Why do humans need morals and ethics while animals don’t
We know humans learn to abstract and learn to separate themselves from others at a relatively early age (2/3 years old) with the so called “Theory of Mind.” Since antiquity man has demonstrated reasoning and logical discussion and debate. Amongst such ideas and discussions the idea of morals and ethics. Maybe some set by religion but other beliefs and traditions too. Maybe it’s just a necessary consequence of language. We know other animals show intelligence and some form of communications with humans (there is certainly communication for all animals of all types).
But is it inevitable that humans with a complex language would always have constructed such formality? Why when animals are able to form order and organisation without this does the human stand alone.
But is it inevitable that humans with a complex language would always have constructed such formality? Why when animals are able to form order and organisation without this does the human stand alone.
Comments (54)
I think morals and ethics can be instinctual, just like love. The only reason we think about it and animals don't (?) is because we are not as comfortable with it. Another way to say it is, morals and ethics (and love) are not innate to our being so we reach for them.
Mythically, the root of human ethics is in the freedom to choose what seems to be in the ego's best interest, without regard for the interests of the whole ecosystem. That's how mammal's evolved-over-eons innate-Emotional-directives are subject to being over-ridden by homo sapiens' still naive Reason, based on local & limited information. It's the ago-old conundrum of Nature versus Culture. And it's why we have to use that same rational faculty to get us out of the tight-spots that it previously got us into. :cool:
Yes. It is called the agency. We have the innate agency to form a system that addresses moral concerns. At any given point in time, we have agency. But whether it's undeveloped, underdeveloped, or advanced is a condition brought about by time and civilization.
Quoting David S
Animals have a different system of existence. We shouldn't be comparing human agency with animal existence. That we are able to extend this notion of agency and acknowledge that animals have intelligence, or whatever, is our own issue.
Indeed. They ate the apple and became self-aware thereafter, immediately proceeding to cover themselves up because they became ashamed of their naked bodies.
I think in a way it also illustrates that human morals and ethics are not exactly in accordance to nature. In the story, it is proclaimed that the humans are in God's image and that his creation is good. Although they were made that way, they dressed themselves, disagreeing that how they were - naked - was good.
Yes. That's why humans were forced by their internal rational conflicts to develop Laws, Ethics, and Morality : we worry too much about the unintended consequences of our freedom. :smile:
What else is there to worry about?
Having a comparatively large forebrain that enables counterfactual thinking, planning and predicting, human animals learn to prevent behavioral conflicts which we humans foresee and attribute blame to those who cause or exacerbate such conflicts. Nonhuman animals that are not endowed with human-level foresight, however, cannot prevent behavioral conflicts and instead, IME, by instinct, react with fear or disgust, aggression or play, immediately to corresponding behavioral cues from one another.
The law of the jungle = No laws; no holds barred death match; nature is red in tooth and claw.
[quote=Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens)]But so far researchers have failed to locate lawyer bees. Bees don’t need lawyers, because there is no danger that they might forget or violate the hive constitution.[/quote]
I believe that this is simply a matter of (particularly frontal) brain development, which has enabled homo sapiens to develop the "higher mind", which has the capacity to ideate and idealize, and can concieve of such abstract concepts as ethicality and morality represent. Other animal species, though they evince various types of social order, simply cannot concieve of these things, much in the same way that they cannot create or discern art.
:love:
The first step towards a solution to a problem is to realize that there is a problem. Humans have, in a sense, awakened to the fact that all is not well in the garden of Eden. Nature, as it turns out, is hyper-savage - its brutality is infinite, everything and anything is permissible - and this is what humans got wind of after Adam and Eve took a bite of the forbidden fruit.
By the way, I want to pick your brain on something that I just realized which is that being immoral, even in the worst possible sense, even though it breaks moral laws does not violate a law of nature. What's up with that? @180 Proof, care to take a stab?
I mean, I could torture someone in an unimaginably horrific way but at no point in the process will I actually violate the so-called laws of nature. Nature, it seems, permits, if not that at least doesn't prohibit, evil.
On the other hand, being good is in almost all cases an uphill task, almost as if a good guy/gal/child is on the verge of transgressing a law of nature.
The modern conception of nature is very different to the traditional.
