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 issue of human evolution from a standpoint that drew on his knowledge of psychology: gradual and collective changes in human behavior. According to McCauley, as environments and situations changed, human behavior was forced to adapt accordingly. In his comments, McCauley cites the example of disgust; 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 recognizable facial and bodily response to disgust. Following McCauley's line of reasoning, if there is evidence that supports changes in active human behavior over time that can be attributed to the evolutionary process, it seems likely that other aspects of human cognition and its manifestations would also 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 prevalent philosophy behind it. In this paper, morality is defined as the rules that determine what is 'right' and what is 'wrong'. In his dissertation, Van Mildert College Student Nicholas Giles notes that while we do have forces that counteract 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 immoral behavior. Giles uses the example of being nice to our friends, so as to be considered nice ourselves, to segue into a discussion of altruism. Although Giles sees altruism, the notion of giving to others at the expense 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 welfare of other organisms before their own will be less successful than 'selfish' organisms. However, there are situation specific benefits to altruism; in many cases, organisms in a group will fare better than individual organisms (1).