Morality
Gene Expression
Tag archives for Morality
The evolution of morals
Posted by Razib Khan on March 21, 2010 I have a short piece up at Comment is Free at The Guardian, The origins of morality do not matter. Its flavor is a bit different from my typical blog posts because the format enforces more brevity, so I decided to try and leverage some analogies. I conclude: … Our moral consensus is a river…
Your religion is false on MR
Posted by Razib Khan on July 19, 2009 Tyler Cowen gives a positive review of Your Religion is False: In addition to its humor, I prefer the content of this book to the better-known “new atheist” tracts. Grus yields many of the strongest arguments. For instance the biographical and sociological correlates with belief (most people choose the religion they grew up with, or…
Old parents who die
Posted by Razib Khan on July 16, 2009 FuturePundit points me to an article about an older woman who had IVF treatment who has died, Spanish woman who gave birth through IVF at 66 dies: A Spanish woman who became the world’s oldest mother at the age of 66 has died of cancer just two-and-a-half years after giving birth to twins, raising fresh…
Good to the bone; adducing honesty via imaging
Posted by Razib Khan on July 14, 2009 Update: See Ed Yong. Randall Parker points me to a new paper from Joshua Greene which describes the neurological responses of individuals when do, or don’t, lie, when lying might be in their self-interest. From EurekaAlert: The research was designed to test two theories about the nature of honesty – the “Will” theory, in which…
Incest, morality and genetics
Posted by Razib Khan on April 13, 2009 Over at Secular Right I point out that Romania is set to decriminalize consensual sexual relations between adult first-order kin. That is, incest. There are a few angles that this story offers. First is the moral-ethical one. From a rational individualist perspective how reasonable are laws which ban consensual sex between adults who just happen…
The biological roots of moral sentiments?
Posted by Razib Khan on April 8, 2009 David Brooks has a new column grandly titled The End of Philosophy. Heather Mac Donald at Secular Right chides him for his criticism of the New Atheists, while John Derbyshire offers guarded praise. It seems to me that the jab at the New Atheists was something of a throwaway line and I lean more toward…