SOCIOBIOLOGIJA I "SEBIČNI GEN"
SOCIOBIOLOGY AND THE "SELFISH GENE". MORALITY AND ETHICS FROM THE VIEWPOINT OF CONTEMPORARY BIOLOGY

Summary/Abstract: Sociobiology, the recent variant of researching behaviour on an evolutionary-theoretical basis, has set itself the task to explore these evolutionary foundations of human morality. The starting point of sociobiology is the phenomenon of human altruism. From the evolutionary-theoretical perspective altruist behaviour can originate and survive if it contributes to the further transmission of genes encoding this behaviour. The main authors of sociobiology, E.O. Wilson and R. Dawkins are trying to "biologise" ethics. They want not only to explain the biological functions of ethics, but also to attach ethics completely to biology and with the help of the theory of evolution give ethics a new natural-science foundation. Sociobiologists draw on the fact that the ability of ethical behaviour has manifested itself as evolutionary adaptable, therefore useful. Morality is a refined trick of the genes, which grant people what is required of it, in other words, to effectively reproduce. Radical naturalism, as represented by sociobiologists, no longer recognises any values, because good and evil are only the result of human imagination. All that is supposedly moral is ultimately a function of gene-egoistical strategies.

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