Animals and Sapience

It's right for us to interfere, in the same way it's baby_eating for the aliens to interfere with us.

Morality and the thing the aliens are talking about aren't out there. From outside, morality is a human thing. Aliens could work out what we're talking about, but it probably would be relevant to them outside of dealing with us.

Because what works for humans does not axiomatically work for dolphins. Since when did we all become moral absolutists here?

Also, we are not right to force other countries to play by our rules in any kind of absolute sense. It is the most intense hubris imaginable to believe that. We do so because it advances our national interests and/or satiates our national amour propre, but "right" in the evolutionary sense and in the historical sense is defined by success, not by abstract concepts of moral superiority. Never mind that the United States has a pretty terrible human rights record itself.

Slogans and sermons are how you get the rabble to march off to war, or to vote for you. If you don't govern with a dose of realpolitik, you don't govern for very long.

edited 8th Apr '16 6:28:41 PM by Fighteer

Minimizing suffering is at least as valid a value as any other, although I don't think it should be the only moral value. Ethical pluralism is more appealing to me than monism.

Nor do you if your of purely by it, ignoring human morality has lead many world leaders to do horrible things and then become very confused when they face resistance from outside powers, after all, pure national interest would have meant allow Hitler to anex Poland, it would have meant allow Gadafii to crush the Libyan uprising, it would mean never ever mentioning human rights when dealing with China.

As for us not having the right, I guess this is a fundemental disagreeing point for me, I belive we as a world should treat everything as subjectively different, murder and killing should not be treated as wooden shoes. Yes we're not always right, yes we make mistakes, but if we refuse to try and make the world better because we're afraid that we'll get things wrong and history will judge us harshly, then what are we?

I am not 100% morally perfect, I'm sure that there are beliefs I hold that are wrong and I simply don't know it, I'm sure that future generations will look at things I belvie and go "how could anyone think that?", but that doesn't meant I shouldn't try to make things better. My morality isn't perfect and I will always seek to improve it, but it's the best I've got and I'll be dammed if I'm not gonna use it as a guide to try and make things better.

edited 8th Apr '16 7:56:26 PM by Silasw

This . Hubris it may be to believe we are doing the right thing by interfering with foreign powers, but we should do it anyway if our calculations say it is the right thing to do. We don't have to believe it, but doing nothing looks worse according to our own math. We have to do what we think is right.

That said, I can't think of a justified war. But, there could be one.

Obviously, you believe your morality to be better or you wouldn't choose it... I hope. That doesn't make it the objectively correct morality for all times, places, cultures, and peoples, because there is no such thing.

It doesn't make it objectively correct, but it doesn't mean that all morality is subjective.

There is not a person on the face of the planet who does not believe their morality is better. If someone didn't, they'd convert on the spot to the other person's system, and still satisfy this principle.

edited 9th Apr '16 9:08:17 AM by war877

Most of us do not choose our morality anyway; it's a result of social conditioning from birth. Even when we branch out, it's within a very narrow band of deviation. Usually, young people achieving their majority will experiment with all sorts of different forms, then return to something statistically very close to how they were raised.

edited 9th Apr '16 6:29:15 PM by Fighteer

That is irrefutably true. If someone grew up in an area that traditionally ate hamburgers or steaks were presented with evidence that cows have moral value and must be respected, they would have a very small chance of becoming non-beef eaters in university and next to no chance of becoming non-beef eaters at any other time in life. In addition, after leaving university, they have good odds of reverting. The chance of them converting is disproportionately low in comparison to the strength of the evidence.

Whether we are talking about fish sticks or nuclear arms races, this natural conservative bend of mankind has always annoyed me.

I do not think the question of the definition of sapience is a question whose answer is engineered to protect ourselves from feelings of guilt. I do believe that humanity's natural conservative leaning will warp and twist the discussion of said definition, with everyone desperately fighting for a definition that means that they are not wrong and never were.

Which in the end makes it look like the word is engineered to protect ourselves from feelings of guilt.

Despite our tools and our culture, we aren't that far removed from dirty apes on the savanna. The entirety of recorded human civilization is a blink in the eye of evolution for a species with our generational length.

I have to admit, people bandying about "morality is subjective" (although I don't take much issue with it philosophy-wise) seems to have an undercurrent of "...and that's why my morality is better, I'm all objective and stuff".

That's why I have some distaste for it when it's used in arguments.

edited 9th Apr '16 8:47:34 PM by CassidyTheDevil

I have to agree with something said earlier: the psychological tendency to consider one's personal morality the "best" is difficult to avoid; egotism is a natural human trait and renouncing it utterly would make one highly neurotic. That should not stop an intellectually honest individual from exploring ways to test and improve their moral framework.

Believing oneself possessed of the One, True morality, discerned from Universal Truth that oneself is uniquely privy to makes one at the very least a smug asshole. If you admit that it is possible for your morality to be wrong in at least some respects, you must then also acknowledge that the One, True morality (should you believe in such) is something that we must discern, not something that we are granted perfect knowledge of from birth. Acknowledging that, it is the purest hubris to be absolutely certain that your morality is the right one.

Edit: Contrariwise, a moral relativist of any stripe cannot believe that their personal morality is correct in any absolute sense without being properly labeled a hypocrite.

If you are trying to make some point about moral relativists being smugly certain that morality is indeed relative, making their stance tautological... I would observe that it's the same rhetorical tactic as trying to declare atheism as a belief system and thereby make it seem like just another religion. Nice try, but no.

edited 9th Apr '16 9:04:45 PM by Fighteer

Yeah I find that the "all morality is subjective" crowd is less "so mine's the best" and more of the "so stop telling me I can't beat me wife and discriminate against blacks and gays" crowd.

