Are people inherently moral?

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Are people inherently moral?!

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Bernard Gert (2012) defines the term „morality“ descriptively and normatively.
Descriptively, morality refers to some codes of conduct which has put forwarded by a society, by a religion or accepted by an individual for her own behavior. Normatively, morality is a code of conduct, which would be put forward by all rational people in some specific conditions. Therefore morality is a knowledge. To assume that people are inherently moral, it should also be assumed that people born with certain knowledge. However many philosophers would argue with this assumption. According to John Locke’s „Essay concerning human understanding“, the human mind is a blank slate or „tabula rasa“ at birth and all ideas come from one’s experience and observations (Locke (1690)). Morality doesn’t come along at birth, it is learned with experience and observation. !
A couple of centuries before John Locke, the persian philosopher and physician Ibn
Sina also stated that the human mind is a tabula rasa at birth and „knowledge is attained through empirical familiarity with objects in this world from which one abstracts universal concepts“ (Rizvi). In the experimental evidence of Fehr, Bernhard and Rockenbach (2008) it is observed that the younger children (between 3-4 years old) behaved more selfishly. As they grow older, they tend to behave fairer. Most of the 7-8 years old children preferred the egalitarian allocations in the same experiments. What happened in those 4 years? The answer is simple. While they knew not much about human relations, fairness and equality at the age of 3, with time they expanded their knowledge with observations and experience. As they reached the age of 8, they already have experienced in their every day life how inequality makes them feel, and why they want to avoid that feeling for themselves and for the others. In this learning process, their emotions played an essential role. As greek philosopher Plato states „all learning has an emotional base“. Morality is a virtue, which is learned from birth to the end of one’s life, deeply connected with emotions. ! de Waal(2008) states that social mammals, birds, humans and few large brained animals posses psychological altruism and therefore empathy. Only humans and few large brained animals can posses intentional altruism (subcategory of psychological altruism) but it requires „knowledge of behavioral effects“ , In the other hand psychological altruism occurs a reaction to specific situation and mostly motivated by other emotions, such as empathy.
Infants are not motivated by morality, according to the lecture they don 't have the cognitive abilities to understand causes and consequences (Weber (2014)), but they are motivated through their emotions, especially empathy which is inherent (Divecha (2012)). So we can state that morality requires a certain knowledge but we are inherently driven to behave

„fairer“ because of our emotions. These emotions such as empathy supports us in the process of becoming a moral person. !
Understanding of morality derives between different demographic backgrounds, societies or countries. People with different backgrounds are likely to have different experiences respective to their culture, various socio-economic standards therefore different moral standards. In the scientific paper „In Search of Homo Economicus“ Fehr (2001) states that economic decisions are not exogenous, but in relation to social and economic interactions of everyday life. It shows that in societies like „Machiguenga“ or „Tsimanè" where people are economically more independent and don 't need to involve in communal activities in their daily lives, cooperate and share less than in societies like „Lamelara“ where peoples daily lives depend on cooperation and sharing. People learn moral in different communities, therefore the results of the same experiment derives between societies. An inherent moral would not be various respective to geography or culture. Here it can be seen that moral is indeed a knowledge and it derives because it is learned in different conditions. !
People as well as other mammals live in large communities and have interactions with each other. They are aware that being fair and cooperating with each other is essential in order to survive. So they tend to be moral because of these reasons, which have a selfish nature. In the TED Talk of Frans de Waal (2011) shows a video of two capuchins who are cooperating to pull a box with food on it, which would be too heavy for one capuchin to pull.
Both capuchins are hungry and motivated to pull the box and at the end they are rewarded with the food on the box. In the second video one of the capuchin is already fed and not really interested in the food. Although he is not interested, he is willing to help. He is aware that he will get the return of his favor sometime in the future (de Waal(2008) introduces us this in his essay as „reciprocal altruism“ which states that helping costs should be offset by return benefits) and the hungry capuchin is aware that he needs the help of his companion to get the food. de Waal(2011) states that this behavior is sing of reciprocity which he describes as one of two mains pillars that morality is based on. The other pillar is empathy and compassion. It is obvious that the capuchin or the chimp behaves „morally“ because they are aware that they have a reciprocal profit as a result of their action. They learned that helping the other has its profits, so the main motivation of their moral behavior is welfare maximizing.
The actions and its conclusions have been learned through previous experiences, so they draw their interactions and moral in order to this knowledge. !
The variations of morality can be explained through many different factors, such as different backgrounds, various types of experiences and social norms of a society we live in, interaction levels with the others and many additional reasons. These variations shows that people are not inherently moral but they gain their morality with time through learning constantly depending on the specific conditions of their lives. In the order hand people have

the capability of empathy inherently. Which is a pillar of moral and helps us to develop a better moral understanding and tendency to be fair.!

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References:!

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“Ibn Sina” by Sajjad H. Rizvi, The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ISSN
2161-0002, http://www.iep.utm.edu/, 21.04.2014.!
Henrich, J., “In Search of Homo Economicus: Behavioral Experiments in !
Fifteen Small-scale Societies,” The American Economic Review Vol. 91, No. 2, 73-78 (2001)!

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Fehr, E., Bernhard, H., Rockenbach, B. „Egalitarianism in Young Children“, Nature 454,
1079-1083 (2008)!

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De Waal, F. „How Selfish an Animal? The Case of Primate Cooperation“, from Moral Markets:
The Critical Role of Values in the Economy, edited by Paul J. Zak (2008). Princeton
University Press!

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Gert, Bernard, "The Definition of Morality", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall
2012 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = .!

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Weber, R.,“The Behavioral Foundations of Morality“, Business Ethics No.7 (2014)!

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Divecha, D., „Is Empathy Learned-or are we born with it?“, Developmental Science, from webseite, http://developmentalscience.com/2012/12/02/is-empathy-learned-or-are-we-bornwith-it/!

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Capuchins pulling the box together.!

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References: 1079-1083 (2008)! ! ! Weber, R.,“The Behavioral Foundations of Morality“, Business Ethics No.7 (2014)!