Dorcas Cummings Lecture
- Patricia Smith Churchland
Dr. Patricia Churchland presented the Dorcas Cummings lecture entitled “The Brains Behind Morality” to friends and neighbors of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and Symposium participants on Saturday, May 31, 2014. Dr. Churchland is Professor Emerita of Philosophy at the University of California, San Diego, and an adjunct Professor at the Salk Institute.
This extract was created in the absence of an abstract.
It's a great, great pleasure to be at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and a special honor to be speaking to the wider community of Cold Spring Harbor.
Today, I want to talk a little bit about morality. I'm going to begin with thinking in the normal way that we do about natural selection. What we know, of course, is that animals who are well-adapted to the particular environment they live in, if they can compete and prosper in that environment, are more likely to pass on their genes. Those who do not do so well will not pass …
