a Moral Grammar: Domain-specificity,
Origins, Universality and Moral Organs
Mark Hauser
(Department of Psychology, Harvard University)
12:00-2:00 pm at Room 469, Science Center, 1 Oxford Street
Abstract:
How do you decide what is morally right and wrong? Historically,
there have been two answers to this question. On the one hand, we
deliver moral judgments on the basis of a rational, conscious, and
deliberate process of accessing principles to justify our
actions. On the other hand, our judgments are the result of
intuitions mediated by emotions. Though these two processes
certainly play some role in our moral deliberations, each suffers
from a set of critical problems. I offer a solution: by appealing
to an analogy to language, I argue that humans are endowed with a
universal moral grammar that generates intuitive judgments of right
and wrong based on an inaccessible code of action. I present
evidence from a large scale study of the internet with over 200,000
subjects, together with work on small scale societies, to justify a
dissociation between judgments and justifications, and to reveal a
set of core principles that appear immune to cultural influences,
including religious background. I also present results from studies
of brain damaged patients, neuroimaging, and brain stimulation to
reveal the architecture of our moral organ.
Biography:
Marc Hauser is Professor of Psychology, Organismic and Evolutionary
Biology, and Biological Anthropology at Harvard University, where he
is director of the Cognitive Evolution Laboratory and co-director of
the Mind, Brain and Behavior Program. His research focuses on the
evolutionary and developmental foundations of the human mind, with
the specific goal of understanding which mental capacities are
shared with other nonhuman primates and which are uniquely
human. Dr. Hauser's previous books include The Evolution of
Communication (MIT); Wild Minds: What Animals Really Think (Henry
Holt); and The Design of Animal Communication (with Mark Konishi)
(MIT). His most recent book, Moral Minds: How Nature Designed Our
Universal Sense of Right and Wrong, is published by HarperCollins.
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For more information about the Harvard STS circle, please visit our
website at:
<http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/sts/events/weeklymeeting.htm>http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/sts/events/weeklymeeting.htm
or e-mail to:
<mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>[EMAIL PROTECTED]
or <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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