[quote=Max Horkheimer, The Eclipse of Reason]In traditional theology and metaphysics, the natural was largely conceived as the evil, and the spiritual or supernatural as the good. In popular Darwinism, the good is the well-adapted, and the value of that to which the organism adapts itself is unquestioned or is measured only in terms of further adaptation. However, being well adapted to one’s surroundings is tantamount to being capable of coping successfully with them, of mastering the forces that beset one. Thus the theoretical denial of the spirit’s antagonism to nature – even as implied in the doctrine of interrelation between the various forms of organic life, including man – frequently amounts in practice to subscribing to the principle of man’s continuous and thoroughgoing domination of nature. Regarding reason as a natural organ does not divest it of the trend to domination or invest it with greater potentialities for reconciliation. On the contrary, the abdication of the spirit in popular Darwinism entails the rejection of any elements of the mind that transcend the function of adaptation and consequently are not instruments of self-preservation. Reason disavows its own primacy and professes to be a mere servant of natural selection. On the surface, this new empirical reason seems more humble toward nature than the reason of the metaphysical tradition. Actually, however, it is arrogant, practical mind riding roughshod over the ‘useless spiritual,’ and dismissing any view of nature in which the latter is taken to be more than a stimulus to human activity. The effects of this view are not confined to modern philosophy.[/quote]
:up:
That says a lot. No wonder, ancient moral theorists needed God, a being not of this world, to prop up their ethics. Morality is a constellation of laws/rules from another realm, adapted, as best as we could, to our world.
The sense of right and wrong (ethics/morality) , ergo, cannot have been acquired from this realm which we inhabit. The human mind, the main protagonist in the tale of the good and bad, is then, from some other, as of yet, unknown universe. Could a man who's only seen white swans ever conceive of black swans?
Quoting 180 Proof
Might help to think about cold water having a certain solid state and asking why it is solid when other water is liquid. At base it’s still ‘water’.
Empathy is a feature of more social animals and ‘morals’ require forward thinking and planning (not instinctual habit for survival - burying nuts etc.,.).
I’d also say that I think stating we ‘need’ ethics/morals is like saying we need ‘arms’. We don’t, but they are pretty useful don’t you agree?
How are morals/ethics useful? How can ethics/morals cause problems and be a burden? Generally I believe this boils down the same thing quoted above. Humans have a more expansive cosmological outlook so interactions with fellow humans and interacting with the future makes morals/ethics a useful ‘tool’.
Traditionalist dualism, such as in the Phaedo, sees the human as a fusion of mortal and immortal - mortal body, immortal psyche (soul). Naturalism, of course, rejects any such notion, with the consequence that h. sapiens forms a continuum with the rest of the animal kingdom. Whereas in Greek philosophy 'reason' was what marked humans off from the animal kingdom. Then of course in the Christian mythology, there was also the myth of the tree of knowledge, which again signifies human's separation from nature - a separation borne of self-consciousness, ownership, the possibility of loss.
Quoting I like sushi
Towards what end?
Hmmm.... :chin:
[quote=Yahweh]I see the clouds of a rebellion (disobedience) on the horizon...better do something about it before all hell breaks loose.[/quote]
Indeed! How fascinating. Taking the Kantian route to morality, evil violates the laws of logic if not the laws of nature. Interestingly, Kant was, in my humble opinion, attempting to make moral laws as watertight as the laws of nature, The Categorical Imperative:
[quote=Immanuel Kant (Groundwork of the metaphysics of morals)]Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.[/quote]
To be evil, as per Kant, was to violate the law of noncontradiction!
Very, very interesting.
It also works the other way around: The first step to creating a problem is thinking there is a problem. All was well in Garden of Eden until humans got too cognitive.
Quoting TheMadFool
Morals are an entirely human concept. There are no morals in nature. Again - this is only a problem if you make it one. Either all is just or all is unjust. It's our complicated set of morals that we made up which puts us somewhere inbetween.
I don't think this is true. Nature was respected, revered but also feared. Primarily, nature was seen as the enabler of life. All of the first Gods of mankind were aspects of nature deified.
Nice! However, I fail to see how a death match, which life is, can be thought of as "...all was well in the Garden of Eden..."?
