Module 1 Where Does Morality Come From?

Week 1 The moral sense

08-26-24

• No required readings

08-28-24

1. C. Buckley. “Man is rescued by stranger on subway tracks.” The New York Times 3.1 (2007). Link

2. C. Booth. “The Bad Samaritan.” Time 152.10 (1998), pp. 59–60. Link

3. O. Issa. “25 years after conviction, Robert Latimer still believes he was right to kill his daughter.” CBC News (2019). Link

4. Optional: L. MacFarquhar. “The Kindest Cut: What sort of person gives a kidney to a stranger?” New Yorker (2009), pp. 38–51. Link

Week 2 Morality from culture

09-02-24*

• No class

09-04-24

1. J. Rachels and S. Rachels. “The Challenge of Cultural Relativism.” In: The Elements of Moral Philosophy . McGraw-Hill New York, 1993. Link

2. K. Cuomo. “Interview with Fauziya Kassindja.” PBS (2000). Link

Week 3 Morality from religion

09-09-24

1. J. Rachels and S. Rachels. “Does Morality Depend on Religion?” In: The Elements of Moral Philosophy . McGraw-Hill New York, 1993. Link

09-11-24

1. J. Diamond. “What Electric Eels Tell Us About the Evolution of Religion.” In: The World Until Yesterday: What can we learn from traditional societies? Penguin, 2013. Link

Week 4 What drives us?

09-16-24

1. R. Shafer-Landau. “Hedonism.” In: The Fundamentals of Ethics . 2009. Link

2. R. Nozick. “The Experience Machine.” In: Anarchy, State, and Utopia . Basic Book, 1974. Link

09-18-24

1. G. Loewenstein. “Because it is there: The challenge of mountaineering for utility theory.” Kyklos 52.3 (1999), pp. 315–343. Link

Week 5 Do we feel or think our way to morality?

09-23-24

1. J. Greene. “Efficiency, Flexibility, and the Dual-Process Brain.” In: Moral Tribes: Emotion, reason, and the gap between us and them . Penguin, 2014. Link

09-25-24

1. J. Haidt. “The Intuitive Dog and Its Rational Tail.” In: The Righteous Mind: Why good people are divided by politics and religion . Vintage, 2012. Link

Week 6 Evil

09-30-24

• No class.

10-02-24

1. R. Baumeister. Evil: Inside human violence and cruelty (excerpts) . 1999. Link

Week 7

10-07-24

• No required readings (review)

10-09-24

• Essay # 1

Module 2 How Morality Evolved?

Week 8 Empathy

10-14-24

1. J. Greene. “Cushman et al’s experiment on human aggression.” In: Moral Tribes: Emotion, reason, and the gap between us and them . Penguin, 2014. Link

2. T. Nagel. “Moral luck (excerpt).” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society (1976). Link

3. R. Burton. “Pathological certitude.” In: B. Oakley et al. Pathological altruism . Oxford University Press, 2011. Link

10-16-24

1. B. Oakley. Cold-blooded kindness (excerpts) . Prometheus Books, 2011. Link

2. P. Bloom. “Against Empathy.” Boston Review (2014). Link

Week 9 Morality as bargaining

10-21-24

1. J. Rachels and S. Rachels. “The Social Contract Theory.” In: The Elements of Moral Philosophy . McGraw-Hill New York, 1993. Link

2. J. Greene. “The Tragedy of the Commons.” In: Moral Tribes: Emotion, reason, and the gap between us and them . Penguin, 2014. Link

10-23-24

1. D. Krebs. “Bad by nature?” In: The origins of morality: An evolutionary account . Oxford University Press, 2011. Link

Week 10 Kinship

10-28-24

1. J. Birch. “Conceptualizing Social Behavior.” In: The philosophy of social evolution . Oxford University Press, 2017. Link

10-30-24

1. D. Krebs. “The evolution of altruism through kin selection.” In: The origins of morality: An evolutionary account . Oxford University Press, 2011. Link

Week 11 Learning

11-04-24

1. R. Boyd, P. Richerson, and J. Henrich. “The cultural niche: Why social learning is essential for human adaptation.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 108 (2011), pp. 10918–10925. Link

11-06-24

1. M. Tomasello and Y. Shimizu. “The origins of morality.” Scientific American (2018), pp. 70–75. Link

Week 12

11-11-24*

• No class

11-13-24*

• No class

Week 13 Group selection

11-18-24

1. J. Henrich. “Self-Domestication.” In: The Secret of Our Success . Princeton University Press, 2015. Link

11-20-24

1. J. Haidt. “Why are we so groupish?” In: The Righteous Mind: Why good people are divided by politics and religion . Vintage, 2012. Link

2. Optional: D. Wilson and E. Wilson. “Evolution ‘for the good of the group.’” American Scientist 96 (2008), pp. 380–389. Link

Week 14 Norms

11-25-24

1. K. Simler and R. Hanson. “‘Norms’ and ‘Cheating’.” In: The Elephant in the Brain . Oxford University Press, 2017. Link

11-27-24*

• No class

Week 15 Signaling

12-02-24

1. K. Simler and R. Hanson. “Religion.” In: The Elephant in the Brain . Oxford University Press, 2017. Link

12-04-24

• No required readings (review)

Week 16

12-09-24

• Essay # 2