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| Drawing credit, Wolfgang Köhler |
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Under the auspices of St. Francis College, there were five Moral Sense Colloquia. The fifth Colloquium was the final meeting because of Prof. Tague's "retirement." Details about some past colloquia are below.
For information or Colloquia programs, contact Professor Gregory F. Tague
MORAL SENSE COLLOQUIUM V: SUSTAINABILITY AND ETHICS
16 May 2022.
This event is not open to the public due to pandemic restrictions. All Events Unless Otherwise Noted Will Take Place in the Maroney Theater, 7th Floor
Full Program HERE
PANEL ONE
First talk by Dr. Gregory Tague.
Second talk by Dr. Kristy Biolsi.
Third talk by Dr. John Dilyard.
First talk by Dr. Gregory Tague.
Second talk by Dr. Kristy Biolsi.
Third talk by Dr. John Dilyard.
Panel Discussion.
2:00 PM - Short refreshment break.
2:15PM - Students and Faculty.
2:00 PM - Short refreshment break.
2:15PM - Students and Faculty.
PANEL TWO
Student Ashytyn K. Van Horn.
Student Luis E. Banegas.
Faculty respondents, panel moderators, and discussants Dr. Alison Dell and Dr. Clayton Shoppa.
3:00PM – Open Discussion with faculty speakers, student panelists, and audience.
3:00PM – Open Discussion with faculty speakers, student panelists, and audience.
4:00PM – Conclusion.
PAST COLLOQUIA___________________________________
--2019--
The Moral Sense Colloquium IV - Cross-cultural Morality: Human and Animal, took place on Saturday, 28 September, 2019, 12:00pm - 6:00pm at St. Francis College, Brooklyn, NY, USA. This Colloquium featured, at the end, a special performance by actors, singers and musicians Vaneshran Arumugam and Emmanuel Castis.
GUIDING QUESTIONS FOR THIS COLLOQUIUM INCLUDED:
Some images from the Moral Sense Colloquium IV can be found HERE.
What is cross-cultural morality? What principles and standards of behavior are shared among cultures? How do values, beliefs, and practices differ among cultures? What is altruism? How do non-human animals, especially primates, and particularly great apes express what humans might call altruism, morality, and culture? Considering the extensive anthropogenic stressors now being forced upon delicate ecosystems and animal habitats, why is it important for humans to view animals as cultural and moral? Why is it important to emphasize the difference between cultures, including the somewhat false division of human-animal, as much as considering similarities?
PROGRAM for Moral Sense Colloquium IV
You can find the program HERE.
Some images from the Moral Sense Colloquium IV can be found HERE.
--2017-------------------
A one-day Moral Sense Colloquium took place at St. Francis College, Brooklyn, N.Y. on 2 June 2017. This was the third such colloquium and included a keynote speaker, a plenary address, and a series of break-out panels on various topics.
Keynote speaker: Robert Trivers, Ph.D. (Bio below). Reports on colloquium used #moralsense2017.
Keynote speaker: Robert Trivers, Ph.D. (Bio below). Reports on colloquium used #moralsense2017.
Colloquium Photos HERE
Full Program HERE
ASEBL Journal with selected, revised papers HERE
ASEBL Journal with selected, revised papers HERE
For many of you, Trivers needs no
introduction. Here is some information from his website RobertTrivers.com
“I have been an evolutionary biologist
since the fall of 1965 when I first learned that natural selection is the key
to understanding life and that it favors traits that give individuals an
advantage (in producing surviving offspring). Spring of 1966 I learned
Hamilton’s kinship theory, which extended one’s self-interest to include not
only one’s own offspring but also those of relatives, each devalued by the
appropriate degree of relatedness. I was eager to contribute to building social
theory based on natural selection, because a scientific system of social theory
must, by logic be based on natural selection, and getting the foundations correct
would have important implications for understanding our own psyches and social
systems. A general system of logic that applies to all creatures also vastly
extends the range of relevant evidence. I then published a series of papers on
social topics: reciprocal altruism (1971), parental investment and sexual
selection (1972), the sex ratio (1973), parent-offspring conflict (1974),
kinship and sex ratio in the social insects (1976), summarized in my book
Social Evolution (1985). [....] I devoted 1990 to 2005 to mastering
genetics, in particular Selfish Genetic Elements, which typically are harmful
to the organism as a whole but spread through within-individual genetic
conflict. They infect all known organisms, including ourselves, come in a zoo
of forms but can be understood by a logic of genetic conflict continuous with
the kind that operates at the individual level (with no internal conflict). [....]
Finally, I have recently attempted to master the scientific literature on
self-deception and to sketch out some of the many applications of the resulting
view.”
Early, Initial Colloquia____________________
I, April 2012, to mark opening of new science labs; II, 7 March 2014, on animal cognition featuring Dr. Diana Reiss and Julie Hecht as well as student panels.
__________________________________________________
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION Regarding Moral Sense Colloquia
Early, Initial Colloquia____________________
I, April 2012, to mark opening of new science labs; II, 7 March 2014, on animal cognition featuring Dr. Diana Reiss and Julie Hecht as well as student panels.
__________________________________________________
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION Regarding Moral Sense Colloquia
In
Darwin’s century, while Herbert Spencer and T.H. Huxley famously defended
Darwin’s ideas, they also confounded his notion of morality by pitting it
against nature (i.e., the flawed ideas of social Darwinism). After Darwin,
prominent biologists of the twentieth century have tackled the question of why
cooperation extends beyond kin: R. Haldane (in 1932) uses the term altruism; in the 1960s W.D Hamilton
addresses the evolution of social behavior, and George C. Williams writes of social donors; by 1971 R.L. Trivers pens his famous article on the
evolution of reciprocal altruism. Since then there has been a steady flow of
articles and books (popular and academic) on what it means to be moral (and
from whence such behavior arose). In his 1990 book Created from Animals, James Rachels argues that the notion of
dignity is a human creation devised only to elevate us above animals.
Philosophers (mostly British) of primarily the
eighteenth century, in reaction to a number of complex events – religious,
social, and scientific – of the seventeenth century, developed a notion of the
moral sense. These philosophers, working in an increasingly secular age, argue
very strongly that any human goodness was not bestowed from a divinity but was
driven by innate human feelings of benevolence or sympathy. Some have written
extensively about this very issue: from an evolutionary and biological
perspective, we do in fact have a so-called moral sense. Taking the lead from
the British Moralists, Darwin, in The
Descent of Man, has a chapter on moral faculties and employs the term moral
sense. There is a rich history of philosophy that focuses on morality and
ethics; now, science is helping us understand much better those concerns and
the connection of ancestral human caring to morality. Some psychologists help
us understand social-moral decision making in terms of our individual
biological construction. Some neuroscientists and biologists have written on
these controversial topics – i.e., the connection between the biology of the
brain and moral decisions or moral behavior.
