Insofar as economists acknowledge that fairness is relevant to their subject, they commonly respond by writing a taste for fairness into the preferences of the agents who inhabit their models, thereby finessing the question of why the agents should care about fairness at all. Binmore proposes an alternative theory in which fairness is seen as evolution's solution to the unavoidable equilibrium selection problem that arises when people interact on an ongoing basis. Why is it useful to try and understand how and why such fairness norms solve the small-scale social problems for which they evolved? Because we may thereby learn how to use the same fairness norms to help solve the large-scale social problems with which we are currently faced. Kenneth Binmore is Professor Emeritus of Economics at University College London. He has made important contributions to the foundations of game theory, evolutionary game theory, experimental economics and analytical philosophy. The event addresses a specialized as well as a general audience.