To appear in Heams et al. (eds.), Handbook of Evolutionary Biology (provis. Title), Springer.

Please do not quote without permission. This is not the final version

programmes and they hardly ever touch on concrete issues such as GM foods, euthanasia or eugenics. It is probably their awareness of the eugenicist derivations of the Nineteenth and Twentieth centuries that motivates their extremely prudent behaviour towards applied ethics. The three other domains are, on the other hand, largely covered by EE. We can note a particular passion for metaethical questions (Casebeer 2003, Gibbard 1990, Joyce 2006, Prinz 2007, Rottshaefer 1998, Ruse 1986 etc.). These questions are very abstract; for example, there is the question whether moral properties exist independently of the subjectivity of subjects or whether they are the simple product of a projection of our minds; one asks in what sense one can speak of moral knowledge, of true moral assertions, etc. The (analytic style) debates are particularly technical and unfortunately distorted by an incessant influx of new terms and definitions. A whole article would be needed to outline the essentials; for this reason, I will bricks21. allow myself the liberty of passing over this area of research like a cat on hot It is, however, useful to mention that the work of evolutionary ethicists in metaethics does not seem to have advanced the debates very much, at least not as much as one might have hoped. In concrete terms, nearly the entire range of imaginable metaethical positions has been defended with the help of evolutionary arguments. While this new approach may have the virtue of bringing supplementary arguments to the debate, for all that, it does not permit all the protagonists to agree on a sole solution. The two areas to which it is worth devoting most time are those of descriptive ethics and normative ethics. Let us see if the evolutionary approach is useful at these two levels.

- 5. Explanations of the genesis of morality

Anthropological research indicates that all human societies possess morality in some form or another (Brown 1991, Roberts 1979). This universal presence of morality within humanity invites the thought that it is, in some way or another, profoundly anchored in our nature. If we add to this the idea that morality is the result of a natural process of evolution, we naturally end up with attempts to explain this phenomenon in terms of adaptation and selective advantages. From an evolutionary point of view, moral behaviour generally translates into individual investment in favour of the wellbeing and interests of other individuals or of the entire community. Since, at first glance, morality seems costly at the individual level, in the eyes of an evolutionary thinker, it comes partially under the question of the emergence of altruistic and highly cooperative behaviour among social species in general. In the evolutionary sciences, it is always a challenge to explain how a behaviour that is costly for the individual was able to evolve. This problem also crops up in the animal world. Thus, before looking at the question of the genesis of actual morality, it is worth taking a small detour via the social animals with an eye to understanding the mechanisms that underlie altruism and mutual help among these species.

In the biological world, we can observe that certain bees are capable of sacrificing their lives by stinging a predator that is approaching the nest; we can equally observe marmots stay on watch for the arrival of eagles for hours, ready to alert their conspecifics as soon as one comes; this allows them to graze in security. The existence of such behavioural traits poses a challenge for biologists because they seem to defy the logic of the theory of natural selection. In fact, from an evolutionary point of view,

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