I have been watching Michael Sandel's televised sessions of his Harvard class titled "Justice". He is obviously a great teacher, able to get students to focus seriously on ethical choices and then bring in the ways that great philosophers of the past had dealt with those issues.
While watching I kept wishing that the instruction was more informed by modern cognitive science research. Clearly our ethics is based on elements of "human nature" such as the ability to relate to the feelings of others, the preference for fairness, and the strong attachment to family and community. The ethics of smart tigers or smart alligators would be different from our ethics because tiger and alligator natures are different than ours.
Sandel recommends the process of going back and forth between ones feelings about the right thing to do and analysis of the principles involved as informed by the great philosophers of the past. That seems a great idea, but as we learn more and more about the biological basis of those feelings, that scientific knowledge too should inform ethical decision making. We are what we have evolved to be, and our ethics should reflect that evolutionary reality.
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