I did an essay on this for one of my subjects at uni. Someone on here asked a while ago for me to post up a copy of my essay when I was done because they were interested in the topic. I originally wanted to argue that morality is not a uniquely human trait, however after critically looking at the evidence, I argued the opposite. Here's the essay (it's only around 1000 words, so I couldn't include as much info as I would have liked): I am proposing that morality is a trait that appears to be uniquely human (see appendix for search results). Charles Darwin suggested that when sexual reproduction first evolved animals had to develop codes of behaviour that eventually became part of their genetic makeup (Leake, 2009). In humans these codes of behaviour are called morality. So what is morality? The Princeton University’s ‘wordnet’ website defines morality as “concern with the distinction between good and evil or right and wrong (right or good conduct)” and goes onto further define the morals and ethics behind morality as the “motivation based on ideas of right and wrong”. The question then becomes, do we see non-human animals with the ability to distinguish between ‘good’ and ‘evil’ or ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, and furthermore do we see evidence that these concepts actually motivate these non-human animals into moral action? Morality can be seen in everyday human interaction, for example when at a supermarket a moral choice would be to pay for the goods you pick up rather than stealing them. But first, let’s firmly establish the idea that morality is a human trait. There are arguments concerning the nature of morality in humans (such as Veneer theory), however there are rarely arguments against the existence of morality in humans (Pigliucci, 2007). So for the purposes of this essay it is sufficient to say, that although the depth of morality humans possess may be a contentious topic, the very idea that humans possess the trait of morality is rarely ever contested. We are now faced with the question of whether or not we observe morality in non-human animals. Frans de Waal (2003) reported an experiment performed with Capuchin Monkeys testing their reactions to unequal rewards, a more recent version of this experiment was also done (Leake, 2009). The experiment consisted of placing 2 monkeys side by side in cages; each monkey was given a token by the experimenter, who stood before them. Upon the return of the token, the monkey would receive a food reward, either a grape or the less preferred reward of cucumber. There was an equal condition and an unequal condition. The equal condition consisted of giving both monkeys cucumber for the return of their respective tokens. The monkeys could see that they were both receiving the same reward and proceeded with exchanges unhindered. However the unequal condition consisted of rewarding one monkey with cucumber for a token exchange, and the other monkey with a grape. This eventually made the monkey with the lesser reward fail to return the token to the experimenter 43% of the time. It may be possible that the monkey with the lesser reward refused to return the token and refused to eat due to a sense of unfairness at the situation, and many have concluded that this is the case. However the monkeys’ refused to return the token 47% of the time when there was just another grape in the other cage, with no monkey receiving it (Wynn, 2004). It becomes apparent that inequality is not the most parsimonious explanation, but rather the monkey simply holding out for a potentially better reward is. Therefore this experiment does not demonstrate a sense of fairness or morality at all. Further questions we are faced with are: do we see animals with a sense that certain things are good, and certain things are bad, or that certain behaviours are good and certain behaviours are bad? One study that investigated these questions was conducted by Franks & Savage-Rumbaugh (2008). Participants included two bonobos, and a chimpanzee, all of which had extensive training in the use of a lexigram language keyboard and had previously demonstrated the ability to communicate with this method (Brakke & Savage-Rumbaugh, 1995). The procedure involved a study of the utterance database, which includes information about the apes’ use of the language keyboard from November 11, 1985 to January 19, 1997. These utterances were examined by the researchers for uses of the terms ‘good’ and ‘bad’. Results indicated that the terms ‘good’ and ‘bad’ were found in the utterance database. These terms were used in one case where a chimpanzee was asked how they were acting and the chimp answered ‘bad’. However do instances such as this truly demonstrate a sense of right and wrong? If I were to teach a chimpanzee how to press a button labelled ‘evolution’ would the chimpanzee therefore know exactly what evolution was? Does this show a ‘sense of evolution’? Or do these utterances simply show that