Why would natural selection have favored the evolution of an innate moral code within our brains?
One possibility is that these principles that I’m describing were not selected for morality. They were favored for other aspects of social cognition and are simply borrowed by morality. What does morality do at a very general level? It sets up, either unconsciously or consciously, rules for navigating the social world. Now, why might it be unconscious? It might be unconscious for exactly the same reason that language is unconscious at some level. Imagine that every time you would try to talk to me, you had to think about adjectives, nouns, verbs, and where they go. Well, you would never say anything. This conversation would take 10 years to complete. Whereas if it’s unconscious, well, you’re just jamming through all this information, because the structure of this stuff is just natural to you. My guess is that there is some aspect of morality which is very much like that. If every time you were confronted with a moral issue you actually had to work it through, you would do nothing else.
Related Questions
- How does evolution through natural selection result in changes in biodiversity through the increase or decrease genetic diversity within a population?
- Why would natural selection have favored the evolution of an innate moral code within our brains?
- Which example is favored in terms of natural selection?
