I find your normative system interesting and useful. But, as I have said, I also find it incomplete, inadequate and/or internally too static ("descriptive") to express agency, a vital aspect of morality. As I see it, to adequately describe moraluty we need to allow for individual moral agency potent enough by chance or choice to escape and even to re-define the normativity of the group/of groups. This seems especially so if we are to root morality in the underlying evolution of sentient, conscious and ultimately intelligent being, evolution itself being necessarily dynamically open ended. I will stop here. Thank you for the exchange.

>Morality is defined here as that for which we are held accountable by others, when we work together towards joint goals.

You exclude by definition a personal morality, even though you say, finally, that,

>Again, there's always going to be a tension between interpersonal and intrapersonal morality (the conscience and how we treat others, and behave) and cultural morality, which may dictate just the opposite of compassion and justice.

I agree that we live within a historical moment influenced if not hegemonically constrained by value systems, and that this context brings us "head to head" with "cultural mores of the day."

But it is a bit of a stretch to then say our notions of right and wrong are necessarily those of an "in-group." (I am reminded of Wittgenstein's rejection of private language – with which I disagree.) Being cognizant of the rules of others does not rule out one's own; in particular, it does not rule out mutancy – e.g., that of Nietzsche "Most people would not do that" does not deny the exception to the rule, including the exception that may become the rule.

I am not qualified to comment on Michael Tomasello's, or your, evolutionary theories of morality. That said, they don't cause me particular concern. Indeed, without expertise on the matter, I observe behavior in species more distant to us than Homo erectus that I could accept as "moral."

At an even more rudimentary level, I am sympathetic to the observations of Kropotkin and others: inter-species co-operation, or at least constructive co-existence, is commonplace in nature, and, at least possibly, a foundation for morality. In short, we share the evolutionary experience of the ecosphere. Arguably, ecosystemic existence encourages notions of right and wrong that presage the pragmatic needs of our species, moreover the inherent sentience, consciousness, intelligence of such existence has not only a past but a present and a future, and thus a potential for agency.

1. I think you should state this "ultimate"/"proximate" distinction more clearly.
2. I still have problems with predicating an individual's morality on the pragmatics of his/her membership in an "in-group." Examples:

• Camus feels himself a "Stranger" in an absurd world. He predicates his morality not on being a member of an in-group or otherwise on being subject to an in-group's system of values, but on being a sentient being who makes choices about how he is going to get through life. (And he does so with extreme courage.)
• A monk's morality may be guided by the goal of achieving his own enlightenment, achieved through the self-non-preoccupied elimination of ego. He may immolate himself, not to encourage others to do so, but to protest this incarnation of his existence.
• The morality of a Tang poet may be guided by the engagement of his senses in pursuit of the non-rational "wu," (nothingness), a state that implicitly involves disregard for imperial society's prevailing order of value, which prioritized correct behavior in keeping with Heaven's mandate. A young Chinese intellectual, perhaps influenced by this recurring phenomenon in Chinese social history, may make a similar ethically inspired but lonely and contrarian choice to stop striving for the wealth, social status and (less likely) political power dangled by the hegemonic materialist value system of the Communist Party of China.

I don't contest how morality may have "evolved" nor that it in human society it may be mostly rooted in the pragmatics of social collaboration, rather your assertion that moral behavior is necessarily that "which we do in pursuit of a joint goal" -- that is, that a wilful act of "rightness" is always, necessarily rooted in the "we" of our existence in society.

You define morality as "the normative of collaborating to achieve joint goals." It is that "which we do in pursuit of a joint goal, by definition." My first concern is that this system denies agency, the existential decision to act or not act -- perhaps out of empathy for anything from a cat in a tree to the ecosphere, perhaps out of commitment to an internalized rationale of worth or value, perhaps out of some other impulse -- but still within a lonely philosophical and psychological framework of "rightness" that does not have its source in "collaborating to achieve joint goals" – as Camus, or perhaps a Theravada monk, Daoist poet or alienated "lying flat" (tang ping) Chinese intellectual, might propose.

I agree that loyalty and self-sacrifice can arise in "cooperative morality," but I feel loyalty and self-sacrifice occur, and are considered "the right thing to do," in situations where no cooperation has been negotiated or even previous contact has been engaged.

I agree that loyalty and self-sacrifice can arise in "cooperative morality," but I feel loyalty and self-sacrifice occur, and are considered "the right thing to do," in situations where no cooperation has been negotiated or even previous contact has been engaged.

Thank you for this nomenclature and for the perspective it gives us on morality. I find it useful but incomplete. It seems to me that there is more to the "we" of moral interaction than informed by the pragmatics of collaboration. "Sacrifice" of self-interest and even of self can be willful or instinctive, and in either case not required by the normative goals of thriving, surviving or reproducing.