An Evolutionary Basis for Ethics?

Maybe it doesn't make sense in the short term, looking at energy in-energy out, but perhaps a sense of fairness i.e. getting your "fair share" has long term evolutionary benefits for a social animal, i.e. those who've settled for second best have had less offspring overall. In a longer study, though, they might have caved if the cucumber was the only sustenance on offer.

Morality is the basis of Ethics
Emotion is the basis of Morality
Feeling is the basis of EmotionIf you were to kill a child do you choose whether to feel guilt ?
If you save a child do you choose whether to feel happy ?
Do you choose what makes you angry or sad ?
Do you choose when to fall in love, or whom you are attracted to ?Conscience is the glue which holds society together. Note how sociopaths who lack the mechanisms for guilt, often get away with their crimes for many years because "I can't believe anyone would do such a thing". Rational law is NOT what holds society together, it is primarily guilt and other emotions which are EVOLVED traits which have helped our societies survive.All emotion is instinct, we just have an ability to act in ways counter to instinct when needed. Most often when we act counter to instinct, it's due to a strong EMOTION. And emotion is not a rational decision.Animals it would seem are primarily driven not by "instinct" but by emotion. In primates at the very least, it would seem, a very similar set of emotions to ourselves. Cats, dogs and other mammals also seem to have similar a emotional dimension.Now, you say that humans, unlike animals, make a rational decision to raise their young. What if horses, cats, dogs etc were driven by love, guilt, lonliness, attachment ? These are all instincts. And they're far from the robotic control mechanisms you seem to imply. And they are what drives us. Would you not feel guilt at abandoning a child ? Then you are not rationally making a decision about whether to raise the child, you are acting through instinct (love & guilt) and if you renege the responsibility you suffer : not through external rational ends, but through self-imposed (irrational) guilt - instinct. No you wouldn't you'd be a dead dog with no offpsring and the defective unsocial dog-genes in you would die out, because by being totally unsocial as a dog you could kill or abandon your own puppies, and wouldn't get a mate. You need to be aware that this form of "survival of the fittest" wouldn't last more than one generation.You seem to be of the impression that dogs are like bacteria or something and replicate asexually or are immortal, when actually "Survival" == "Have Offpsring (who also survive)". This is tautalogically true to some degree for all replicating organisms. The survival to reproductive maturity of your offspring is the only measure of success. It's especially true for social animals - the good of the group is paramount. It's why animals rarely eat their children, their mates or their siblings - doesn't make survival sense. But the animal has no rational knowledge of this, it only knows emotion.Edited by jasonlang, : No reason given.Edited by jasonlang, : No reason given.Edited by jasonlang, : No reason given.

Great article, thanks for linking it.I think the "moral philosophers" mentioned near the end are sounding like they're on the defensive here, orthodoxy defending it's turf against cross-disciplinary invasion (modernization).Like Jesse Prinz, whom it states, believes "morality developed" after human evolution was "finished". That's the old Humans at the pinnacle of creation, can't get any better, we've beaten natural selection fallacy. He states all morality is cultural, which seems to be like the old fallacy that the only differences between male and female were cultural, not innate. Suffice to say I, wouldn't be buying a book by Jesse Prinz.

Occam's Razor could be your friend as well, I have a low opinion of philosphy professors, somehow I think they'd be more impressed by you referencing Occam's Razor than, say a physicist.And like another poster said - find some Anthropologists they could be helpful.Occam's razor - Wikipedia The idea would be take two closely related entities (human and chimp perhaps)Find a scenario in which the situtation is the same, the action taken is the same, the intent of the action seems the same, and the outcome is the same (even better if the animal repeats the action more than once knowing what the result was last time - repetition of a successful action shows conscious intent).Now, with the human you'd have no trouble arguing about how intent plays a part in the decision on how to act, and why they did as they did.Your adversary now has two avenues - he either accepts that the likely motive for the ape to behave exactly as a human does is an analogous intent to the human one.Or he insists that an otherwise unknown hypothetical mechanism is at work, a fictitious mechanism totally unknown, alien and non-existant in the human, the chimps closest living relative.Now what's more plausible a known mechanism with an explanation or the hypothetical one, which is just being different for the sake of being different?------------ Actually, tools lead to the greatest leap in Darwinian evolution ever seen. We didn't "get smart" then make tools and evolution stopped. Tools => brain not brain => tools. If that was the case WHY did the brain develop in the first place.We coevolved with our environment and our tools. I've heard this called gene-meme coevolution, where memes are like genes of ideas.My own theory is that the first tools were thrown rocks, and the optimal technique developed was a mass of hominids all throwing rocks at predators or prey, in defense or hunting. This would have evened things up for the small hominids on the African plain against large creatures.To fully implement this technique you would have needed to develop :* Situational awareness i.e avoid hitting your friends with rocks, or getting in the way of their rocks, keep track of enemy creatures.* Coordination of attack, as the technique was only really effective with mass cooperation (you'd need a lot of rocks to dissuade a large plains creature)* Hand eye coordination and spatial judgement to aim effectively* Logistical awareness to gather and maintain ammo supply and identify potential ammo supplies on the fly.All this could have driven brain development and cooperation of the hunters.Edited by jasonlang, : No reason given.Edited by jasonlang, : No reason given.Edited by jasonlang, : No reason given.

Chimps don't cave. Gottit.I'd never ever have a pet chimp, too many horror stories, way too strong and aggressive. Btw, it baffles me that it's even legal to have pet like that in America, it's certainly not something we have here. Why not have something safer like a giant tank of Pirahnas or a Boa Constrictor ?I guess that's why they did the sharing research with cute little monkies instead.Imagine trying to withhold goodies from a Chimp??>>shudder<<Edited by jasonlang, : No reason given.

In support of what RAZD has said I'd just like to point out i'm a programmer and Genetic Algorithms (Aka GAs : a simplistic implementation of natural selection with mutation) are one of the most powerful programming techniques known to man, able to design efficient solutions to problems which completely elude human "Intelligent Designers".Though they're most often used for software this article is about a group using GAs for engineering super-efficient antennas for actual satellites :Intelligent Systems Division | NASAGA's provide a "no brainer" approach to designing simple -> complex solutions to problems, requiring little to no human knowledge of the subject domain they are meant to be exploring, and they are an empirical proof-of-concept that the combination of selection and mutation has a strong ability to design novel solutions. Many of the designs have a WTF? feel to them, purely logical yet alien designs which no human would have intuitively come up with : Edited by jasonlang, : No reason given.Edited by jasonlang, : No reason given.Edited by jasonlang, : No reason given.