I do not think that our ability to communicate creates morality. Rather it is part of what allows for morality to arise naturally. I suspect that were humans, on the whole, not be able to hear each other, morality would still arise, for they would be able to communicate in other ways. And since humans (and their predecessors) have goals and interact in a communicating group, they begin to use their communication to exert influences on each other. This "vocabulary" (which is not solely words), which influences other humans, is built upon and built upon culturally, until it is commonly instilled in children so that they may influence others and to influence them. Moral vocabulary is internalized so that it may be more effective. The examples that you would need to look at are children in complete sensory and/or social deprivation. They do not develop morally as others do, to some extent (in as much as they do not have a chance to learn and internalize moral vocabulary). Does that make any sense?
He said determins lol. Like I said monkey, I really like your idea, I'd like to see where it is you're comming from fresh so I should probably put foward some sort of a question which provokes that. Maybe you think langauge evolves through us or something. I haven't really read a clear explaination other than a general thesis/theory/idea etc. That depends on your perspective:bugeye:
The theory makes complete sense, I'm just not sure if it has much merit. Children who are raised with no sensory input do become abnormal as adults, and if certain developmental windows are missed, it is very difficult to overcome the deficiencies with further training. However, this is clearly because the human brain "expects" certain things from its environment. It is genetically predisposed to have certain stimuli at certain periods of its growth. The damage to our morality by breaking with genetic expectations does not buttress the nurture theory, it strengthens the nature theory. Again, I do not see why morality would come from communication. Communication should come from morality. Evidence of this is the fact that our morality has changed a lot more in the past 200 years than our communication has. In fact, another way to test your theory would be to see if communication methods or morality changed first. Off the cuff, I can think of more morality changes that occurred before communication caught up. We freed blacks before we stopped using harsh language about them. We grant greater freedoms to females, but our language is still incredibly misogynistic. We are seeing other nations as comprised of humans that deserve the same respect we deserve, but racist language pervades. As for non-verbal evidence that your theory is backwards: We have learned that fighting or running is not the "correct" response to confrontation, yet our feet still perspire for traction and our heart still races to ready for action. Our faces flush to demonstrate embarrassment even for topics that are not as immoral or shameful as they used to be. There seems to be quite a lag between our increase in morality and our ability to communicate these new mores. I hope these examples of how to test your theory help. Remember something as well: Just as much is added to our understanding of an issue when a hypothesis fails as when it is verified. If what you find after setting off to explore a topic is opposite of what you expected, you have still landed upon a truth which has increased your understanding of the world. Do not ever shy from presenting a theory and afterward showing the antithesis to be true. You will actually be taken more seriously in this manner every single time!
There is a fair amount of research concerning moral behavior in social animals as well as game theory analysis of the benefits of moral behavior for both the individual and the group. While not proto human, "7,000 Years of Religious Ritual Is Traced in Mexico" might be of interest to you: http://www.oaxacaoaxaca.com/archeology-oaxaca.htm
Thank you for doing this, I really appreciate it. However, I want to reiterate that I am not claiming that morality comes from language but that morality is possible in part thanks to language. In addition I hope I am correct in coming to the conclusion that you are making claims about the content of morality. Certainly slavery came to be regarded as wrong and then efforts were made to change the language. I can see how the morality in that case came first and linguistic changes came afterwards. But the question I am trying to answer here is the question of "Why is there morality at all?" It is not a question of why we hold moral or immoral those things that we do hold moral or immoral but rather how we are able to do that at all. And I am claiming that we are able to conduct this morality-thing because we have communicative abilities and sociality and a degree of unpredictability about ourselves. I might agree that the brain restricts the content of morality to some degree. Tentatively, I would say it allows for empathy with other humans. But at the same time, through language one could and did describe black slaves as non-human, or sub-human, or savages back in those days so as to thwart the empathy. But this I am not as sure about. I hope this helps. And forgive me if I have misrepresented you in some way.
Of the dozens of books I've read on the subject, this one is the best all-around: http://www.amazon.com/MORAL-SENSE-J...bs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1233233783&sr=8-1 You should check it out. It will answer most of your general questions and begin to raise the ones that nobody has solved yet. It is a book that all humans should read at some point in their lives. I urge you to save your pennies and get a copy as soon as you can or to check your local library. Back to your theory: The last post you made certainly contains some truth. We do not derive our moral ability through communication, but we can certainly affect our moral sense through language. By dehumanizing someone via language we can retard the maturation of morality. But again, there is a desire to dehumanize before it is communicated. So language can be studied as a tool that is employed BY our moral sense to further its objectives. It still can't be seen as the originator of our moral senses or abilities.
