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Even though I'm coming to this topic a few weeks after we hit it, I'm still puzzled.  For most of my life, I probably would have argued that people are innately immoral, that what drives us is not an urge to cooperate and make things easier for other people, but rather the selfish drive to look out for ourselves.  Isn't that why when we go to kindergarten and elementary school we have to *learn* how to play well with others? Sure, some kids may take to sharing the firetrucks better than others, but doesn't someone still have to tell them to share? Maybe some adults are more moral than others because they had better moral educations, that they've been more effectively constructed to be moral.

At the same time, I think that the evolutionary theories of morality that Sarah suggests make a lot of sense.  Organisms do often need to cooperate to survive, and so it follows that those organisms best suited to play well with others would have the easiest time surviving.  I especially like the idea of selective altruism, because I have yet to meet a person (or organism, period) who/that is entirely altruistic.

I guess what I'm getting at is that in my mind, morality is in direct opposition to our innate selfishness.  But it's also true that morality, the social glue that holds everything together and prevents us from killing each other, also makes it easier for us to get that which we desire.  So in some ways, agreeing to live under some kind of moral code in which we ostensibly sacrifice for the greater good is really a selfish choice.  Maybe an example are the Bryn Mawr and Haverford Honor Codes: we agree not to cheat and plagiarize, but what we get in return is trust from our faculty and peers.  This trust translates into a great deal of academic flexibility, as manifest in self-scheduled finals and generous extensions, and the upshot of it all is that we have an easier time at two very rigorous schools than some people do at far less demanding institutions.  So perhaps, in some way, morality is a tool for reconciling the selfish self with the selfish community.

Katie Baratz