Quote:
Originally Posted by TGS
What I'm understanding you to mean is that how humans treat non-human animals is subject to ethical consideration and constraint. If that's right then that's an aspect of human morality - which is consistent with what I said. It is, so far as we now, only humans who have any moral sense in relation to putting shampoo into the eyes of lab rabbits or keeping pigs in spaces so confined that they cannot turn round. The rabbits and pigs might have a response to being in these situations but it's probably not a moral response. Similarly we might, in an anthropomorphic way, not like to see a chimpanzee steal a baby from another chimpanzee and eat it - but it doesn't seem to make a lot of sense to ascribe to the cannibalizing chimpanzee or its act, some moral value.
It's in those two senses that I meant that human morality has application only to humans.
|
And yet, chimpanzees have some sense of morality, or at least fairness. If you make a chimpanzee perform a task for a reward - say, a slice of apple - it will be happy to do it. But if he sees that another chimpanzee is getting a better reward for the same task - say, a raisin - he will get annoyed and refuse to perform. This information I got from a scientist I heard on a radio show, is what makes me think that there is a biological foundation to our sense of morality.