Are ethics, morals and justice taught or are we born with it?

Have you ever seen or heard someone do something that clearly seems wrong to you and you ask rhetorically (because you really don't expect an answer), "What were they thinking??" If you read my last post a family member responded to a bad situation based on their like or dislike for the person who wronged another. This initial response centers more on the self than the other. I don't know how the processing went beyond that but it seems reasonable to assume that some thought into moral or just reasoning of some sort did occur. Ethics, morals, and justice require one to think beyond the self to the other. So today I ask the question, "Are we born with the capacity to do what is right or is it all learned behavior?" I'm sure we would list things such as religion, parent/guardian teaching or social modeling as the basis for learned behavior and leave it at that which is totally reasonable. And yet, since the brain is SO complex, I thought instead of just yacking on and on, I better go searching. I've included a link for my source at the bottom if you'd like to read for yourself.

This debate as long been in the realm of philosophers, many of whom went with the learned behavior theory such as listed above. One Scottish philosopher put forth the idea that our emotions determine behavior. Charles Darwin thought that animals (including humans) that have any social instinct would have at least SOME "moral conscience." That makes me think of working with young children as a teacher. When you give children an opportunity, they can blow your socks off with their ability to consider social problems in their little world with a sense of what is right, just or fair. Well as it turns out, we have what scientists call a moral brain with a basic sense of fairness, justice and helping someone or at least not hurting someone. They've actually mapped out the circuitry. How cool is that?!

Further research in moral psychology reveals that through evolution, humans contain mechanisms (cognitive, emotional and motivational) that help us naturally be cooperative and altruistic in order to be able to live in community with each other. Living in groups is actually part of our survival as a species. So we DO have the capacity to think beyond ourselves and consider others. The rub may be that humans don't all practice ethics and morals the same way.

Where do we go from here? I will leave you with a quote from Immanual Kant, German philosopher:

“Morality is not the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy, but how we make ourselves worthy of happiness."

Source: https://exploringyourmind.com/the-moral-brain-the-neuronal-basis-for-ethics-and-human-values/