Nope, not saying that at all. I'm not invested in the philosophical argument for meta-ethical realism or antirealism. I don't really see it as important personally, as I think the purpose of ethics is simply social in function, and the only thing that really matters is what the practical effect of those beliefs are.

Contrary to some relativists, moral relativism doesn't really seem to do much practically speaking.

But anyway, my issue isn't really with any of that, my issue with how common it is for moral subjectivism to be a sloppy and hypocritical reasoning people use in arguments to justify their morality.

edited 9th Apr '16 9:51:27 PM by CassidyTheDevil

To someone who thinks critically about moral relativism, the guy using the concept to justify why he should be allowed to beat his wife is just an asshole, not a revolutionary philosopher.

I kind of feel like we're getting away from the topic of the thread...

Sorry about this LSBK, But...

@Silsaw: I think you are there conflating individualist moral relativity with cultural or societal moral relativity. Acting against societal prescriptions would only be in line with individualist moral relativity. Most of the recent discussion has been in terms of cultural moral relativity. Which would not appeal to the "I can do whatever I want" crowd. (Unless they were really confused)

This is a question I'm interested in being answered from dog owners: do you think your furry friends feel guilt?

Because most articles I've read say that most experts disagree with the notion, followed by a bunch of dog owners vehemently disagreeing in the comments.

I don't know dogs very well so...

edited 18th Jul '16 9:27:46 PM by LSBK

I'm not a dog owner but I am a vet.

I don't think they do. Not in the sense of "I made a mess in the lounge room and I'm sorry".

If dogs see (or anticipate) anger from their people they're going to go into appeasement mode. That looks a lot like 'guilt', but it isn't really. It's just 'you're mad and I really don't want you to hurt me'.

You could make an argument, I suppose, that "I'm going to be punished and I really don't want to be punished" is the basis of the emotion humans call guilt anyway, but I think it's a bit more complicated than that.

edited 4th Jun '16 7:41:19 PM by LoniJay

As someone who has had 4 dogs in her life (2 currently living) and who has studied and read a lot about dog behavior, no, I don't think they feel guilt in the sense of remembering what they did wrong and feeling guilty about it. What often looks like "guilt" to a human scolding a naughty dog is usually an expression of fear or submission, because while dogs do notice patterns (of behavior, changes in their environment over time), they tend to live in the moment. This is why one of the big things I learned with training dogs is to not scold them unless I actually catch them doing something they shouldn't, because otherwise they'll just think I'm angry at them for no reason.

That fits in with everything else I've heard. But that does bring up the question of if they don't understand how can they anticipate anger.

I suppose past experience but that makes you wonder why do they repeat the action? Maybe just instinct I guess?

Edit: Well, I guess answers that.

edited 4th Jun '16 7:42:48 PM by LSBK

I read a book on dog training once that talked about this kind of thing a lot. Apparently even in 'the wild', or in dog-only social structures with no people involved, dogs will disobey the dominant animals and steal resources behind their back all the time. If they think they can get away with it.

I wonder, too, if dogs don't really see actions and consequences the way we do. They might understand 'messed up room means the human will be angry', but not quite join the dots to 'the human is angry at me, for making that mess, which is what I did earlier today'.

Well, if you follow the Dog Whisperer, you would know that he thinks dogs only exist in the moment.

I forget what his big spiel was, but he said that humans have spiritual, rational, and emotional existence. An owner may try to appeal to a dog's logic. To talk them through something. Or to their morality. To explain why something is wrong. In either case, you won't get far. They are instinctual creatures for the most part. That is why he believes that creating an environment that gives them the role that best suits their instincts is the best thing for their mental health.

Despite that, I believe dogs are capable of feeling guilt. Guilt is an emotion that we associate with knowing that we did something wrong. People who say that guilt is the emotion we feel when we know we did something wrong are incorrect. You can feel the emotion associated with guilt without this knowledge, and you can have this knowledge and not feel the emotion of guilt.

Usually, I would be quite suspicious of anyone who said that they had a dog who knows they did something wrong. But, dogs can probably feel the full range of emotions humans can. The problem in reasoning here is that humans can't separate the philosophical ideas we use to understand the world from the emotions we feel.

edited 5th Jun '16 12:07:03 AM by war877

I'd argue that it depends on the dog. Just as feeling guilty depends on the person: not everybody feels guilty about the same kinds of things, after all.

I've known dogs who you can tell have realised they've messed up (they mostly weight to working out when what they've done has messed with group dynamics than getting a sequence of cause-and-effect events totally straight). However, it'll depend on a number of factors on how guilty they act — including whether they've got the doggie equivalent of autism, antisocial personality disorder or just a straight-up learning disorder (Bowser, for example, was as thick as a brick: but, he was born barely breathing, so we're pretty sure why he couldn't wrap his head around even basic "table + nose + velocity = sore nose" consequences).

Good luck giving any dog a guilt trip over the stolen steak, regardless... never going to happen — that solid payday trumps anything. But, it's easy to spot when a dog is trying to apologise for snapping at you because they are scared of the fireworks... Most dogs don't want to make others feel bad and do feel bad when they can work out that they screwed up.

Some cats, too: I've had solid, full-purr apologies from semi-feral cats after instinct trumped will and they lashed out despite their better judgement. If they can do it...

edited 18th Jul '16 9:35:19 PM by Euodiachloris