Comments on: Review of ‘Moral Minds’ by Marc D. Hauser http://boltonian.edublogs.org/2008/11/24/review-of-moral-minds-by-marc-d-hauser/ A polite site for the facilitation of learning and the discussion of anything of interest Sun, 29 Nov 2009 17:32:07 -0500 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.2 hourly 1 By: boltonian http://boltonian.edublogs.org/2008/11/24/review-of-moral-minds-by-marc-d-hauser/comment-page-1/#comment-1044 boltonian Mon, 24 Nov 2008 14:27:30 +0000 http://boltonian.edublogs.org/?p=33#comment-1044 For Hauser's thesis to hold water human morals must evolve only at the same pace our brains evolve and I can't see how this can be so. Morals have changed quite dramatically in historical times - we no longer carry out state-sanctioned infanticide, for example. Slavery is illegal in most liberal democracies these days but it was commonplace up to a couple of hundred years ago. Although I am not an expert on human evolution I would be very surprised if our brains had changed much in the last 2-3 thousand years. For Hauser’s thesis to hold water human morals must evolve only at the same pace our brains evolve and I can’t see how this can be so. Morals have changed quite dramatically in historical times – we no longer carry out state-sanctioned infanticide, for example. Slavery is illegal in most liberal democracies these days but it was commonplace up to a couple of hundred years ago.

Although I am not an expert on human evolution I would be very surprised if our brains had changed much in the last 2-3 thousand years.

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