Is There a Point To Living a Moral Life?

[max-greece]

"My description of how your emotions and rationality determine your inclinations was to show that we don't have any pre-programing that could serve as a fundamental basis for our ethics and morality. "

I am dying to know why you are so against this at a conceptual level.

In the meantime I have started to do a bit of research on the subject and there is a lot to follow up on:

Try this one : http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/c.../819.short - (Does morality have a biological basis? An empirical test of the factors governing moral sentiments relating to incest)

This one makes passing reference from what I can see : http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/jksadegh/...secure.pdf

But I haven't had time to read the whole thing.

http://www.nature.com/nrn/journal/v6/n10...n1768.html "Here, we propose a cognitive neuroscience view of how cultural and context-dependent knowledge, semantic social knowledge and motivational states can be integrated to explain complex aspects of human moral cognition."

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/art...5082920693

"Morality may be defined as the problem solving activities of a moral community, a primary group which uses a wide range of sanctions directly to reduce conflict, which also sanctions perceived causes of conflict, and defines and controls other deviances judged to be antisocial. So defined, morality is a precondition for law. In comparing human with non-human primates, conflict management is one of the most impressive parallels. This empirical parallel is built upon, to construct an evolutionary scenario for the development of morality and law in their proto-forms."

OK - I'm getting bored cutting and pasting. I Googled "evolutionary basis for morality." Knock yourself out.