Author: Doug Mann
Doug Mann, PhD, is an experimental psychologist and former medical school professor. Research on empathy in the doctor-patient relationship led to his post-retirement interest in moral psychology and the evolution of morality.
A Humanistic Alternative to the Failed and Misleading Concept of ‘Objective Morality’
This article begins with a critique of four propositions—one that is religious and three that are philosophical—that summarize many failed attempts to define and defend the existence of “objective morality.” After explaining the linguistic trap that objective morality presents for secular humanists, I will propose a replacement for the illusory goal of objective morality in …
The Science of the Evolution of Morality
Since Charles Darwin published The Descent of Man, his second major book about evolution, in 1871, researchers have made many discoveries that flesh out Darwin’s little-known ideas about the evolution of morality. Recent papers in Free Inquiry by Ronald Lindsay and James Hughes have touched briefly on the evolution of morality, but there’s much more …