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Moved: Animal Morality and "Occupy Wall Street"
These comments have been moved from Frans de Waal's Talk.
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William Dais
shyamolika dube
Ron Wyatt
this is not about politics.
jan modaal
furthermore I think there is, contrary to what you suggest, a common ground as to what fairness stands for. taking economical value from society in such proportions that encumbers growth andt damages the social fabric is not a part of it.
Rob Flax 20+
One criticism of the OWS movement I hear quite frequently is that the protesters "want handouts." Consider the "other capuchin" in this allegorical scenario: extremely large corporations that really DO receive handouts from the federal government.
More important, corporations are NOT people, contrary to the Citizens United decision. Corporations should not get a vote, according to our laws prior to that one. This is the root cause of all the protests: it's not cucumbers versus grapes. It's about grapes versus no food at all.
I assume your point is that "cucumber is just fine; roll with it. After all, you could be starving, you lucky little capuchin." What a fantastic bit of PR work, there.
Mark Meijer 100+
Although of course it's the people who allowed for the creation of the very system they are protesting against. That is, if you claim to live in a "free country". If the system sucks, that's a direct reflection on ourselves.
So to anyone looking for the moral high ground, forget about reciprocity and fairness and grow up. If morality is your thing, surely you'd have to acknowledge that the one who acts with no expectation of getting anything in return, is morally superior.
Protesting is what children do against their parents, subordinates to their betters. Taking responsibility is what grown ups do. If corporations have your money, it's because one way or another you gave it to them.
Richard Nota 20+
To expect and participate in a system of mutual responsibilities is reasonable. An expectation of nothing in return for anything is a severe sense morality; more like a delusional, ascetic but conceited sense of superior morality than moral superiority. The religious have often preached this kind of superiority. You might have had a point that those arguing from the religious point of view are being inconsistent. However, that is not what you wrote and I do not think they would have got it anyway.
Fair is fair and the real test of moral fortitude for the individual to not expect or take more than a fair share even when the person could get away with it.
The observation, with respect to the monkeys is the same as for humans; that they can be seen to behave in the open with a sense of fairness.
Joanne Donovan 30+
Richard Nota 20+
I do not think Mark sees a sense of morality as a guide for behaviour but rather as a superficial construct to justify the way we behave (a contrived intellectual exercise, for the lack of a better expression, and deterministic).
I think a sense of morality can influence behaviour. I would have expected you to I think that was the case too. Actually, I think behaviour and moral thought interact, but not deterministically. Behaviour, especially interactive behaviour, and necessity can educate a sense of morality.
In any case, if the end result is demonstrably fairer in terms of equalising opportunity and reward then I think it does not matter whether it is deterministic or not. The term morality can be applied. However, as Mark responded, morality is not his thing. I think morality is your thing or am I wrong?
Neither do I think morality is so arbitrary as some suggest. It is primarily impeded by prejudice.
By off topic I meant the topic of morality in other animals.
Joanne Donovan 30+
The real discussion seems to be about whether or not we have an 'innate' sense of morality. I think we have an 'innate' drive to 'care' or 'love' or 'nurture' and that other strong drives define 'family' 'loved ones' 'community' as the target among. We can put the label 'morality' on that I guess, as it could be defined as a sense of right and wrong.
Of course a great part of what we would consider our 'morality' is socio cultural and that seems to make for a perenial discussion, what is innate and what is derivative?
Richard Nota 20+
They aren't mutually exclusive.
If I interpret Mark correctly, he does not think the idea of morality is even relevant and it was his idea you were defending. He reckons it is just an incidental idea (as per his comment below). Do you think the idea of morality is irrelevant?
Anyway, I explained why I thought it was getting a little off topic and it seems TED thought so too.
Mark Meijer 100+
Formalized morality, as in codes of conduct, as in trying to explicitly define what is "the right thing to do", is nothing but a conceptual layer on top. A thin veneer to hide the fear. In short, vanity. You talk about a conceited sense of morality, I would say any sense of morality is conceited. Morality assumes context, but reality transcends context. In other words, things are "neither good nor bad, but thinking makes it so."
As Frans de Waal showed, the views we have about aggression and competition in other species are fairly one-sided. Not entirely incorrect, but entirely dependent on context. And so are our views about sharing and cooperation in those same species. Both aspects exist simultaneously, and context determines how we interpret and emphasize and judge their expression. Again, "thinking makes it so". Of course, thinking does NOT make it so, we only THINK it does. That's the conceit.
