yeah cus i googled 'chimp' instead of 'bonobo'
BBC - Earth News - Wild bonobo mother ape eats own infant in DR Congo
'Last year, however, that more peaceful image was shattered when scientists discovered that bonobos do kill and eat monkeys.'
Privileged people calling less privileged people "stupid" doesn't seem to be working...
- Thread starter chilango
- Start date
yeah cus i googled 'chimp' instead of 'bonobo'
BBC - Earth News - Wild bonobo mother ape eats own infant in DR Congo
'Last year, however, that more peaceful image was shattered when scientists discovered that bonobos do kill and eat monkeys.'
krtek a houby
Merry Xmas!
Perhaps we do it metaphorically?
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
What does that prove? The mother ate a dead infant. Could be all kinds of reasons for that, and it is anthropomorphising to transfer our taboo against eating dead human bodies onto bonobos.yeah cus i googled 'chimp' instead of 'bonobo'
BBC - Earth News - Wild bonobo mother ape eats own infant in DR Congo
'Last year, however, that more peaceful image was shattered when scientists discovered that bonobos do kill and eat monkeys.'
As for bonobos hunting and eating other species of animal, so they're not vegetarian? Again, what does that prove exactly?
danny la rouge
More like *fanny* la rouge!
Anyway, I said we were social animals. I didn't say we never bicker and veer off topic...
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
nope.
DotCommunist
So many particulars. So many questions.
thing is pointing at bonobos or chimps has only limited value. hom sap is a very different animal for any number of reasons. I'm not having the 'we share 99% of dna!!!elevn1' discussion. The thing where we talk about hom sap by looking at its close relatives- well its an interesting thing but we can't read too much into it imo. Without wishing to sound all HUMANS PREVAIL we have, and have had since before recorded history, language and fire and all sorts of technological advances that came along- social technologies. Systems of wealth marking, taboos against kin fucking and eating human flesh (yes I know, some still did in living memory but even that was highly ritualised). Basicaly we have a toolkit that is not really comprable to what other animals have, even the ones that look most like us.
anyways this is veering way off t...
anyways this is veering way off t...
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
Yes and no. Taboos grow out of an often very deep evolutionary heritage. The aversion to kin-fucking is a very good example of that, and something we share with a very large number of animals.
This is something I think Freud got very wrong. Moral codes did not emerge in order to curtail our basest urges, as he suggested. Quite the reverse. They emerged as an expression of some of those urges, including such things as favouring fairness, which, as danny pointed out, we share with other social animals. Normally incompletely, as they use the imperfect tool of language, they codify or expand on something that was already understood.
Last edited:
Wilf
Slouching towards Billingham
((((
emanymton
A cat politely sat on the flaming gardener.
Johnny Canuck3
Well-Known Member
A 'built-in moral system'? I think that's described in philosophical terms as 'moral absolutism'; ie there is a 'correct' moral system. We just have to determine what it is. And once it's determined, it can be applied to all those people in the world who operate under different moral systems.
There are a number of evangelical religions in the world that believe they have the truth of the 'universal moral code', and they have spent centuries attempting to convert everyone else to it.
Another thought arises from the quoted post: to what extent are personality traits, character etc., apart from the ones listed, 'biological features of our being'?
Johnny Canuck3
Well-Known Member
People seem happy to cherry-pick the 'good' attributes of human character - ie the altruism, the empathy etc, and endorse them as being part of our innate character.
Looked at from the perspective of certain Eastern philosophies, positive and negative attributes of anything don't exist in separation from their counterparts. To put it most simplistically, 'good' and 'evil' aren't separate things - they are the two ends of a continuum.
Looked at that way, anger, an impulse to violence, selfishness, etc. are as much innate attributes of our being as are all the good attributes that everyone likes. The way to better understanding of ourselves and others, and the way to more balanced dealings with one another, is to stop pretending that that isn't the case.
Understanding that selfishness, anger etc are innate aspects of our being, is not the same thing as allowing them to have free rein. It's a recognition that they are present and will play some part in our actions and interactions, and that they must be dealt with.
Pretending that it's otherwise, won't make them go away.
Looked at from the perspective of certain Eastern philosophies, positive and negative attributes of anything don't exist in separation from their counterparts. To put it most simplistically, 'good' and 'evil' aren't separate things - they are the two ends of a continuum.
Looked at that way, anger, an impulse to violence, selfishness, etc. are as much innate attributes of our being as are all the good attributes that everyone likes. The way to better understanding of ourselves and others, and the way to more balanced dealings with one another, is to stop pretending that that isn't the case.
Understanding that selfishness, anger etc are innate aspects of our being, is not the same thing as allowing them to have free rein. It's a recognition that they are present and will play some part in our actions and interactions, and that they must be dealt with.
Pretending that it's otherwise, won't make them go away.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
No, it describes or suggests the idea of how we interact and this structure is based on what we have come to call - via various ways - morals. The capacity to have morals does not mean that only one set of morality exists or can be produced. Like the capacity to speak doesn't really mean you have to say this shit.
Last edited:
danny la rouge
More like *fanny* la rouge!
Christ, we're making heavy weather of a throw away remark.
First off, I wish people would read what I actually wrote:
Privileged people calling less privileged people "stupid" doesn't seem to be working...
I'm not cherry picking the good points. I quite clearly said each has a negative opposite.
What I did say was that we are social animals and evolved traits that enable us to function socially. The roots of these pre-date our species. Of course they do. Our morality systems are constructed post hoc upon these foundations. That seems uncontroversial to me.
