“Morality did not evolve to promote universal cooperation”

Why Can't We All Just Get Along? The Uncertain Biological Basis of Morality

Squaring recent research suggesting we're "naturally moral" with all the strife in the world

ROBERT WRIGHTOCT 23 2013



"Greene’s diagnosis is, at its foundation, Darwinian: the impulses and inclinations that shape moral discourse are, by and large, legacies of natural selection, rooted in our genes. Specifically, many of them are with us today because they helped our ancestors realize the benefits of cooperation. As a result, people are pretty good at getting along with one another, and at supporting the basic ethical rules that keep societies humming.
Anyone who doubts that basic moral impulses are innate will have Paul Bloom’s book to contend with. He synthesizes research—much of it done by him and his wife, Karen Wynn—demonstrating that an array of morally relevant inclinations show up in infants and toddlers. His list of natural moral endowments includes “some capacity to distinguish between kind and cruel actions,” as well as “empathy and compassion—suffering at the pain of those around us and the wish to make this pain go away.” Bloom’s work has also documented “a rudimentary sense of justice—a desire to see good actions rewarded and bad actions punished.”So if we’re such moral animals, why all the strife? Joshua Greene’s answer is appealingly simple. He says the problem is that we were designed to get along together in a particular context—relatively small hunter-gatherer societies. So our brains are good at reconciling us to groups we’re part of, but they’re less good at getting groups to make compromises with one another. “Morality did not evolve to promote universal cooperation,” he writes."