>
> If you believe we don't have enough information about the innate influences
> at work in the development of human morality, then that's essentially an
> argument in favor of continuing to develop that research program - *not*
> closing off the discussion. But it's the latter option that so many seem to
> be in favor of, purely for reasons of ideological convenience.
Yes, we haven't been able to prove our hypothesis... it just couldn't be that our hypothesis is wrong, it just couldn't, it must be that we don't have enough data! Gimme another grant, morality has to be innate, and because of that I have to prove it.
Miles' follow up, of course, makes the key point... the evolutionary psychological hypothesis runs directly counter to the richness of actual, living and empirically productive evolutionary theory and research in just the ways that transhistorical analysis runs directly counter to the materialist conception of history. (I wonder if someone's wanting to now argue that, somehow, the materialist conception of history is social, not natural, science and that the two need to/must be kept separate?)