Objective Morality (Once More Into The Breach)

[seer]

Sounds like you are describing human behavior more than Chimps. Your describing the similarities which remain regardless of your view. It is also observed that Chimps show empathy, social rules, reciprocity, and peace making, and like humans bad behavior. Also primative tool making and the teaching of those skills to others.

Chimps are not moral, they act on instinct. They do not conceptualize or understand moral principles. As your religion teaches it is the rational soul that separates us from the animals, and it is through the rational soul that we come to these understandings and ideals. "All sciences, knowledge, arts, wonders, institutions, discoveries and enterprises come from the exercised intelligence of the rational soul

[Tassman]

Chimps are not moral, they act on instinct. They do not conceptualize or understand moral principles.

This instinctive behaviour is a precursor of human morality; only humans have the intelligence to conceptualise it into a moral system. But, since altruism, empathy, and gratitude underpin all moral behaviour, finding these qualities in our fellow primates suggests that they run deep in our brain biology and did not come about because of moral reasoning or religion

[Tassman]

Well, let's take one example, "do not steal". I could see how fitness (reproductive success) would be improved by stealing, and this happens a lot in the animal kingdom, but this is a moral principle. And it doesn't seem like one that would easily evolve.

the precursors of morality, not a systematised moral code such as the more intelligent humans have developed. All social animals (including humans) have hierarchical societies wherein each member knows its own place. Social order is maintained by certain rules of expected behaviour. Dominant group members enforce order through punishment. But the higher primates also have a sense of reciprocity, e.g. chimpanzees remember who did them favours and who did them wrong and reward or punish them accordingly.

[lee_merrill]

So God did not create these morals, they are eternal like God?

Yes, as are mathematical truths.

Again, how do morals exist, where do they exist?

And I repeat that they are self-existent. They also do not have a location somewhere.

That doesn't mean that all our dreams influence behavior.

Well, that was a "for-instance". But given that some dreams influence behavior, then at least some forgotten dreams would still exist.

But you are suggesting something different - that they are self-existent, how is that possible, where do they exist apart from a mind?

No, I'm not saying dreams are self-existent.

Blessings,
Lee

[lee_merrill]

The evidence concerning primates does not support your assertion.

But I still do not see chimps acting against their impulses. "Do not steal" is not in effect.

Source: NY Times

They also apply a degree of judgment and reason, for which there are no parallels in animals.

© Copyright Original Source

So it is now required of you to show how judgment and reason could have evolved.

Blessings,
Lee

[lee_merrill]

But the higher primates also have a sense of reciprocity, e.g. chimpanzees remember who did them favours and who did them wrong and reward or punish them accordingly.

But I still hold that such higher primates only act according to their impulses, "do not steal" is not one of their principles.

Best wishes,
Lee

[seer]

And I repeat that they are self-existent. They also do not have a location somewhere.

Since you can not show how they exist (apart form minds), and that they have no spacial location, how is this any more than an assertion?

[Tassman]

But I still hold that such higher primates only act according to their impulses, "do not steal" is not one of their principles.

[shunyadragon]

But I still hold that such higher primates only act according to their impulses, "do not steal" is not one of their principles.

Best wishes,
Lee

In fact do not steal is a principle among Chimps only when comes to stealing from the offended chimp. Also cooperation is rewarded and freeloaders are punished.

[seer]

In fact do not steal is a principle among Chimps only when comes to stealing from the offended chimp. Also cooperation is rewarded and freeloaders are punished.

We are speaking of chimps in the wild, not controlled situation:

Bands of chimpanzees violently kill individuals from neighboring groups in order to expand their own territory, according to a 10-year study of a chimp community in Uganda that provides the first definitive evidence for this long-suspected function of this behavior.

University of Michigan primate behavioral ecologist John Mitani's findings are published in the June 22 issue of Current Biology.

During a decade of study, the researchers witnessed 18 fatal attacks and found signs of three others perpetrated by members of a large community of about 150 chimps at Ngogo, Kibale National Park.

Then in the summer of 2009, the Ngogo chimpanzees began to use the area where two-thirds of these events occurred, expanding their territory by 22 percent. They traveled, socialized and fed on their favorite fruits in the new region.

"When they started to move into this area, it didn't take much time to realize that they had killed a lot of other chimpanzees there," Mitani said. "Our observations help to resolve long-standing questions about the function of lethal intergroup aggression in chimpanzees."