sometimes a chimp will press a button? These experiments do not demonstrate a spontaneous demonstration of morality. These can only be found by observing the interactions that happen in groups of animals. Frans de Waal (2006) recounted one such example of what he deemed morality demonstrated amongst a group of chimpanzees. Two chimps refused to come in one night, and the zoo had a rule that only when all chimps came in at night were they to be fed. The next day the other chimps attacked the 2 chimps that stopped them from being fed the previous day. However is a true sense of morality required here, or are simpler mechanisms at play? Rather than the chimps judging the other chimps as being ‘bad’, couldn’t it be that the other chimps were annoyed at not getting their food and blamed the chimps that stopped them from getting it. Does that really equate to the morality we see in humans, where stealing or cheating or assault is deemed immoral? I believe that the concept of whether or not animals feel true morality can be tested for. Recently there have been neuroimaging studies focusing on morality in the human brain, and the parts of the brain that are activated (Greene & Haidt, 2002). For personal moral decisions, it has been found that parts of the brain such as the posterior cingulate/retrosplenial are activated, and this area has been widely associated with the activation of emotion in neuroimaging studies. I suggest that an experiment could be performed using neuroimaging in circumstances eliciting apparent moral behaviour in primates such as seen in de walls example. If similar activation is seen with primates’ brains as seen in the ‘moral parts’ of the human brain, then perhaps this could lend support to the notion that morality is not uniquely human. My thoughts on this subject tie in with its development in children. Piaget (1965) asked children questions regarding immoral things such as stealing and lying. Young children (ages under 7) would tell Piaget that a lie was ‘naughty words’. When asked why lying is wrong, the children would simply say that lying was wrong because ‘they are naughty words’. Older children (ages over 7) were asked the same questions, and were able to explain that lies were wrong because ‘they weren’t true’ and proceeded to give complex reasons behind their moral choices. Therefore it is my opinion that the views of right and wrong that we see with certain animals, is much like the primitive views seen in young children. They don’t understand the reasoning behind why something is wrong, but they understand the rule that it is wrong. I think to call this primitive notion of right and wrong ‘morality’, would in fact be wrong. Perhaps animals can learn rules for behaviour, but this is not the same as demonstrating morality. References Brakke, K.E., Savage-Rumbaugh, E.S. (1995). The development of language skills in bonobo and chimpanzee. Language and Communication, 15 (2), 121–148. De Waal, B. F. (2006). The animal roots of human morality. New Scientist, 192 (2573), 60-61. De Waal, B. F. (1991). The chimpanzee's sense of social regularity and its relation to the human sense of justice. American Behavioral Scientist, 34 (3), 335-349. Greene, J., & Haidt, J. (2002). How (and where) does moral judgement work? Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 6 (12), 517-523. Leake, J. (2009) Monkeys have a sense of morality, say scientists. The Sunday Times. Lyn, H., Franks, B., Savage-Rumbaugh, S. S. (2008). Precursors of morality in the use of the symbols ‘‘good” and ‘‘bad” in two bonobos (Panpaniscus) and a chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes). Language & Communication, 28, 213–224. Piaget, J. (1965). The moral judgment of the child. New York: The Free Press. Pigliucci, M. (2007). Primates, philosophers and the biological basis of morality: a review of primates and philosophers by Frans De Waal, Princeton University Press, 2006, 200 pp. Biological Philosophy, 22, 611–618. Word Net Web. Retrieved April 9, 2010, from http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s= morality&o2=&o0=1&o7=&o5=&o1=1&o6=&o4=&o3=&h= Wynne, D. L. C. (2004) Animal behaviour: Fair refusal by capuchin monkeys. Nature, 428, 140.
There's a species of bat that does distinguish between good and bad behavior. Since they have such a high metabolism, it's like they live on a knife edge. If they don't have a constant supply of food, they die. So when a bat isn't successful at getting food for whatever reason, he'll plead for another bat to share his food by regurgitating. The bat who shared his food will remember that bat. If the situation reverses and the starving bat doesn't get food from the one he originally helped, he'll remember it. Then there will be no more reciprocation between those two. But if there's another bat he hasn't helped, but is in dire need of food he'll always oblige. Tit for tat. Always help if it is asked for, unless it's from someone you know is a moocher.
