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This book was written in the tradition of the Austrian school of behavioral research, at the suggestion and with the support of Prof. Rupert Riedl, founder and former head of the Konrad Lorenz Institute. The formation of morals, that is, of the rules and institutions which govern human behavior, is conceived as an evolutionary mechanism. Moral cognitive phenomena in Homo sapiens occur simultaneous... More

This book was written in the tradition of the Austrian school of behavioral research, at the suggestion and with the support of Prof. Rupert Riedl, founder and former head of the Konrad Lorenz Institute. The formation of morals, that is, of the rules and institutions which govern human behavior, is conceived as an evolutionary mechanism. Moral cognitive phenomena in Homo sapiens occur simultaneously as cultural phenomena in large social groups, as behavioral phenomena in the individuals who compose these groups, and as neurophysiological phenomena in the neural systems of the same individuals. The approach of the inquiry described in the book is thus based on a thoroughgoing interdisciplinary reduction of human behavior, from political science and sociology to behavioral biology and psychology to neurophysiology. No other work on human morals offers this interdisciplinary approach. In no biological or psychological work on morals is there any reference to the theses of moral evolution at the social group level developed by Friedrich August von Hayek. Yet Hayek's fundamental theses must be taken into account in any work on morals. The interdisciplinary inquiry of this book is thus the first to give due value to Hayek's work. The biological explanation of the human capacity for moral decisions can be considered as a reduction to individual behavioral biology of Hayek's insights at the social group level. In turn, behavioral phenomena in individuals coincide and are simultaneous with the generation, at the neurophysiological level, of conceptual representations associated with emotions and feelings which command decision making and action. The relation of human behavioral phenomena to the neural mechanisms described by brain scientist Antonio Damasio thus completes the interdisciplinary account of the book. The consequences of the inquiry's evolutionary thesis on history, philosophy, biology and psychology are examined by way of critical dicussions of works by may authors, including, among other, Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Hayek, Steven Pinker, Edward Wilson, Karl Popper, John Eccles, Arthur Koestler, Egon Friedell, Edward Carr, Judith Harris and Adolf Heschl.

More information about the book may be found at evolutionofmorals.com.br

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