Topic: Science & Religion
Quoting from the Bookshelf, a feature of American Scientist Online:
Widely known for his studies of animal cognition (see "What Do Animals Think About Numbers?" in the March-April 2000 American Scientist), Hauser has long been intrigued by the nature of human moral judgment (interested readers can take his Web-based Moral Sense Test). He says the human sense of right and wrong, which evolved over millions of years, precedes our conscious judgments and emotions, providing a hidden engine of moral intuition that's shared by people around the world. "Our moral instincts are immune to the explicitly articulated commandments handed down by religions and governments," he writes. "Sometimes our moral intuitions will converge with those that culture spells out, and sometimes they will diverge." In Moral Minds (Ecco) Hauser draws ideas from the social and natural sciences, philosophy and the law to support his own findings for an unconscious moral instinct.
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American Scientist Online managing editor Greg Ross interviewed Hauser by e-mail in July 2006.
