I have mentioned in a few blog posts and comments to readers that “morality is biology.” Thought I would be clearer.
Thinkers during the Enlightenment decided that people are not sin-prone or oriented toward evil. Instead, these thinkers focused on the human tendency toward sympathy. This is not to suggest humans are angels, but we’re not demons either.
Philosophers like David Hume, Adam Smith, and Rousseau led the charge in this direction and it just so turns out, they were on the right track. Our core sense of right and wrong (morality) is something you feel, not intellectually deduce. You see something terrible and you feel that it’s wrong; you do not intellectually interrogate it. You might do that later, but at the instant of seeing it, it’s felt
Modern scientists of various stripes have been substantiating what the Enlightenment had to say. I have posted a 60 Minutes clip below which looks at what research a group at Yale have been up to. They detect in babies and toddlers a preference for stuffed animals that behave well over stuffed animals that behave badly. It’s quite fascinating.
So, it looks like the Enlightenment was onto something. We are a cooperative species. And we have an inborn sense of right and wrong we did not get from our parents or religion. Those two played a role in your values, which are cultural. Values change place to place. Morality, on the other hand, doesn’t vary that much.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRvVFW85IcU
