Bioethicist Margaret Somerville Asks, "Do Apes Have Ethics?"
Those biologists and philosophers intent on destroying human exceptionalism often argue that apes have ethics, albeit more rudimentary, just like people, and thus we must disabuse ourselves of the unique nature of human life.
Not enough energy has been invested in pushing back against these subversive arguments. I am happy to see that one of my favorite bioethicists, the Canadian Margaret Somerville, is manning the fire hoses. In a long piece published in today's Montreal Gazette (you should read the whole thing), she recounts participating in a round table on the issue as the only dissenter to the premise that apes have ethics, which her co panelists were convinced is genetically determined. From her column:
Ethics require moral judgment. That requires deciding between right and wrong. As far as we know, animals are not capable of doing that. There's a major difference between engaging in social conduct that benefits the community, as some animals do, and engaging in that same conduct because it would be ethically wrong not to do so, as humans do.To get from here to there requires some redefinition--kind of the way some atheists support their thesis that religion has caused most of the world's woes by labeling communism a religion. Somerville sees it and parries:
Definition is a problem here: If ethics are broadly defined to encompass certain animal behaviour, they are correct. But if ethics are the practical application of morality, then to say animals have ethics is to attribute a moral instinct to them.Somerville is a human exceptionalist--only one of the reasons I like her. She writes:
I believe that humans are "special" (different-in-kind) as compared with other animals and, consequently, deserve "special respect." Traditionally, we have used the idea that humans have a soul and animals don't to justify our differential treatment of humans and animals in terms of the respect they deserve. But soul is no longer a universally accepted concept.Well yes, if she means by that term to rise above and beyond what can be measured in the physical realm. Hence, we have duties, which are immaterial and are morally based--whether they arose when we became conscious in some blind evolutionary process or otherwise. But no animal has a duty and no animal can be held morally accontable. Similarly, genetic determinism reductionism notwithstanding to the contrary, we have free will and rationality and animals do not. That too separates us from every other known species. One way this expresses is that we have the capacity to act upon nature and bend it (to some degree) to our will, while animals in their natural state are always purely within nature, acted upon and reacting to it.
Ethics can, however, be linked to a metaphysical base without needing to invoke religious or supernatural features or beliefs--it could be of a secular "human spirit" nature or, as German philosopher Jurgen Habermas describes it, an "ethics of the human species." I propose that ethics necessarily involve some transcendent experience, one that humans can have and animals cannot.
This issue of human exceptionalism could not be more important to the future of human rights and our thriving as a species. Somerville understands:
The argument that it's dangerous to abandon the ideas of human specialness and that a moral instinct and search for ethics is uniquely human, was greeted with great skepticism by my colleagues, who seemed to think that only religious people would hold such views.Indeed. And the time has come to take this discussion out of the ivory tower and bring it to Main Street. Otherwise, the elites will pull universal human rights out from under us and we will find ourselves in a world of new eugenics and sacrificing human welfare and prosperity "for the animals" or "to save the planet." In other words, we will be engaging in a self-destructive form of human exceptionalism on the ironic basis that we are not exceptional.
To conclude, how we answer the question, "Do ants have ethics?" - that is, does the behaviour, bonding and the formation of community in animals have a different base from that in humans - is of immense importance, including because it will have a major impact on the ethics we hand on to future generations.
Labels: Human Exceptionalism. Ethics. Apes. Margaret Somerville
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 3:35 PM
32 Comments
32 Comments:
If the ethics of apes do not involve transcendent experiences (and how would we know that for sure?) and ours do, then ethics are more natural to apes than to us.
Ianthe: Her point is that ape don't really do ethics. It is mere behavior. Our ethics are based on moral concepts and moral choices. Which is why we can act either morally or immorally, unlike apes.
"Ethics require moral judgment," she writes. They are "the practical application of morality." Apes don't do that at all.
We do. That makes us different in kind from any other known species in the universe. And that matters morally (which is where you might disagree).
