Assuming that we evolved in the moral climate that you are constructing I would guess that we would readily kill babies. Now of course, in the example you give there is an inherent limit to the number of babies that can be killed and still have sufficient life left over to be around to respond to your questions.
The spectrum of responses and moralities I’ve seen on display here (and elsewhere) are artifacts of our being and culture. Many of the behavioral tendencies that we ascribe as being “moral” have both an innate (“instinctual” for lack of a better term) and a social/cultural element (i.e. learned or amplified). The idea of an “embedded” morality in the universe is a bit hard to swallow, but I’ll play along: I would guess then, since we are also embedded in this experiment we (or any entity capable of expressing what can be judged as “moral” behavior) would eventually express this embedded moral behavior. It would be a rather fascinating argument to justify otherwise, given the “universe” as described has as part of it’s makeup a particular moral code it would be reasonable to conclude that “moral” creatures would come into existence that continue to show a arbitrary collection of moral behaviors despite there being a supposed “embedded” moral compass? Then what is the meaning of such an embedded property if it not to be expressed? In the experiment as proposed the embedded moral direction is either relevant and expressed, or irrelevant and has no baring on the moral development of such a universe’s inhabitants.
The general sentiment expressed about humans possessing morality is really a statement about some evolved behaviors that were selected, the rest (higher-level elaboration on these somewhat “innate” traits) is substantially illusionary. This is not to say that the more “illusionary” extrapolations aren’t an important variable in societies, they are, but beyond the physiological and neurological elements, the rest are behaviors culturally and socially tuned to essentially arbitrary values.
Assuming that we evolved in the moral climate that you are constructing I would guess that we would readily kill babies. Now of course, in the example you give there is an inherent limit to the number of babies that can be killed and still have sufficient life left over to be around to respond to your questions.
The spectrum of responses and moralities I’ve seen on display here (and elsewhere) are artifacts of our being and culture. Many of the behavioral tendencies that we ascribe as being “moral” have both an innate (“instinctual” for lack of a better term) and a social/cultural element (i.e. learned or amplified). The idea of an “embedded” morality in the universe is a bit hard to swallow, but I’ll play along: I would guess then, since we are also embedded in this experiment we (or any entity capable of expressing what can be judged as “moral” behavior) would eventually express this embedded moral behavior. It would be a rather fascinating argument to justify otherwise, given the “universe” as described has as part of it’s makeup a particular moral code it would be reasonable to conclude that “moral” creatures would come into existence that continue to show a arbitrary collection of moral behaviors despite there being a supposed “embedded” moral compass? Then what is the meaning of such an embedded property if it not to be expressed? In the experiment as proposed the embedded moral direction is either relevant and expressed, or irrelevant and has no baring on the moral development of such a universe’s inhabitants.
The general sentiment expressed about humans possessing morality is really a statement about some evolved behaviors that were selected, the rest (higher-level elaboration on these somewhat “innate” traits) is substantially illusionary. This is not to say that the more “illusionary” extrapolations aren’t an important variable in societies, they are, but beyond the physiological and neurological elements, the rest are behaviors culturally and socially tuned to essentially arbitrary values.