Are Our Morals Genetically Determined or Merely Assumed? :: Philosophy Biology Essays

In a recent commentary for BBC News, Clark McCauley, Professor of Psychology at Bryn Mawr College, analyzed the bailiwick of piece organic evolution from a standpoint that drew on his friendship of psychology gradual and collective changes in human behavior. According to McCauley, as environments and situations changed, human behavior was barond to adapt accordingly. In his comments, McCauley cites the example of detestation although it is now a common human reaction, McCauley claims it once did not exist. As humans became less capable of digesting raw meat, disgust became an important deterring force that, through the process of evolution, became a familiar and shared part of human existence. Evidencing his claim, McCauley pointed to the fact that humans have a shared and easily recognisable facial and bodily response to disgust. Following McCauleys line of reasoning, if there is separate that supports changes in active human behavior over time that screw be attributed to th e evolutionary process, it seems likely that other aspects of human cognition and its manifestations would to a fault be subject to evolution. This paper will address the issue of the evolution of human morality namely, whether morality is an aspect of humanity that is constructed or innate, and, depending on those findings, whether evolution plays any role in the process of determining our morals. In order to assess morality, we must first define it and identify the rife philosophy behind it. In this paper, morality is defined as the rules that plant what is right and what is wrong. In his dissertation, Van Mildert College Student Nicholas Giles notes that while we do have forces that corrupt our morals (i.e. our own desires), morality is often the limiting factor of our behavior. We (as a majority) do not steal, because somehow we have internalized that this is a wrong or basal behavior. Giles uses the example of being exquisite to our friends, so as to be considered nice ou rselves, to segue into a discussion of altruism. Although Giles sees altruism, the notion of giving to others at the cost of oneself, as a counterintuitive philosophy, he recognizes that it the philosophical basis for morality (1). The biological basis for altruism seems fairly straightforward organisms that put the social welfare of other organisms before their own will be less victorious than selfish organisms. However, there are situation specific benefits to altruism in galore(postnominal) cases, organisms in a group will fare better than unmarried organisms (1).