edge
29th January 2008, 12:37 PM
How We Stay Good
Merely being equipped with moral programming does not mean we practice moral behavior. Something still has to boot up that software and configure it properly, and that something is the community. Hauser believes that all of us carry what he calls a sense of moral grammar—the ethical equivalent of the basic grasp of speech that most linguists believe is with us from birth. But just as syntax is nothing until words are built upon it, so too is a sense of right and wrong useless until someone teaches you how to apply it.
It's the people around us who do that teaching—often quite well. Once again, however, humans aren't the ones who dreamed up such a mentoring system. At the Arnhem Zoo in the Netherlands, de Waal was struck by how vigorously apes enforced group norms one evening when the zookeepers were calling their chimpanzees in for dinner. The keepers' rule at Arnhem was that no chimps would eat until the entire community was present, but two adolescents grew willful, staying outside the building. The hours it took to coax them inside caused the mood in the hungry colony to turn surly. That night the keepers put the delinquents to bed in a separate area—a sort of protective custody to shield them from reprisals. But the next day the adolescents were on their own, and the troop made its feelings plain, administering a sound beating. The chastened chimps were the first to come in that evening. Animals have what de Waal calls "oughts"—rules that the group must follow—and the community enforces them.
The Moral Ape
The deepest foundation on which morality is built is the phenomenon of empathy, the understanding that what hurts me would feel the same way to you. And human ego notwithstanding, it's a quality other species share.
It's not surprising that animals far less complex than we are would display a trait that's as generous of spirit as empathy, particularly if you decide there's no spirit involved in it at all. Behaviorists often reduce what we call empathy to a mercantile business known as reciprocal altruism. A favor done today—food offered, shelter given—brings a return favor tomorrow. If a colony of animals practices that give-and-take well, the group thrives.
But even in animals, there's something richer going on. One of the first and most poignant observations of empathy in nonhumans was made by Russian primatologist Nadia Kohts, who studied nonhuman cognition in the first half of the 20th century and raised a young chimpanzee in her home. When the chimp would make his way to the roof of the house, ordinary strategies for bringing him down—calling, scolding, offers of food—would rarely work. But if Kohts sat down and pretended to cry, the chimp would go to her immediately. "He runs around me as if looking for the offender," she wrote. "He tenderly takes my chin in his palm ... as if trying to understand what is happening."
You hardly have to go back to the early part of the past century to find such accounts. Even cynics went soft at the story of Binta Jua, the gorilla who in 1996 rescued a 3-year-old boy who had tumbled into her zoo enclosure, rocking him gently in her arms and carrying him to a door where trainers could enter and collect him. "The capacity of empathy is multilayered," says primatologist Frans de Waal of Emory University, author of Our Inner Ape. "We share a core with lots of animals."
Taken from here. http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1685055_1685076_1686619-2,00.html
I believe all living things share a core with god in other words have souls, to an extent.
In higher mammals it’s just more noticeable.
For instance, to check what’s written above with my pet dog.
Is he aware and does he understand what’s right and wrong.
For months now I have been telling him to go and get his food and water after I pour it.
He always hesitates and approaches it about a half a minute after I leave the vicinity of it, basically in his own time, so if I tell him go and get some food after it sits there a while he usually doesn’t, or once in a great while he does.
The other thing I do, and I have been doing this for a long while, is ask to smell his breath and I get up close and personal I sniff his breath as he bears his teeth inches from my face, I do it because it’s cute and a trust issue, he could bite my nose off.
I have always told him that it smell good ecept maybe once or twice I have said, it stinks and to get away with it, at which point he gets this sad look on his face, then I give in and say I was kidding it smells good and the whole expression changes to a more joyful look.
This morning I decided to before leaving on his walk to tell him that it stinks and he should drink some water to fix it and this is the first time he has gone over and immediately done something about it.
I'll have to repeat this to make sure and will keep you posted if you are interested.
What I said this morning for the first time ever is your breath stinks you need to drink water to fix it, before we go out.
I'll change the line each time with variables in the wording
My point is that all are the living creation and all are individuals with individual spirits we are all related and all past present living creatures have their own souls as individuals.
Just because Lucy isn’t around now and we where not around then doesn’t make them us what makes us individuals is spirit the last of Lucy’s kind may have been in as much contact with God as we are, whether or not our bodies are related, our souls are not.
He, “Odie” was tested in another way to see if he had empathy at the age of a year and a half or so Green Eyes decided to see how smart he was and pretended to drown to get him to come into the creek, Like the chimp no amount of coaxing would bring him in.
As soon as she did the, “help me I’m drowning thing with fake crying,” he promptly came in to save her by grabbing her by the back of the shirt and pulling her to shore.
We have also taught him to say, I love you, and he has more facial expressions than most humans, especially to get what he wants.
She is doing an experiment with a big gold fish at work, at the this very moment to see if a lesser creature is intelligent, has fear, can demonstrate courage, can respond to commands with out the prompting of a reward, can understand human voice, speech, and so far it seems so.
It’s been found that it doesn’t take much gray matter to be intelligent as with the French tax collector that has most of it missing from birth, it’s recently discovered that he only has a thin layer and most of his brain is vacant, he is no different than any one else and has no problem with math and his job, so size seems to be irrelevant.
It is very possible, very possible also, that we may have had to also experience every life form that ever was, to know God, past present and future.
We are at a pinnacle in life to acknowledge and to praise the creation by good morals, and belief.
