The Pleistocene Social Contract with Kim Sterelny

In the CAVE: An ethics podcast, is back with Season 3 of the show. Join your hosts, Professor Paul Formosa and Distinguished Professor Wendy Rogers, along with guest host Associate Professor Mark Alfano, from the Macquarie University Research Centre for Agency, Values and Ethics (or CAVE) as they explore a range of philosophical topics focused on the question of how we can live well as moral agents in an ethically complex world.  Most of us trust our families and friends, at least most of the time. But we also sometimes trust mere acquaintances and even total strangers. When you board a plane, you trust the pilot and crew to keep you alive. When you undergo surgery, you trust the surgeon, anaesthesiologist, and nurses to keep you alive. The scale and ease of trust in humans far outstrips that of our closest evolutionary cousins, such as chimpanzees. Join host A/Prof Mark Alfano and guest Professor Kim Sterelny as they discuss the evolutionary and cultural underpinning of human hyper-sociality. This podcast discusses Kim's recent book, The Pleistocene Social Contract: Culture and Cooperation in Human Evolution, 2021, Oxford University Press. You can read more of his work here: Sterelny, K. (2016). Cooperation, culture, and conflict. The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science; Sterelny, K. (2022). Further thoughts on hierarchy and inequality. Mind & Language, 37(4), 760-768. Produced by Piccolo Podcasts See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.