Show me another animal that has evidenced a culture of death. Other than lemmings, which is what those who accept the death culture act like. Does human behavior along that line support the theory of human exceptionalism? I'm not "out to destroy" human exceptionalism, but I don't see the need for it, it doesn't add up logically to me, and I don't see it winning the battle against the culture of death. In fact, the latter would say argue humans being apart from other species as justification for the "right to choose to die," to which the "uniqueness" of being human entitles tham.
Apes never act immorally? Or is it just that we discuss it (which we can't be sure that apes don't; animals have their own means of communication, just as we do)?
Ethics isn't behavior?
How can we be sure that we know of every species in the universe? You may mean in the world as we know it, but the language reflects the stumbling blocks of human exceptionalism -- assumption and overassumption.
Of course. We are the only species capable of evil. Dolphins rape. Male lions kill cubs. Elephants obliterate ecosystems. All kinds of what we would call savagery out there.
But we alone are morally accountable. Animals are amoral.
The latter argument you envision is a moral argument that only humans are capable of making. One of my points with HE is that if we deny it, which really is to deny the obvious, there is no foundation whatsoever for universal human rights. If our humanity and that alone is not what gives moral value, then none of us is safe. Because one of those rights is to life, which Jefferson said is inalienable.
Besides, if it isn't being human that gives objective value, we will have to decide what it is. That something else will consist of traits, capacities, or attributes that some of us don't have-or have lost--the details about which will be decided by those with power.
Singer says it is personhood, and so all who don't qualify have a lower quality of life and hence can be killed or used as resources.
Radical environmentalists go further into anti humanism, depicting us as the vermin species that must have its population reduced to under one billion. They don't say it, but there is only one way to get that done.
Materialists say all we are is genes or meat on the hoof and so have no unique value. That gets us right back to utilitarianism.
Francione says all sentient beings have rights, which degrades the concept of rights the way inflation degrades currency.
Ecuador now says that nature has rights. See above.
Without human exceptionalism, rights are exclusive and the very reason to fight evil, to dissuade us from wrong actions, from butchery, and for heroism, virtue, valor, etc. is undermined.
Ianthe: I didn't say every species in the universe. I said every KNOWN species. Big diff. Your critique fails.
No it doesn't, and you just made my point again. By "known," you meant known to us humans; I was saying that there may be species in the universe of which/whom we do not know at this time. They might consider our ethics and morality, and our concepts thereof, as "un-unique" as we do the ethics of, for example, apes.
Beavers do a very impressive job of manipulating the environment when they build dams, especially considering that they are only beavers. As they are more advanced, in that respect, than creatures that can't do that (but, on the other hand, e.g., birds can fly and no other creature can), we are more advanced than they are, and can manipulate the environment in more ways and to a greater extent, but it's the same principle.
When I came home one day and found my dog on the couch, rolling his eyes upon seeing me see him there in that "uh-oh," way dogs have when they know they've done something they are not supposed to, he was exercising reason in concluding that he was now in a situation and that there were going to be consequences, and he had exercised his free will on getting up on the couch, and was exercising it in staying there (sometimes he exercised it by jumping down, other times he decided (free will again) to engage in a battle of (free) wills), he was exercising reason in knowing that I couldn't get him off the couch other than by main strength or turning the couch over (similarly, when he plopped down in the middle of a deep puddle 20 feet in diameter on the Central Park bridle path and laughed at me, he was grinning because he knew I wasn't going to wade in and get him, and when he would walk by his water dish and deliberately "accidentally" knock it over, grinning, he was reasoning; games involve reasoning) and he knew, in terms of dog morality, darned well that he (according even to his own judgement) that he was not supposed to be on the furniture.
