Abstract
In this chapter, we advance the concept of “evolutionary awareness,” a metacognitive framework that examines human thought and emotion from a naturalistic, evolutionary perspective. We begin by discussing the evolution and current functioning of the moral foundations on which our framework rests. Next, we discuss the possible applications of such an evolutionarily informed ethical framework to several domains of human behavior: sexual maturation, mate attraction, intrasexual competition, culture, and the separation between various academic disciplines. Finally, we discuss ways in which an evolutionary awareness can inform our cross-generational activities—which we refer to as “intergenerational extended phenotypes”—by helping us to construct a better future for ourselves, for other sentient beings, and for our environment.
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Notes
- 1.
This is not just metaphorical; humans may be employing some of the same neuronal pathways during both their experience of past memories and their imagining of possible futures (Botzung, Denkova, & Manning, <CitationRef CitationID="CR14" >2008</Citation Ref>; Schacter, Addis, & Buckner, <CitationRef CitationID="CR94" >2007</Citation Ref>).
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Gorelik, G., Shackelford, T.K. (2016). Evolutionary Awareness: A Metacognitive Framework for Ethics. In: Shackelford, T., Hansen, R. (eds) The Evolution of Morality. Evolutionary Psychology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-19671-8_4
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