(June 19, 2021 at 4:33 pm)JohnJubinsky Wrote: I think that morality is inherent for the simple reason that I believe it became inborn through the process of natural selection. That is, I believe there was a time when morality was not particularly inherent. However, I believe that at that time those who preferred to be good were better equipped to survive. That is, I believe that they were better able to work together to care for their young and each other, to hunt and gather, to build and manufacture, and to defend themselves. I believe that this lead to them becoming more numerous and prosperous than those who did not prefer to be good and that they eventually eliminated in self-defense a great many of those who did not prefer to be good. I believe that over time, as the good parented the overwhelming majority of children they passed on to them the genes that made them prefer to be good in the first place. I believe that this resulted in the vast majority of people today having an inborn feeling that it is right to be good and wrong to be bad.
On a related topic:
I think that MATH came about due to a process of natural selection. It gave our species greater viability to be able to count berries or numbers of antelope in herds. Beforehand, there was a time in our species when math was not particularly inherent.... maybe a vague ability to distinguish large numbers of things from small ones. But then the sense developed. And it became the case that those who could do basic math were better equipped to survive. Hominids who could do basic math could make better judgments concerning hunting and gathering... judgments which, in a harsh environment, meant the difference between survival and demise.
All this math has in common with morality. But I would add something else. Just like we can figure out advanced mathematics, we can do the same with morality. Our moral feelings are only the "nub" a greater possible moral sense. A sense based on reason... not emotion. And (I would add) just like with math, perhaps it is possible for us to get to get moral problems wrong. (Just like we can make mistakes in addition and subtraction.) After all, we do not have an innate sense of long division. We have the ability to compute basic numbers and we must learn how to do the rest.
I find many more similarities with math and morality too. If, tomorrow, every human being were to disappear from existence, so would morality.... and math.
So, in the end, I agree with your evolutionary history of morality. But i disagree that evolution furnished us with the beginning, middle, and end of morality through natural selection alone. We figured out the rest through reasoning.