I will start with some biology, psychology and sociology. Every animal is pre-programmed with a set of instincts. Some of them obviously promote survival of the individual and/or the species and are the result of natural selection, such as copulation or fleeing from a large animal with both eyes in front of its face. Others may be accidental mutations that convey no clear advantage, passed down through genetic drift or a genetic bottleneck. Some mammals are solitary hunters or grazers, like tigers and orangutans. They require and have almost no social instincts and in fact may be instinctively hostile to others of their species except one of the opposite sex during mating season. Others are herd-social (my terminology, I have never encountered a proper biological word for this), which includes many of the grazers like bison and wildebeest. They find strength in numbers, and therefore require and have a minimal set of social instincts for living in harmony and cooperation with anonymous strangers. Others are pack-social, including hunters such as wolves and lions, grazers such as horses and gorillas, and scavengers such as hyenas. Their far more complex social behaviors require a much more expansive set of social instincts. They need to have and respect a hierarchy of leadership, to perform complex coordinated behaviors, to depend on each other, to care for each other and to protect each other. And (one of the key points in this discussion) to defend the pack's hunting and grazing territory against encroachment by rival packs. Therefore, some of what we call "morality" is clearly instinctive. We are by nature a pack-social species, like gorillas and all the other Great Apes except the orangutan. We share most of their social instincts, including rituals for establishing and respecting pack leadership, cooperative feeding, etc. We share their instinct for cooperative raising of the young, which is greatly expanded in our species since our young undergo a childhood that is an order of magnitude longer than any other mammal (the size of our head conflicts with the width of the birth canal so we are born with a much less developed brain than any other mammal). However, since we are the only predatory species of ape, our instinct to protect our territory is much greater than theirs. Our ancestors established a hunting range, which is vastly larger than a grazing range owing to the much lower density of game than of leaves. It was imperative to keep competing packs of humans at a much larger distance from our own territory than gorillas maintain. This primitive "morality" worked for us for millions of years. We could rely on the instincts that our children were born with to guide their behavior, providing a little help here and there. They loved us, helped us, took our orders, copulated and raised a battle cry if they saw a stranger approaching. Then that same uniquely massive forebrain that makes birthing difficult caused all of this to change. It is so large that it gives us the ability to override the limitations of nature. We began by overriding external nature: crafting stone tools, taming fire, making warm clothes. Eventually we invented agriculture, the twin technologies of farming and animal husbandry. Rather than being dependent on nature, we gave nature the finger and started growing our own food. This technology, known as the Agricultural Revolution, which was the dawn of the Neolithic Era, caused a man-made challenge to our instinctive "morality." For the first time ever, there was a food surplus instead of a food shortage. Without refrigeration, there's a limit to how much extra food we can store in anticipation of the next famine. Our superiority at producing food made the first division of labor possible: trading our surplus food for another tribe's surplus tools, clothing, art--anything they could produce abundantly if they didn't have to spend nearly all of their time looking for food. We had no reason to be hostile to them any more, except our pack-social instinct. It's not easy for the couple of dozen humans in the extended-family unit that comprised a primitive tribe of nomadic hunter-gatherers to grow a lot of food. More farmers create an economy of scale that greatly increases the productivity of each individual farmer. This created an additional incentive to make peace with the neighboring tribes, for more efficient agriculture. Again, a conflict with the pack-social instinct. The paradigm-shifting technology of agriculture both made possible and required giving up the nomadic lifestyle and settling in permanent villages. Two tribes who came together for more efficient farming had to live with each other. We had to learn to trust, care for, protect, cooperate with, establish leadership with, and in general live in harmony with a large group people we had not known intimately since birth. This was the essence of the conflict between our technology and our pack-social instinct. Fortunately our massive forebrain gives us the ability to override our internal nature, just as it allowed us to conquer external nature with tools, clothes, fire, language, and so many other early technologies. We were able to simply decide to live in peace with other tribes, for the good reason that it made life safer, easier and more prosperous for everyone. Nonetheless, this happened only twelve thousand years ago, an eyeblink on the scale of evolution. Our DNA has not had enough time to catch up with our lifestyle. Inside each of us there still lives a caveman who is suspicious of other tribes, is protective of his food and other resources because a famine is bound to occur, can't completely trust people he has not shared intimate caves and other campsites with since birth, and perhaps most especially doesn't respect the leadership of someone outside the tribe. So there is a second facet to morality, something that is unique to our species (with an asterisk to be explained later), and transcends the now-counterproductive limitations of our instinctive morality. We have developed moral codes, which we try to obey and which we teach to our children. One of the most important issues this invented morality has to deal with is failure to comply with it. That inner caveman can only be negotiated with up to a point. Some days he just doesn't trust his non-family pack-mates, and does something that a civilized person considers antisocial. Our moral code must strongly discourage such behavior. The people who on that particular day manage to keep their inner caveman happy with music, booze, pets and furniture, have to get the other fellow's caveman back in line. And they have to establish controls to make sure that a large number of cavemen don't take control at the same time, overwhelming their ability to maintain order. Otherwise, tribes might lose control at the same time and start battling with each other, and that would be really idiotic, wouldn't it? And this is the way in which "morality is uniquely human." No other animal needs an invented, enforced morality, because the much simpler morality they need in their lives is completely instinctive. Now for that asterisk--a very instructive asterisk that inspires hope for our own future. There is one other species of mammal that has successfully adapted to the imposition of non-instinctive morality. A scavenging species that voluntarily sidled into our camps at the dawn of the Agricultural Era to feast on the bounty of perfectly edible food that we left lying around in piles, and turned out to be very helpful with chasing game, herding flocks, standing guard duty during the night, and entertaining our children. The dog. "Man's Best Friend" isn't just a cliche. It's a morality lesson Unlike humans, dogs have one generation per year. So in the twelve millennia since we created the first voluntary multi-species community in history, they have passed through twelve thousand generations versus our six hundred. This has been enough time for their DNA to evolve, especially with a little selective breeding once we mastered the technology of animal husbandry. Dogs are still wolves, a subspecies of Canis lupus, but the differences between modern dogs and wolves are striking, all the more so because some of them pertain to instinct rather than physiology. Like wolves, dogs have the pack-social instinct, but they form much larger packs than wolves. Feral dog packs have dozens of members, whereas you rarely see more than seven or eight wolves hunting together. This comes in very handy in civilization, where a dog needs to be friendly with all of his many neighbors. Wolves have a strong alpha instinct and routinely fight for dominance--one reason their packs are so small. Most dogs have very weak leadership instinct and are content to let someone else give the orders. Wolves are very wary of strangers, but dogs are not. Two dogs encountering each other for the first time are very likely to end up playing rather than fighting. Dogs extend their pack-social instinct to other species. They accept our authority and friendship automatically, but with very little guidance they also accept the companionship of cats, monkeys, parrots, various rodents, livestock, and virtually any other species that the rest of their pack (i.e. the humans) regards as companions. I find this heartening. It's been noted that humans have been selectively breeding ourselves over the millennia, that our pack-social instinct has already been modified, although not as extensively as that of our dogs. Anthropologists and psychologists say evidence suggests that we are more tolerant of living in large groups, less hostile to strangers, and more sanguine about the leadership of someone we've never met, than our Neolithic ancestors. Give us a few more generations (hopefully not another six hundred) and we may have an instinct for morality that no longer has to be taught to our children. Here's hoping! And give your dog an extra hug, for being such an inspiring role model.
