Children and Ethics

I had been working on the idea that morality is somehow a product of runaway sexual selection. I no long think that it is, directly...

1. Morality is not distinctly human.
2. Very little of the cerebral cortex is used for morality, planning, or judgement.

The linguistic expression of morality or ethics is distinctly human. Talking about what people should or should not do, or social rules, or gossip about the status and reputation of various people is probably one of the original uses of language.
To a large extent, our language, and the memes in our language, determine our morals and ethics. Ethics are social constructs, like language, conveyed by other people in our social environment. Particular versions of morality, like language, vary from culture to culture. There are common elements, or universal ethics, which are analogous to universal grammar.

I think, though, that human morality is not only more fully articulated that other species, but that it is more developed. There are two main reasons for this, I think:

1. Articulation highlighted deficits in morality which made them more of a romantic liability.
2. The extremely long and difficult childhood of humans highlighted the necessity of parental morality for child survival.

One theory, which I agree with, is that runaway sexual selection was the main driver for our species' explosion of language abilities.
The idea of plasticity, taking the same basic genetic material but expressing the genes differently, coupled with the influence of sexual selection could explain the extremely rapid development of language abilities.

Our linguistic abilities, however, causes a long an difficult childhood for humans. The size and capacity of the human brain is due in large part to its postnatal development. The newborn brain of all other species develops almost entirely within the womb. A new born chimp has a brain averaging 350 cc. That of an adult chimp averages 450 cc. A newborn human brain also averages 350 cc. But an adult human brain averages 1400 cc, a postnatal increase of 300%.

The challenges of raising children are well-known. It is difficult, exhausting, exasperating work, but it is generally thought of as one of the greatest joys and rewards of life.

Not only are children challenging to raise, but our ethics are also deeply affected by in-group/out-group classification. By the rules of universal ethics, killing other humans is wrong, except when the other human is your enemy. Death of 10 people is worse than the death of one person (assuming the correct scenario), except if that one person is your child.

An additional, related speculation, is that cognitive dissonance played a strong role in our image of God.
1. Men woe women through language
2. Women evaluate men through their language
3. Language is tied up with Morals
4. Morals are tied up with child-rearing
5. Men like to think of themselves as in-control
6. Men realize, deep down, that women have a great deal of control over the moral expression of men
7. Men need to reconcile this emotional conflict
8. Men attribute the Moral Law to God, a man, rather than women.