But as thin a veneer as morality is, it gets rather transparent when "what's in it for me" becomes one of its pillars. This is not to say that the individual can't benefit. He inevitably does. But it's to say that there's nothing "moral" about it being a necessary incentive. I mean look around. By "human" standards of morality, humans must be the most immoral creatures on the planet. Why? "What's in it for me".
Reciprocity is already built into the cake, every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Formalizing it as a conceptual condition for "being moral" is another conceit. Simply "being" is enough. "Moral" is the good intentions that paved the road to hell.
daniel hehir 20+
I sure wouldn't like to be your neighbor.... I wouldn't even like to live in your neighborhood .... your town....
You should really think twice before making such insidious comments...
Richard Nota 20+
Immorality comes with morality. While you may not agree I think that morality is a sense of fairness that, while often betrayed, presents a basis for a mutual contract and that is good enough for me.
Mark Meijer 100+
Maybe you should think twice before suggesting that I shouldn't speak my mind about the topic of morality. You do see the hilarious irony there, don't you?
daniel hehir 20+
Of course your right,
You don't need to have the morality of a snake to have the right to speak freely about it....
....or to demonstrate the fact that you don't have any clear meaningful ideas about what morality really is.... do you .. ??
Mark Meijer 100+
The point you're missing is, there's a difference between reality and ideas about it, no matter how "clear" or "meaningful". And likewise there's a difference between one's ideas about "what is right" and one's actual behaviour. Any number of circumstances could wipe away your lofty ideals like a sandcastle in a flood. So what are they really worth?
I know from our last conversation that you think you can choose what ideas, desires, motivations etc. to adopt. And so you must think you chose what moral values to hold in high regard. But if that were a matter of choice, then everyone would always adhere to their stated values. Also you could choose to switch to any different set of values at will, as easily as you pick up and set down a cup of coffee.
Convince me you can do that, and then maybe we have something to talk about. But if you can't, you have to admit that your values are as arbitrary as mine or anyone else's. Consider the possibility that "your" ideas aren't really yours at all, and that reality does not take steps to conform to "your" ideas of the way it "ought" to be.
It so happens my behaviour is quite "moral", if you'd care to measure it according to some standard. But that's more of an observation than anything else, I take no credit for the way that works. And that's my point. No animal could care less about how moral we would judge them to be. They don't debate about doing the right thing, they just do their thing. That doesn't make them monsters, but free of self-conceit.
We ourselves in fact just do our thing too, even if our thing is sometimes debating about (or imposing) ideas of morality. Dogs bark and birds sing, water falls and wind blows. Whoopty doo.
daniel hehir 20+
I have written roughly 32 comments on this discussion. All my ideas are there. All that I have written I stand for. If you want to understand my ideas of morality I suggest you go and read some of my other comments because I don't have the time or energy to repeat myself again through all that I've said along the length of this discussion. Not to be unfriendly... I just see from your comments that we are coming from two pretty different perspectives although we could possibly agree on some points.
I forget what the name of your "guru figure" was, if I remember correctly .... wasn't it Allen Watts who said things so eloquently in your ears?
My impression of A.W. is that he's way off base... and way out in left field if not completely out of the stadium... Sorry Meijer, I don't have the inner moral strength to straighten out A.W. and eventually your half twisted ideas.
But please, if you have any comments to what I have already said in the 32 previous comments here, you can feel free to take them up one by one. One at a time please... maybe I can find the time to unscramble some of your misconstrued ideas....
Mark Meijer 100+
Instead of solidifying, try deconstructing it further, keep thinking for yourself, try to poke holes in it and be honest to yourself in the process. Don’t settle on shiny theory, better to keep going until you get to the core essence. And when you think you’ve found it, you haven’t.
I do like to quote from time to time, like I quoted Shakespeare above and Alan Watts in one of our prior exchanges. Simply because so much that can be said has already been said way better than I could say it, and also because people have this weird tendency to be more open to consider words spoken by certain other people than to the exact same words spoken by a random joe forum such as myself. Admittedly I don’t quote Sam Harris often, if at all, but that’s what I’ll leave you with nonetheless, for whatever it may be worth to you right now.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cf9eGUWGtyo
Best regards
daniel hehir 20+
I see we've been "moved" over to OWS debate, so I guess were off topic now..
After watching the video, out of respect for your honest interest in the subject, I choose to make a quick response to it
It could be argued that everything Sam Harris is saying is perfectly correct out of his perspective of a purely biological viewpoint of the human being. Without going into detail here about causality, neural weather patterns, intentions mysterious nature, the negation of "self", the MRI's limitation on seeing the underlying causes of the activity of the human brain, the phenomenal glockenspeil, and S.H. ultimate conclusion that all thoughts and emotions simply rise up in the human mind.. "what else could they do?"
