A Case for Inherent Morality

[John 6IX Breezy]

I still don't see the baby's action as moral. It could just as easily be pure self-interest. ("I want that puppet around in case I ever want Y.") But the fact that he could interpret something as helpful is a necessary step toward understanding morality. 

Here's one of the papers in question. I think it'll help put things in perspective: 

"The capacity to evaluate individuals by their social actions may also serve as a foundation for a developing system of moral cognition. Plainly, many aspects of a full-fledged moral system are beyond the grasp of the preverbal infant. Yet the ability to judge differentially those who perform positive and negative social acts may form an essential basis for any system that will eventually contain more abstract concepts of right and wrong."

As for pure self-interest, there might be some truth to that, but in one of the embedded videos in the CNN link there was one experiment in which the bad puppet had two cookies in front of him, and the good puppet only had one, and the babies still had a preference for the good puppet.