Morality — Biological or Philosophical?

loid_void writes to mention The New York Times is reporting that Biologists are making a bid on the subject of morality. "Last year Marc Hauser, an evolutionary biologist at Harvard, proposed in his book 'Moral Minds' that the brain has a genetically shaped mechanism for acquiring moral rules, a universal moral grammar similar to the neural machinery for learning language. In another recent book, 'Primates and Philosophers,' the primatologist Frans de Waal defends against philosopher critics his view that the roots of morality can be seen in the social behavior of monkeys and apes."

Comments

Re:Towards a Multi-Dimensional Morality

[rtb61]

It is evolution plain and simple. As a human society evolves so do the humans that make up that society evolve. Specifically the society allows members who would no survive in a hostile dog eat dog environment ie. computer nerds to survive and reproduce. The increases number of more aware and enlightened members in a society that in turn further drives the evolution of that society.

Immoral or amoral members of a society can only be tolerated in limited numbers and their involvement in society needs to be strictly limited (prison) else they will cause the break down of that society, either resulting in it's absorption by a competing society or the extinction of it's members.

It terms of human society the two extreme ends, stubbornly ignorant and poor, and will fully ignorant and rich (both ultimately corrupt) cause the most amount of harm and disrupt the harmonious evolution of society and the humans that form it. The greed and stupidity of the few always drives the extinction of human societies (excluding the odd natural disaster), currently we seem to be just barely edging back from the brink.

In terms of modern society it is pretty bloody obvious that it is the rich and greedy who a currently causing by far the most harm, so every effort must be made to ensure they are removed from active participation ie. arrested, charged and prosecuted for their self evident corruption, lest we all pay the price for their greed.