Objective Morality

Abstract

An objective basis for morality can be found in an evolutionary account of its origin and development. Morality is a key factor in the success of human groups in competition or co-existence with one another. A group's moral code represents an increasingly rational pattern of behavior derived from the collective experience of the group handed down from generation to generation. Group selection is a controversial idea for animal evolution but it is inescapable in accounting for human evolution under the influence of language and the accumulation of cultural patterns. Further, morality has an objective physiological and neurological basis in so far as it exists to moderate the expression of the array of genetically-derived emotional patterns. Emotions represent the combination of action tendencies (neural motor programs) with physiologically-derived affective concomitants. The relation between emotion, empathy, and morality is important. Empathy (a special form of perception still largely unexplained) has a key role both in the formation and cohesion of human groups and in the observance within groups of a moral code. Ultimately observance of moral rules depends on recognition by each individual of an integrating purpose in his/her life. In so far as the moral code is directed towards achieving this integrating purpose, morality for the individual becomes objective.