Since we are the best creation and scripture can back all of this are we the final in a series. :)
Merely being equipped with moral programming does not mean we practice moral behavior. Something still has to boot up that software and configure it properly, and that something is the community. Hauser believes that all of us carry what he calls a sense of moral grammar—the ethical equivalent of the basic grasp of speech that most linguists believe is with us from birth. But just as syntax is nothing until words are built upon it, so too is a sense of right and wrong useless until someone teaches you how to apply it.
It's the people around us who do that teaching—often quite well. Once again, however, humans aren't the ones who dreamed up such a mentoring system. At the Arnhem Zoo in the Netherlands, de Waal was struck by how vigorously apes enforced group norms one evening when the zookeepers were calling their chimpanzees in for dinner. The keepers' rule at Arnhem was that no chimps would eat until the entire community was present, but two adolescents grew willful, staying outside the building. The hours it took to coax them inside caused the mood in the hungry colony to turn surly. That night the keepers put the delinquents to bed in a separate area—a sort of protective custody to shield them from reprisals. But the next day the adolescents were on their own, and the troop made its feelings plain, administering a sound beating. The chastened chimps were the first to come in that evening. Animals have what de Waal calls "oughts"—rules that the group must follow—and the community enforces them.
The Moral Ape
The deepest foundation on which morality is built is the phenomenon of empathy, the understanding that what hurts me would feel the same way to you. And human ego notwithstanding, it's a quality other species share.
It's not surprising that animals far less complex than we are would display a trait that's as generous of spirit as empathy, particularly if you decide there's no spirit involved in it at all. Behaviorists often reduce what we call empathy to a mercantile business known as reciprocal altruism. A favor done today—food offered, shelter given—brings a return favor tomorrow. If a colony of animals practices that give-and-take well, the group thrives.
But even in animals, there's something richer going on. One of the first and most poignant observations of empathy in nonhumans was made by Russian primatologist Nadia Kohts, who studied nonhuman cognition in the first half of the 20th century and raised a young chimpanzee in her home. When the chimp would make his way to the roof of the house, ordinary strategies for bringing him down—calling, scolding, offers of food—would rarely work. But if Kohts sat down and pretended to cry, the chimp would go to her immediately. "He runs around me as if looking for the offender," she wrote. "He tenderly takes my chin in his palm ... as if trying to understand what is happening."
You hardly have to go back to the early part of the past century to find such accounts. Even cynics went soft at the story of Binta Jua, the gorilla who in 1996 rescued a 3-year-old boy who had tumbled into her zoo enclosure, rocking him gently in her arms and carrying him to a door where trainers could enter and collect him. "The capacity of empathy is multilayered," says primatologist Frans de Waal of Emory University, author of Our Inner Ape. "We share a core with lots of animals."
Taken from here. http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1685055_1685076_1686619-2,00.html
I believe all living things share a core with god in other words have souls, to an extent.
In higher mammals it’s just more noticeable.
For instance, to check what’s written above with my pet dog.
Is he aware and does he understand what’s right and wrong.
For months now I have been telling him to go and get his food and water after I pour it.
He always hesitates and approaches it about a half a minute after I leave the vicinity of it, basically in his own time, so if I tell him go and get some food after it sits there a while he usually doesn’t, or once in a great while he does.
The other thing I do, and I have been doing this for a long while, is ask to smell his breath and I get up close and personal I sniff his breath as he bears his teeth inches from my face, I do it because it’s cute and a trust issue, he could bite my nose off.
I have always told him that it smell good ecept maybe once or twice I have said, it stinks and to get away with it, at which point he gets this sad look on his face, then I give in and say I was kidding it smells good and the whole expression changes to a more joyful look.
This morning I decided to before leaving on his walk to tell him that it stinks and he should drink some water to fix it and this is the first time he has gone over and immediately done something about it.
I'll have to repeat this to make sure and will keep you posted if you are interested.
What I said this morning for the first time ever is your breath stinks you need to drink water to fix it, before we go out.
I'll change the line each time with variables in the wording
My point is that all are the living creation and all are individuals with individual spirits we are all related and all past present living creatures have their own souls as individuals.
Just because Lucy isn’t around now and we where not around then doesn’t make them us what makes us individuals is spirit the last of Lucy’s kind may have been in as much contact with God as we are, whether or not our bodies are related, our souls are not.
He, “Odie” was tested in another way to see if he had empathy at the age of a year and a half or so Green Eyes decided to see how smart he was and pretended to drown to get him to come into the creek, Like the chimp no amount of coaxing would bring him in.
As soon as she did the, “help me I’m drowning thing with fake crying,” he promptly came in to save her by grabbing her by the back of the shirt and pulling her to shore.
We have also taught him to say, I love you, and he has more facial expressions than most humans, especially to get what he wants.
She is doing an experiment with a big gold fish at work, at the this very moment to see if a lesser creature is intelligent, has fear, can demonstrate courage, can respond to commands with out the prompting of a reward, can understand human voice, speech, and so far it seems so.
It’s been found that it doesn’t take much gray matter to be intelligent as with the French tax collector that has most of it missing from birth, it’s recently discovered that he only has a thin layer and most of his brain is vacant, he is no different than any one else and has no problem with math and his job, so size seems to be irrelevant.
It is very possible, very possible also, that we may have had to also experience every life form that ever was, to know God, past present and future.
We are at a pinnacle in life to acknowledge and to praise the creation by good morals, and belief.
Since we are the best creation and scripture can back all of this are we the final in a series. :)