Quoting Hermeticus
I recall @jorndoe had a thread on rats/mice and proto-morality and let's not forget, we're part of nature and if nature somehow made us think of morals, the idea that "morals are an entirely human concept" doesn't make sense.
That said, in my reply to Wayfarer, I made a mention of how immorality seems to be perfectly compatible with the laws of nature which suggests, to some extent, that morality isn't a feature inherent to how our world works. Maybe humans, some aspects of us (minds?) at least, maybe from a different world. I dunno!
Quoting Hermeticus
Opinions vary but you can't deny the simple fact that morality is, at the end of the day, about oughts that arise from ises that are a rich source of dissatisfaction (dukkha).
1. No trait absent/present in animals which if absent/present in humans would justify the killing of humans.
Ergo,
2. Killing animals (if based on the absence/presence of some putative trait) is completely unjustified.
3. The Name The Trait argument assumes that differences result in differential treatment.
Ergo,
4. We don't kill each other because humans are like each other.
In what way are we like each other that makes us reluctant/unwilling to kill each other?
5. The only shared trait that seems to matter is life itself.
Ergo,
6. Humans hesitate/refuse to kill each other because we're alive.
7. Animals and plants too are alive.
Ergo,
8. We should not kill any living organism (plant, animal or otherwise).
That's simply due to how we define good and evil. Or rather it's due to us defining death as evil. The other view is that death is a part of life just like anything else and there is nothing inherently evil about it. Then rather than a death match, we're suddenly looking at a game of life.
Furthermore, I believe morals fail immediately once we take them to the extreme.
Is it okay if I eat another human being when I'm hungry? No.
Is it okay if I eat another human being when I'm starving? Maybe.
Is it okay if I eat another human being when we're both starving? Yes! Why not? Otherwise we'll both die.
This being my set of morals. I'm sure many of you have different views - which further showcases that these concepts are very limited and are only practical to some degree, in some certain context.
Quoting TheMadFool
You're right of course that theoretically everything is "natural" as we all stem from nature. However mind is a different matter - in that regard you're also right about morals originating from an entirely different world - the world being the fictionary world of mind. Morals do not exist just like how any other thought concept doesn't actually exist. The lion will submit to what actually is: To weapons, to gravity, even a loud noise may scare him off. But ethics and morals aren't something that actually is. You'll have a hard time talking the lion out of eating you just because "it's wrong". To the lion, what you're saying doesn't mean anything. When we talk about morals and ethics, it doesn't mean anything to anyone other than humans. Hence "There are no morals in nature"
My approach to most topics is very similar: Where did it come from and why do we have it?
The origin of morals, as I see it, is very clearly logic. Back in the good old day we used to live in packs (we still do but differently). As social animals do, we look after our own pack. This is not yet moralistic, it's simply logical. The group is valuable because it improves chances of survival. The individual is valuable because it strenghtens the group.
The rise of morals as a concept is just as logical. Eventually, as our cultures and our numbers evolved, you'd have increased encounters with other groups of humans. The problem is that the weapons we employed for hunting worked perfectly well against us as well. Humans relatively early on became the biggest threat to humans. In nature however, there is one exception to predator killing prey: When food is available in abundance. When the belly is full even the lion becomes harmless. And so there were times where humans didn't have to fight each other. And over the course of thousands of years, our food situation drastically improved.
So tribe started connecting with tribe and eventually humans realized the benefits of coorporation beyond their own tribe. This was the birth of both trade and morals. First of all it was bad to kill other tribesmen because it would provoke the tribe into war. Secondly in order to engage in trade, we'd better know if we can trust our opposite or not. The necessity for a system to measure the trustworthiness as well as the threat of others arose.
This is good and evil:
Good, someone who I can trust. Bad, someone who is a threat to me.
Everything else, the varied aspects of morals and ethics simply evolved from there.
Quoting Hermeticus
Reciprocity? Cooperation? Yeah, for extrinsic benefits only like e.g. social stability, deescalating violent conflict, trade. Mere (social) animality; not moral, I think, until the benefits sought are instrinsic, or self-cultivating, via (non-reciprocal) practice e.g. sympathetic altruity. (To wit: "What you find hateful, do not do to anyone." ~Hillel the Elder :flower:) A meta-cognitive breakthrough after maybe dozens of millennia of human eusociality ...
