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We can deduce from evolutionary ethics a compatibilist view of free will, an idea famously introduced by Scottish philosopher David Hume in "Of Liberty and Necessity," who suggested that we share responsibility for our actions only insofar as our actions originate from us and no one else. We have choices, preferences, desires, and decisions that dictate these actions, but from where do these desires and preferences originate? Our actions, as they are motivated by desire, belief, and preference, are as determined by our biological/genetic makeup as our hair and eye color. We have buried psychological impulses that have been given to us through "natural" means--there's no way we could have chosen for them to exist. For example, due to issues with their hypothalamus, sociopaths have a reduced capacity for empathy than the typical human being. Of course, these parts of ourselves that determine our actions can, and often do, change over time, given influences of nurture and experience.
"A group of scientists at Newcastle University, headed by Melissa Bateson and Daniel Nettle of the Center for Behavior and Evolution, conducted a field experiment demonstrating that merely hanging up posters of staring human eyes is enough to significantly change people’s behavior."
http://www.bartleby.com/37/3/11.html
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-the-illusion-of-being-observed-can-make-you-better-person/
http://essay.utwente.nl/64617/
“Normative ethics involves arriving at moral standards that regulate right and wrong conduct. In a sense, it is a search for an ideal litmus test of proper behavior…The key assumption in normative ethics is that there is only one ultimate criterion of moral conduct, whether it is a single rule or a set of principles.”
Normative ethics attempts to prescribe the universal rightness and wrongness of any given action; yet here it is already complicated by the notion that there are absolute “rights” and “wrongs,” which apply no matter who is committing the unethical act and why they are committing it. Exclusively normative approaches to ethics violations are ineffective because they don’t take into account individual reasons for why the ethical violations occurred, and the punishments end up being more punitive than pragmatic.
http://www.iep.utm.edu/ethics/
“We may define metaethics as the study of the origin and meaning of ethical concepts. It covers issues from moral semantics to moral epistemology. Two issues, though, are prominent: (1) metaphysical issues concerning whether morality exists independently of humans, and (2) psychological issues concerning the underlying mental basis of our moral judgments and conduct.”
http://www.iep.utm.edu/ethics/
One could determine that the words "right" and "wrong" make little sense in ethical discussions. They require someone to ordain moral actions, and without a "someone" ordaining actions (like a supreme being), what makes something "right" or "wrong"? Therefore, we can focus on whether an action is "good" or "bad" instead of "right" or "wrong" for two reasons : 1. We can determine whether something is good or bad through quantifiable means and 2. We don't need a supreme being to do so. Morality, then, is built into nature.
“Evolutionary ethics tries to bridge the gap between philosophy and the natural sciences by arguing that natural selection has instilled human beings with a moral sense, a disposition to be good. If this were true, morality could be understood as a phenomenon that arises automatically during the evolution of sociable, intelligent beings and not, as theologians or philosophers might argue, as the result of divine revelation or the application of our rational faculties. Morality would be interpreted as a useful adaptation that increases the fitness of its holders by providing a selective advantage.”
http://www.iep.utm.edu/evol-eth/
Why do people break honor codes? Unfortunately, there are no universal moral laws that can tell us how to understand ethical transgressions. No one person cheats or behaves badly for quite the same reason, and therefore exclusively normative, or Kantian-derived, punishments are ineffective in treating and preventing ethics violations. We need to understand ethical violations, and why they occur, at their base level in order to figure out how to apply the most effective solutions.