The Natures of Universal Moralities

Abstract

One of the abiding lessons from postmodernism is that reason does not go all the way down. That is, one cannot deductively derive a universal morality from incon­testible moral primitives, or practical reason alone. Instead, even reasoned moral systems must ultimately be grounded on intuition, a sense of justice. The question then arises, whence come moral intuitions? Evolutionary biology offers answers. In this article, I examine the main ones. Since the products of evolutionary principles are contingent on chance and the environ­ment in which the evolution occurs, I speculate on the range of moral intuitions consistent with these prin­ci­ples.

Keywords: morality, ethics, sense of justice, moral intuition, evolutionary biology, evolution psychology