Are some morals and ethics hard wired into us.?

Question

I know that there are morals and ethics that change from one culture to another. But surely there are enough in common to suggest that many morals and ethics are hard wired into us at birth. Behaviours that have given us a better chance of survival, like loyalty to loved ones and parents putting the lives of their children first.

All animals have developed instincts for survival. Do many of our morals and ethics fall this catergory?

Answer 1

Morals and ethics exist only in the eye of the beholder.

Love and blessings Don

Answer 2

I wish I had a copy of this magazine artical (or remembered the source at least ... ) but there is this artical which claims that genetic scientists in fact have found a "Moral" DNA strand.

"They" claim that morals are hard wired in the DNA just like being bloond/ brown hair, brown eyes, and other traits.

Humanity is the quest to tame animal traits and strive for the greater good for all. Yes, humans do have basic animal instincts ... some instincts are good for the greater while other animal instincts are destructive to the greater good. This is where law and justic restrictions come in to over ride the bad animal instincts. Little things like laws on how to handle food keep us all safe ... animals eat raw meat, and don't burry thier dead ... so, laws make it better for everyone ... even though some laws do seem silly ... since DNA mixes and matched new combinations ... that some need these goofy laws.

Answer 3

In my experience, morals and ethics aren't something we're just born with.

I've met many people who seem to lack ethics and morals when money, fame or relationships are involved -- situations that produce primal / savage behaviors.

From my understanding ... the point in our human response systems for survival is found at the base of our brains. Cognitive thought, as we know, is found at the frontal lobe of the brain. And, the vast space in between is where feelings are recognized.

Every stimulus must be evaluated by "the feelings" before it is processed and produces a moral or ethical response. While we all can agree on how to react in a primal situation, more complex events must move through this region to the cognitive area of the brain.

While intelligence at the front of the brain is present at birth, the feeling pathways in the middle can be developed, nurtured, or broken at any time in life.

I believe that morals and ethics morph through a lifetime because different experiences will mark different individuals.

Answer 4

DNA DOES NOT CODE FOR BEHAVIOR!!!!!!

NOR ARE MORALS AND ETHICS " .....[although different] from one culture to another .. common enough to suggest...[they are hard wired]" In the trobriand islands, the women every day gang rape the men, This is common practice where you live? Moral and ethics differ entirely as a fish would find itself on dry land. Behavior and ethics are just a local groups attempting to conform all the members of their group to harmonize quickly and stabilize its newest members (the young children, for example)

Answer 5

That's really great food for thought on a Monday morning! I don't think instincts and ethics are the same thing; however, ethics are probably based on the instinct of survival. Each society will determine those ethics for itself, depending on the environment. So, while the environment establishes necessary nuances between cultural ethics, the basic ones arise from survival.
Love the question... thanks and cheers!

Answer 6

I believe some values humans tend to have are somewhat engrained in us through biology...family relationships in particular do this-having a particular bond with your family for instance is not biologically necessary, but it is helpful, and we tend to think loving your children/siblings, etc is a basic instinct. Likewise, incest is biologically bad, so there may be to some degree an inherent value we are "hardwired" with for this.

Some things may not be hardwired at birth, in that we recognize them as children, but perhaps are inherent in us (again, to some degree) and become more obvious as we age-child molestation for instance is something that most adults inherently interpret as wrong, perhaps because it is something simply a part of the construct of growing older and protecting future generations.

Overall, obviously, there are few if any ethics or morals that all people adhere to, so I dont know that they are hard and fast fixed in us from birth, even for biological reasons. but I think certain human/biological functions play a role in our ethics.

Answer 7

This question really did deserve the star I gave it.

This is an argument I've put over the years that we are educated to have values and they are not inbreed. And it's our choice as an individual if we choose to take them on board. Murders have the most fantastic parents who pull their hair out wondering were they went wrong. They didn't. It had nothing to do with them.

I'm a firm believer in each of us taking responcibility for our own actions. It's no good comparing to animals because we are not....

I could go on but I just fell off my soap box.

Answer 8

They need to be hard wired at birth and in child hood. When maturethe society gives enough chance to unshacklethem and expand on them for the betterment of society . For deterimental acts there is always social rebuttal.

Answer 9

Well, name the trait and the chromosome(s).

Although, it would be interesting to hear what ethics or morals were hard wired into us when both of us were infants.

Answer 10

i think of the form of a toddler isn't actual translated into the language of morals and ethics. we are born no longer even having a feeling of ourselves as separated from others or from the international. i think of that as a social species, including subculture, we (jointly) inevitably tend to consumer-friendly appreciate between persons, and to transmitting our equipment of responses, that produces such appreciate, to toddlers and young toddlers. the only way i might say we are for valuable under pressure for morality, is that we are born in a position to receive exhilaration from social interplay and we are harmed by using isolation.