I Keep My Moral Compass in My Genes
It's funny. I was just thinking about this the other day. I was wondering where non-learned social behaviors among animals come from. A little more specifically, I was thinking about what a huge scientific breakthrough it would be to find links between such behaviors and patterns in genomes.

Stuart sent me an article from the NYTimes this morning. It's about a biologist at Harvard proposing that evolution has developed an innate sense of right and wrong. It's an interesting read.
The proposal, if true, would have far-reaching consequences. It implies that parents and teachers are not teaching children the rules of correct behavior from scratch but are, at best, giving shape to an innate behavior. And it suggests that religions are not the source of moral codes but, rather, social enforcers of instinctive moral behavior.

Both atheists and people belonging to a wide range of faiths make the same moral judgments, Dr. Hauser writes, implying “that the system that unconsciously generates moral judgments is immune to religious doctrine.”
I love that last sentence.

The article presents a dilemma scenario that tries to get at our inner moral workings.
Suppose you are standing by a railroad track. Ahead, in a deep cutting from which no escape is possible, five people are walking on the track. You hear a train approaching. Beside you is a lever with which you can switch the train to a sidetrack. One person is walking on the sidetrack. Is it O.K. to pull the lever and save the five people, though one will die?

Most people say it is.

Assume now you are on a bridge overlooking the track. Ahead, five people on the track are at risk. You can save them by throwing down a heavy object into the path of the approaching train. One is available beside you, in the form of a fat man. Is it O.K. to push him to save the five?
Most people say no, although lives saved and lost are the same as in the first problem.

Why does the moral grammar generate such different judgments in apparently similar situations? It makes a distinction, Dr. Hauser writes, between a foreseen harm (the train killing the person on the track) and an intended harm (throwing the person in front of the train), despite the fact that the consequences are the same in either case.
It's an interesting problem. It's a tangent, but I can't help thinking about all the hawkish white guys who clamoured for war in the lead up to the Iraq invasion and foamed at the mouths watching the "shock and awe" highlight clips on FoxNews. Would they be so hawkish if war were much more personal for them? The pessimist in me imagines them gleefully throwing the fat man in front of the train. The realist in me knows they'd be wetting their pants a little more slowly than they would if faced with actually being sent off to war.

The last paragraph provides a big distinction between Hauser's hypothesis and intelligent design. Where are the "testable predictions" of intelligent design?
Nevertheless, researchers’ idea of a good hypothesis is one that generates interesting and testable predictions. By this criterion, the proposal of an innate moral grammar seems unlikely to disappoint

PostBlog: I read a review of Hauser's book in the latest issue of Nature at lunch today. It's given a very positive review. The reviewer's take on the book is similar to the last paragraph of the NYTimes article. I'll probably pick up a copy eventually.