چکیده:
Ayala (American philosopher and biologist) has presented new theories on the evolutionary ethical explanations. Following Darwin, Ayala distinguishes the moral sense and the moral norms accepted by the human community. Therefore, he believes that the biological-natural processes lead to the evolution of the human mind; this growth and development in the mind results in the moral sense in the human. On the one hand, the norms and ethical systems of any human society have been emerged due to the cultural evolution in that country. Hence, cultural evolution is the foundation of Ayala’s ethical pluralism theory. As such, Ayala advocates the objectivity of moral values and Kantian substantive morality. since he, like Kant, regards human rationality as the only reason for justifying moral sense. In this paper, Ayala’s theories on ethical pluralism and the role of cultural evolution in the formation of moral norms are discussed and criticized. Ayala’s success in establishing a universal normative ethical system will be approached skeptically; however, his biological explanation of the origin of moral sense can be considered as a Kantian account of morality, but on the other hand moral pluralism related to cultural evolution led to a split between two aspects of meta-ethics and normative ethics in Ayala`s theory, that disorganizes the coherence of his theory. It seems that Ayala`s theory needs explanation more than cultural evolution.
خلاصه ماشینی:
Ayala’s success in establishing a universal normative ethical system will be approached skeptically; however, his biological explanation of the origin of moral sense can be considered as a Kantian account of morality, but on the other hand moral pluralism related to cultural evolution led to a split between two aspects of meta-ethics and normative ethics in Ayala`s theory, that disorganizes the coherence of his theory.
Keywords: evolutionary biology, moral sense, cultural evolution, moral norm, moral substantivity, Kantian rationality, moral pluralism Introduction Francisco José Ayala Pereda was born in 1934, is a Spanish-American philosopher, and is a professor at the University of California, Irvine.
Emphasizing the significant distinction between moral sense and moral norm, Ayala believes that the moral norms based on which specific actions are called good or bad, are the result of the cultural evolution in different human communities.
He believes that like other human concepts which construct cultural evolution, moral principles and traditions completely adapt to biological tendencies of human species (Cela Conde & Ayala, 2007, p.
Ayala was consistent with Wilson regarding the existence of various ethical systems in accordance with the specific culture of any society; he believed in moral pluralism.
With regard to this explanation, Ayala, on the one hand, states that the moral judgments with respect to the goodness and badness of moral behavior are different in diverse human cultures; of course, he believes that this difference depends on the cultural evolution of different societies and on the other hand, he considers some of the moral norms pervasive and universal.