Morality without god

Genes result in brains that behave in ways which maximise gene replication.Because the genes that do this survive.

That is the claim but I see little or no support for that position.

Oh. So if not surviving genes what do you think has shaped our brains?

Personal experiences, teaching, training, ...

Sure. But there is a strong genetic component to any human-wide behaviour too - Right?

Do human beings contain any instinctual behaviors at all? Or is every act and thought the result of various forms of conditioning?

I'm not at all sure strong is a valid word when it comes to actions.Yes there is a genetic component to eye color, height, sex, hair color, premature balding ...but I see far less evidence for any genetic component when it comes to morality or taste or love or beauty or other things where an individual makes a decision on actions in a specific incident.

There seem to be some instinctual behaviors, fight-flight is an example. However even those can be tempered and controlled by conditioning, training, experience.

Is there a strong genetic element to the composition of one's physical brain in your view? What role does the brain have in decision making, taste, morality etc. in your view?

In many cases no role. It is simply a slate board, a tool used by the individual, a calculator, a database.

They don't. Genes govern the development of the brain, both as you grow and as you learn. The brain then makes the decisions, not genes.

Indeed.But what about those behaviors and thought patterns that we do not generally address with training, experience, etc?Take cognitive biases for example; confirmation bias in particular. This is a basic tendency of thought universal to all human beings. It's not something you decide to do, and in fact it's a built-in factor in how decisions of all types are made in the first place.If species-wide behaviors and patterns of thought like that exist, is it impossible that a similar pattern of thought can bias decision making towards preservation of the group over preservation of the self?And since we still perceive our decisions as our own deliberate choices even when we are significantly affected by inherited cognitive bias, how would we be able to tell the difference between "intentional" and "instinctual?"

Given that you have previously made clear your adherence to the indefensible position of dualism I'm not sure what else there is to say here. Message 171

All great questions and ones that so far I have never seen answered. The issue is that the human brain (most any brain) is complex and to point to any one thing as "the cause" or "the answer" is almost certainly wrong. For example many recent studies of very young children seem to show an innate tendency towards being helpful to others but also a sense of satisfaction when they are rewarded for that behavior that tends to reinforce the behavior.The issue as we grow older is one of increasing complexity when it comes to behavior; not all people show that preserving the group over the individual.The brain is complex and as we experience things, as we learn, we rewire the sucker.

But not entirely.That's the issue. We don't completely program our own brains. I wish we did - a lot of our brain structure is specialized for the ancestral environment, and is not particularly useful in an age where it's more important to be able to process abstract concepts like mathematics than an overcautious identification of a predator.You're right - there is no single answer. I think the evidence is fairly clear that both heritable biology and cultural influences determine our capacity for selflessness...somewhat in the same way that our brains are biologically structured in such a way as to process language and pattern recognition very well, while specific languages are learned from the cultural environment.