Humans are animals affected by natural selection, wherefore no translation from animals to humans is necessary or even possible.
An individual is neither a predator nor a mugger by default. An individual is a predator or a mugger because of its traits and behaviour. Probably the mugger does not value the mugging itself. Humans who value the survival of their own behavioural genes would in all probability put into practice and enforce laws against mugging, since allowing mugging would risk adversely affecting not only each individual herself, but also other humans who to a large extent are carriers of the same behavioural genes as this individual. Please see my comment to gjm, where I mention “fitnessist contractarianism”, which, by the way, is universalizable.
Ethics per se does not have any function. Teaching ethics does. Discussing ethics does. Rational people do those things for a purpose. They do them as a means to an end. The end is given by ethics. Ethics gives you the purpose, but is not the purpose, or even a means to the purpose. But discussing ethics is a means to the purpose.
Humans are animals affected by natural selection, wherefore no translation from animals to humans is necessary or even possible.
"Morality" centrally refers to a set of beliefs and practices only attested in humans, so any attempts to found morality in the behaviour of non human animals requires a translation stage.
An individual is neither a predator nor a mugger by default. An individual is a predator or a mugger because of its traits and behaviour.
I don't see the relevance,
Probably the mugger does not value the mugging itself.
No, they...
I noticed that there has been some earlier discussion about Sam Harris’s Moral Landscape Challenge here at LW. As a writer on the Swedish politico-philosophical blog The Inverted Fable of Reality, I would like to share a response to the challenge, written by our main contributor, which I believe is interesting to read even if you are not familiar with The Moral Landscape or its content. See this link for the response and a short explanation of the challenge.
The response takes a different approach to most responses to the challenge. It is divided into four parts and starts by asking which ethic is most compatible with science and reality and finally tries to answer this question.