Quoting TheMadFool
Correct. Consequences (extrinsic as well as intrinsic) follow decisions (conduct) just as effects follows causes. The ancient Vedic dharma calls this "karma". :fire:
Right, Buddhism & Hinduism take a page out of nature's book, specifically the part that's about the laws of nature. I suppose whoever the person was who discovered/invented karma simply drew from natural causality. Fae must've reasoned, causality is an inherent aspect of nature and so, why shouldn't moral actions have moral effects? It seems to fit right in with everything else. The moral universe/dimension has its own version of causality (what goes around comes around; as you sow, so shall you reap; karma).
I'm not even sure where the line between intrinsic and extrinsic is.
What's the most baseline intrinsic behaviour there is? Survival, no?
So all these extrinsic benefits were adopted for an intrinsic purpose.
Can altruism ever be non-reciprocal? Even if there is no immediate return - helping others inevitably raises my standing with the helped. Does Hillel urge us not to hate for the sake of goodness, or does he urge us because he does not want to encounter hate himself?
Yep. I want your opinion on something that's bothering me for as long as I can remember. The Taoist harmony principle between opposites (hot-cold, good-bad, and so on), to my reckoning, implies the existence and, shockingly, the necessity for disharmony (the counterbalancing force of harmony). This, as far as I can tell, means there should be discord/strife/struggle/chaos in the universe. If so, what's the point at all of seeking balance/equilibrium?
That is an extrinsic benefit.
Surviving =/= thriving (i.e. surviving is necessary but not sufficient for thriving). To thrive – self-cultivate – is an intrinsic benefit.
Yes, as you point out: no quid pro quo.
Helping a dying person die doesn't raise your standing with the dead.
The rabbi reminds us, I think, not to do anything we know is hateful to another so that we avoid that our 'hating' becomes a (self-immiserating) bad habit, or vice.
Have you even read the Daodejing? What "opposites"? The yin-yang are complementaries entwined with each and not separate, discrete, "opposites". Imbalance is the diagnosis – rigidly fixating on one complementary and neglecting the other; seeking balance (via effortless (fluid, flowing) activity) is the treatment.
When imbalance is absent balance is present. When balance is absence, imbalance is present.
(Imbalance : illness :: balance : good health & diet :: seeking balance : medicine.)
Still not clear? Read Laozi, Fool. :sweat:
So, I could then define your joy and suffering away?
Quoting Hermeticus
A variation of the naturalistic fallacy. Remember, morality is about oughts and not ises, the latter is a cause of much dissatisfaction (dukkha).
Quoting Hermeticus
Again, you're flip-flopping between oughts and ises. Because you're stuck in the ises, the oughts appear extreme.
Quoting Hermeticus
This doesn't make sense. God is a threat to the devil. So, is God bad? A gang of thieves can trust each other, are they good?
:ok:
Care to explain how survival is an extrinsic benefit?
Quoting 180 Proof
Still means that extrinsic benefits have been adopted for intrinsic purposes (thriving rather than surviving in this case).
Quoting 180 Proof
Very good point. But in regards to myself: The reason I'd help a dying person die is because I think it's "the right thing to do". I think it's the right thing to do because if I ever were in the same situation, I'd hope someone would help me die in the same way.
To be clear with my point here: I don't really think there is any good behaviour that is good just for the sake of being good. I may act as a saint throughout my life and never expect anything in return. Why? To make the world a better place? Why do that? Because >I< want to live in a better world.
Even the Buddhists who have this sort of expectation to be selfless do this - but they do this in a brilliant way. Instead of assuming that >I< am the self, everything is the self. So if one is to truly adopt this idea, their inherent selfishness is still caring for the entirety of the world.
Quoting TheMadFool
No, you can not define my joy and suffering away because my joy and suffering depend on my definition.
You can however, define your own joy and suffering away.
Quoting TheMadFool
You've got it the wrong way around, Fool! There is no dukkha in what is. Dukkha arises from desire and expectation - the oughts.
Quoting TheMadFool
We're all stuck in the ises. Ises is what is. Oughts is dreamland. It doesn't exist. Ises is what is important. If I can't run an ought through any given scenario, what's the point of having an ought?