In fact, he knew that it was his duty to stay off the furniture, as to do other things (e.g. heel, and sit, even when off leash, at every corner before we crossed the street, which he chose to do by learning that it resulted in getting a treat, praise, a pat on the head, etc., and feeling pride). Cats as well as dogs feel a duty to protect their humans, sheepdogs feel a duty to herd, etc. But they don't always choose to do it. Non-human animals have the duty to protect and rear their young, just as we do, and they perform, and rarely abandon it; when they do, I see your point that they may not have debated the morality of what they are doing that is wrong, but humans who do likewise often dont do that either. Dogs certainly feel shame, and horses have hung their heads in shame after losing races. They aren't humans and we can't expect them to behave on all fours like us, but for what they are, one can't say they don't behave in terms of free will, duty, and reasoning. In fact, scientists extrapolate conclusions about human behavior from experiments on non-human animals (which are unnecessary considering that we can already learn the same from simply making empirical observation of humans; in such experiments scientists are really learning more about the similarities non-human animals have with us), and, e.g., trying harder when given only sporadic reinforcement can be considered free will.
Nevertheless, I understand what you are saying. I just approach it differently, and maintain that having life is what entitles one to life (not entirely unanalogous to possession being nine points of the law, except that in this case it's all 10 points), and that life, like fire, is sacred and to be respected, whether at any given moment it is a flicker or in full flame, and that the life principle applies across all species. I am not a radical environmentalist, and the mistake they make is presuming to think on behalf of nature and the environment, for which, as you noted, we can only affect to a certain extent. Singer can posit whatever he chooses to, but he contradicts himself. There is spirit in non-human animals, who are themselves more than mere material and genes, and we don't need to denigrate them in order to preserve our own universal right to life; they are no threat to us; we are the threat to us, and no matter how we think about what we are, they are, etc., it is more urgent to focus on our making moral and ethical choices than it is to focus on whether we are able to make them and the other animals are not, and if we can't even make them about non-human animals that are at our mercy, which human exceptionalism holds that we are entitled to experiment on to benefit ourselves, we can't make them about our own species. In fact, we've been treating them immorally and unethically, and ended up with a death culture for ourselves. I see it in a much simpler and more way, requiring much less elaborate reasoning and no rationalization.
I checked online, was disheartened to learn that the Gray Panthers endorse assisted suicide, and found the site of the international anti-euthanasia group. If Singer is having a great impact, and he's known as in the forefront of the animal rights movement, being at loggerheads with the concept of animal rights only makes it more difficult to take the wind out of his sails; the real conflict is not animal v. human, but Singer/utilitarianism v. human, and v. life, and endorsing the rights of animals only strengthens the basis of the argument in favor of life; it does not promote or bow to the death culture.
At the very end of the second to last paragraph of the above, I mistyped (again); It should read: I see it in a much simpler and more efficient way.
I said I am not a radical environmentalist; I do think that nature has rights; if it doesn't, I don't know what does, and if it didn't, no species, including our own, would, either, and it exercises them whether we like it or not. The Ecuadorian law and the Swiss constitution merely recognize them. I doubt that the Swiss constitution precludes mowing of grass, the harvesting of crops, or the picking of flowers. If we didn't innately have them, our own Constitution would be immoral; it, and Jefferson, e.g., affirmed, not created them. The purpose of writing down what they are and creating law to ratify them was to ensure good social order. I understand your logic and position, but while I do agree that it was made at the the same time, by the same nation, that has legalized assisted suicide and given the death culture (as it has given money owned by foreigners, and at least one infamous fugitive financier), safe haven, I don't agree that it's a threat to the principle of life to legislate (and again, the Swiss legislate even how curtains must hang and seeds must be planted) that individual plants have rights; it's a matter of national character; that is food for thought, in view of the famed Swiss neutrality, which could be considered amorality as well. But it doesn't seem "moral" to say that plants -- or anything else -- don't have rights, either. The concept seems silly, but in fact is life-affirming; they are alive, and thus entitled to life. When my car bore a bumper sticker years ago that said laboratory animals never have a nice day, most people's first reaction was that it was silly, but what it said was the truth. I'd like to know why the Swiss made that law.
