[sojournerc]

I tend to think of morality as an emergent property of successful social structures.

It's a necessary common value system that underlies peaceful cooperation. In this sense it's an evolutionary advantage to treat each other morally and have a shared ethic. That includes not exploiting others for personal gain.

[coldtea]

>It's a necessary common value system that underlies peaceful cooperation. In this sense it's an evolutionary advantage to treat each other morally and have a shared ethic. That includes not exploiting others for personal gain.

It's an evolutionary advantage for a species.

For an individual animal it's an advantage to not follow morality anytime it can get away with it, and thus gain more sexual partners, food, influence in the herd, etc, and from that, more progeny.

[Smaug123]

It sounds like you haven't heard of that experiment on rats. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/QsMJQSFj7WfoTMNgW/the-traged...