Did The Great Conversation About Right & Wrong have a beginning; or has it always been going on? What is the relationship between moral systems and genetic dispositions? Is there any at all or is moralit
y something that humans invented, which would mean there was a time when humans had no morality? Or is it both/and–are our moral systems both grounded in the genetic code that makes us human and the products of social construction?
I find the evidence supporting a genetic disposition to develop moral systems compelling. For thousands of years, smart people have noticed a universality to core principles of moral systems: All societies prohibit murder (of people within the community). Lying, cheating, stealing, promise breaking (again, within the community)–these are pretty much cons
idered wrong everywhere and at all times. Philosophers call this side of morality natural law. No written rules are necessary. You know without being told that it is wrong to kill your brother–and so does every other human who has ever lived. Cain knew it was wrong to kill Abel even though Moses had not yet brought the law down from Mount Sinai. At least, so have Western philosophers believed for thousands of years–a belief that itself is evidence of a universal moral foundation.
We also have large amounts of evidence that our primate cousins also display a sense of morality, if not moral systems. Frans de Waal and his colleagues at the Living Links Center for the Advanced Study of Ape and Human Evolution have spent decades studying how chimpanzees, kapuchin monkeys, and other primates relate to each other, in the process revealing behavioral patterns that are distinctly moral. Jane Goodall and her successors found similar evidence of a basic moral foundation among the chimpanzees they studied in Africa.
Jonathan Haidt and others working on the Moral Foundations project believe they have isolated six continua of universal morality: 1) Care/harm, 2) Fairness/cheating, 3) Loyalty/betrayal, 4) Authority/subversion, 5) Sanctity/degradation, and 6) Liberty/oppression.
Others are contributing to our knowledge about our evolutionary disposition to morality as well.
Some resources for further study and exploration:
Michael Palmer, The Moral Faculty
Leonard D. Katz (ed.), Evolutionary Origins of Morality: Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives.
Richard D. Alexander, The Biology of Moral Systems
Christopher Boehm, Moral Origins: The Evolution of Virtue, Altruism, and Shame.
Living Links Center for the Study of Ape and Human Evolution