Our being the only species that is capable of evil doesn't seem to justify our being the only species that has a right to life. Actually, when male lions kill cubs that are not their own, it is evil, as is what female lions have to put up with, and from what I've seen even recently of evil done by humans, those perpetrating it were acting according to their own natures, and had no qualms about it, and those who went along but did not feel good about it or did not go out on a limb to stop it acted, and failed to act, out of fear and what they perceived as self-preservation. When lions (and humans)kill for food, it's savage; when they kill innocent cubs not for food but to replace another's genes with theirs, and cause their mates-to-be anguish, and then the female lions have no choice but to mate with them or remain cubless, it's utilitarian -- and evil. There is more human analogy here than one might think, and consider that Bill Clinton, Fidel Castro, and Obama are born under the sign of the lion.
First sentence last post, that should have been, the only species that has a universal right to life.
Margaret Somerville is indeed an excellent person. Spoke at a anti-circumcision conference many years ago that I attended. She has been a guest on my radio show. God bless her for standing up for human beings and rejecting this animal lunacy.
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"Show me another animal that has evidenced a culture of death. Other than lemmings, which is what those who accept the death culture act like."
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Hello Ianthe. your question begs an answer.
All animals are involved in a culture of death. Some more so then others. Bucks kill other bucks, in the heat of battle. Many animals such as pigs , mink & fox eat their own young. Many more intelligent animals such as pigs ,bears ,rats & monkeys are cannibalistic. Whether as pack mentality or through individualistic methods, those are the facts of nature. Black Widow spiders even eat their mate after insemination is completed. Some spiders and Octopus die after placing their eggs and become the food for the next generation after hatching. Death is a predominant culture of Life but more so to humans who understand the ramifications of death.
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Ianthe: You called male lions killing cubs of other males evil. It is not. It is nature. Evil is a uniquely human construct because we are uniquely able to make moral judgments.
Humans are the only species capable of mitigating the suffering that is part of life. I think we have a duty to do so. That too is part of human exceptionalism.
Beavers are not altering nature. They are part of nature. Their dam building is instinctive, just as the salmon's instinct is to go up the river in which it was hatched to spawn.
But those are not the same activities in kind as our emptying swamps in order to plant crops, designing space ships to fly to the moon, or taking the Hadj as a perceived religious obligation.
Waldenspond: You give great interview. Thanks for having me on and pondering human exceptionalism to a wider audience.
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"Does human behavior along that line support the theory of human exceptionalism? I'm not "out to destroy" human exceptionalism, but I don't see the need for it, it doesn't add up logically to me, and I don't see it winning the battle against the culture of death. In fact, the latter would say argue humans being apart from other species as justification for the "right to choose to die," to which the "uniqueness" of being human entitles tham.
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In a few hours I am off to see a woman who seems to be in the advanced stages of breast cancer. Her children approached me as I am like a second father to them. I state this because it is an effort to show how our communication skills and awareness of human intrigue is the measuring stick often over looked by the culture of death. She refuses to see a doctor whether out of fear or out of refusal to seek medical council because she will need to make a choice to fight or to refuse to fight. Her husband died a few years ago of a sudden congential heart failure. Sudden, with no opportunity to say goodbye for any of the survivors.
Her children want to help her. But she is trying to protect them and control their emotions by denying them the right to help her, to communicate (shed tears even)with her. In my opinion, God has given her an opportunity to bring closure and healing to their stake in life that their fathers death never gave them. The reason, I bring this up is two fold. It weighs heavy on my heart and soul that I will not be able to honor the request of her children in their early thirties without individual pain to me. I have loved this lady and her deceased husband as family friends for over forty years. Her children have numerous uncles & aunts but both of them told me after their fathers death in 1999 that I am their surrogate father. Those children were like brother and sisters to my own children.
