How did humans discover morality and be able to separate things as good and evil?
Was it religion that made it or was an innate understanding as we evolved?
>>1202293
all morality is based in fear
>>1202293
The latter, how does a bird instinctively know how to build a nest? how come people don't just go full murder suicide all the time?
>>1202293
animals have the instincts it's based on. it's likely very old.
>>1202293
All social animals have rules of interaction, morality is just a a sophistacted version of that
>>1202322
> how come people don't just go full murder suicide all the time?
Gonna play devil's advocate here.
Currently people understand that there are consequences to evil actions i.e. prison etc.
If it was as instinctual as a bird knowing how to build a nest how come there are people still commit evil actions even if it is directly against our instinct?
>>1202341
sorry for the bad english.
>>1202293
Empathy is conducive to cooperation, which gives a competitive advantage. Morality is just the outgrowth of empathy, and basically arbitrary. People try in vain to find some anchor, some objective foundation on which we can build an ethical system, but there is none to find. If we want one, we must build it, i.e. assert it. We need to courage to assert something arbitrary, or if that is something we don't possess, we just need the cunning to convince ourselves we have an external mandate.
>>1202293
Man has an innate morality towards his own small tribe but not towards strangers. As society grew and people began to interact with and live with strangers, a logical moral doctrine had to rise up to keep order. So both.
Morality is social glue
>>1202341
Evolutionary game theory, if one particular strategy becomes dominant, then a different minority strategy may become successful in relation to the dominant one, but this only works when the majority don't follow it.
>If everyone was a psychopath then there would be no benefit to it, if there are a minority of psychopaths and the majority are not, then it has the potential to persist.
Similar to this I guess
>The strategy of the Hawk (a fighter strategy) is to first display aggression, then escalate into a fight until he either wins or is injured. The strategy of the Dove (fight avoider) is to first display aggression but if faced with major escalation by an opponent to run for safety. If not faced with this level of escalation the Dove will attempt to share the resource.
>humans are selected by kin selection, that is, the clan is the level at which humans succeed or fail in evolution
>the clans in which benevolent, pro-social behavior is more common are more likely to survive
>hominids have existed for millions of years
>>1202293
Well you see with the threat of punishment most will not go around stealing/killing, most.
>>1202293
/thread
>>1202293
God gave it to us, you heathen
>>1202341
>If it was as instinctual as a bird knowing how to build a nest how come there are people still commit evil actions even if it is directly against our instinct?
Instincts are never concrete. There will always be aberrant or desperate people, and culture can sometimes override that.
>>1202293
A cursory rhetorical analysis of OP's question reveals an interesting construction:
> discover morality
Here, we see that the concept of morality is framed within a construct of that which lies outside of human invention, but which can be influenced or controlled by humans, like one might argue we discovered fire or electricity. This assumption must be questioned, as it relies on an objective framework. Morality, when one explores it as a set of ethical principles applied to human action throughout all known history (and only able to be inferred through written or concrete artifact), becomes quickly apparent as something that depends entirely upon human invention. We did not discover morality - we invented it. Most likely, we can reason that morality is a byproduct of the human recognition that we are the cause of others' suffering, and that we can do and not do things as a way to alleviate that suffering. The earliest hominids appear to to have established a communal relationship with morality, and codified actions that would benefit their group. However, upon the establishment of ownership, the concept of morality was extended to include things that would ensure control over others as a method of establishing dominance and maintaining a social organization based on family structure and lineage. Surely, as there is no universal standard of morality, we have only to explore the complexity of power relationships in any culture to be able to describe the meaning of morality as it exists to that culture, and thus any general exploration of the topic will result in an infinite regress. This discussion, if it is to be insightful, would have to begin to focus on a particular aspect of a moral issue.
Morality is not just about survival. It includes a whole range of variables like charity, environmentalism, all the things we associate with development and progress. In many ways these are arbitrary and counterintuitive/restrictive from an individual's point of view. Why give to the poor? Why not litter? Why not exploit the environment? These customs and values are geographically limited and are not at all generalizable. There is no guarantee that every culture will perish unless they adopt these values, or that they will decide to limit individual freedoms to the same extent. In the West, these values were providentially bestowed upon us primarily from Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and Jesus. They are not absolute.
>>1202662
Did you... did you just draw a line of philosophical inheritance from Socrates to Jesus, and then use the word "providential" in reference to Socrates? Is there like a church you belong to that studies this lineage of theology, or are you just going straight off the dome? I'm genuinely curious about this, btw - not even trolling.
>>1202690
Yeah I did, meaning that it was very fortunate that he happened to live at all. An intellect like that is rather miraculous actually and not at all common (unlike yours apparently).
>>1202704
Wow, sick burn. Maybe you *should* join a church, if there were any evidence that they helped you not be an asshole. Can I not ask you about your reasoning without meeting aggression? Why the hate?
>>1202724
I apologize, I thought you were one of those "God has nothing to do with it" types. Um to answer your question, it is generally agreed that the early Christians were heavily influenced by the dominant Greek culture at the time. I do believe that it was providence, but that's a personal belief. Just my thoughts from the readings that I've done, not from any church.
>>1202321
this is an interesting response.
so is it right to say that you may be polite to someone because you FEAR that they will be offended?
