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There is evidence. Physical evidence in fact. You can find people with mental conditions that involve a complete lack of morality. If you scan these people wit

There is evidence. Physical evidence in fact. You can find people with mental conditions that involve a complete lack of morality. If you scan these people with an MRI you actually find actual correlated differences in their brain. The term for this type of mental condition is antisocial personality disorder. The popular term is psychopathy. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-neuroscientist-who-discovered-he-was-a-psychopath-180947814/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-neuroscien... It's hard to beat an MRI of the brain and an arrow pointing to a picture of the part of your brain that is moral. Unless you disagree with physical structures in the brain being the result of natural selection, such evidence supports morality being the result of natural selection.

AnimalMuppet 6y ago
All right, here's a structurally similar claim: Snoring is the result of natural selection. The physical features of our throats cause snoring (we can actually change this with surgery). And the physical features of our throats are the result of evolution. So... So now we need to define exactly what we mean by "is the result of". Is it accidentally the result of an evolutionary process (and we are explaining it with post-hoc rationalizations)? Or is it the result of a process that evolution actually drove toward that outcome, because it was beneficial? (Or is snoring actually beneficial for the survival and reproduction of the species?)
- nendroid 6y ago
  All mutations are accidental. Whether a macro feature on a biological lifeform is accidental feature or a feature driven through generations of natural selection can be judged through the complexity of the outcome. Complexity arises from random mutations being selected and building on each other. A complex module in our brain that formulates moral judgements on certain behaviors is by probability more likely to be an outcome of generations of natural selection. Such a module arising by accident is roughly equivalent to the probability of a tornado self assembling a 747 airliner from random junk by accident.
  - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
    You're pulling out the "tornado in a junkyard" argument to advocate for evolution? There are those who think that exact same argument applies to something like morals arising as the result of a series of accidental mutations.
    - nendroid 6y ago
      I'm not arguing against it. I'm saying morals are a macro feature arising from a series of accidental mutations as opposed to a macro feature arising as a side effect similar to your snoring example. The complexity of the moral module is too complex to be a single accidental mutation... it must be naturally selected out of a multitude of mutations building on each other to produce such a feature. This is very unlike snoring which is caused by mechanisms that are far more simplistic.

AnimalMuppet 6y ago

All right, here's a structurally similar claim: Snoring is the result of natural selection. The physical features of our throats cause snoring (we can actually change this with surgery). And the physical features of our throats are the result of evolution. So... So now we need to define exactly what we mean by "is the result of". Is it accidentally the result of an evolutionary process (and we are explaining it with post-hoc rationalizations)? Or is it the result of a process that evolution actually drove toward that outcome, because it was beneficial? (Or is snoring actually beneficial for the survival and reproduction of the species?)

nendroid 6y ago
All mutations are accidental. Whether a macro feature on a biological lifeform is accidental feature or a feature driven through generations of natural selection can be judged through the complexity of the outcome. Complexity arises from random mutations being selected and building on each other. A complex module in our brain that formulates moral judgements on certain behaviors is by probability more likely to be an outcome of generations of natural selection. Such a module arising by accident is roughly equivalent to the probability of a tornado self assembling a 747 airliner from random junk by accident.
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago
  You're pulling out the "tornado in a junkyard" argument to advocate for evolution? There are those who think that exact same argument applies to something like morals arising as the result of a series of accidental mutations.
  - nendroid 6y ago
    I'm not arguing against it. I'm saying morals are a macro feature arising from a series of accidental mutations as opposed to a macro feature arising as a side effect similar to your snoring example. The complexity of the moral module is too complex to be a single accidental mutation... it must be naturally selected out of a multitude of mutations building on each other to produce such a feature. This is very unlike snoring which is caused by mechanisms that are far more simplistic.