When I made the remark I was merely saying that we can and should agree on universal values. There are things we can and should be appalled by. It is a cop out to say at every level that we "mustn't judge". I'd argue that we must.
If people here are going to disagree about that, then we have a long way to go. But that shouldn't stop us trying.
First off, I wish people would read what I actually wrote:
Privileged people calling less privileged people "stupid" doesn't seem to be working...
I'm not cherry picking the good points. I quite clearly said each has a negative opposite.
What I did say was that we are social animals and evolved traits that enable us to function socially. The roots of these pre-date our species. Of course they do. Our morality systems are constructed post hoc upon these foundations. That seems uncontroversial to me.
When I made the remark I was merely saying that we can and should agree on universal values. There are things we can and should be appalled by. It is a cop out to say at every level that we "mustn't judge". I'd argue that we must.
If people here are going to disagree about that, then we have a long way to go. But that shouldn't stop us trying.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
Studies have been done with infants showing that they are developing a sense of, for instance, fairness at an age of just a few months. The suggestion is that, as butchersapron alluded to, we're born with a predisposition to look for something like 'right' and 'wrong' in a very similar way to how we are born with a predisposition to look for something like language, and that we're very active in our acquisition of these things.
To what extent the content of what is right or wrong is then culturally determined is a separate point, no? If we really do have a more or less innate sense of fairness, one that we don't learn from others, there may be limits to what we will accept as fair, and if we're born with a predisposition to look for binaries (right/wrong, good/bad), that will have an influence too, but it seems pretty clear to me that, just as we can learn any language, whatever framework we're born with contains enormous room for post-natal development. That extreme flexibility is a very important part of what humans are.
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
If people said "most people are ignorant", they might have a point. The difference between ignorance and idiocy being that someone can choose to educate themselves out of ignorance on a subject or subjects, whereas idiocy implies a condition which one cannot move beyond.
Backatcha Bandit
is not taking your calls
Plus plenty of this sort of thing:
Evolution of conditional cooperation under multilevel selection : Scientific Reports
(Modelling to discover 'evolutionarily stable' behaviours).
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
Martin Nowak has written a really good book about this stuff, Supercooperators. He did a massively controversial paper (rubbished by Dawkins, among others) with Wilson and Carnita about the development of eusociality, which incurred the wrath of Dawkins for invoking multilevel selection. I've linked to this before, but looking around at recent commentaries on it, the argument appears still to be raging seven years on.
Johnny Canuck3
Well-Known Member
Social functioning has been occurring so long as people have been living in groups, and as you say, even before people were people. Social behavior is of course evident in animals, as well.
But 'social' in 'social functioning', means just that - the interaction amongst individuals when they interact within groups. It is something broader than the definition of 'social' as something similar to 'sociable'.
Looked at that way, 'social interaction' has and does occurs in many ways. Group or herd domination by 'alpha' males, is a method of social interaction. Competition between two groups via war to obtain scarce resources, is a method of social interaction.
Cooperation in order to advance common objectives is also a method of social interaction, but by no means the only one, and most likely not the most prevalent one.
That is because the other, 'negative' character traits, are as much a part of what we are, as the 'positive' traits; and the negative traits have seen expression in human interaction, throughout human history and into the present.
danny la rouge
More like *fanny* la rouge!
You're having your own argument there Johnny Canuck3.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
Can't agree with that at all. Cooperation within various groups is the definitive human day-to-day interaction. We'd be dead within days without it as the vast majority of us are entirely incapable of looking after ourselves on our own.
danny la rouge
More like *fanny* la rouge!
Poster: it's raining cats and dogs.
Johnny: you can't simply ignore the dogs.
Poster: I said cats and dogs.
Johnny: listen, the dogs are as much of the picture as the cats.
Poster: good grief.
Johnny: you can't simply ignore the dogs.
Poster: I said cats and dogs.
Johnny: listen, the dogs are as much of the picture as the cats.
Poster: good grief.
Johnny Canuck3
Well-Known Member
That's in no way inconsistent with what I'm saying - which is, that both 'positive' and 'negative' traits are inherent to the human character. So it's not surprising that studies show babies have a rudimentary sense of fairness - but they also have a sense of selfishness, anger, etc.
As for whether or not we're born with a predisposition to look for right and wrong, that position advances from a dualistic approach to existence - and everyone subscribes to the dualistic view.
Deciding that we're born with a predisposition to a dualistic view, presupposes that the dualistic approach is the only one - which it isn't.
I'm not sure what 'born with a predisposition to look for language' means. We are born into language-using cultures, with the biological tools to develop the use of language. Nothing is 'looked for'.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
It absolutely is. If I have the energy, I'll look it up for you.
Johnny Canuck3
Well-Known Member
We operate in a capitalist system which employs a carrot and stick approach to keep the working classes in line.
Women do the disproportionate amount of work around the home, for cultural reasons, and have faced millenia of unequal treatment mostly because they aren't as physically strong as males.
There are many aspects of our daily lives that fit better within the category of coercion, as opposed to cooperation, imo.
Johnny Canuck3
Well-Known Member
And I made the remark that certain large evangelical religions have come to internal agreement about universal values, and have spent centuries trying to impose those 'universal values' on the nonbelievers of the world.
I was saying that what you're describing is moral absolutism, and it leads to tyranny when those who believe they have discovered the 'universal values', attempt to make others accept them.
danny la rouge
More like *fanny* la rouge!
Jesus.
The point of the discussion is not whether or not unfair behaviour happens (did you think anyone was saying it didn't/couldn't/isn't in our nature? - They weren't) but whether we have the capacity to learn to move beyond it. We do.
Similar threads
