Evolving Ethics: The New Science of Good and Evil - Softcover

"The authors clearly make a strong case for the usefulness of simulations as an experimental methodology... Examination of Aristotle's virtue ethics, Kant's categorical imperitavism, Socrates' consequentialism, Epicurus' hedonism (egoism) and utilitarianism, identifies act utilitarianism as the best (in this case) underlying theory for developing simulations that can be applied to the evolutionary ethics domain."

This book describes the application of Artificial Life simulation to evolutionary scenarios of wide ethical interest, including the evolution of altruism, rape and abortion, providing a new meaning to "experimental philosophy". The authors also apply evolutionary ALife techniques to explore contentious issues within evolutionary theory itself, such as the evolution of aging. They justify these uses of simulation in science and philosophy, both in general and in their specific applications here. Evolving Ethics will be of interest to researchers, enthusiasts, students and interested lay readers in the fields of Artificial Life, philosophy of science, ethics, agent- and individual-based modeling in ecology and the social sciences, computer simulation, evolutionary biology, evolutionary psychology and the social sciences.