Not an easy visit for me to address her mortality on any level. However the awareness and exceptualism of humanity does offer us gifts and millstones that only we humans can weigh with deep expressions of love and pain.Everyone close to her feels deeply the exclusion or inclusion on those who are affected by her choices. Somehow I have to map out a plan to get her to involve her family in mapping out life without Mary according to Mary's wishes or their involvement in helping her to make death more plalatable ,by sharing it with those she loves to much to speak of.
I speak as a cat mommy - I love my girls like babies, but I know they're not humans and that they are totally amoral. My twin girls (both felines) beat up on each other regularly because their instincts say to show dominance and to minimize and eliminate competition. Because they have humans in the household to have dominion over them, they don't hurt each other, they share toys and food, and they don't fight nearly as much as the outdoor strays do around here. I've seen male cats kill kittens to keep the attention of the mothers. I've also seen female cats beat the crap out of males who get too close to their kits. They have instincts and live by those instincts.
Only when exceptional human beings intervene do we see animals behaving in a more "companionable" way. My twin girls stop and groom each other, play with each other, snuggle, and love on each other. Cat's aren't pack animals; this isn't natural to them. It's because humans (who don't compete with them for food and who feel a natural sense of respoinsibility toward them) give them all they need to survive and encourage kindness that they're so sweet to each other (when they're not fighting, that is).
Monkeys eat baby humans periodically. Hippos will chase down humans and kill them if they get too close to the hippos' homes. Dolphin males will kill calves to keep the females free for repeated mating.
Animals act in a brutal way. The only known species in the universe that don't act brutally are humans and angels (and Wesley will point out we don't "know" about angels). Both are unique among the critters we know, and both try hard to extend kind influence on others.
Animals need humans to know that humans are exceptional, because if we don't acknowledge our special behavior, we will not be able to extend our influence to the animal world and bring it some peace. Humans owe it to our charges, as proper stewards of this planet, to recognize our specialness and act accordingly. I love my kittes too much to pretend I'm on the same level with them. I have to recognize the respoinsibility I have over them as their superior to ensure they have a happy, long, and healthy life.
So, no, ethics don't apply to apes. Humans need to be ethical or they won't treat apes well and won't encourage apes to act in a kind manner.
SHS: We're not part of nature?????!!!!! If in fact we have altered nature, which SHS has said here we are not capable of controlling beyond a certain extent, then the "global warming" lemmings must be on to something. I understand what you are saying about moral judgements, etc., but I still say that male lions killing other males' offspring, causing anguish to the mothers, who then have no choice other than to remain kittenless or bear their cubs, is evil, and that's based on the wrongness of killing young for reasons other than food for survival, plus causing anguish; I live with cats, I have an understanding of what the lions are about for yet another reason, and I have a female perspective on the plight of the lioness as well. Humans sometimes get into an analogous (on a human level) scenario, and instinct is all wound up with that, but evil is intertwined in there too, and we wouldn't be capable of evil if we weren't also capable of instinct; vice-versa for the lion. Of course beavers build dams on instinct, as well as ability; humans act on instinct as well as ability when we build dams, empty swamps to plant crops, build bridges, space shuttles, etc.; as for accepting the Hadj or whatever it is, that's just plumb nuttiness on our part, and related to our capacity to have created the death culture, and if that, the capacity for evil, and the need to make moral judgements make us "exceptional," no wonder we've created the death culture, and we shouldn't be bragging about how exceptional we are, but rather we should be ashamed of ourselves, as we should be about experimenting on animals. If we're able to be "better than that," we should prove it (which is the only way to defeat the death culture, but no one seems to want to believe me...). Animals are in fact capable of mitigating the suffering that is part of life; that's why they groom each other, comfort each other, etc., and many people value their pets because those pets voluntarily, deliberately, intentionally, etc. choose of their own free will to do likewise for them. They are doing better within the scope of their own capacities and limitations than we are as humans, net -- we created the science of medicine to heal and to serve life, and now we're bowing to it and allowing it to be sufficiently arrogant to drug us, pull plugs on us, and otherwise further the death culture. If humans are better than the other animals, we don't need to say we are, and if we were, we'd prove it by not treating them as we do(for which human exceptionalism is a rationalization) and by not having created the death culture that SHS admirably opposes and is trying to fight, and by winning that fight. How do SHS and those here propose to win it?