By human standards I would say animals are immoral. They steal, rape, and murder. But by human standards humans are also immoral. But humans need higher levels of morality than animals and more complex social rules because they are more complex animals than all the rest.
But if you go by the definition of morality that you used in your paper, "Concern for the distinction between right and wrong," you don't need to be a good person to be considered "moral." All that's required to be "moral," is a sensitivity to good and bad behavior.
The definition actually had a second part which you seem to have missed. "goes onto further define the morals and ethics behind morality as the “motivation based on ideas of right and wrong”"
Okay, I would agree with you then. Because in order to have "ideas," you need to be capable of abstract thought, which other animals don't really have. "Morality," in this instance, is about thinking.
Social instincts of animals are related to the idea of the survival of a group or species, as Fraggle mentioned earlier, but I wouldn't associate demontrations of social behaviour such as the existence of hierarchies or acts of altruism (like in the case of the bats) to acts of morality, because they all tend to be inclined towards the survival of the species, rather than acting on their feelings of what is right and wrong. If i'm not wrong I remember reading somewhere how moral codes are species-specific, so it may be difficult to compare our own moral codes to that of animals. But there are examples of certain species demonstrating morally-inclined behaviour. A common one would be how in wolf packs, the alpha male punishes members of the pack who become too violent, or goes against the interests of the pack. It's also been known that in herds of elephants when one of them is in pain or dying the rest of the herd tend to it and stay with it until it passes away, which in a way overrides the idea that animals only act in the interests of the survival of its kind.
First you have to define morality precisely.Which is tough. Roughly speaking, my logic is this-we believe that we are moral because we care for our species.There are definitely other species that care for their own species.Example-Elephants.And even insects are capable of showing motherly love.
This is from Wikipedia: As Fraggle Rocker pointed above: If we combine these two statements, morality appears as an human issue. It requires something beyond instinctive social bonds between animals. Especially if you are seeing "motherly love" among insects, you should definitely check the definition of "moral"; has it ever occurred to you that maybe you are interpreting insect behaviour with human terms...
It all really depends on how you define morality.Certain aspects of morality is definitely uniquely human.For example only humans can tell stories.So only humans can learn from them. And how do we know that animals are all instinct and nothing else?That's a big ASSUMPTION.Animals do learn things.Elephants do mourn over their deads.
Nobody said "animals are all instinct and nothing else". Nobody said they don't have feelings. Nobody said they are not able to memorize, learn, repeat and do many other things. But in order to apply morality to animals, you must definitely come up with an alternative definition of morality. "It is difficult to define morality" is not a definition. It's just a belief.
A lot of the definitions are meaningless.They are better experienced ,than read.The dictionary can't teach you anything unless you know the meaning of at least a few words from experience. I would say morality is very subjective.Right or wrong is subjective.But I can intuitively tell that some animals do have a sense of right or wrong.Especially mammals.
I got the bit that you don't value dictionaries and similar type of resources, but I couldn't stop myself; this is from Wikipedia: As far as I understand up to now, in order to prove your point (= animals can be moral), you prefer to use intuition which ironically sounds like instinct. So let's try to explain things like mammals do. Sorry, I don't play this game. If we don't impose human responsibilities to animals and convict them for criminal offences or blame them for eating their own kind, there is a well founded reason behind of this. I wouldn't recommend you to use "intuition" weapon among humans so often, unless if you are having sex or engaging some artistic activity (actually, knowing humans, I wouldn't recommend to use intuition even for these activities).
