(07-21-2025, 08:15 AM)quintessentone Wrote: I am not dismissing the evolutionary predisposition along with knowledge gained along one's life, with influence added in there too where our choices could be considered as being 'steered' rather than free will.
"Thou shalt not kill", but kill those people over there and you will get a medal."
What do people get out of being moral/kind/generous etc. - there must be a driving factor. Follow God's laws and get the promise of salvation/heaven, be generous and help others and feel less guilty about something else? or get something in return?, be kind to others/treat others the way you want to be treated and hope that others will validate and not harm you (?). Could these be all seen as selfish/steered behaviours, or behaviours being influenced by other factors?
It makes sense that humans would have evolved to be moral/kind/generous [1]. We are social animals, evolved to live in groups, and when you live in a group and you're empathic, you're more likely to do well in the social hierarchy and maximize your chances of reproduction. So of course we are instinctually averse to hurting others, and even acts of kindness can be explained by evolution. There is no need for any external moral truths.
More complex moral standards that only apply to today's society are learned. Humans evolved to be adaptive and are exceptionally suited to learn behavior, more so than any other species. It's why we can grow up today with practically hundred thousand year old genes and still function.
There is no reason, as far as I can see, to believe that our morals come from anywhere but our brains. You may say that makes us all selfish but I don't think that's fair. People who find it very rewarding to help others are, by that standard, just as selfish as people who exploit others for personal gain. That feels intuitively wrong. Sure, they are both maximizing their personal happiness in the end, but the means by which they do this matters. When we say someone is selfish, in my view we are talking about the means by which they try to achieve their own happiness. We are saying they tend more towards exploiting than helping others. We are ultimately making a statement about their internal reward system.
[1] The most basic morals like "don't kill your children" are even common in other species.
