Why do right?

I can tell you why I do what I think it right: doing things that I feel to be wrong makes me feel bad.Granted, this is a self-centred system, but given that empathy and morality are (at least partly) innate, and so I don't need threat of punishment or a set of Ten Commandments to gain my all of morality, it works. That would be affirming the consequent. If that's not clear, let's have another example: I hope you can agree that this is unfalsifiable - No matter what occurs, fate rigged it - so makes a very bad theory.

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"Der Mensch kann was er will; er kann aber nicht wollen was er will." (Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills.) - Arthur Schopenhauer

Could not empathy and compassion be useful for survival? There are the obvious ways, such as if you cooperate with someone you (usually) have a better chance of survival than if you hurt them. So, we open a door for someone in the hope that they will do something good for us when they have the chance, and to form a bond to ensure cooperation. While it may inhibit our survival at this minute to make the effort to help another, in another minute we could reap the benefits. Thus, we feel good when helping people, because those who felt bad or indifferent when helping people didn't reap aforementioned benefits of cooperation. Just because a behaviour isn't of any survival value, or inhibits survival, doesn't mean it can't evolve. The favourite example of this is moths flying into flames. It is a by-product of something that does have survival value: keeping a light source at a fixed acute angle.I could say the same sort of thing about music and poetry. Music and poetry may be a by-product of our innate 'wiring' for the spoken and written word respectively.

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"Der Mensch kann was er will; er kann aber nicht wollen was er will." (Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills.) - Arthur Schopenhauer

Consider something other than opening doors, such as caring for someone while they are sick. If you are well, and you do care for someone, then when you are sick, you will be cared for. If you ignore that person and let them die from illness, then when you are sick, you may die.Really, the same example could be applied to the door opening, if you introduce a load of boxes into the hands of one member. If you open the door for someone who has their hands full, then next time you need someone to do something that you would have trouble doing yourself, the favour will be available.So you see, you're in a better position than if you had to work alone.Edited by Doddy Curumehtar, : Added clarification

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"Der Mensch kann was er will; er kann aber nicht wollen was er will." (Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills.) - Arthur Schopenhauer

So? Instincts we might call 'immoral' also evolved.Our brain is still hard-wired for the Pleistocene, and can fail us in this day and age. For example, while it would be ok to consume as much of the natural resources as you want back then with only scattered tribes, with the population and demands we have today, it can cause untold environmental damage. As another example, it would have been ok to eat as much as possible because food wasn't that common and it may be a day or two before your next meal, but with the plenty we have today, it can cause morbid obesity.Sometimes in history, for an animal or even a tribe to survive, it has to kill others. These days, things are not quite so dangerous, and we can usually find peaceful solutions, but we still maintain armies and police to protect us, often through killing of enemies and criminals, because the killing instinct still exists in us.

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"Der Mensch kann was er will; er kann aber nicht wollen was er will." (Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills.) - Arthur Schopenhauer

My signature addresses my feelings on this issue. We can choose what we want, but we have no control over what we want to choose. There were plenty of resources like coal, oil etc, and to those I was referring when I said 'natural resources'. There was also plenty of animals and plants for food - you just had to find them and hunt them in order to use them, which was the main reason why they couldn't be used at the rate needed for a steady diet. The fatty and very sugary foods we tend to view as more appetising 'junk' are in fact good foods to eat if you aren't likely to get food for a while. Useful too, for such hunter-gatherers, is the tendency to store all available energy as body fat.And, neurological factors certainly play a role in some cases. Just look up adipokine, orexin, ghrelin etcEdited by Doddy Curumehtar, : Added some clarification

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"Der Mensch kann was er will; er kann aber nicht wollen was er will." (Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills.) - Arthur Schopenhauer

What could possibly prove to you that this is not the case? How about, showing that animals, which I assume you don't believe have a God-fearing spirit, have attributes that we would associate with morality?To quote Sam Harris in his review of Francis Collins' book:

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What if mice showed greater distress at the suffering of familiar mice than unfamiliar ones? (They do.) What if monkeys will starve themselves to prevent their cage-mates from receiving painful shocks? (They will.) What if chimps have a demonstrable sense of fairness when receiving food rewards? (They have.) Wouldn’t these be precisely the sorts of findings one would expect if our morality were the product of evolution?

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"Der Mensch kann was er will; er kann aber nicht wollen was er will." (Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills.) - Arthur Schopenhauer

We also can't prove that our fellow human beings consciously choose the moral options either.Did you also read my similar post in another thread?Edited by Doddy Curumehtar, : No reason given.

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"Der Mensch kann was er will; er kann aber nicht wollen was er will." (Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills.) - Arthur Schopenhauer

Neither do you have such proof for humans, such as criminals. It may be that they chose not to feel for their victims through pure callousness (which raises the argument of why they do that), or it may be that they can't feel empathy due to the structure of their brains. We really can't infer what emotions a human or animal is feeling unless we know for sure their brain works like ours.Now, I would argue however that it is likely that apes do have such emotions as remorse and guilt, although maybe not to the extent that humans do, because they share many key features of our prefrontal cortex (the part of the brain consistently shown to be involved in feelings of remorse and making moral choices).Anyway, this is getting into animal consciousness, so is getting off topic somewhat.

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"Der Mensch kann was er will; er kann aber nicht wollen was er will." (Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills.) - Arthur Schopenhauer

Their brain must work differently to non-criminals, because not every brain commands its body to commit crimes. We are even more in the dark with animals, as we have not experienced what it is like to be one. Any assumption that they do or don't have a choice is speculation until the problem of consciousness is understood more fully. What we do know however is that animals, especially apes, often act like moral humans would.

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"Der Mensch kann was er will; er kann aber nicht wollen was er will." (Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills.) - Arthur Schopenhauer

An Evolutionary Theory of Right and WrongIt's free to sign up to read it. Basically, it's an ad for a new book called "Moral Minds". Maybe I'll pick it up.

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Suppose you are standing by a railroad track. Ahead, in a deep cutting from which no escape is possible, five people are walking on the track. You hear a train approaching. Beside you is a lever with which you can switch the train to a sidetrack. One person is walking on the sidetrack. Is it O.K. to pull the lever and save the five people, though one will die?

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Most people say it is.

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Assume now you are on a bridge overlooking the track. Ahead, five people on the track are at risk. You can save them by throwing down a heavy object into the path of the approaching train. One is available beside you, in the form of a fat man. Is it O.K. to push him to save the five?

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Most people say no, although lives saved and lost are the same as in the first problem.

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Why does the moral grammar generate such different judgments in apparently similar situations? It makes a distinction, Dr. Hauser writes, between a foreseen harm (the train killing the person on the track) and an intended harm (throwing the person in front of the train), despite the fact that the consequences are the same in either case. It also rates killing an animal as more acceptable than killing a person.

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Many people cannot articulate the foreseen/intended distinction, Dr. Hauser says, a sign that it is being made at inaccessible levels of the mind. This inability challenges the general belief that moral behavior is learned. For if people cannot articulate the foreseen/intended distinction, how can they teach it?

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