Re: [asa] An Evolutionary Theory of Right and Wrong

Game theoretic group selection theories and monkey social practices
are all
very interesting. So how does this relate, say, to the problem of human
trafficking? According to U.S. Department of Justice statistics,
nearly a
million people are trafficked across international borders *every
year*. (http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/ovc/ncvrw/2005/pg5l.html)
A million people sold as slaves every year, right now, and that's a
conservative estimate. Most of those slaves are women and children,
and a
large percentage of them are forced into prostitution.

Think about this for a minute. People today are selling huge numbers of
children as slaves so that other people can pay money to rape them. And
that's just one pixel in the big picture of human depravity.

How does a prisoner's dilemma game about altruism, or a bunch of
monkeys who
share their food, inform us about problems like human trafficking? What
binding "oughts" can we derive from such (questionable) "is" statements?
How does an evolutionary theory of morality lead to a theory of law and
justice that supports legal / government / military action against human
trafficking?

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Received on Wed Nov 1 10:44:44 2006