Ethical foundations of the left

[Gordon Fitch]

> > So morality derives from our evolutionary biology, which
> > just happens to have made us highly social primates who have
> > strong emotional attachments to one another, but might have
> > turned out some other way.  In any case, it doesn't apply to
> > the humans who happens to prefer to hate other humans on the
> > basis, most likely, of other evolutionary accidents.  There's
> > no reason for them to be moral.  Therefore, there is no general
> > reason to be moral.  The universe continues to lack a handle
> > and a user's manual.

Luke Weiger:
> I think many moral philosophers would agree that morality is derived from
> the sort of creatures evolution has made us into.  That's why lions have no
> ethical obligations.  Morality is like color: it doesn't exist outside of
> our perceptions, except in the sense that certain external stimuli elicit
> extremely similar reactions in most people.  As one wouldn't expect a
> color-blind person to view the color spectrum in the same manner as oneself,
> it should come as no surprise that the amoral among us fail to see the
> validity of the ethical arguments we find compelling.

Except that the amoral view would not necessarily be the
defective, "incorrect" view.

I think the issue is pretty academic in that the ability to
respond to a moral argument is about as rare (in my experience,
anyway) as the ability to run a four-minute mile or write
interesting fugues.  It's a rather freakish phenomenon and
might well be considered a sort of disability.