Meet the Expert I

Prof. Allen Buchanan, Ph.D.

The Limits of Evolutionary Explanations of Morality

Can evolutionary biology ellucidate the discussion of the foundation of morality? Are there valid arguments linking the two concepts? These and other fundamental questions with regard to the human condition were raised and discussed in our first Meet the Expert session with Prof. Allen Buchanan, Ph.D.

Assumptions about human nature have been used to inform conservative views for a very long time. While traditional conservative arguments against the possibility of major moral progress or fundamental institutional reform relied on under-evidenced assumptions about the limitations of human nature, a number of contemporary thinkers from a variety of disciplines have attempted to fill this empirical gap in the conservative argument by appealing to evolutionary theory.
 
These “evoconservatives” deduce from evolutionary accounts of morality that it is unrealistic to think that cosmopolitan and other “inclusivist” moral ideals can meaningfully be realized.

Allen Buchanan discussed and critically reflected the status and implications of these evoconservative evolutionary explanations of morality.

Allen Buchanan is the James B. Duke Professor of philosophy at Duke University. He received his Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1975. Prof. Buchanan taught at the University of Arizona, the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and the University of Minnesota before joining Duke's faculty in 2002 as professor of