Hi everyone,
My thanks to Chris for the reference to the article in New Scientist and at
http://www.newscientist.com/

While the research being done on animal mentality is very interesting and
relevant to our discussion here on the list, the article doesn't do very
much to further our thinking about the possibility of animal morality.  For
instance, take the quote from Marc Bekoff that Chris provides:

>Here is a short extract:
>
>>Marc Bekoff from the University of Colorado has studied how dogs,
>           wolves and coyotes play. "All animals learn certain codes of
>conduct
>about their own species' morality through play," he says.

With all due respect to Marc Bekoff, doesn't this statement rather beg the
whole question about animal morality?  Morality is the ultimate cultural
phenomenon in the human realm.  If as an animal rights activist I want
simply to declare victory and go home, I can label every last animal
behavior I observe as "moral" throughout the rest of the animal kingdom,
too.  How can other species have "morality"? without the term being so
all-encompassing that it is meaningless?  Bekoff is fairly well known in
ethological circles for attributing human characteristics to animals (he
calls it, "deep ethology"), and he is also well known for his animal rights
views.  While the AR activity alone certainly does not disqualify him from
doing ethological research, the two tendencies combined do in fact add up
to placing him about as far out on the one end of ethological research as
one can possibly be with regard to anthropomorphism (for discussion see
e.g. Kennedy, J. S. (John Stodart). The New Anthropomorphism. Cambridge;
New York :: Cambridge University Press, 1992).  The authors' citing of
Bekoff as their expert on animal morality does little to inspire confidence
in the rest of their reporting.

Another quote from the article can help illustrate the point.  Bekoff is
further quoted as saying (and to be fair to Bekoff, the authors may
possibly be quoting him out of context):

"In his forthcoming book on animal emotions, [Bekoff] recounts the story of
a dog who saved the life of his canine companion by awaking their owner to
let him know that the second dog was ill. Bekoff also tells a tale about
his own dog, Jethro, who adopted an orphaned rabbit and, years later,
rescued an injured bird. 'I think Jethro is a truly compassionate soul,'
writes Bekoff. 'He could easily have gulped each down with little effort.
But you don't do that to friends, do you?'"

How does the fact that Jethro "adopts" a rabbit (an orphaned one, of
course) and "rescues" an injured rabbit lead to the moral evaluation that
Jethro "is a truly compassionate soul"?  Are any of these terms
observationally neutral and/or ethologically objective?

Bekoff:  "He could easily have gulped each down with little effort.  But
you don't do that to friends, do you?"  Excuse me for suppressing a giggle
here, but just about any average bird hunting dog with any manners
whatsoever will either *naturally* return an injured (read: shot) but live
bird to the shooter's hand, or can be *trained* to return crippled birds to
hand.  This has nothing to do with the dog making "friends" with rabbits or
birds.  This tendency to return the prey alive relates to the trait in
hunting dogs known as "hard" or "soft" mouth. The tendency to "gulp down"
or otherwise chomp on a bird in the mouth is known as "hard mouth," whereas
the tendency to softly mouth the bird without killing it while making the
retrieve is known as "soft mouth."  Hunting dogs are bred for a large
number of valued traits, among which is the innate tendency for "soft
mouth."  Hard mouth is obviously undesirable because excessive chewing by
the dog can ruin the meat for human consumption.  And this trait is
especially valued in labs and other retrievers, since the dog's job of
retrieving a wriggling duck in either salt or fresh water is a difficult
one to accomplish without the swimming dog sinking its teeth into a duck in
order to kill it and keep it still.

You know, I bet it would be very interesting to find out what kind of dog
ol' Jethro is. . . .  I don't have any evidence, of course, but on
statistical grounds alone I'd bet good money that Jethro is probably a lab.
:-)

Bekoff:  "'I think dogs
>learn codes of conduct from humans through dog/human play.' They
>learn the ground rules for acceptable behaviour, such as how hard they
>can bite without harming."

Well, okay--but tell it to the folks at retriever trials, who train their
dogs with soft canvas dummies in order to mimic the softness of a bird.
When these trainers are conditioning and/or habituating their dogs not to
bite down hard on the retrieved object, are they in effect teaching a
doggie ethics class?  I don't think so.

Jim T.





>Best wishes
>
>Chris
>
>At 11:29 AM 3/6/00 -0500, you wrote:
>