I see. So morality involves a choice but at the same time has to be commanded by higher authorities with threat of punishment to enforce it? That doesn't sound like choice to me.
i specifically said morality can have components of secular thought and non-secular. You are the fundamentalist here, not me. The chemicals in your brain are far more powerful than a threat of punishment could be to control you. People here should know enough about biology not to even need a reference for that. You can't even admit that choice is being limited or directed in both versions of events (whether genetically or by an authority). Nor admit that we don't have a secular morality or a religious morality, but rather a mix. Unless you want to claim all the way mechanistic, i.e that we have no will and are just machines playing out the gene pool. That is a valid ideology, and is where this biology thing leads logically, but sad. Unless you allow for philosophy.
Choice comes when you have a sense empathy for your fellowman
no, it comes when you have agency.
--a capacity that evolved from our social evolution as primates--and then out of that motivation to choose to help them because you identify with their needs. God has nothing to do with that. Philosophy has nothing to do with that. As for evidence for the evolution of morality in our species, go back to that article I posted demonstrating altruistic behavior in apes and monkeys. Did you even read it? You act like you didn't. It clearly showed that our moral instinct evolved from a much earlier stage of our evolution before there was anything like philosophy or language or laws. If you need more evidence I'll be glad to post. See bottom of this post. As for modern examples of people taking moral action, the world is full of these. Helping other people thru charity and volunteer work. Relief efforts for wartorn or disaster-stricken countries. Where is there NOT evidence for the moral instinct to help your fellowman without recourse to commandments from God?
i am with Nietzsche on this whole "using someone's commandments as morality" thing. Hate it. My point is that a morality of genes and a morality of command are both less than a higher morality. If you have recourse to say, "my mom didn't give me enough compassion genes to care about helping you", we have a similar lack of responsibility to that of the stringent follower of authority.
Edit - the following is a quote that I am bringing in to the discussion to see how closely your idea matches up with the ideas wright seems to represent, or to see how it differs
"These are the questions asked and answered in Robert Wright's fiercely intelligent, beautifully written and engrossingly original book "The Moral Animal." It lucidly explains our understanding of the evolution of human moral sentiments and draws out provocative implications for sexual, family, office and societal politics. But Mr. Wright's main lesson comes from the very fact that morality is an adaptation designed to maximize genetic self-interest, a function that is entirely hidden from our conscious experience. Our intuitive moral principles, he says, have no claim to inherent truth and should be distrusted. In Darwin's wake we must reconstruct morality from the ground up.
http://cogweb.ucla.edu/Abstracts/Pinker_on_Wright_94.html "
If our morality is just genetic self-interest, so is the lizard's lack of it. How is your theory of amoral lizards going to deal with that? I mean there has to be more to morality, or we can just drop the "morally good" and call it "biologically good", and shave off the excess. That is what you recommend to religious people every day anyway, to shave off the meta-explanations, so let's not be hypocritical.
I never asserted such a thing. You did. In fact some species have moral instincts while others are amoral. Lizards are pretty amoral. They do whatever the hell they want without much consideration for their fellow lizards. We don't call them immoral. We call them amoral. See the difference?
I definitely know the difference between amoral and immoral. You are the one who is calling some other species of animals moral, not me. No, no, no. How do you decide which species is moral and which amoral?
Please explain why a spider monkey is more morally "good" than a lion, because they have more "compassion" (supposedly), and then explain why a lion is more morally good than a snake. I think you may start to see the problem i am referring to.
... Sometimes that wiring goes bad, as in the case of sociopaths who have no ability to empathize. This in itself should prove that empathy is directly related to the structure and biochemical composition of our brains. It's not something you can teach or learn from reading a philosophy book or a bible.
aaand here comes the problem
Noone chooses to have compassion. They either do or they don't.
bam
And then they can choose to act or not act according to that inherent sense of bonding. It doesn't invalidate morality that it is based on primal needs for love and nuturing and altruistic urges. It's just who we are. And unless we are sociopaths, there really is nothing else to be.
i am not saying it isn't ALSO biology - it is biology plus something else we humans have, i.e. conscious responsibility for our agency. Or do you agree with this "But Mr. Wright's main lesson comes from the very fact that morality is an adaptation designed to maximize genetic self-interest"? Is morality genetic self-interest?
if so, why is our genetic self-interest a higher principle than the lizard's. Why add the word "moral" to the discussion of genetic self-interest.
An animal driven by instinct to kill its young is not committing an immoral act because it has no morality in place to act from. It is an amoral creature. Only with species which have evolved in social structures where group solidarity and cooperation and altruism advanced their own survival do we approach something like "good behavior." Look at dogs. Dog owners know from experience that dogs have their own moral sense and loyality that often puts our own morality to shame. Do you think these dogs learned this all from the teachings of some religion or from belief in some Dog God? Ofcourse not. We see in animals the same emotions and altruistic drives that we ourselves also evolved. That is abundant evidence for the evolution and biological basis of human morality.
human morality or simply genetic self- interest? believe me i am not talking about animals to call them immoral, no no no. They are amoral, acting only in genetic self-interest. Are we doing that plus something else or not?
So where is the line drawn? Between a sociopath with moral agency and a psychopath with no moral agency, it seems only slightly difficult to render a verdict of "amoral or immoral", but which sociopaths have agency? All, some, none? Is morality only a concern for people with certain genes who do the wrong thing?
