Why is philosophy included in discussions of morality?

Philosophy and morality in homo sapiens? Why?
I am always puzzled by the inclusion of philosophy within discussions of morality. We are wired with an empathy system, unless suffering from a "broken brain" of one sort or another. Newly born infants will cry harder when hearing a recording of other babies crying, than they will at hearing a recording of their own crying. Toddlers will move to help someone who has dropped something that they didn't mean or want to drop, yet ignore it when a person drops something they mean to drop and don't care about.

Empathy in rhesus monkeys
In the 60's Mirsky and Miller conducted studies with rhesus monkeys demonstrating empathy between two monkeys. In these studies they trained monkeys to associate a sound with a shock. After the onset of the sound, the shock could be avoided by the monkey pressing a lever. The monkey were then paired, and one monkey was exposed to the pre-shock tone, while the second monkey was simply watching the first on a television screen. When the first monkey heard the pre-shock sound, the observing monkey saw the fear in the first monkey's face, and pushed the lever to spare the first monkey from the shock. This demonstrated the capacity to communicate affect in rhesus monkeys, and also the presence of strong empathy. In a small detail of this study, they narrowed the range of what was seen by the observing monkey, to determine how the affect was being communicated. Showing a narrower and narrower view of the observed monkey, they found that the affect was communicated by the eyes alone, so that if the observing monkey had nothing to go on but observing the eyes of the observed monkey, the observing monkey would press the shock-relieving lever when needed, saving his or her conspecific from being shocked. There is something to be said about "is" equalling "ought." The effort to prevent shock in a conspecific is automatic, a split second reaction to fear in the eyes of the conspecific. Empathy in mammals is a biological fact of life. Rats will suffer "personally" in an effort to help a conspecific in distress.

Survivor guilt in chimpanzees: Discomfort in reaction to begging, why is there begging?
As for fairness, in 1936 Yerkes reported on a study of two chimpanzees caged side by side. If one of the pair and not the other was given food, the chimpanzee not receiving food began begging. The provisioned chimpanzee at first ignore the begging, but over time became uncomfortable and share some food with the chimpanzee without. This happens not always, but often enough to demonstrate that the reaction to begging is to share. Why would animals beg, if not to induce feelings of discomfort (survivor guilt broadly defined) in the animal who is the recipient of begging, with the intention of getting the animal with food (or with some other desired object) to share the product of his or her good fortune. Babies beg in order to get fed, and adults also beg in order to receive. Our domestic animals beg in order to get us to share. Begging demonstrates the presence of a drive to share, to be shared with, equity, or "guilt" (survivor guilt or whatever we want to name it) --that s some internal state of discomfort in the absence of equity, that is resolved by sharing.

A drive for equity and the fungus in the forest
Sharing, or the drive for equity, has at its base, an adaptive purpose, and extends far beyond primate or mammalian behavior. In a forest trees of the same species may compete for resources, and trees of different species may do the same. But under the floor of the forest, hidden underground, is a network of fungi, connecting all the trees. If one tree or one species is getting more of needed resources than other trees or other species, the fungi will absorb nutrients from the overly endowed tree or species of trees, and will redistribute the resources to those less fortunate. Therefore even in the forest there is a system that enforces a kind of equity and cooperation between trees of the same species, and between different species. Cooperation is the name of the game, and sharing and "morality" are mechanisms working in the interest of cooperation. Bacteria that live in our mouth live in cooperative clumps, and to survive the bacteria have to maintain their "group" structure. If the group is disturbed as it is in flossing our teeth, the group is dismantled, and individual bacteria can't make it and are killed off. Here, this smallest of units, is dependent on group living and cooperation, and we make use of that in efforts to protect our gums and teeth, enabling us to have dental health far past our 40s.

Our place in the animal world...we are not unique and why should or would we be?
The only way I can see philosophy at work in this picture is found in how we explain our history of narrowly focusing on self-interest, individuality, and gene-centrism, at the expense of focusing on cooperation as a very old and fundamental adaptation, in response to evolutionary pressures. What is it about our thinking that has led to such errors in attention and explanation of natural phenomena? I have been very happy to see the return of group selection, or multilevel selection theory, as finally we seem to be on the right track in our efforts to understand the world. Philosophy or world view, in the face of evolutionary data, seems narrow and "besides the point" and can only be considered, in my own opinion, as factors that contributed to our errors in attribution. In the end, it always seems to me that taking a philosophical stance in discussions of morality, goes hand in hand with denial of our place in evolution, and by necessity ends up once again proclaiming that man (and woman) is qualitatively "different" from other animals, and thus is at heart, an anti-evolutionist perspective.