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Sanders Foundation. Or. It is natural for us to use ethical concepts in our everyday lives, to hold a person

responsible for their actions for example to praise or blame them. But when did humans first start using

ethical talk and how did this arise? Philip Pettit has a story. A useful story he says even if it's not true.

Philip Pettit, welcome to Philosophy Bites.

Thank you very much. The topic we're going to focus on is the birth of ethics.

Now before we get on to the birth, perhaps we could just clarify what is ethics.

Well, what I'm thinking of ethics is the best thing I can contrast it with is just altruistic behavior.

It's more than altruistic behavior.

I mean, animals of all kinds display altruistic behavior.

We now have many evolutionary explanations of that. But when you've got ethics, certainly people

remove by ethics are going to behave in good part in many contexts in an altruistic way,

...