> COMMUNICATING EMOTIONS AND INTENT.

Contemporary studies continue to document the importance of the body and even of particular muscles in expressing emotions, as well as in feeling and perceiving them among others (Niedenthal 2007).

One of the most challenging communication tasks — sometimes even with language — is interpreting the intention of others. This is a further dimension of managing social information relevant to moral responses — for example, in deceiving others or in detecting such deception. Being able to interpret, or "mirror," another mind appears to be quite a sophisticated cognitive skill. The abilities of other primates and mammals in doing this are still being debated (Zimmer 2003; Miller 2005; Pennisi 2006).

Communication and language are also integral, of course, to sharing desires and ideas about ideal behavior, and thus to moral discourse. In the context of organisms with open behavior programs, language also contributes significantly to the transmission of culture and to the learning of moral norms. Moral systems may thus not only emerge socially, but also perpetuate themselves culturally, apart from specific genes or individual behavior patterns (Richerson and Boyd 2005).