THE EVOLUTION OF MORALITY

A few days ago I visited a friend’s home for lunch. He served a rather large meal, and as I was nearing the end he said “Don’t feel obliged to finish it all.” I replied (tucking in) “No, I don’t; I really want to".
This simplest of familiar exchanges underlines an important point that, despite being obvious, is often overlooked: To do something because you want to do it is very different from doing it because you judge that you ought to do it. We can easily imagine a community of people all of whom have the same desires: They all want to live in peace and harmony, and violence is unheard of.  Everywhere you look there are friendly, loving people, oozing prosocial emotions. However, there is no reason to think that there is a moral judgment in sight. These imaginary beings have inhibitions against killing, stealing, etc. They wouldn’t dream of doing such things; they just don’t want to do them.
But we need not credit them with a conception of a prohibition: the idea that one shouldn’t kill or steal because to do so is wrong.
And moral judgments require, among other things, the capacity to understand prohibitions.
This point must not be confused with one famously endorsed by Immanuel Kant: that actions motivated by prosocial emotions cannot be considered morally admirable (Kant (1783) 2002: 199–200).
I am more than happy to side with common sense against Kant on this point. We often morally praise people whose actions are motivated by love, sympathy, and altruism. In fact, I am willing to endorse the view that on occasions a person whose motivations derive from explicit moral calculation rather than direct sympathy is manifesting a kind of moral vice. So it is not being denied that the imaginary beings described above deserve our moral praise, or even that they are, in some sense of the word, morally virtuous. My point is the far less controversial one that someone who acts solely from the motive of love or altruism does not thereby make a moral judgment (assuming, as seems safe, that these emotions do not necessarily involve such judgments). If, then, our object is to investigate whether it is part of human nature to make moral judgments—to think about each other and the world in moral terms—we must conclude that an explanation of how natural selection might end up making human beings with altruistic, sympathetic, loving tendencies toward each other—how, that is, it might produce nice humans (or, if you prefer, virtuous humans)—misses the target. Claiming that humans “by nature have a moral sense” but then giving evidence only that our ancestors acted in ways that may be considered (by us) morally laudable,is like claiming that humans by nature have a native arithmetical ability and then giving as evidence the fact that our ancestors grew ten fingers. In drawing attention to this fact I do not mean to imply that sympathy and other social emotions are not important to our moral lives; indeed, as we shall see in due course, emotions are of central significance to human morality.
Moreover, I have no particular objection to using the label “moral sentiments” for the prosocial emotions of love, sympathy and altruism, or to using the label “moral virtues” for the prosocial behaviors that might flow from such emotions (though in the philosophical tradition a moral virtue is a lot more than this); but this concession must include the caveat that the capacity for moral judgment is not necessary for such moral sentiments or such moral virtues.
Of course, these moral sentiments are very often accompanied by moral judgments: When you love someone, typically you judge that it would be morally wrong for you to hurt that person. But the judgment is not a necessary part of the emotion, for we can easily imagine an individual who satisfies the criteria for loving another (and simply doesn’t want to cause harm) but lacks any sense of obligation to refrain from causing harm.
The nature of emotions will be discussed in much more detail in the next chapter. Here, all that is being emphasized is that an explanation of how humans came to have prosocial inclinations and aversions—whether grounded in love and sympathy or anger and disgust—is not an explanation of how humans came to judge things morally right and wrong, and to this extent is no explanation of an innate moral faculty. At best it is the start of an explanation.

By Richard Joyce  in "The Evolution of Morality" as 'Inhibitions vs. Prohibitions', A Bradford Book- The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts USA & London, 2006, p. 50-51. Edited and adapted to be posted by Leopoldo Costa