It seems to be the case that morality has a biological - or evolutionary - origin. Other animals exhibit morality, or at least proto-morality. In other words, the moral sense, or what David Hume and Adam Smith called sympathy (and which we would call empathy) is an evolved trait, like hunger and horniness. It exists in all humans, and it has been recorded that tribes in Africa and on some Pacific islands who still live on the Stone Age level in technology operate around very similar social contracts, despite there being no shortage of cultural differences between them.

Yet we can observe that what is considered moral and immoral (what Dawkins calls "the moral zeitgeist") changes with the times. For instance, it was only in the 19th century that we got a real anti-slavery movement. Brilliant minds before then questioned many common beliefs, but the justice of slavery was usually not among what was questioned. Some still consider it to be an acceptable practice.

Likewise, homosexuality has gradually come to be considered more acceptable. In ancient cultures, it was viewed in different ways. Some might think that intolerance of homosexuality came with the Abrahamic religions, but reality begs to differ. Homosexual relationships were prohibitted in ancient Athens, though homosexual acts were permitted. In other words, gay marriage was not for the ancient Athenians. The Roman historian Tacitus in his book Germania (ca 98 CE) records how the Germanic peoples put homosexuals to death. Yet now, the trend is towards acceptance of homosexuality, at least in the developed world.

I think you see my point. Simply put, what account for the differences in morality, and the changes of what is considered moral and immoral, if all of humanity (except psychopaths) have inherited the same moral sense from our evolutionary history? Evolutionary speaking, humans today and 2000 years ago are not significantly different.

First of all I'd have to say that nothing is determined. It was not a necessary outcome that we would achieve X system of morality, so there is not necessarily something we can point to and say 'that' is what accounts for differences in particular expressions of morality. There may well be elements of environmental determinism as a raw source of diversity. Ultimately though, all the historical tribal systems of society feeding into different traditions with all the lost personalities of prehistory are impossible to ever list like a recipe.

However, I think the current shifts can be better accounted for in terms of massive population increases and globalism.

The vast population growth this century means there are more subcultures where one can actually find like-minded people, so these groups are able to define themselves as a distinct group rather than as 'abberations' to homogenous smaller populations.

In our hunter-gatherer past, we may have only ever met a few other tribes which may even have had some historic inter-marriages. As we moved towards sedentary societies and perhaps more defined sets of moral systems, we still had a very limited suite of other people we came into contact with, and our mutual history meant that ideas had passed back and forth for generations. In the modern world, we have been exposed to an incredible diversity of other moral positions on practically every aspect of thought. Things we have probably taken for granted for millenia are 'suddenly' being contradicted by groups of people in another part of the planet.

I think these account for the great shifts in 'western' morality over the last couple of centuries.

Hugin wrote:It seems to be the case that morality has a biological - or evolutionary - origin. Other animals exhibit morality, or at least proto-morality. In other words, the moral sense, or what David Hume and Adam Smith called sympathy (and which we would call empathy) is an evolved trait, like hunger and horniness.

I'm skeptical of this premise.

Mr.Samsa wrote:

Hugin wrote:It seems to be the case that morality has a biological - or evolutionary - origin. Other animals exhibit morality, or at least proto-morality. In other words, the moral sense, or what David Hume and Adam Smith called sympathy (and which we would call empathy) is an evolved trait, like hunger and horniness.

I'm skeptical of this premise.

How come Mr. Samsa?

Our neural structure is tied to our sense of empathy in this study here:

http://www2.unipr.it/~gallese/Gallese%202001.pdf

Although this isn't well sustantiated in other primates, as shown in this wikipaedia article.

Stephanie Preston and Frans de Waal,[33] Jean Decety,[34][35] and Vittorio Gallese[36][37] have independently argued that the mirror neuron system is involved in empathy. A large number of experiments using functional MRI, electroencephalography (EEG) and magnetoencephalography (MEG) have shown that certain brain regions (in particular the anterior insula, anterior cingulate cortex, and inferior frontal cortex) are active when people experience an emotion (disgust, happiness, pain, etc.) and when they see another person experiencing an emotion.[38][39][40][41][42][43][44] However, these brain regions are not quite the same as the ones which mirror hand actions, and mirror neurons for emotional states or empathy have not yet been described in monkeys.

Mr.Samsa wrote:

Hugin wrote:It seems to be the case that morality has a biological - or evolutionary - origin. Other animals exhibit morality, or at least proto-morality. In other words, the moral sense, or what David Hume and Adam Smith called sympathy (and which we would call empathy) is an evolved trait, like hunger and horniness.

I'm skeptical of this premise.

I would say our capacity for morality is biological. There is no no doubt of this. But I think morality can be divided up into at least two types. One is based on social norms (non biological) and the other on empathy (biological). Sometimes these two are in conflict, where social norms single out a minority group within the community.

Bribase wrote:How come Mr. Samsa?

Just simply that given the shared environmental factors that are common across all social animals, it seems unlikely that any experiment has been able to successfully separate evolutionary effects from learnt effects - especially given the rather young state of evolutionary psychology. (I feel like an asshole pimping my own posts, but I outlined some of my issues with Evolutionary Psychology in the science writing competition here, if you wanted a more detailed answer for why I'm skeptical).

Bribase wrote:Our neural structure is tied to our sense of empathy in this study here:

http://www2.unipr.it/~gallese/Gallese%202001.pdf

Although this isn't well sustantiated in other primates, as shown in this wikipaedia article.

