What is the evidence that infants already have a moral code ingrained in their brains?
I don’t think we’re ready to say. Studies have shown that infants as young as 15 months are sensitive to the beliefs of others—true versus false beliefs. That’s crucial to the moral domain. There’s also this from the work of Elliot Turiel [a cognitive scientist at the University of California at Berkeley]. He said, Look, there’s a very important distinction between a social convention and a moral rule. Children by at least the age of 3 or 4 understand that distinction. Here is a simple way of putting it. If a teacher comes into a classroom and says, “Today, class, instead of raising your hand when you want to ask a question, just ask your question. Don’t raise your hand.” If you ask kids, “Is that OK?” kids will say, “OK, fine.” If you tell them, “In our class, we raise our hands to ask questions, but in France they never raise their hands. Is that OK?” “OK.” So it’s basically open to authority; it’s culturally variable. There appears to be some kind of unconscious process driving mora
