If you think your moral compass uses some higher power to attract its True North, consider this story on Science Friday that explores empathy and the sense of right and wrong among primates. Perhaps as the brain gets bigger, fairness emerges in social animals as an adaptive survival trait.
From Science Friday:
Searching for the Roots of ‘Right’ and ‘Wrong’
In The Bonobo and the Atheist: In Search of Humanism Among the Primates, primatologist Frans de Waal explores traits like empathy and fairness in our closest relatives, bonobos and chimpanzees, and argues that human morality is not the product of rational thought or religion, but evolved long ago.
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