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Morality as Cognitive Scaffolding in the Nucleus of the Mesoamerican Cosmovision

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Empirically Engaged Evolutionary Ethics

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Abstract

The aim of this chapter is to investigate changes and continuities of human moral systems from an evolutionary and socio-historical perspective. Specifically, I will argue that these systems can be approached through the lens of non-genetic inheritance systems and niche construction. I will examine morality from a comparative socio-historical perspective. From this, I suggest that these inheritance systems are cognitively scaffolded, and that these scaffolds are part of the nucleus of the historical Mesoamerican cosmovision.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    I do not want to obviate the classic problems that evolutionary ethics has faced, i.e. the problem of the naturalist fallacy and the argument of the open question; different authors have contributed approaches that allow re-evaluating these problems (Baeten, 2012; Martínez, 2003; Sober, 1998); from these, my intention here is to explore other ways that would enrich the empirical investigation of human morality from a transdisciplinary perspective.

  2. 2.

    An analysis of how Gibson refined the concept of affordance can be found in Jones (2003).

  3. 3.

    Martínez (2003, p. 105) has explained that there are two notions of adaptation that have been widely used in philosophy of biology, one understood as functional responses of the organism to certain problems and the second characterized as historical, in which adaptation implies considering ontogenetic and ecological processes. The author also shows that traditionally the second meaning was reduced to the first; in this sense, what the defenders of NTC would understand by adaptation would be more attached to the second meaning, trying to avoid some type of functional reductionism, since the notion of ecological heritage implies taking into account that organisms modify niches and subsequent generations respond evolutionarily to that modification without necessarily reducing the notion of adaptation to a functional sphere.

  4. 4.

    Despite the fact that the cultures that developed in the Mesoamerican area went through various environmental pressures, archaeological evidence indicates that the cultivation of maize (Zea mays) was relevant for the development of a religious and calendar system around 900 B.C. (González-Torres, 2007) The historical evidence of the colonial period, and the ethnographic evidence of the twentieth century, shows great coherence with the archeological evidence, which has made it possible to establish a continuum around which different cultural expressions are manifested (Ayala Falcón, 1995; López Austin, 2006).

  5. 5.

    Unlike other parts of the world where archaeology is considered part of the history of art, in the academic tradition of the Americas, archaeology is part of anthropology.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), Mexico City, Mexico

    J. Alfredo Robles-Zamora

  2. Interdisciplinary Professional Unit in Energy and Mobility (UPIEM), National Polytechnic Institute (IPN), Mexico City, Mexico

    J. Alfredo Robles-Zamora

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  2. Danforth Chair in the Humanities, Saint Louis University, St. Louis, MO, USA

    Helen De Cruz

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Robles-Zamora, J.A. (2021). Morality as Cognitive Scaffolding in the Nucleus of the Mesoamerican Cosmovision. In: De Smedt, J., De Cruz, H. (eds) Empirically Engaged Evolutionary Ethics. Synthese Library, vol 437. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-68802-8_10

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