Quoting TheMadFool
You're just demonstrating the subjectivity of good and evil. Of course the devil thinks God is evil and of course the thieves think that their mates are good.
So, I define my joy as the feeling that I get when someone punches me in the face, that punch on the face will magically transform in terms of the accompanying sensation into something else? Remember, snow doesn't change color if I decide to describe it as black.
Quoting Hermeticus
So, a person who's being tortured severely is unhappy because he can conceive of a world in which he isn't tortured? :chin:
Quoting Hermeticus
Some of us aren't. The world has changed all because of the oughts our ancestors and contemporaries have thought up in their minds.
Quoting Hermeticus
But, are they? if your claims are not objective then why are you trying to convince me of your views.
That's it! Our discussion is over. Thank you and good luck..
Precisely. Masochists do exactly that, associating pleasure with pain.
Quoting TheMadFool
Yes. More accurately, the person is unhappy because they knew happiness before. You've actually inquired about this just earlier.
Quoting 180 Proof
This is (non)duality. This is yin-yang. Without knowing suffering, I can not know happiness. Without knowing happiness, I can not know suffering. Nothing has any meaning on it's own. Everything needs a complementary to put it into context.
Quoting TheMadFool
I don't understand how anyone wouldn't be "in the is". "Ises" as you say, that what is, is simply reality - or do I misunderstand something about the words you use?
Quoting TheMadFool
I'm not saying my claim is not objective. I'm saying objectively, good and evil are subjective.
Yes, loyalty to our group is good. Socrates would have us expand our consciousness so our group includes others and the Athenian Oath was loyalty and duty to all Athenians. Even Hebrews had group loyalty and those outside their group were not treated the same. Just about everyone had slaves with the rule that those outside the group could be made slaves, but not those inside the group.
Religion tended to make one's group much larger than we would naturally understand our group. Now that does separate us from animals, who can not imagine such large groups. Because we do think of ourselves as members of very large groups, we do have some problems. Do I have to feed a homeless person who most certainly is not in my social group?
In sadomasochism, the experience of pleasure/pain, no matter how weird, doesn't change because you changed the meaning of a word. It should if we could define away the experience. For instance, if I redefine the word "pain" as the feeling you get when you're not being whipped, it doesn't now make the masochist feel pain when he's not being whipped.
Quoting Hermeticus
Quoting Hermeticus
So, how is that this happiness before (an is) make a person who's being tortured unhappy? Fae wishes fae ought to be in that previous state of happiness. No?
Quoting Hermeticus
Some of us aren't stuck in the ises - they've managed to actualize some oughts to their great satisfaction I might add.
Quoting Hermeticus
If good and evil are subjective, how can you be objective about them? :chin:
So, a group of genocidal maniacs who are loyal to each other are good? Why the hell then are they put on trial and sometimes sent to the gallows?
Something's off. You need to rethink your idea of good & bad. Looks like it might get really interesting very fast.
Some here are of the view that good and bad (morality) is an issue of definition. This, in my opinion, implies that if I were to swap the meanings of the words "good" and "evil", stealing, raping, and murdering, other acts presently considered evil would become good. However, someone who claims this is merely equivocating: First, let's take murder as the type specimen, such a person claims murder is good (meaning has changed) and second, this same person asserts that murder is good in the original sense of the word "good" (meaning hasn't changed)
The beneficial conditions or requirements of survival are external to the survivor.
Okay. "Purposes", however, are not synonymous with "benefits".
Agreed. One is altruistic in order to fulfill one's immediate (conditioned) sympathic responses (needs) and not in exchange for something the patient can do in return. In the main, for example, nurturing children and caring for debilitated elders, feeding the hungry and donating blood or organs, etc, are not 'acts of reciprocity'.
Not stealing because it could lead to going to jail, is not a very high standard of morality. There are many legal ways to take advantage of people. And calling a band of thieves genocidal maniacs is a bit hyperbolic don't you think?
The answer is that all social animals display moral judgments and inform their actions in their groups.
To be clear calling the act of "killing an other human" murder is cheating.
Its better to take a generic act (killing other humans)and apply the legal term after we have found his act to be immoral.
Not all killings are immoral.
