Gabriele De Anna

Evolutionary Ethics and Contemporary Biology

Introduction Giovanni Boniolo and Gabriele De Anna Part I. The Limits of Evolutionary Explanations and Justifications of Ethics: 1. Is Darwinian metaethics possible (and if it is, is it well taken)? Michael Ruse 2. The descent of instinct and the ascent of ethics Giovanni Boniolo Part II. Methodological Issues Concerning Evolutionary Accounts of Ethics: 3. Are human beings parts of the rest of nature? Christopher Lang, Elliot Sober and Karen Strier 4. The nature of resemblance, homologies in the nervous system, and behavior correspondence Aldo Fasolo Part III. How Biological Results Can Help Explaining Morally Relevant Human Capacities: 5. Genetic influences on moral capacity, what genetic mutants can teach us Giovanni Boniolo and Paolo Vezzoni 6. Evolutionary pharmacology, mental disorders, and ethical behaviour Stefano Canali, Gabriele De Anna and Luca Pani 7. The biology of human culture and ethics: an evolutionary perspective Stefano Parmigiani, Gabriele De Anna, Danilo Mainardi and Paola Palanza Part IV. How Biological Results Can Help Explain Moral Systems: 8. Biology to ethics: an evolutionists view of human nature Francisco Ayala 9. Between fragile altruism and morality: human evolution and the emergence of normative guidance Philip Kitcher 10. Will genomics do more for metaphysics than Locke? Alex Rosenberg Index.

Libertarian paternalism and health care policy: a deliberative proposal

Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler have been arguing for what they named libertarian paternalism (henceforth LP). Their proposal generated extensive debate as to how and whether LP might lead down a full-blown paternalistic slippery slope. LP has the indubitable merit of having hardwired the best of the empirical psychological and sociological evidence into public and private policy making. It is unclear, though, to what extent the implementation of policies so constructed could enhance the capability for the exercise of an autonomous citizenship. Sunstein and Thaler submit it that in most of the cases in which one is confronted with a set of choices, some default option must be picked out. In those cases whoever devises the features of the set of options ought to rank them according to the moral principle of non-maleficence and possibly to that of beneficence. In this paper we argue that LP can be better implemented if there is a preliminary deliberative debate among the stakeholders that elicits their preferences, and makes it possible to rationally defend them.

The four faces of omission

In this paper, the ontological, terminological, epistemological, and ethical aspects of omission are considered in a coherent and balanced framework, based on the idea that there are omissions which are actions and omissions which are non-actions. In particular, we suggest that the approach to causation which best deals with omission is Mackies INUS conditional proposal. We argue that omissions are determined partly by the ontological conditional structure of reality, and partly by the interests, beliefs, and values of observers. The final upshot is that moral judgments involved in cases of omissions cannot be grounded on, but are the ground for judgments about what INUS conditions count as omissions.