What is the point of morality?

Answer 1

It is hypothesised that, as it became evolutionarily advantageous for humanity to operate as a society, rather than as distinctentities, morality evolved. This is supposedly due to the fact that morality made the affected humans better able to survive than their immoral counterparts.

Morality is, therefore, an internal measure intended to dissuade behaviour that is damaging to society any of a number of levels. This is demonstrated satisfactorily in Artificial Intelligence examples, where a number of them interact continuously or intermittently. In such examples, it is normally profitable to have the 'intelligent' beings co-operate, rather than compete, potentially destroying eachothers' work and neglecting certain tasks.

Morality is also a way to sustain variety in the genes of a population, by limiting competition, although, in the long term, it transpires that this is simply another part of the same function; it helps to sustain the population more effectively for the better survival of the species.

In essence, there is no point of morality, it has simply come about because it was more evolutionarily profitable than its absence at a certain point in time, and has been sustained since.

Interestingly, morality may well begin to be 'phased out' genetically, as excessive morality is presently leading to excessive population sizes and rates of increase, and soon, as resources become limited, those more interested in personal survival may become (significantly) more able to survive.

This principle, very pleasingly, identifies morality as a circumstantial feature of humanity AND indicates that it is of no significance except in the inter-personal management of humanity (and other similarly afflicted [a daring word choise, some might say] creatures).