I will have a look at that Charlotte 
I would argue that morality in it's most basic form has an evolutionary basis. There is growing evidence in animal behaviour studies that morality is not just a human trait, but a trait existing throughout the social animals. The argument being, that in order to survive and thrive and produce more offspring in a social setting there needs to be certain 'rules of conduct'.
A selfish individual who cheats the system and plays everyone for a fool, will inevitably be found out and ultimately will shoot themselves in the foot. e.g Vampire bats sometimes fail to find a meal. On their return their neighbour will regurgitate some blood for them to keep em going. They expect the favour to be returned. If it is not, the 'cheater' is identified and soon no one will give him a meal. Much like that person who borrows money from everyone and never gives it back. Soon no one will lend them money, or trust them and they will ultimately lose out!
A human rapist might in the short term spread more seed, but quickly he will be shunned by females in a group who will not want to breed with him through choice, and he is likely to be ortracised by his group. thus in the long term he loses out and reduces his reproductive success. Yea he will pass on some of his rapist genes so the behaviour will persist, but not enough to become widespread as its not an evolutionarily stable strategy.
Empathy is a part of morality, and also essential to the process of morality. A social animal must have feelings of empathy towards its conspecifics or it will have no drive to help them. In turn that would mean it would not be helped by its conspecifics. Lack of empathy would mean everyone loses out. Alliances are essential to a social animal, and you can't build a proper alliance without feelings. I read a couple of cruel but interesting studies on empathy. A rat is placed in a cage with a lever that it presses to receive food. There is a rat in a cage next to it, which gets electrocuted every time the lever is pressed. When he associated the pressing of the lever with the other rat being hurt, he refused to press the lever, even under duress of great hunger.
If that is not morality I don't know what is.
Another rat study which was pretty brutal for the poor rattys, looked at the reaction to rats exposed to the decapitation of conspecifics. It was found they had exactly the same stress response as a human would have, exposed to a person being brutally beheaded.
I would recommend alook at the book 'Wild Justice - The Moral Lives of Animals" by Bekoff and Pierce for a really really eye opening read. And if you search google scholar for Animal empathy you will find loads of really interesting studies
updated by @fay-brotherhood: 07/23/15 04:13:21PM
