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Marc Hauser
July 18, 2008
Marc Hauser is a professor of
psychology and organismic and evolutionary biology at Harvard
University. He also co-directs Harvard's Mind, Brain & Behavior
Program and serves as director of the Cognitive Evolution Laboratory.
He teaches courses on evolution and human nature, the evolution
of communication, the biology of morality, and evolutionary ethics.
Through his research on social
cooperation, neuroscience, and primate behavior, Hauser believes
that evolution hardwired human beings to know right from wrong.
In his most recent book Moral Minds: How Nature Designed Our
Universal Sense of Right and Wrong (2006), he argues that millions
of years of natural selection have molded a universal moral grammar
within our brains that enables us to make rapid decisions about
ethical dilemmas.
Hauser has authored hundreds
of articles in scientific journals and has authored or co-authored
numerous books including The Evolution of Communication (1996);
Wild Minds: What Animals Really Think (2001); and From Monkey
Brain to Human Brain (2005). A forthcoming book entitled The
Minimalist Mind, co-authored with Noam Chomsky, is in preparation.
The recipient of a National
Science Foundation Young Investigator Award in 1993, Marc Hauser
was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2005. He has twice been
awarded the Harvard University Teaching Innovation Award, and
has been voted the University's most popular professor on two
occasions. |
