Jim asked
>I am willing to listen to your account of the moral life of dogs. Tell >me
how I would recognize seeing a dog exercise moral judgment.
Dogs quite frequently risk or give their lives to save human companions all
the time. Of course, you would attribute this to "instinct" we extol the
virtue of human mothers who risk their lives for their children all the time.
Not only that, but quite often dogs will go to great lenghths to save humans
who are not even their companions. Kindness and love, (I must explain to
you), are feelings that humans and non-human beings alike express, without
cold calculations. You seem to need so much structure for these decisions,
maybe because some of those feelings might not be there. Unfortunate monkeys
in primate labs were starved, and only given food if they pressed a button
that they later found would deliver a shock to other primates. They soon
resolved to go hungry rather than elicit a shock to their helpless collegues.
Just as we might have difficulty knowing that someone speaking a different
language than we do, has feelings and makes moral decisions, (without the help
of an interpreter), we cannot be explicitly told of moral decisions of most
non-human beings. There have often been similar denigrations of human beings,
denying them feelings and thoughts, without their ability to defend
themselves, due to cultural and language differences. It is not totally
coincidental that the intelligent animals that we can communicate with, such
as chimpanzees via sign language have shown the feelings of complex thought.
Those that we cannot precisely communicate with yet, we can tell by way of
similar neuroanatomy, facial expressions and feelings of pain, that they
certainly have complex emotionss Because most wild free non-human beings make
life decisions, much more crucial to survival than the typical human being
does; it is fairly obvious that these beings must act intelligently for their
own survival as individuals and for other known individuals within their
flock, pack or pod. Why would a being have well-developed cerebral
hemispheres, designed for decision making, and yet autonomously act at the
level of the midbrain or hindbrain as you suggest? Unfortunately, it has
taken some inhumane experiments to show very ingenius problem solving
abilities in most vertebrates and some intelligent invertebrates like
crustaceans and cephalopods. Octipii have been shown to watch one unscrew a
lid to some food from another tank, and more quickly learn the trick than if
figuring it out de novo.
Peace for All Beings
Jamey Lee West
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