Ethics seems to be the mass application of what was evolutionarily selected for when the tribe was the largest social unit.

I'm no biologist, or expert in evolution of any kind, but here's one hypothesis from a laymen; both 'moral', cooperative behaviour AND 'immoral' savage behaviour occur in nature, and probably BOTH are essential for the survival of a species, and most of us today have decided - using our sentient intelligence - that one is preferable to the other. I've seen arguments from both sides who seem to grasp at an example of
evolution either producing 'ethical' or 'unethical' behaviour as though that's the ultimate proof either way. Seems to me if both behaviours can be seen to occur in nature than both behaviours are produced by evolution.....which is actually pretty obvious, when you just consider that we humans DO both behaviours.

OR....both 'moral' and 'immoral' behaviour are just side effects of evolution that are only indirectly caused by it, and we have just chosen to divide it into two and apply meaning to each.

Either way, I really don't understand why both sides find possibilities like this so disturbing - it seems some people really need to believe that their concepts of 'right' and 'wrong' are objective in order to be important. There seems to be this need for people to establish that our 'morality' exists outside of our heads, and is therefore 'real', and not just a product of our imaginations. As though anything that only exists in our heads as a concept is therefore worthless, and there's no reason for us to use it.
But LANGUAGE is only a concept that exists solely in our heads - are you going to tell me that language doesn't 'exist' and is therefore worthless and meaningless, and there's no reason we should use it? If not, then great - try living without language for a few days and see how far it gets you.

I don't get that at all. I'm perfectly fine with my 'morality' being subjective. The universe doesn't care about something like rape, as far as 'objective reality' is concerned, rape is neither good nor bad. But we are not objective creatures, so we'll decide subjectively whether rape is good or bad, and I will ally myself with everyone in the world who decides it is a bad thing. And I'll hold disgust for anyone who decides they like rape, and will do everything within my power to oppose them - and yes, that does mean I am unfairly forcing my subjective views onto rapists.

The point is, I don't particularly care about the rights of rapists to rape, or murderers to murder, or thieves to steal - and I question the mentality of anyone who does. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

it does not suggest evolution is directed towards moral behavior or reflection.

Agreed.

And therefore . . . what?

Yes, if we're logical, but morality does not always concern logic, and people do not always apply logic when developing their moral understandings. This egalitarian view is a relatively modern idea, and one that isn't as widespread as we might like. One big piece of evidence for this is unfolding as we speak, namely how ethics concern homosexual individuals. Although some major breakthroughs have been made in some places, and are continued to be made, it is evidently true that the bigger part of societies on this planet do not regard homosexuality as "normal" or "morally acceptable".

To a great extent morality is externally learned behaviour facilitated through participation in different groups (families, social circles, societies, etc), to another extent it is internally processed. The development of empathy (not only in humans as we now know) coupled with a highly capable mind can enable us to be influenced by others and to be able to influence both ourselves and others as to what is and is not moral.

In that regard, it is of course not evolution that has lead to morality, but rather our social behaviour and our common capacity for thought, but this behaviour as well as our brains have both been developed by our evolution as a species.

"Ethical sense/conscience" explained? The desire to conform / seek approval from others, begins as early as age two
http://bigthink.com/ideafeed/desire-to-conform-starts-by-age-two

It develops from a seed planted early in life, namely the desire to conform, which is also linked to the desire and effort by the child to gain approval from their parents. To quote Will Bagley (not from the article)... "In the human species, there is a kind of emotional biology where "approval equals survival." Human beings are very socially oriented, in spite of all the macho independence talk. Biologically, humans are actually quite weak physically and their strength is in a kind of social unity with the family being the basic unit. In earlier phases of history, a child could not really fend for itself on its own. The heroic stories of children who were cast out of society and managed to survive and even thrive were the exception that proves the rule, showing how much this did not happen, since these heroes were like legends. I deal with this a lot in my healing work, tapping into the "inner child" that still holds this belief that social approval equals survival. As a manipulative control strategy, many psychopaths will use social condemnation as a tool to control others and get their way, because most humans have this inner child within them and can be controlled through this. I find, too, that there are trolls that use condemnation tactics, very psychopathic in intent and flavor, to try to create a false consensus to shift political opinion. You can find them dancing away on nearly every RT video on youtube. Curiously, if a person does not have this "approval equals survival" meme running in childhood, they have a high tendency to become a psychopath (usually as a result of a highly toxic family environment where getting approval is so terrifying that the mechanism shuts down, the person gives up). It seems that the formation of our 'conscience' has a lot to do with the childhood effort to gain approval. It is like the seed that evolves into ethical thinking."

Moral values, like moral behaviors appear to have more than one basis behind them, by which I mean morality does not appear to be driven totally by one's conscious mind, nor does it appear to be something that is totally due to genetic predispositions, nor totally due to repeated lessons from birth that eventually become ingrained behavior patterns requiring little to no thought.

And the "moral" question appears to be a sub-division of all questions regarding what humans find agreeable and disagreeable. The vast majority of us like

1) being healthy rather than chronically ill or in pain;

2) eating rather than starving;

3) having at least a little money rather than living in abject poverty;

4) sharing peace and happiness rather than living in fear of having our lives or belongings taken from us at the whim of others or at the whims of natural accidents, diseases and disasters.

Such "choices" seem undeniably obvious to us, being a species with a long shared biological background, large brains, similar sensory organs, similar nerves that record similar feelings of pain and pleasure, and a similar psychological need to feel wanted and belong, rather than mocked and shunned, and a hunger to be in the presence of other members of our species like our family and others who stimulate us physically, verbally, and mentally. Hence, joys shared are increased, while sorrows shared are reduced. (Two notable exceptions would be psychopaths and sociopaths--who often show signs while very young that they have a much diminished sense of empathy; or, complete hermits who attempt to isolate themselves from the family or society in which they were raised.)

Man, from the activity of his mental faculties, cannot avoid reflection… Any animal whatever, endowed with well-marked social instincts, would inevitably acquire a moral sense or conscience as soon as its intellectual powers had become as well-developed, or anything like as well-developed as in man.(Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man)

That, Darwin said, is why we have within us the rudiments of such a priority system and why we have also an intense need to develop those rudiments. We try to shape our moralities in accordance with our deepest wishes so that we can in some degree harmonize our muddled and conflict-ridden emotional constitution, thus finding ourselves a way of life that suits it so far as is possible.

These [priority] systems are, therefore, something far deeper than mere social contracts made for convenience. They are not optional. They are a profound attempt--though of course usually an unsuccessful one--to shape our conflict-ridden life in a way that gives priority to the things that we care about most.

If this is right, then we are creatures whose evolved nature absolutely requires that we develop a morality. We need it in order to find our way in the world. The idea that we could live without any distinction between right and wrong is as strange as the idea that we--being creatures subject to gravitation--could live without any idea of up and down. That at least is Darwin’s idea and it seems to me to be one that deserves attention. [Mary Midgley, “Wickedness: An Open Debate,” The Philosopher’s Magazine, No. 14, Spring 2001]

But evolution did select for our intelligence and empathy, which together make ethical thinking inevitable in a social species such as ourselves.

I'm referring to the meta method in general- of which Vatican II is just the latest incarnation in Catholicism, but which exists in other religions and stretches back in time to the pre-Christian era as well. It is a method of developing philosophical truths, which go by the name "virtues". The scientific method is a subset of the same principle, using the new invention of the printing press and peer reviewed publication instead of general council debates, but it is the same basic idea.