Quote Originally Posted by Gelatinous Cube View Post
Morality certainly isn't emergent at all. Morality exists all over the animal Kingdom, you just don't call it that. What is morality? Is it not the unspoken (or spoken) rules that govern our behaviour? The proverbial pheromones that drive an ant colony to do the queen's bidding serve the same function: Some species' evolve a means to work together. Wolves operate in packs with rules and regulations. Geese fly in formation. Social rules are one of life's oldest tricks, but humans have the misfortune of being smarter than the sum of their parts. Our mutated brains have enough processing power to question the rules that we never understood on a conscious level anyway, and I suppose in that sense it is emergent indeed.
Atoms don't have morals. Therefore it is an emergent property of a complex ie multi molecular system. It is not a property of electromagnetics, gravity or nuclear forces.

The properties emerge out of combining various other things. One requirement for morality to be non instinctual would be memory. Game theory and the prisoners dilemma takes on a whole different strategy when played as a single thought game vs a series.

Morality deals with future consequences. Some people do the right thing because it is right others will worry about the ROI.