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On the phylogeny of human morality (ten years later)

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Human Evolution

Abstract

Sociobiological explanation of altruism, through theories as such «kin selection», cannot reach the wealth of human morality; it is necessary to add some specific traits in order to explain the human way to ultrasociability. Some of them appear within the classical school of «moral sense», distinguishing between two different levels («motive to act» and «moral criterion») of moral phenomenon. Due to the complexity of criterion level, here we deal with a broad model of human moral phenomenon, proposing three different dominions («motive to act», «personal criterion», «collective values»), and trying to find possible phylogenetic roots of them through a cognitive approach.

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Cela-Conde, C.J. On the phylogeny of human morality (ten years later). Hum. Evol. 5, 139–151 (1990). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02435470

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