Papers by Richmond Campbell
The Journal of Philosophy, Apr 1, 1988
Oxford University Press eBooks, Aug 1, 2022
Oxford University Press eBooks, Mar 24, 2022
Chapter 4 describes the early evolution of moral pluralism among humans in which emotions and nor... more Chapter 4 describes the early evolution of moral pluralism among humans in which emotions and norms tend to reinforce each other and neither one functions entirely independently of the other. Their interdependence runs contrary to dominant views in the history of moral philosophy. The five core clusters of moral norms are: harm, kinship, reciprocity, autonomy, and fairness. Norms of purity and authority evolved much later. No core norm is more basic than the others, though some are emphasized more than others in some cultures. The five core moral norm clusters, though not innate, are universal. They are distinct from conventional norms since they are motivated by moral emotions, take priority in cases of conflict, and are treated as objective. Since moral intuitions are joint products of moral emotions and moral norms, the familiar opposition between reason and emotion is a false dichotomy; moreover, contrary to a common view, moral intuitions are not inflexible.
Oxford University Press eBooks, Mar 24, 2022
Chapter 7 describes the evolution of institutional morality within family, religion, military, ec... more Chapter 7 describes the evolution of institutional morality within family, religion, military, economic, and political institutions. Moral norms of authority evolved within these institutions and were key to the social division of labor that can benefit everyone but often resulted in personal privilege. Norms of purity arose from the need to fight disease but often became in religious and other institutions a means for men to control women. Religious institutions function to reinforce moral norms and create a sense of community but also exclude others from moral consideration. The core moral norms, including those of autonomy, play a role in the functioning of military, economic, and political institutions because individuals at any given level of the hierarchy must rely on each other for the division of labor to function well. These same institutions drive moral diversity across cultures, for example, in individual freedom and respect for honor.
Oxford University Press eBooks, Mar 24, 2022
Chapter 8 offers an evaluative theory of moral progress and moral regress that explains how ratio... more Chapter 8 offers an evaluative theory of moral progress and moral regress that explains how rational moral change is possible. Moral progress, distinct from progress in well-being, is illustrated by key examples, like the abolition of chattel slavery and reduction of gender inequality. The possibility of a traditional global theory of moral progress is rejected in favor of non-ideal theory that explains how to reduce moral exclusivity and inequality based on what has already worked locally. Moral progress theory seeks to promote realizable ends by identifying positive feedback loops between the moral mind, social institutions, and knowledge. Facilitated by social integration, relevant knowledge reveals facts that are needed to apply moral norms or moral inconsistencies that result from their misapplication. In both respects rational moral change is achieved when morality scaffolds socially interactive reasoning to reveal morally relevant knowledge. Such knowledge tends to foster the social conditions that make moral knowledge possible.
Oxford University Press eBooks, Mar 24, 2022
Oxford University Press eBooks, Mar 24, 2022
Darwin’s understanding of evolution by natural selection changes our view of nature and our place... more Darwin’s understanding of evolution by natural selection changes our view of nature and our place in it. It allows us for the first time to see clearly who we are and why. In particular, Darwinian evolution explains why we are moral creatures. Arising through gene-culture co-evolution, the moral mind is anchored in moral capacities for emotion, norms, and reasoning that together make possible successful interdependent living. In modern humans, the pluralistic moral mind is shaped by social institutions like family, politics, and religion. This account is distinct from “just-so stories” that lack adequate empirical evidence and from Social Darwinism that mistakenly deduces moral truths from descriptions of evolutionary processes. But evolution can inform a theory of rational moral progress and resistance to moral regress. Empirically demonstrated feedback loops among the moral mind, complex social structure, and knowledge gained in interactive reasoning advance moral inclusivity and equality.
Oxford University Press eBooks, Mar 24, 2022
Chapter 1 explains how the altruistic moral emotions of sympathy and loyalty evolved through natu... more Chapter 1 explains how the altruistic moral emotions of sympathy and loyalty evolved through natural selection in great apes and their ancestors prior to human evolution. Altruism can be biological or psychological. Biological altruism is the sacrifice of fitness by one individual that increases the fitness of another. Its evolution by natural selection seems impossible. The apparent paradox is resolved by explaining how mechanisms of kin selection, reciprocal altruism, and group selection allow biological altruism to evolve. These mechanisms also explain the evolution of psychological altruism, exemplified in sympathy and loyalty, where an altruist is motivated to benefit another for the sake of the other. This altruism can exist alongside egoistic motives, but it is incompatible with hedonism, the view that the ultimate end of all action is pleasure. Altruism explains how morally motivated cooperation existed within ape groups that shared resources, alloparenting, and defense against external threats.
Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 1982
Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy, 1994
Despite the emergence of new forms of feminist empiricism, there continues to be resistance to th... more Despite the emergence of new forms of feminist empiricism, there continues to be resistance to the idea that feminist political commitment can be integral to hypothesis testing in science when that process adheres strictly to empiricist norms and is grounded in a realist conception of objectivity. I explore the virtues of such feminist empiricism, arguing that the resistance is, in large part, due to the lingering effects of positivism.
