The development of evolutionary theory over the last twenty years has provided social researchers with a conceptual and theoretical toolkit that was inaccessible to the traditional moral philosopher. Our project aims to contribute to the contemporary critical debate over the attempts to model the emergence of interaction norms in an evolutionary fashion. Our theoretical approach follows three main research directions.

First, we will contribute to the critical analysis of the logical and conceptual presuppositions that underlie recent evolutionary models of norm emergence.

Secondly, the project aims to investigate and classify the contemporary developments in social sciences that make use of such models. Our hypothesis is that we witness one of the rare moments of convergence in the history of science when political theorists, moral philosophers and social scientists have at their disposal the same set of theoretical instruments and obtain complementary results.

Thirdly, the project tries to explore the philosophical implications of the possibility to achieve a rigorous model of norm emergence in the context of dynamic and complex interactions such as those that take place in virtual environments.