We are naturally moral beings, but our environments can enhance - or, sadly, degrade - this innate moral sense.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Ordinary morality is innate in my view.
The moral virtues, then, are produced in us neither by nature nor against nature. Nature, indeed, prepares in us the ground for their reception, but their complete formation is the product of habit.
A growing body of evidence suggests that humans do have a rudimentary moral sense from the very start of life.
Humans are born with a hard-wired morality: a sense of good and evil is bred in the bone. I know this claim might sound outlandish, but it's supported now by research in several laboratories.
As a social primate species, we modulate our morals with signals from family, friends and social groups with whom we identify because in our evolutionary past, those attributes helped individuals to survive and reproduce.
If you look at life with any honesty and intelligence, it's clear that human nature is dark, vile, selfish, and despondent. But I also see a force in human nature, namely grace, that sometimes works against our natural moral entropy.
Moral codes adjust themselves to environmental conditions.
I think we need to start thinking about grounding our moral systems in our biology.
It's through the small things that we develop our moral imagination, so that we can understand the sufferings of others.
I don't believe that we evolved moral psychology; it just doesn't seem plausible to me as a biological phenomenon.