American Political Science Review, Dec 1, 1986
Routledge eBooks, Sep 8, 2017
Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy, Mar 1, 2008
Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Jun 1, 1993
In Wise Choices, Apt Feelings Allan Gibbard engages in three meta-normative projects of enduring ... more In Wise Choices, Apt Feelings Allan Gibbard engages in three meta-normative projects of enduring interest: (1) to understand what makes judgments about how to live normative, (2) to explain why we make such judgments in the first place, and (3) to account for the central role that emotions play in them, particularly as they bear on moral questions. He endeavors to accomplish all three within a naturalistic, normatively anti-realist world view: there are only natural facts, such as those revealed in the natural and social sciences, and there are no normative facts (natural or otherwise). He rejects, therefore, approaches to these projects which construe our emotions and judgments about how to live as representations of normative facts (as guilt, for example, might represent the fact of having done something wrong). Instead, he views judgments about how to live and associated emotions (such as guilt and resentment) as being without truth value and arising from psychological mechanisms which have the specific biological function of promoting social coordination. They function not to represent the world but to coordinate our activities in the world. There is much to admire in the theory of normative judgment that emerges from these projects. In particular, Gibbard's semantics for the normative content of complex normative statements provides a considerable advance over the 'non-cognitivist' theories of Ayer, Stevenson, and Hare; his semantics is also in some ways more defensible than the
Oxford University Press eBooks, Mar 24, 2022
A Better Ape explores the evolution of the moral mind from our ancestors with chimpanzees, throug... more A Better Ape explores the evolution of the moral mind from our ancestors with chimpanzees, through the origins of our genus and our species, to the development of behaviorally modern humans who underwent revolutions in agriculture, urbanization, and industrial technology. The book begins, in Part I, by explaining the biological evolution of sympathy and loyalty in great apes and trust and respect in the earliest humans. These moral emotions are the first element of the moral mind. Part II explains the gene-culture co-evolution of norms, emotions, and reasoning in Homo sapiens. Moral norms of harm, kinship, reciprocity, autonomy, and fairness are the second element of the moral mind. A social capacity for interactive moral reasoning is the third element. Part III of the book explains the cultural co-evolution of social institutions and morality. Family, religious, military, political, and economic institutions expanded small bands into large tribes and created more intense social hierarchies through new moral norms of authority and purity. Finally, Part IV explains the rational and cultural evolution of moral progress and moral regress as human societies experienced gains and losses in inclusivity and equality. Moral progress against racism, homophobia, speciesism, sexism, classism, and global injustice depends on integration of privileged and oppressed people in physical space, social roles, and democratic decision making. The central idea in the book is that all these major evolutionary transitions, from ancestral apes to modern societies, and now human survival of climate change, depend on co-evolution between morality, knowledge, and complex social structure.
Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Dec 1, 1972
The theory I want to refute is sometime called Impersonal Ethical Egoism (IEE): the view that eve... more The theory I want to refute is sometime called Impersonal Ethical Egoism (IEE): the view that everyone ought (morally) to do what will benefit him the most in any given situation. It might be thought that this view can be distinguished from Personal Ethical Egoism (PEE): the view that I ought (morally) to do what will benefit me the most in any given situation. But to whom does “I” refer in PEE? To any person who states the view? And is the view supposed to be true no matter who states it? If the answers to the last two questions are Yes, then PEE and IEE come to the same thing. To distinguish the views, we might take “I” to refer to a specific person, say, the person who just stated the view. Put unambiguously, without the personal pronoun, PEE then becomes: RC ought (morally) to do what will benefit RC the most in any given situation. IEE would then logically imply PEE, but not conversely. But the reason why PEE would not imply IEE is not that it would be a conflicting, or even an alternative and competing, form of ethical egoism; it is simply that PEE would be formulated much less generally than IEE. In fact, since PEE would concern only what one particular person ought to do, it would not be obvious that the view itself should be called a form of egoism. For if anyone else subscribed to the view, that would hardly make him an egoist; so there would seem to be nothing inherently egoistic about the view. But, in any case, what I aim to refute is a general theory about what anyone ought to do in a given situation, not a theory limited in scope to the actions of only one individual.
The Philosophical Quarterly, Jul 1, 1988
The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, Dec 1, 1983
Introduction 1 The Problem of Definition 2 The Problems of Asymmetry and Vindication 3 Epistemic ... more Introduction 1 The Problem of Definition 2 The Problems of Asymmetry and Vindication 3 Epistemic Novelty 3 (1) Formulations and Counterexamples 3 (it) Standard Bayesian Vindication 4 Heuristic Novelty 4 (0 Definition 4 (it) Temporal Novelty and The Copycat Case 4 (MI) The Vindication Problem Again 4 (iita) WorralYs Proposal 4 (iiib) Redhead's Proposal 5 Novelty, Objective Confirmation, and Bayes' Theorem 5 (t) An Overview 5 (if) Selection Novelty 5 (MI) Novel Evidence Defined 5 (iw) Vindication of Novel Confirmation 5 (tva) Novelty vs. Design in Hypothesis Selection 5 (t»6) 4̂ Formula for Greater than .5 Confirmation 5 (») Objections from 3 (ii) Answered 6 7%e Asymmetry Puzzle Resolved
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Papers by Richmond Campbell