(June 19, 2021 at 7:18 pm)Belacqua Wrote:(June 19, 2021 at 6:20 pm)JohnJubinsky Wrote: Certainly people are also taught to be good but my experience has been that young children are happy innocent things. There is no doubt that they are broadly viewed this way by society.
Have you ever read about Noam Chomsky's views on language acquisition?
His studies show that newborn children have no language, but they have a strong active tendency to pick up a language. There is a kind of space or structure in the mind which is there for language, and it gets filled up fast. After a short time if they don't have a language it would be some kind of disability.
My suspicion is that morality works the same way. It is natural to be born without morality, but it is unnatural to stay without one for very long. And as with language, the morality you pick up is the one you see around you as a little kid.
The problem that I have with that is that I have seen a lot of uncaring parents but their young children are still happy innocent things for a significant period after they are born. I am not saying that all children are born good. I'm saying most are because they are genetically predisposed to it. (Of course not all would be genetically predisposed to it.)