From: livesey@solntze.wpd.sgi.com (Jon Livesey)
Subject: Re: Morality? (was Re: <Political Atheists?)
Organization: sgi
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Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: solntze.wpd.sgi.com

In article <1qlettINN8oi@gap.caltech.edu>, keith@cco.caltech.edu (Keith Allan Schneider) writes:
|> livesey@solntze.wpd.sgi.com (Jon Livesey) writes:
|> 
|> >>>Explain to me
|> >>>how instinctive acts can be moral acts, and I am happy to listen.
|> >>For example, if it were instinctive not to murder...
|> >
|> >Then not murdering would have no moral significance, since there
|> >would be nothing voluntary about it.
|> 
|> See, there you go again, saying that a moral act is only significant
|> if it is "voluntary."  Why do you think this?

If you force me to do something, am I morally responsible for it?

|> 
|> And anyway, humans have the ability to disregard some of their instincts.

Well, make up your mind.    Is it to be "instinctive not to murder"
or not?

|> 
|> >>So, only intelligent beings can be moral, even if the bahavior of other
|> >>beings mimics theirs?
|> >
|> >You are starting to get the point.  Mimicry is not necessarily the 
|> >same as the action being imitated.  A Parrot saying "Pretty Polly" 
|> >isn't necessarily commenting on the pulchritude of Polly.
|> 
|> You are attaching too many things to the term "moral," I think.
|> Let's try this:  is it "good" that animals of the same species
|> don't kill each other.  Or, do you think this is right? 

It's not even correct.    Animals of the same species do kill
one another.

|> 
|> Or do you think that animals are machines, and that nothing they do
|> is either right nor wrong?

Sigh.   I wonder how many times we have been round this loop.

I think that instinctive bahaviour has no moral significance.
I am quite prepared to believe that higher animals, such as
primates, have the beginnings of a moral sense, since they seem
to exhibit self-awareness.

|> 
|> 
|> >>Animals of the same species could kill each other arbitarily, but 
|> >>they don't.
|> >
|> >They do.  I and other posters have given you many examples of exactly
|> >this, but you seem to have a very short memory.
|> 
|> Those weren't arbitrary killings.  They were slayings related to some 
|> sort of mating ritual or whatnot.

So what?     Are you trying to say that some killing in animals
has a moral significance and some does not?   Is this your
natural morality>


|> 
|> >>Are you trying to say that this isn't an act of morality because
|> >>most animals aren't intelligent enough to think like we do?
|> >
|> >I'm saying:
|> >	"There must be the possibility that the organism - it's not 
|> >	just people we are talking about - can consider alternatives."
|> >
|> >It's right there in the posting you are replying to.
|> 
|> Yes it was, but I still don't understand your distinctions.  What
|> do you mean by "consider?"  Can a small child be moral?  How about
|> a gorilla?  A dolphin?  A platypus?  Where is the line drawn?  Does
|> the being need to be self aware?

Are you blind?   What do you think that this sentence means?

	"There must be the possibility that the organism - it's not 
	just people we are talking about - can consider alternatives."

What would that imply?

|> 
|> What *do* you call the mechanism which seems to prevent animals of
|> the same species from (arbitrarily) killing each other?  Don't
|> you find the fact that they don't at all significant?

I find the fact that they do to be significant. 

jon.
