Role of Evolution in Morality

Is it moral to throw a switch that diverts a train that is going to hit five people even though throwing that switch will mean the death of a single person?

Is it moral to throw a person in front of a train to save five people in the trains path?

What does evolution have to do with morality?

Those are questions asked in an article in todays Science Times. Most people would answer yes to the first question, yet no to the second question. Why?

Testing people’s reactions to situations like that of a hungry family that cooked and ate its pet dog after it had become roadkill, he explored the phenomenon of moral dumbfounding — when people feel strongly that something is wrong but cannot explain why.

Dumbfounding led him to view morality as driven by two separate mental systems, one ancient and one modern, though the mind is scarcely aware of the difference. The ancient system, which he calls moral intuition, is based on the emotion-laden moral behaviors that evolved before the development of language. The modern system — he calls it moral judgment — came after language, when people became able to articulate why something was right or wrong.

Moral intuition consists of decisions that take place instantaneously, "from the gut" while moral judgement comes later as an attempt to rationalize the decision.

A role for religion is even discussed, but again from a natural selection aspect.

Dr. Haidt believes that religion has played an important role in human evolution by strengthening and extending the cohesion provided by the moral systems. “If we didn’t have religious minds we would not have stepped through the transition to groupishness,” he said. “We’d still be just small bands roving around.”

Religious behavior may be the result of natural selection, in his view, shaped at a time when early human groups were competing with one another. “Those who found ways to bind themselves together were more successful,” he said.

Even morality of members of liberal and conservative political parties are discussed. Although I disagree with his findings as does Dr. Frans B. M. de Waal, a primatologist at Emory University. Dr. de Waal writes:

“For me, the moral system is one that resolves the tension between individual and group interests in a way that seems best for the most members of the group, hence promotes a give and take,” Dr. de Waal said.