“2. Virtue and Evolutionary Biology/Genetics: Are there innate “learning modules” that incline growing children to be sensitive to cultural and religious codes dealing with more conservative-sounding virtues such as loyalty, respect for authority, and purity-sanctity? Have humans evolved with certain virtues or are they strictly cultural constructs? If there is an evolutionary basis for virtue, how does it function to protect or preserve the species? Are there identifiable virtues that are strictly cultural or that, by contrast, have clear biological bases?”

Hmm. So there are many other topics, but just to pause a bit on this #2…

I’m not at all opposed to using science to explore some aspects of ethics, but I’ve had sufficient close encounters with evo psych theorists to be nervous that reductive reasoning may be lurking in the shadows of this type of science/ethics interdisciplinarity.

But rather than go on about this, I’ll just point to another thread on another blog where other people go on about this:

http://crookedtimber.org/2005/06/06/evo-psych-factoids/