PHIL 2070 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Group Conflict, Sexual Coercion, Environmentalism

• School: University of Guelph
• Department: Philosophy
• Course: PHIL 2070
• Professor: S Linquist

Document Summary

Week 3: darwinizing the land ethic & a tension with animal welfare theory. P2)if humans were selected in ancestral environments to cooperate with members of the same social group, then they should cooperate with any new type of individual that is recognized as a member of some contemporary community. Converging lines of evidence suggest that reproductive benefits are associated with in-group cooperation. Periods in history where some groups form some sort of alliance, but may be also the two groups that have a war between each other later on in a different time period. Archaeological record: lots of focus is put on upper paleolithic, human material culture exploded. This is strong evidence for social learning and cultural transmission. Some argue that it provides indirect evidence for cooperation. There was an explosion of culture, or at least culture was being retained and passed on from that point on. Evidence of high level of cooperation (food sharing norms, punishment of cheater).