Hauser, Marc D.

Marc D. Hauser (1959-) is an American evolutionary biologist and psychologist whose work on moral psychology has implications for religious ethics and the origin of moral intuitions often attributed to divine sources. In Moral Minds: How Nature Designed Our Universal Sense of Right and Wrong (2006), Hauser argued for an innate moral faculty analogous to Chomsky's universal grammar, suggesting that humans possess evolved moral intuitions independent of religious instruction. This naturalistic account of morality challenged traditional theological views that ground ethics in divine command or religious revelation. His research proposed that moral judgments arise from unconscious, automatic processes shaped by evolution rather than conscious reasoning or religious teaching. Though his later career was marred by research misconduct allegations, Hauser's work significantly influenced debates about whether morality requires God and contributed to evolutionary explanations of ethical behavior that compete with religious accounts.