Richard J. Severson

Two of the oldest moral virtues in human experience are humility and generosity.¹ That makes sense from an evolutionary point of view.  Like social insects, humans found a way to become superorganisms that function as a cooperative hive, thereby enhancing their chances to thrive.  Bees achieved that rare distinction by restricting sexual reproduction to queens and drones.  Most bees are sterile females—sisters, essentially—which reduces the potential for conflict between members of the hive.  All animals have a natural inclination to nepotism, or the protection of their own family.  Humans took a moral path to their hive-based success.  (We call our “hives” cultures, societies, and civilizations.)  Our hunter-gatherer ancestors shared food and other resources with families that needed help, a clear example of generosity.  They also insisted upon the equality of each adult member of the group.  Bullies were not tolerated (in extreme cases they were banished or put down), a clear example of humility. 

Moral virtues such as humility and generosity are definitely learned behaviors.  Our ancestors would have taught their children to share their food, and avoid being a “big shot” amongst the group.  And yet these and other virtues are also probably ingrained in our mammalian biology as adaptive instincts.  Morality, I suspect, is both biologically and culturally adaptive.  The same can’t be said for ethics, which is often (wrongly, I believe) used as a synonym for morality. 

Ethics is reflection about the moral life, which isn’t the same thing as being moral.  If you lack a moral conscience, you won’t find out how to get one in an ethics manual.  Conscience is an instinctive part of our moral/mental lives, yet we also need to nurture and fortify it by practicing good habits and behavior.  A recent psychological study suggests that even newborn infants have instinctive moral sentiments, such as an attraction to nice people and an aversion to mean ones.²

The history of ethics, essentially, has been an effort to universalize our moral instincts and feelings.  How can we learn to treat everybody—friend, foe, stranger, whomever—without prejudice?  That is the ethical quest.  Henry Sidgwick, one of the great ethicists of the 19^th century, claimed that there are really only two methods of ethics.³ One is intuitionism, best represented by Kant’s “moral law,” which requires that we only act according to principles (or intuitions/instincts) that can be universally applied to everybody.  Take the intuition that stealing is wrong, for example.  If I think it is OK for me to steal, but not for others to do so, then I have not lived up to the moral law because my intuition isn’t being applied universally.

The second method of ethics that Sidgwick identified is consequentialism, best represented by Mill’s utilitarianism, which requires that we always act in accordance with the greatest happiness principle.  According to that principle, we are obligated to increase the happiness of the greatest number of people possible, not just ourselves or our tribe.  Taking the example of stealing again, it is wrong for anybody (including me) to steal because the consequence of stealing diminishes the happiness of those who are robbed, which is never acceptable.

Many of the arguments we get into in everyday life are about our moral values.  We often use ethics, or practical reason, to try to justify our position.  Not surprisingly, there are two basic tactics: appeals to values that all humans share (intuitionism), and/or appeals to values that all humans should share (consequentialism).  The stronger argument usually manages to include both methods of ethics. 

Some of the earliest ethical manuals, like Confucius’s Analects and Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics, instructed students about how to improve their moral lives.  In Aristotle’s case, that meant acquiring virtues, which he defined as dispositions to act and feel appropriately in given circumstances.⁴ We acquire virtues—courage, for example—by making it a habit to imitate what courageous people do (standing up to bullies, perhaps).  The problem with the moral life, as Aristotle viewed it, was that we have too many bad habits. 

To circle back to where this reflection began, I think both morality and ethics have been adaptive (helpful) for the thriving of Homo sapiens.  As Darwin pointed out, moral societies are more likely to survive than nonmoral ones because they foster cooperation.⁵

Notes:

1. Christopher Boehm, Moral Origins (Basic Books, 2012). 
2. Alessandra Geraci, et al.  “Human Newborns Spontaneously Attend to Prosocial Interactions,” Nature Communications (July 8, 2025): 9 pp.
3. Henry Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics (University of Chicago, 1962; original work published 1874). 
4. Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics (Liberal Arts Press, 1962; original work published approximately 350 BCE).
5. Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man (John Murray, 1882), p. 166.