You're evading the question. You said, all that matters to goodness is loyalty and hence my question about a band of genocidal [s]maniacs[/s] people who are loyal, let's even say deeply loyal to each other and whether they qualify to be counted among the ranks of, say, the Buddha or Jesus?
Its possible that a bad act might be the moral thing to do for your society.
I am quite sure I did not say "all that matters to goodness is loyalty". Because I did not list all the things that are important to goodness, it is understandable how you could interpret what I said to mean that. I said what I said to open the discussion. I think your mention of Buddha and Jesus opens it further. I do not believe any other species contemplates those men and what they said.
The question is if we need morals and ethics and animals do not? All social animals depend on each other for survival so they need a mechanism for getting along. They just don't label things and talk about them. As far as we know they do not imagine another reality and talk about people who talk about a different reality. Would I be a better person if I believed life on earth is only an illusion and there is a better life waiting for me if I qualify?
I am not sure what you think is good about Jesus or Buddha? The story of Buddha is he darn near starved to death because he was caught up in a movement of self-torture and deprivation. A nutty idea. Not any better than being a hermit monk. Give me a scientist or a teacher with practical knowledge. I am questioning the value of morality that may have nothing to do with our survival. On the other hand, understanding morals as a matter of cause and effect can lead to good government and the advancement of human potential.
Good, someone who I can trust[/quote]
Quoting Athena
Quoting Athena
:chin:
I take it "is it inevitable" here means something like "Do we really have to? Couldn't we just not do this and be fine?" Which suggests human fretting over morals is a sort of mistake. Maybe we could just stop or maybe it's a mistake we can't help but make, because we are cursed with self-awareness. (Or cursed with some other property other animals lack -- there've been a lot of candidates for that over the years, usually something to do with thinking too much. Other animals live in a state we have in some sense fallen from, that sort of thing. "I think I could turn and live with animals ...")
On the other hand, your question could point in what amounts to the other direction. Other animals manage to have social organization without all this ethics business, but evidently we cannot, we need it -- which suggests humanity is kindof awful but making up for it with lots of thinking and talking. And that view too has been pretty common, although usually without the claim that other animals are just fine. (Usually the pitch would be that all animals are awful -- we're not special in that respect -- but we lucky devils have thinking and talking to make up for that. Or, if not awful, then certainly "amoral" -- seems to be a common view -- they're living their lives infra-morally, as children are infra-linguistic.)
There is another option, namely that we are simians through and through, but we also talk and wear clothes and build cities, all stuff we happen to do in addition to behaving like textbook simians.
My question then, is this: what exactly needs explaining?
I missed this response from the original but had not been visiting the forum. I consider myself a Taoist. Taoism isn’t implying a necessity for imbalance but that there exists a duality, the Yin and Yang and also interestingly suggests that there is no absolute of one over the other so each has the seed or the potential of the other. The I Ching book of changes describes the 64 Hexagrams composed of the combinations of the 8 trigrams. Each trigram has a meaning related to it’s construction and assignment to basic assignments. Each hexagram has changing lines Yang to Yin or vice Versa. There is the mention of the 10,000 things but this just a way of describing all things. What Taoist tries to explain is that nature naturally seeks a balance.
There may be extremes but everything naturally finds a balance. This is true in general when we look at nature and animals. Humans however do not normally work with nature. Early civilised society probably did so e.g. Native American Indians but man has always worked to control and change nature, you can argue overall for the better but lately the debate with global warming and burning fossil fuels. It is not that there should be disharmony but it exits after all chaos (increasing entropy) exists. At first I found that counter intuitive as gravity you can argue increases order because from e.g gas you have stars form and planets but the overall entropy apparently is still higher as there is ‘information’ lost in this ‘apparent order’.
This is an aside but it is true in general nature will achieve balance. An eco system if left undisturbed balances itself predators and prey for example. Mankind has always had an impact on natural order. In pre history this did not have an impact but arguably since the industrial revolution it has. I strayed a bit but the message of Taoism is to try and follow the Tao which means letting the natural flow of things happen and balance and recognise extremes of Yang or yin and let them balance each other, after hard work Yang, rest yin.
On topic - if you follow the Tao you don’t need morals. Acting in accordance with the Tao (with nature).
A tidbit to chew on while you're at it: Animal Trial