The results were showing that when the volunteers placed the interests of others before their own, the generosity activated a primitive part of the brain that usually lights up in response to food or sex. Altruism, the experiment suggested, was not a superior moral faculty that suppresses basic selfish urges but rather was basic to the brain, hard-wired and pleasurable.
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Joshua Greene, a Harvard neuroscientist and philosopher, said multiple experiments suggest morality arises from basic brain activities. Morality, he said, is not a brain function elevated above our baser impulses. Greene said it is not “handed down” by philosophers and clergy, but “handed up,” an outgrowth of the brain’s basic propensities.
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We evolved in a world where people in trouble right in front of you existed, so our emotions were tuned to them, whereas we didn’t face the other kind of situation,” Greene said. “It is comforting to think your moral intuitions are reliable and you can trust them. But if my analysis is right, your intuitions are not trustworthy. Once you realize why you have the intuitions you have, it puts a burden on you” to think about morality differently.”
Do you base your view on research like the one reported in the article? My understanding is evolution is thought to be driven by natural selection. What evidence shows that natural selection has driven the evolution of biologically based moral behavior?In my view there is good evidence to suggest a lot of morality is based on biology (i.e altruism) in the sense it evolved in us. What theologians and Catholic philosophers are to make of this is not yet as clear, though it might help in some ‘natural law’ arguments.
While I agree with the characterization, attacking the messenger as a way of refuting the theory will only get us so far.Ahh… the Washington Pest. Now what’s their agenda? To tell us that if we didn’t get the ‘morality gene’ that we are dispensed from morality? Is this the new ‘gay gene’ theory for the rest of us?
If this were entirely true, then good moral people would not have children who defied their parents’ morality, and bad people would never produce saints.
I’m not a biologists but I know enough that not every trait gets passes down from parent to each sibling. I do not know know if any study has looked in to immoral behavior running in families.We’re all called to make choices. Some of us have higher hurdles to climb on that way than others.
No, it is not biologically based.In today’s article from the Washing Post and syndicated nationally scientists report that morality is biologically based and has evolved. This implies that morality is not based on free will but biological factors. Is morality biologically based?