People Are Basically Good

Milgram, Stanford, and Rwanda do not show humans are "basically evil". They show humans are authority-sensitive. Two different claims.

1. Milgram does not prove innate evil. Participants were not enjoying harm. They were distressed, protested, and wanted to stop(as you've said). Obedience here required authority, institutional framing. The cruelty was default, then that would not be necessary.

2. Stanford experiment is methodological weak. Analyses and Prison Study show variation, not inevitability. Some guards resisted abuse, some prisoners organized collectively. Power enables cruelty but that doesn't mean it produced it[5].

3. If humans were evil, genocide would be spontaneous, not laboriously constructed. As explained by Rwanda, Abu Gharaib and Nazism. They all involved propaganda and authority, including social rewards for cruelty[4].

My Arguments:

Infants show empathy and helping behavior before moral instruction[1], humans cooperate in many different ways[2], most people obey laws even when enforcement is unlikely[3].

There is a false binary here: basically good does not mean incapable of evil.

Conclusion: Your data proves vulnerability, not essence. Evil DOES need instructions. Sympathy seems to appear unpredictably.

NOTE-: I believe in Moral Relativism. I am against the belief that we are born moral/immoral. Our environment effects our behavior, thus creating "Moral" or "Immoral". Evolution plays a crucial part. Humans have two "purposes", ie, survival and reproduction(secondary).

We do not kill, because it lowers population(not because we are made not to), and that is adverse for survival.

In this sense, I do not think we are born good, but I do not think the other way either.

Footnotes:

[1] Warneken and Tomasello(2006) Altruistic Helping in Human Infants and Young Chimpanzees, Hamlin, Wynn and Bloom(2007) social evaluation by Infants.

[2] Tomasello et. al. 2012. Two key steps in the evolution of human cooperation. Human cooperation exceeds that of other primates. Nowak 2006 Five rules for the evolution of cooperation.

[3] Why people obey the law(1990), and 2003 The Role of Procedural Justice.

[4] 1963, EichMann in Jerusalem(1963), Strauss 2006, The order of genocide.

[5] BBC prison study, 2001 also said it was not universal or inevitable. And Le texier 2019 debunked the experiment.

Thank you for the clarification. With that framing, I think we are actually closer than it first appeared.

I never meant to say "Basically good" to imply fixed moral essence or immunity to wrongdoing.

My claim is narrower: Humans possess real, early developing prosocial capacities, empathy, helping and cooperation.

Which exist prior to former moral instruction. They are indeed fragile and context sensitive.

The evidence you've cited show how easily those capacities can be overriden by authority and social pressure. But not that they are absent.

I agree that institutions, norms and incentives matter enormously. Where I differ is that I see those structures as cultivating and protecting something that already present.

If humans lacked any baseline pro social tendencies, authority alone would not explain distress, resistance and variation.

My position, clarified: Vulnerability is real, but Vulnerability does not negate the existence of prosocial baseline.

I do not generally agree with the term "empathy". I think the word 'sympathy' makes more sense. Empathy can only be felt in rare circumstances. Doing empathy means you need to understand the person's suffering or pain. Which, if you've never felt, cannot understand. In this way, Sympathy is the better term we can use when we talk about a 'helping' mind.

So, empathy is learned. But, Sympathy might not be learned. (1)

Moral cognition is not fully expressed at birth(just like language, mathematical ability or self control). That doesn't mean something like language is "not innate".

Innate doesn't mean fully developed at birth. It means a capacity that unfolds WITH development. (2)

From 1 and 2,

Sympathy could be a capacity or trait that is not fully expressed by preverbal Infants.

Vision is innate, but depth preception develops.

Similarly, showing ego-bias infants does not prove absence of moral capacity.

Let's look at neuroscience,

Innate neural structures can be seen, which are developed and shaped through learning.

So we can conclude that predisposition mixed with environment gives the trait.

Newborns are able to show emotional distress, contagion, facial mimicry etc... and they are biological..not cultural.

Explaining orgin is not explaining meaning or experience

For e.g., hunger evolved for survival, doesn't mean that enjoying the food is an illusion or is fake..

fear also is evolved for safety or protection, that doesn't mean courage is impossible.

Similarly, altruism has evolutionary explanation, but that doesn't mean the psychological motivation is irrelevant or that the intention is absent.

There are many traits that can collapse under stress. Not just morality.

For example, sleep. Torture severely ruins sleep. Sleeplessness is extremely common in survivors.

Another example is language. Language can collapse if the brain is 'disturbed'(through injury or stress).

Just because something is fragile, does not mean it is artificial.

Biology explains capacities. Morality isn't an organ..

Biology explains tendencies partially and shows gradual development of these capacities.

You can have cultural shaping or moral systems with Biological roots.

Just because behavior has evolutionary advantage, doesn't mean it isn't genuine.

If that's the case, then love, curiosity, art or loyalty, all becomes fake, or meaningless(they all have evolutionary benefits too).

Con did not prove "humans are not basically good"

Con proved that humans are context sensitive beings who are biologically grounded, and are social organisms.

Did I ever say "social = good"?

What I claimed: Humans have prosocial capacities(sympathy, helping, cooperation tendencies), not that being social guarantees morality.

Definitions

1. Sociability: Ability to interact.
2. Prosociality: tendency/capacity to care or help.

These two are different.

Dark triad examples do not prove your point.

They only prove one thing,

That is the fact that sociability can be weaponized.

They do not prove the absence of the prosociality capacities.

Just because the traits have been misused, doesn't mean the traits are invalid.

The dark triads caused harm.

As per your argument,

harm requires: Trust, group bonds, connection, authority structures, emotional attachment, etc..

These are just pro-social mechanisms, hijacked for harm.

Con's conclusion is invalid.

Con went from "some people are evil" to "Pro's position fails".