[Sonart]

Quote by: MerlinsByte 3.. Adaptive evolution (intra species)

How about adaptive evolution based on self interest? "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." We refrain from lying, stealing and killing because we don't want others doing those things to us, so we make a tacit social agreement... you don't do these things to me and I'll agree not to do them to you.

This may be a lead to a new thread, but TIME magazine came out with an amazing article this week, Honor Among Beasts. The story reports on research that altruism, empathy and a sense of fair play are not limited to human beings but is present, in perhaps less sophisticated ways, among higher animals... most observably in dogs (to which I can attest)

Which leads to the question summed up at the end of the article.... is there an evolutionary basis for ethics and morality, and is ethics and morality not unique to humans but rather a continuation of something already evolving in the animal world.

--"But while animals may not possess true ethics or morality, Bekoff, De Waal and a growing number of their colleagues think fairness and cooperation may be the forerunners of those qualities, just as the apelike brain of our distant ancestor Lucy was the forerunner of our own, much more sophisticated minds. After all, Lucy was no Einstein—but without her, the leap from the tiny brains of primitive mammals to the subtle intelligence of an Einstein could never have occurred."--

Some of the more interesting hilites from the story...

--"In short, Bekoff was able to show -- after at least a decade of painstaking observation and analysis -- that canine play is actually a complex social interaction in which the participants constantly signal their intentions and check to make sure their behavior is correctly interpreted. Dogs that cheat -- promising a playful bite but delivering a harsh one, for example -- tend to be ostracized.

That understanding is nothing short of revolutionary. Only a decade or so ago, scientists were arguing vigorously over whether animals had emotions: just because a dog looks sad or a chimp appears to be embarrassed doesn't mean it really is, the skeptics said. That argument is pretty much over. The idea of animal emotion is now accepted as part of mainstream biology. And thanks to Bekoff and other researchers, ethologists are also starting to accept the once radical idea that some animals--primarily the social ones such as dogs, chimps, hyenas, monkeys, dolphins, birds and even rats--possess not just raw emotions but also subtler and more sophisticated mental states, including envy, empathy, altruism and a sense of fairness. "They have the ingredients we use for morality,"--

One interesting example they brought up, and which they stated was not limited just to dogs, is something I observe constantly in dogs. During play, an older, bigger or stronger dog will beat up on a younger or smaller dog. Every so often, however, the larger dog will flop to the ground and allow the younger or smaller dog to "win" -- to beat up and chew on them for a while. The theorized reason being that such fair play is based on self interest. Allowing the smaller dog to win insures their willingness to play in the future.

--"That doesn't mean animals necessarily have a fully developed moral or ethical sense. "I don't say dogs are fair the way you and I are fair, or have the same moral systems," says Bekoff. But it does mean that -- just as with so many other attributes once considered unique to humans, including toolmaking and language -- animals have at least rudimentary versions of what we call morality. That would conform to Darwin's ideas of evolution, and indeed, Darwin himself was convinced this must be true. "It would be bad evolutionary biology," says Bekoff, "to assume that moral behavior just pops on the scene only with us."--

Quote by: MerlinsByte What keeps us from wanton murder?…nothing,we do it in spades every fraction of a second. From abortion, to wars, to crimes of passion.

While this may seem to be the case from constant headlines, in proportion to the human population it's an obvious anomoly. And abortion, despite the florid rhetoric of opponents, can be considered a moral decision... ending the life of a potential human in order to spare future suffering as an unwanted child.

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