The Origins of Fairness

Nicolas Baumard is Research Scholar in the Department of Cognitive Sciences at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris.

This book offers a compelling account of the origins of morality. It makes an important contribution to the growing body of literature in the field of evolutionary ethics ... and will be of interest to anyone in the fields of evolutionary ethics and contractualism, as well as to students of ethics broadly construed.

• INTRODUCTION: Reconciling morality with the natural sciences Naturalism: The moral sense Contractualism: The social contract A naturalistic and contractualist theory of morality PART 1: THE MORAL SENSE Chapter 1: A mental organ 1. An autonomous disposition Moral judgments and moral intuitions Moral intuitions and moral ideas 2. A domain-specific disposition Morality, a passion among others The sense of honor 3. A universal disposition Variability as a product of the diversity of situations and beliefs Observed diversity and real diversity 4. An innate disposition 5. Non-intuitive moral judgments Chapter 2: A functional disposition 1. The competing passions 2. The moral sense and non-naturalistic theories The domain specificity of moral judgments The innateness of moral judgments 3. The moral sense as adaptation Functionality and modularity Efficient causes and final causes PART 2: MORALITY AS FAIRNESS Chapter 3: From cooperation to morality 1. A naturalistic contractualism 2. From the cooperation market to the sense of fairness The cooperation market Cooperation market theory vs. other mutualistic theories Manipulation on the cooperation market The cooperation market in the ancestral environment 3. The sense of fairness The example of reciprocity and justice Moral rectitude, or fairness in general Fairness and power relationships Framing effects Chapter 4: Moral principles and the sense of fairness 1. Getting past principles 2. The mutualistic logic of moral dilemmas Actions and omissions The trolley dilemma A mutualistic analysis of the trolley problem Utilitarian interpretations of the trolley problem 3. Principles and justice Chapter 5 A cognitive approach to the moral sense 1. A contract without negotiations: Morality and theory of mind The importance of others: Mental states vs. interests Consent has no moral value A mutualistic approach to responsibility 2. The evaluation of individual interests Intuitive axiology and the moral sense Victimless crimes Roles and statuses Moral differences between the sexes 3. The limits of the moral community The proper and actual domains of the moral sense The variability of the actual domain 4. Disposition and micro-dispositions PART 3: MORALITY AS SACRIFICE Chapter 6 Mutualistic morality and utilitarian morality 1. Utilitarian morality and group selection 2. Utilitarian societies? Observed utilitarianism and real utilitarianism Collectivism and utilitarianism Social institutions and moral interactions 3. Utilitarian judgments? Distributive justice Retributive justice Supererogatory actions Moral dilemmas 4. Economic games The ecological validity of economic games Economic games: moral situations A mutualistic analysis of economic games Chapter 7: Punishment: useless and uncertain 1. A marginal practice in non-state societies 2. Revenge, ostracism and self-defense: punishments? 3. A simple question of duty A mutualistic analysis of apparently punitive actions Punishment in economic games 4. Retributive justice and penal systems PART 4: MORALITY AS EXCELLENCE Chapter 8: Mutualistic morality and virtue morality 1. Sympathy The three faces of Adam Smith Of sympathy and the other social sentiments 2. The parental instinct 3. Disgust 4. The virtues Chapter 9: On the "state of nature" 1. Morality in animals Morality: one disposition among many Primate morality: reality or anthropomorphism? 2. Morality and social cognition Understanding others to communicate Communicating to cooperate CONCLUSION 1. The steps in the argument 2. The scientific implications of a mutualistic theory 3. The practical implications of mutualistic theory References