Because science, being true to its self limitations of focusing itself on the purely physical aspects of the human being, it cannot penetrate any deeper than this... that's it... the final conclusion.. man is no more than this "neural weather pattern" an inner storm of unforseen impulses of intentions that there is no explanation for.
Due to this self imposed limitation of going no deeper into the understanding of the world than the purely physical nature of all causality ... what more can be said than to point at the neural storm going on in our brain and say this is the end, the final cause.
What I see here is perhaps most quickly demonstrated in the following little picture.
Have you ever buttoned up your shirt in the morning and started with the bottom button in the number 2 hole...? You don't realize your mistake until you get all the way up to the top and realize that you have one extra button.
Your initial assumption works perfectly well,... perfectly logical... all the way up to one point...
Then you realize when you have an extra button that you have to restart from the bottom up and re-evaluate your thinking.
This is where S.H. is now. He is caught up in a form for "Pinkerism" and has painted himself into a proverbial corner...
Kris Rosvold
Mark Meijer 100+
He did not offer only neurological arguments to support his claim (that free will is an illusion, and its implications for morality). He gave you everything you need to verify it for yourself. In fact it is so staggeringly obvious that it's a miracle how desperately people deny and resist and even cry out against it in indignation. Remember I mentioned vanity before? That's what that is.
Watch your own intentions or decisions or any other thoughts pop up in your own consciousness, then tell me if you know where they came from or how they got there. If you don't, then there is nothing for you to base any claim of control or ownership on. This holds regardless of any "physical mechanism" through which this supposedly occurs, and also regardless of whatever you think about causality, so we don't need to get into those and you have nothing to hide behind.
It's plain for everyone to see who cares to take a look for themselves in their own direct experience. It's a perfectly simple and repeatable experiment that anyone can perform at any time, as often as necessary. No logical arguments or conceptual juggling or beliefs required, just looking at it. Sounds scary? So what. Do you want to know the truth or not? Then just look at it, it's everywhere. The burden of proof is not with the one who makes the claim, but with the one who is actually interested in finding out what's true.
daniel hehir 20+
I think we should round off on this topic here .. at least on this OWS discussion.
However, I have a lot of arguments against what your saying.. so it's a bit uncomfortable to just let them go. ... Can't you start a discussion of free will and I can jump in. It is a very interesting topic and others have started such discussions before.
Quickly, in regards to just where "ideas" or "thoughts" come from. As it is in a way at the root of the question... If I said to you that your own thinking is a product of a spiritual activity taking place within you ..... and to just that degree... that you can think freely, is exactly this degree of freedom that you possess,
From the starting point, I can say that I see the question threefold
Thinking as most free
Feeling as less free
Willing as the least free
Start a discussion and we can see where it takes us. There might be a lot of interest out there on TED so it would be a good exercise on both our parts to collect our thoughts... if that can be done from your perspective that is.... understanding the fact that they just pop up in your head at random.....
Mark Meijer 100+
Anyway, point is there is no other purpose for this conversation, so we can't go off topic here. Besides, if free will is not considered related to morality, I don't know what is.
Last time we talked I suggested you create a conversation if you were really interested, and that was the last I heard from you. Are you saying you're interested now? Have you done the experiment and looked yet? I can't do it for you, you know. I'm not "right" or anything. And I'm not in the business of trying to convince anyone anymore. It's not about beliefs or points of view, it's about getting past them. Which incidentally leaves precious little to say. All I can do is offer counterpoints and suggestions. I also can't do anyone else's thinking for them.
If you've got anything to elaborate on, such as what you found (or why you haven't looked yet), maybe start a new thread here, or create a new conversation if you prefer.
By the way, I never mentioned the word random.
Richard Nota 20+
One is why the frustration was aimed at the person who was giving the the reward.
Two is that envy is not associated with morality. If it looks like morality you need a better explanation to dismiss it than you do not like the interpretation.
At the same time you expose your simple attitude about the Occupy Wall Street protesters, which you presume to be irrefutable.
daniel hehir 20+
Clearly so, I agree. Had they started with three monkeys. The first two monkeys got grapes and the third monkey got cucumber. Would the two monkeys with the grapes throw their grapes back at the person doing the experiment in order to get her to give the third monkey a grape too..? I doubt it... They would each eat their own grape.. It would be very interesting to get Frans de Waal to tell just how they got the one monkey to deny a grape in order to get his fellow monkey a grape too. Now that would be more interesting than this more simple example. He mentions it briefly on the video at around 15.30 if your interested.
TED Conversations Admin 30+