In short, whatever emotional impulse we may have toward altruism and empathy, and to whatever extent it may be genetically hardwired, it does not obviate the need for explicit judgments about right and wrong. If it did not seem correct to act with kindness and fairness, even at a net personal cost—if there were no sensible reason for so acting, beyond a raw impulse to do so—then we would have reason to regard the raw impulse as pointlessly self-destructive—like a disposition to alcoholism or a purely visceral (so to speak) aversion to surgery—and we would have a reason to attempt to overcome it.

• Gary Drescher, Good and Real