Spinoff: Where do our ethics come from?

[cdn2wheeler]

This recent post by our brilliant friend NotesMaeve...

Originally Posted by NotesMaeve

Morality is dictated by dogma. Ethics are a conscious choice... Ethics are a personal choice, IMO. I decided my opinion on gay marriage, abortion, whatever, based on no dogma. Morals are based on dogma, IMO.

...got me thinking about the watershed of our ethics and moral behaviours.

Some suggest that our ethics come from religion. That doesn’t make sense to me, because that would mean that religious folk are supremely ethical and agnostics/atheists would be totally without an ethical yardstick. In my personal experience, that situation is about as wrong as it could be.

Others suggest that it’s an evolutionary adaptation (membership may be required to read the article) that emerged as human beings gathered in groups. Those who operated ethically were more likely to pass on their genes to the next generation.

Maybe ethics are somehow hard-wired into our brains. Recent studies on psychopaths who have virtually no ethical base and no conscience show that these folks might actually be missing connections in their brain.

Yet others think that it’s entirely based on environment, our history and our upbringing as children. But that leaves such monsters as Hitler and Stalin and many others unexplained.

What do you think?

[Sam988]

According to the interesting and famous Milgram experiment - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, with the right circumstances and environment, anyone can become kind of psycopath, suggesting that group thinking is stronger than any "ethics". Which means that if our reference group said it was OK to kill someone or blow yourself up for a higher cause, you would probably do it.

[Angela]

I think it's all those things, cdn, plus interactional adaptation: we figure out what works for us, ethically speaking, through interacting with the world and with other people. What behavior causes us pain and gives us pleasure, including the pain and pleasure we receive from seeing pain and pleasure in others, builds the synapses for us of what we believe is right and wrong.

I would also put a pretty heavy emphasis on the "you're born with it or you're not" basis, too.