EVOLUCIONĀRAIS, PĀRLAICĪGAIS UN AKTUĀLAIS ĒTOSS
THE EVOLUTIONARY, TIMELESS AND CURRENT ETHOS

Summary/Abstract: In this article, the author draws attention to morality as both a value system and social property outlining the neo-Darwinian view on the origin of morality. According to this view, conflicts were disastrous for weak organisms looking for scanty resources. In rivalry, an approximate Nash equilibrium – the influence and dominance partition acceptable to all competitors – was established. As a relation paradigm, it is analogous to other examples of equilibrium in inanimate and animate nature and displays the objective, unconventional character of social regulation. In the hard struggle for survival, the individuals and groups that were cooperating had the best chance to persist and propagate. A tribe having many members ready for mutual aid and self-sacrifice succeeded in fulfilling joint ventures and could leave more offspring. In this way, protomorality functioned as an instrument of natural selection. The development of morality should not be deemed a result of methodological induction. At the stage of the undeveloped mind, this process means an instinctive, non-linguistic mechanism. Indirect reciprocity is a serious step towards moral behaviour. To form moral judgments, both general intellectual capacity (mind, memory, speech) and specific feelings (love, guilt, shame) are necessary. The acquisition of the capacity for normative guidance was the turning-point in moral development. Viable habits were maintained in the collective memory as social norms. Our moral intuitions about the goodness of survival and reproduction have a genetic heritage. Moral judgments are cognitive statements, which at least implicitly are universal. The metaethical nature of moral values is continuously discussed. Moral realists stress the objective, irreducible character and a priori cognition of moral norms. Their opponents point out that an unexplained gap remains between the ideal, causally inert values and real events. Evolutionists treat morality as biological adaptation and admit subjective creation of moral judgments. The synthesis of moral realism and evolutionary interpretation of moral sense is not impossible. The phylogenetic comprehension of values at a certain time does not degrade them as independent eternal patterns. Historical beliefs may rather be treated as the instantiation of moral paragons. A parallel is drawn with general theoretical principles, which being unchangeable in themselves are discovered during the investigation. Scrutinising similar situations, human mind ponders idealised models subject to definite laws. Ethical a priori cognition is vindicated to the extent to which general theoretical knowledge is justified. Only a few inadequate beliefs provided by natural selection are known: parents’ conviction about the exclusive properties of their children and predisposed recollection of unfortunate experience in risky situations.

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