Reply to comment

In the moral life of babies article the author points out a possible role for the early moral of the babies. He writes,

"an empty head learns nothing: a system that is capable of rapidly absorbing information needs to have some prewired understanding of what to pay attention to and what generalizations to make. Babies might start off smart, then, because it enables them to get smarter." Leaving the social goals of learning aside, learning enables one to more even more and faster. This could have both a positive and a negative implication. On the one hand this sounds exciting that this understanding of human intelligence points to an effective way for increasing people's learning ability. Through accumulation of knowledge and understanding, the brain finds short cuts and forms increasingly better intuition of the world. One the other hand, it seems easy for one to develop ingrained biases. The previous biases will only facilitate  faster learning of other biases by selecting a preconditioned cognitive path.  Psychologist Henrich and his colleagues concluded that "much of the morality that humans possess is a consequence of the culture in which they are raised, not their innate capacities." The author points out that we do have some sense of right or wrong. This is not incompatible with Henrich's idea that morality is enculturated. It could be that the ability is innate  but this ability is so general that the culture comes to determine the exact views and values of one's morality.

 http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/09/magazine/09babies-t.html?pagewanted=3&_r=1