The reason there is no Social Contract (capital "S" capital "C") is that there is no Society with a capital "S". There are, in fact, lots of societies and they each have their own social contract. My committee was allegorical, but the members of each society collaborate with each other in some fashion to develop their social contracts over time. Then there are societies within societies. There are probably some things which all Americans believe to be wrong, although sometimes I wonder anymore. Then there are other things that are considered wrong in one American subculture and not in another, and you will find even more moral diversity if you go international.
While human children may have an inborn capacity to understand right and wrong, they don't know which is which until somebody tells them or shows them. If an American or European child were to be kidnapped at a young age and raised by cannibals, he would grow up thinking that cannibalism is perfectly normal. I'm not talking about starving in the wilderness cannibalism, I'm talking about tribal cannibalism where they eat their fallen enemies as a religious rite. I'm not sure how young the kid would have to be, but I'm guessing under the age of five, because most of us can't remember much about our lives before that. If the child had any memory of his former culture, it would be difficult, if not impossible, for the cannibals to condition him to their way of thinking.
I don't know a lot about infants either, but my impression is that they are pretty self centered. I think you're right that language has a lot to do with their eventual socialization but, for the first year or so, they aren't very good at it. They probably pick up on non-verbal clues, and will attempt to communicate but, until they can speak in complete sentences, you can't really reason with them. You can teach them simple commands like a dog, but that's about it.
8/22/15: I've given it some thought, and I think I've got this sin thing figured out. What you said about rationalization put me on the trail. I know that rationalization is supposed to be a bad thing, but I don't know why. Maybe it's because people tend to rationalize their actions after the fact. They believed it was wrong before they did it, and now they want to justify their behavior rather than repent of it. Looking back on it, I think what I used to do was rationalize the thing before I did it. If I couldn't convince myself that it was right to do, then I just didn't do it. Of course, if you want to do something bad enough, and you really put your mind to it, you can probably rationalize it eventually.
The best example I can think of is sex. Even before I became aware of my own sexuality, I heard other people talking about the subject, but they didn't seem to be making a lot of sense. As my awareness developed, they still didn't seem to be making a lot of sense, probably because the stories I was hearing were inconsistent and contradictory. So it came to pass that I searched the Bible for answers, because the folks at Elsdon had told me that the Bible had an answer for everything. When my Biblical search proved inconclusive, I read everything else about the subject that I could get my hands on. It took me a few years, but I finally convinced myself that sex was a good thing as long as you did it honestly and responsibly. Convincing the girls proved to be much more difficult than convincing myself, so I finally had to leave town and find some different girls who didn't need convincing. All told, I spent the better part of a decade on this project and, to this day, I wonder whether or not it was worth it. If I had spent all that time and energy learning how to make money, I might be a rich man today.
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