Subject: [SciPol 268] Morality in chimps?

From: Lloyd Davidson <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 21 Mar 2007 16:15:24 -0700

I would hope that this sort of study begins to show that morality has 
nothing per se to do with religion.  It is simply a part of every 
normal person's make up, an inborn trait.  That is not to say that 
such behavior can't be modified by environment, but it's good to know 
for sure that some forms of empathy and morality are not strictly 
learned behaviors.

 From today's Sigma Xi Science News:

Scientist Finds the Beginnings of Morality in Primate Behavior

from the New York Times (Registration Required)

Some animals are surprisingly sensitive to the plight of others.
Chimpanzees, who cannot swim, have drowned in zoo moats trying to save
others. Given the chance to get food by pulling a chain that would also
deliver an electric shock to a companion, rhesus monkeys will starve
themselves for several days.

Biologists argue that these and other social behaviors are the precursors
of human morality. They further believe that if morality grew out of
behavioral rules shaped by evolution, it is for biologists, not
philosophers or theologians, to say what these rules are.

...The original call to battle was sounded by the biologist Edward O.
Wilson more than 30 years ago, when he suggested in his 1975
book "Sociobiology" that "the time has come for ethics to be removed
temporarily from the hands of the philosophers and biologicized." He may
have jumped the gun about the time having come, but in the intervening
decades biologists have made considerable progress.

To read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/20/science/20moral.html

Or: http://tinyurl.com/2ej59j

-- 
Lloyd Davidson, Ph.D.
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