The Evolution of Moral Progress: A Biocultural Theory

In The Evolution of Moral Progress, Allen Buchanan and Russell Powell resurrect the project of explaining moral progress.They avoid the errors of earlier attempts by drawing on a wide range of disciplines including moral and political philosophy, evolutionary biology, evolutionary psychology, anthropology, history, and sociology.Their focus is on one especially important type of moral progress: gains in inclusivity.They develop a framework to explain progress in inclusivity to also illuminate moral regression--the return to exclusivist and "tribalistic" moral beliefs and attitudes.Buchanan and Powell argue those tribalistic moral responses are not hard-wired by evolution in human nature.Rather, human beings have an evolved "adaptively plastic" capacity for both inclusion and exclusion, depending on environmental conditions.Moral progress in the dimension of inclusivity is possible, but only to the extent that human beings can create environments conducive to extending moral standing to