Kristen Renwick Monroe is Professor of Political Science and Philosophy at University of California-Irvine. She is the author of Heart of Altruism and The Hand of Compassion (2004).

• Introduction 1 Evolutionary Biology and the Origin of Morality 2 Creating New Paradigms in Political Science: The Case of Biology and Politics 3 “The Aesthetics of Reason”: Exploring the Psychology of Virtue 4 About Race and Politics 5 On Ethics and Economics 6 Economics, Policy, and the Public Good 7 The Ethics and Politics of Preventing Political Violence 8 About Law and Justice 9 Ethics and Individual Freedom

“This work is presented with the intention of demonstrating the contributions that scientific thought can make to the study of ethics. Monroe (director of the Ethics Center at the U of California at Irvine) presents nine papers, each of which is paired with a conversation/interview with one of the paper’s authors addressing the broader scientific-ethical issues raised by the paper in question. Topics include the roots of morality in evolutionary biology, the psychology of virtue, the ‘morla conundrum of blurred racial boundaries,’ the economic responsibility of parents to children, economics and climate change, ethical and scientific considerations of traumatic stress in the international context, ethics and the policy of extraordinary rendition, and gender equality in academia.” –-Eithne O’Leyne, August 2011 Reference and Research Book News "This is a fascinating interdisciplinary conversation between distinguished scholars. If you are interested in the relation between science and ethics, this book will provide rich food for thought." -Brian Skyrms, University of California—Irvine and Stanford University