Waldenspond: I agree with Margaret Somerville on the first, but not on the second. We don't need to be "stood up for"; the other animals are no threat to us; rather, we are to them; we already have dominance over them; they didn't create the death culture SHS rightly opposes; we did; humans can debate all day long about what we are, what the other animals are, etc., but it doesn't change what we are and what they are, and we didn't create them, or our own species either; God (whatever one person or another means by that) did; in fact, it's wrong to mutilate the human body, which God made exactly the way it's supposed to be, for the same reason it's wrong to assume that we are set apart from the other species by some kind of special entitlement. Life is life, and to be respected, period. It doesn't elevate us to denigrate them, and we don't need to do that.
Donnie: We already know, empirically, that we are the way we are. I would consider the theory of "human exceptionalism" useful it it were winning the battle against the death culture, which it isn't.
T.E.: I think we have instincts and live by those instincts too. We're over in Iraq and Afghanistan as a result of 9/ll, which is not unanalogous to what hippos do. I have five cats right now (and have had as many as 10 in the past; I set myself a limit of never more than that; I've had the opportunity to experience the whole cat-maternity/paternity/litter thing several times, each time as the result of a vet saying no so and so shouldn't be "fixed" right now) and understand what you're saying about their behavior; they have the opportunity and the luxury of being nicer to each other when they are safe in a human home because they don't have to fight for survival as strays do, and if they have "learned" to love us, they've been able to do that because they have the capacity to do it. Cats are like lions, which live in prides and behave toward one another in prides exactly the same way we've seen our own cats do, grooming, bonding, the males toward the kittens and the females, the females toward the males, etc. Humans eat babies of other species regularly; monkeys eat baby humans, as you noted, periodically, as do animals of other species. Humans most certainly do act brutally, toward other animals as well as toward each other.h I don't buy the theory that animals need the human species to bring them some peace, or that we are proper stewards of this planet; that's something we thought up to justify ourselves, which is not necessary. Apes don't need to be encouraged to act in a kind manner, such an attempt is not apt to lead to success, and if it ever does, it's only because the ape had the capacity to do it in the first place.
SHS: No, I do agree that it matters morally. But a lot of good that does. For the same reason that it matters morally, we've created the death culture, and for the same reason the theory of human exceptionalism misses a more important point, it can't defeat it.
Donnie: The "death culture" SHS is concerned about is -- even according to the theory of human exceptionalism itself, and in any event even without it -- not the way the other animals behave, but the insane way humans do when they talk about the "right to die," e.g. Show me another animal dumb enough to do THAT.
Tattooing, piercing, drug-taking, etc. have become prevalent at the same time as the death culture has.
The same "exceptionalism" that enabled us to create the death culture has enabled us to consider whether ants have ethics, and to consider that an important question, and to ponder what kind of ethics we hand on to future generations, etc. Ethics are TO BE DONE, not pondered. The school I attended taught us a few very simple, very important things -- stand up when an adult enters the room, every week it's someone's turn to clear dishes from the lunch table, take something from each serving dish that is passed around the table, and do not discuss the food we are eating. These values, like the one about not discussing money, serve us well. The essentials of life, including ethics, are to be done, not discussed.
Hello Ianthe : Quoting you here:
"SHS: We're not a part of nature?????!!!!! If in fact we have altered nature, which SHS has said here we are not capable of controlling beyond a certain extent, then the "global warming" lemmings must be on to something."
