An objective morality can be discerned

Alright, I'm guessing that you agree to the definitions and presuppositions that I've laid out. I'm not going to retort anything that you've written, as the time to retort will come in the third and fourth rounds (you should not retort in this round either; feel free to re-post or rewrite your opening). Instead, I'm going to outline my argument for how one can determine an objective morality and exactly what that morality is. As I noted in the first round, my argument rests on a couple of presuppositions, and those presuppositions come with some baggage. My first presupposition is that reality is, in some sense, shared. This is simply one of the scientific presuppositions, essentially disregarding the problem of hard solipsism. This particular presupposition comes with no baggage. The second presupposition, that humans evolved and are animals, comes with substantially more baggage. I'll try to unpack that here. First, humans evolved and are animals. This indicates that humans have a survival instinct (either as individuals or as groups) and that human faculties underwent some process of refinement. Second, evolution implies that survival pressures occur. Natural selection spurs natural adaptation; natural adaptation is the natural way to adapt to survival pressures, but humans can technologically adapt. Ever since humans began to create tools, they have been "escaping" natural selection through technological means. Of course some pressures will still cause natural adaptation to occur (in the case of milk consumption, for instance), but humans didn't need to adapt strength because they had spears, and humans can't eat raw meat because they had fire.(1) In this way the purpose of the traits of any animal can be discerned. We can create sentences in the form of "X trait occurred for Y reason." This doesn't imply any conscious goal in mind, it's simple a posteriori observation. Fish have fins because they need to swim and birds have hollow bones because they need to fly. I couldn't have told you this before the adaptations occurred, of course, but telling you afterwards isn't a problem. There is no teleological issue when talking about the purpose of natural traits in this way. So, this brings us to morality. Why are we even moral in the first place? It clearly isn't arbitrary, and immorality is actually fairly hard to propagate (serial killers are quite rare, for instance). So, clearly, humans have some inbuilt, natural morality, but, again, the question is why. Well, often, when trying to determine the purpose of an adaptation, cross species examinations can be done, and when cross-species examinations are done in the case of morality, its purpose and its nature are easily discerned. The purpose of morality, like every other trait that an animal adapts, is to promote survival. Morality promotes survival through group cohesion, and this is quite apparent when looking across species. Why don"t I kill? It puts my group at risk. Why don"t I steal? It puts my group at risk. A group filled with immoral individuals will do substantially worse that a group glued together via morality.(2) So, back to humans escaping natural selection: If we"re naturally moral, why are we so, well, immoral? That"s actually easy to answer. The only type of morality that humans ever needed to naturally adapt was minor. Humans just needed enough morality to keep a band of roughly 30 to 40 people from collapsing. After the rise of agriculture, and, by extension, society, the natural human morality couldn't keep up. This is when humans began to innovate an unnatural morality, enough to deal with large societies. This need to innovate coincides nicely with the rise of organized religion and law.(3)(4)(5) This unnatural vs. natural morality divide also explains the inconsistent consistency across cultures, in group vs. out group dynamics (and Dunbar"s number) and the lack of large scale empathy next to the abundance of personal empathy. (6)(7)(8) Now, my definition of morality is as follows then: Morality - A suite of otherregarding behaviors that promote group cohesion through altruism, reciprocity, cooperation, etc. What does this mean for law, then? Well, this definition of morality can be expanded, and, with a basis to work from, it would be easy enough to determine what actions would promote the highest level of group cohesion. This doesn't automatically indicate a lack of personal freedom, as, when freedom is restricted, frustration breeds, and frustration leads to instability.(9)(10) It should also be noted that convergent evolution is a great measure of the efficacy of a natural trait for its purpose (flagellum vs. submarine rudders, bird wings vs. plane wings), and the type of morality that I've laid out here is, in fact, a convergent trait that can be seen in cetaceans, canids, other primates and even rodents to some extent. It seems to increase as group complexity increases. (11)(12)(13)(14)(15) 1. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov... 2. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov... 3. http://avalon.law.yale.edu... 4. http://www.ancient.eu... 5. http://www.duhaime.org... 6. http://www.europeansocialsurvey.org... 7. http://www.npr.org... (there are better resources, but NPR is fun) 8. http://www.socialemotiveneuroscience.org... 9. https://www.hawaii.edu... 10. http://psycnet.apa.org... 11. "Wild Justice" by Bekoff and Pierce. Yes, the whole thing. 12. https://books.google.com... 13. http://ilarjournal.oxfordjournals.org... 14. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com... 15. http://sharkmans-world.eu...