Quote:
Originally Posted by FlorenceArt
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.
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I wonder what else would explain the first chimpanzee's behaviour? The chimpanzee might just have noticed that when it did something it didn't yield the same result as when another chimpanzee did it and so the cognitive effort required to do whatever it was being asked to do just wasn't worth it. This of course doesn't need to be a conscious, reflective process - all living creatures seem to be able to make this kind of assessment of their environment - and the assessment doesn't necessarily need to be based of fairness.
It is interesting though that the neural mechanism which is thought to underpin the understanding of the actions of others, and hence underpin empathy, - mirror neurons - were discovered in monkeys. Unfortunately, in order to discover mirror neurons the monkeys had to have probes inserted into their brains and than had to be killed so that their brains could be examined. Sometimes I think the cost of knowing some things is too high and it might be better if we didn't know them!