We are certainly are a part of nature or we wouldn't exist . You might not like the fact that we are not unmoving rocks but thinking manipulating human beings but that doesn't lessen our part in nature. In fact our ability to be Scientifically Aware & Mathematically manipulative is no worse then the ice ages or the global weather manipulations of weather or meteorite splatters of the past and future. In fact we might just be the natural leaning safety valves that God decided to apply to the natural world for those very same qualities.
Ianthe:
Quoting you again.
"I understand what you are saying about moral judgements, etc., but I still say that male lions killing other males' offspring, causing anguish to the mothers, who then have no choice other than to remain kittenless or bear their cubs, is evil, and that's based on the wrongness of killing young for reasons other than food for survival, plus causing anguish; I live with cats, I have an understanding of what the lions are about for yet another reason, and I have a female perspective on the plight of the lioness as well."
In truth you don't understand the methodology of the male lion to the female estrus cycle. The male has a limitation of rule over his new winnings. Thus in order to leave his genes in the gene pool ,he must have females to mate with. Thus he must kill the male cubs to keep that strain out of the tribes gene pool from his portion in nature. The male kills the males to keep their genes from being stronger when his genes are trying to reach the breeding cycle. If the latent genes carried by a male lion 6 months to a year older then his offspring are still alive,they will kill his offspring before they can mate because they will be the stronger issue from the pride due to older age and thus superior strength. An added bonus to that cycle is the loss of male cubs causes the female lion to go into estrus and the male will get mating privileges immediately in the pride instead of waiting 6 months to a year. It is a natural cycle and not one of evil design.
You note to me Ianthe: "Donnie: We already know, empirically, that we are the way we are. I would consider the theory of "human exceptionalism" useful it it were winning the battle against the death culture, which it isn't."
And the reason is that we are humans with different scopes on exceptulaism. Tough debate to stop abortions on demand because we are exceptional & aware of what each choice means to individuals in society. For example I don't agree with abortion on demand but I certainly have compassion an pain for a woman caught up in a date rape that becomes pregnant. Because of my exceptional understanding of the issue at hand , I am very torn by such a problem which means that the raped has to decide on murder or on adoption or on actually raising that which she never asked for. Morality , Compassion and free choice are tough task masters but the bottom line is a child unborn is in the position of becoming an exceptional human being or a cast away life in a kidney pan. Winning the debate from my position or loosing it doesn't dissolve our human exceptulaism. Caring for a Downs Syndom child or knowing shortly after conception that a child is DS doesn't deny our exceptional position in nature but cements it. Choosing that the DS fetus can be cared for and loved through our compassionate morals or pretending it is amoral to kill the child is another human choice to make . Our desire to protect the child or destroy it AKA, Pete Singer is a human doesn't extract us from our exceptional ability to be moral, amoral or immoral animals.
Hello Ianthe; Please don't think I am picking on you. I like your mind but I would also like you go into thinking that you might have become to linear to notice in your style.
You state.
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Ethics are TO BE DONE, not pondered. & The essentials of life, including ethics, are to be done, not discussed."
Let me point out a variance that you completely ignore in that commentary.
No act whether as a fictional book or a historical fact ever occurred without first being weighed through the human mind.Ditto Ethics need to be pondered and the greater the risk of choosing the wrong ethics the more astute the debate in ones own mind or in trying to prove your ethics are morally superior to those of your adversaries. For example: I can not agree with Pete Singers ethics because mine come a different position then he is choosing. Maybe my reading classes are more rose colored then his or maybe more clouded by a different type of morals and compassion but we made ethical choices on morality and societal change that are quite different. Our ponderance, has given both of us a different set of morals & ethics which are diametrically opposed but at the same time, based in human/humane concerns.
Donnie: I certainly don't think you are picking on me. I'm not always able to understand what your are saying, though. The question marks after "nature" meant that of course I do think we are part of nature; how could we not be? Why you would think that I don't like that we are not rocks, I don't know. I do understand why the male lions act as they do; I just think it's evil, from the point of view of the cubs and their mothers. And if only humans are capable of evil, that makes us "exceptional," all right, but it hardly gives us a greater right to life than any other animal has, and that does not necessarily lead to Singer's conclusions. We just want a greater right to life because assuming it justifies our own utilitarian purposes. My question remains: What are we going to DO about the death culture?