Stephanie Preston and Frans de Waal,[33] Jean Decety,[34][35] and Vittorio Gallese[36][37] have independently argued that the mirror neuron system is involved in empathy. A large number of experiments using functional MRI, electroencephalography (EEG) and magnetoencephalography (MEG) have shown that certain brain regions (in particular the anterior insula, anterior cingulate cortex, and inferior frontal cortex) are active when people experience an emotion (disgust, happiness, pain, etc.) and when they see another person experiencing an emotion.[38][39][40][41][42][43][44] However, these brain regions are not quite the same as the ones which mirror hand actions, and mirror neurons for emotional states or empathy have not yet been described in monkeys.

The first problem is that mirror neurons are still are rather dubious notion. Nevermind more complicated aspects like empathy, we're still struggling to consistently demonstrate that the same areas of the brain light up when viewing an action like pulling a lever.

Secondly, of course our neural structure is tied to empathy. Whatever behavior, thought or belief we hold, we can find neural structures for them. Unless we are dualists and believe there is some kind of disembodied mind floating around, this is necessarily true as everything must have its basis in the brain. But the brain and its very structures are shaped by our ongoing experiences and thoughts, and the changes that occur throughout our lifetime are irrelevant to evolutionary processes (since they aren't tied to our genes or evolutionary fitness). So we can find things like the "Grandma centre of the brain" which lights up when we think of our grandma, but that doesn't mean it's evolutionary or innate.

In addition to the discussion on mirror neurons still being somewhat controversial, the authors also note Theory of Mind in there as a demonstration of an innate characteristic. However, it takes us years to learn Theory of Mind, and instead the determining factor simply seems to be related to a general intelligence or cognitive capabilities rather than a specific ToM module in the brain. This is why the mirror test isn't recognised as a valid tool any more, as all that is required to pass the test is a specific learning history and there is nothing particularly special needed in the animal (except of course basic things like decent eyesight, adequate intelligence, etc).

This obviously doesn't mean that empathy (or ToM) necessarily aren't innate evolutionary traits, but just that I don't think we have anywhere near enough evidence to make a claim like that - at least not as definitively as the OP described it.

CdesignProponentsist wrote:I would say our capacity for morality is biological. There is no no doubt of this.

Agreed. If we weren't capable of it, then we obviously couldn't do it.

CdesignProponentsist wrote:But I think morality can be divided up into at least two types. One is based on social norms (non biological) and the other on empathy (biological). Sometimes these two are in conflict, where social norms single out a minority group within the community.

Hmm.. if we accept the biological nature of empathy then I'd imagine that it would work as the basis for which the social aspect grows on, I'm not sure the two could really be "in conflict". I think the kind of conflict you're describing there is simply a conflict of two general rules we have, like "be kind to your fellow man" and "try not to go against the grain/try to fit in". The idea that our "conscious" processes can be in conflict with our "unconscious" processes just seems a little too Freudian to me (although I know that's not exactly what you were suggesting).

Spearthrower wrote:
The vast population growth this century means there are more subcultures where one can actually find like-minded people, so these groups are able to define themselves as a distinct group rather than as 'abberations' to homogenous smaller populations.

This is an interesting take, Spearthrower. I like it. I was thinking on the lines of population growth as well, but more in the sense that as groups got larger, this has changed the game completely - qualitatively, not quantitatively, since you can't regulate social relations in, say, a city the same way you do in an extended family. So new problems required new solutions, again and again, and I imagine we got them by tweaking previous ones until they worked, so that too would account for different traditions.

Hugin wrote:I think you see my point. Simply put, what account for the differences in morality, and the changes of what is considered moral and immoral, if all of humanity (except psychopaths) have inherited the same moral sense from our evolutionary history? Evolutionary speaking, humans today and 2000 years ago are not significantly different.

I didn't see this earlier, but the whole problem is assuming that if there is a biological basis for morality, then specific morals "must be" innate in us. This certainly isn't the case, it's not like we have an innate moral imperative to help old ladies across the street, or to share our toys, instead if there were a biological basis for it then it would be a very simple form of the golden rule where it feels good to help someone who might help you in the future.

The actual moral rules we hold are like the variables that are put into the skeleton of the biological basis of morality. As such, as the environmental variables change, the output from our moral equation changes. So even if morality was a biological module in the brain, subject to evolutionary pressures, we don't need changes in genetics to produce changes in morality because the environment changes our brain anyway. In other words, genetic determinism isn't true in this strict sense. For example, autism is thought to be primarily or largely a genetic disorder, but all the "symptoms" can be completely reverted through therapy and training.

Wealth. The richer we are, the nicer we are to others.

Just a thought, but probably correlates pretty well with different nations now and throughout history.

I think it would useful to find something that everyone agrees is bad. Moral conflict seems to undermine morals because it suggests a fatal state of impermanence unable to be put intio the category of objective or true.

It's rather like music appreciation. You can't force someone to like a peice of music or have the same experience as you regardless of arguments or objective facts about the structure of the music.

I don't think our moral sense is neccessarily good in its own right either it can cause excess guilt and be associated with predjudice and retributive tactics.

Andrew4Handel wrote:I think it would useful to find something that everyone agrees is bad. Moral conflict seems to undermine morals because it suggests a fatal state of impermanence unable to be put intio the category of objective or true.

Golden rule: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Golden_Rule

'objective' and 'truth' are highly problematic when it comes to discussing morality. They're best saved for the simplification of religious beliefs.

Instead, I think we need to look at a Rawls style 'veil of ignorance'.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veil_of_ignorance

The veil of ignorance and original position are concepts introduced by John Rawls in A Theory of Justice.[1][2] It is a method of determining the morality of a certain issue (e.g. slavery) based upon the following principle: imagine that societal roles were completely re-fashioned and redistributed, and that from behind the veil of ignorance, one does not know what role they will be reassigned. Only then can one truly consider the morality of an issue.

Why is me doing X wrong? Because if society was refashioned to have me on the receiving end of X, I wouldn't consider it just.