Mitani is the James N. Spuhler Collegiate Professor in the Department of Anthropology. His co-authors are David Watts, an anthropology professor at Yale University, and Sylvia Amsler, a lecturer in anthropology at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. Amsler worked on this project as a graduate student at U-M.

Chimpanzees (along with bonobos) are humans' closest living relatives. Anthropologists have long known that they kill their neighbors, and they suspected that they did so to seize their land.


https://phys.org/news/2010-06-chimpanzees.html#jCp

Animal coercive sex

It has been noted that behavior resembling rape in humans is observed in the animal kingdom, including ducks and geese, bottlenose dolphins, and chimpanzees. Indeed, in orangutans, close human relatives, copulations of this nature may account for up to half of all observed matings. Such behaviors, referred to as 'forced copulations', involve an animal being approached and sexually penetrated as it struggles or attempts to escape.

Sexual Coercion

Male chimpanzees, like other male mammals, exhibit patterns of behavior toward females that disarm females' resistance to mating. These behaviors may include physical force and qualify in human terms as rape or sexual assault, or they may be more subtle or indirect, as when males engage in activities that partition females from other males. Direct sexual coercion includes a male keeping an ovulating female to himself, which limits sperm competition. An indirect form of sexual coercion is males killing infant babies that he is fairly sure aren't his own. This may be an effort to spur the mother into becoming fertile again so that he can mate with her. Female chimpanzees also kill the babies of other chimp mothers.

http://sciencing.com/chimpanzee-mati...s-6703991.html

So chimpanzees regularly kill each other, steal each others territory and practice rape.

[shunyadragon]

We are speaking of chimps in the wild, not controlled situation:



So chimpanzees regularly kill each other, steal each others territory and practice rape.

This is also true of humans in wild situations like our contemporary civilizations, which is the part of the point that primate behavior has many similarities with human behavior, but in a more primitive form. This same punishment for theft, and cooperation has been observed in the wild. The research is valid, and done in controlled conditions.

The controlled conditions do not detract from the conclusions of two independent research projects. More details here: http://www.pnas.org/content/104/32/13046.full

Again . . .

[shunyadragon]

Primates in the wild commonly demonstrate cooperative behavior, and more specifically cooperative learned behavior shared within the primate community, and associated primitive tool making, which varies from primate communities. This behavior cannot be remotely described as 'impulse' instinctive behavior.

[seer]

This is also true of humans in wild situations like our contemporary civilizations, which is the part of the point that primate behavior has many similarities with human behavior, but in a more primitive form. This same punishment for theft, and cooperation has been observed in the wild. The research is valid, and done in controlled conditions.

Shuny, no one is arguing that certain species don't cooperate, but that is mere instinct, and it does not tell us what is right or wrong. They are not acting, as human morality and law suggest, on ethical abstracts. Yes chimpanzees share, but they also rape, they also kill that take each others territory. A monkey will never attain the moral abstract thinking of humans, because as your own religion teaches it is the rational soul that separates us from the animals:http://reference.bahai.org/en/t/c/BW...=highlight#gr4

[shunyadragon]

Shuny, no one is arguing that certain species don't cooperate, but that is mere instinct, and it does not tell us what is right or wrong. They are not acting, as human morality and law suggest, on ethical abstracts. Yes chimpanzees share, but they also rape, they also kill that take each others territory. A monkey will never attain the moral abstract thinking of humans, because as your own religion teaches it is the rational soul that separates us from the animals:http://reference.bahai.org/en/t/c/BW...=highlight#gr4

I cited specific scientific research that demonstrates cooperative social behavior in primates in the wild and controlled conditions that cannot be only attributed to instinct nor simply 'impulsive' behavior as the same behavior in humans cannot be attributed to instinct.

Your abusive unethical selective citation of Baha'i scripture to justify your agenda continues unabated as you do with all others who disagree with your agenda. Yes, we both believe that humans have a rational soul, but that is not the issue of this thread.

[seer]

I cited specific scientific research that demonstrates cooperative social behavior in primates in the wild and controlled conditions that cannot be only attributed to instinct nor simply 'impulsive' behavior as the same behavior in humans cannot be attributed to instinct.

Nonsense, there is no evidence that apes can or do think in abstract moral principles.

Your abusive unethical selective citation of Baha'i scripture to justify your agenda continues unabated as you do with all others who disagree with your agenda. Yes, we both believe that humans have a rational soul, but that is not the issue of this thread.

No, the issue of this thread is objective ethical principles (do they exist and where). And how is it unethical to quote your own religion - that teaches that the rational soul is necessary for ALL knowledge.