I will continue to fight against the culture of death and the devaluation of humanity by the Pete Singer, Dr Kervorkian & Henry Morgentaler types. I believe we owe it to those in humanity that are unable to defend themselves or are to weakened by their despair, to continue valuing themselves as worthy of our support. When people loose that sense of exceptualsm they loose a portion of their value in nature.
Back to the lions. They do not hold the same ethics as we do or at least one or two males or a pride would try and defend the males of the ousted male. It is natural but not evil for the main goal in the new pride and the males hierarchy is survival of the fittest. A male at the end of his string loses his genes through those deaths but the net result is his gene pool was already weakened whereas the new males will inject a larger gene pool into the mix. That factor is harsh but not evil.The goal for lions is to maintain or increase in strength via a healthier and more mixed gene pool within the prides confines. The lion hierarchy only allows for mixed genes from the new male interlopers and can not stand the replacement of male interlopers by the original males offspring. Thus the killings.
BTW . Sorry about my misunderstanding on your comment about us being a part of nature. I was keyed more towards you comments about evil of nature. As much as I feel empathy for your disappointment about what you as a HUMAN see that is evil in the lion pride , I still view those things as amoral factors. Extrapolating your views on the lion pride as being evil would certainly be true if humans operated that way. OOps we already do with our own offspring as a convenience because an expectant mother is challenged by her conceived child or in knowing she has a DS type child. To add salt to that wound other caring humans want to adopt those children because they can not have children of their own.
I'm still waiting to see a shred of evidence that we reason morally and apes don't. I'm not convinced that humans reason morally that often, frankly, but I see little reason to assume apes don't. We can't ask them, or haven't figured out how to do so. They share the decision-making brain circuitry that we have - in lesser amounts, but still, it is there. If someone just looked at our behavior, I think they could explain all we do in terms of behavior rather than ethics if they set their mind to it. Evolutionary biologists, sociologists, psychologists and anthropologists do that all the time, actually. So I don't buy the a priori assumption that apes don't do ethics because apes can't do ethics.
Prove it. Until then, I'll say that we should say "we don't know"...because we *don't*.
In such a case as you offer the premise is impossible and unlikely. Prove a negative is difficult enough but to prove a negative where the ethics and morality factor is as suspect as it is with the great apes is a crazy request.
No Doug. You prove it. You can't prove a negative, but if it is there, we can prove a positive. So prove they are moral species such as humans without engaging in anthroporphism. Indeed, anthroporphism is an attempt to project human qualities onto animals to try and elevate their capacities to those similar to ours.
Can any ape be held morally accountable for their actions? I think not. Human beings are the only moral species. All other animals are amoral. Animals can't be evil, for example, because only we can be held to those kinds of moral and ethical standards.
So, why do you want apes to be considered moral beings? I suspect it is so we won't think of ourselves as exceptional. Right?
What Doug said reads very clearly to me as a matter of fairness and objectivity. It doesn't look like he wants apes to be considered moral beings; it looks like he is being objective and pointing out that we may just not know. Giving them their due does not detract from ours, nor did I detect anything in what Doug said that indicates that he doesn't want us to think of ourselves as exceptional. But human exceptionalism does want us to think of ourselves as exceptional, and that should not be necessary. It's obvious that we're exceptional. But human exceptionalism is wants, for utilitarian reasons, us to think of ourselves as exceptionalism in order to justify our doing whatever we want, which is hedonistic, and that's why human exceptionalism doesn't work and goes in circles and can't beat the death culture of which in fact it's part. I've talked myself blue in the face here about how to strengthen its position and thus its ability to defeat the death culture but the only person who seems to have noticed what I just pointed out is the person who posts as Dark Swan.
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