Are We Born Moral?

I was thinking about the example someone made in class today, "when you find twenty dollars on the ground, what do you do?" And I preceded to tell how that happened to me once and I gave it back to the person who dropped it. But, my initial instinct was to keep it. It only lasted for a few seconds, but it was still there. So, does that make my first instinct immoral? Does the fact that I almost immediately gave it back cancel that out? Do my morals conflict with one another? Or, was it just the natural thing to do? If the latter is true, then society has indeed played its part in shaping our ideas of morality.
I remembered this quote though, "moral life was a struggle to combat nature-- a view that left morality hanging in mid-air, without any evolutionary explanation, as a kind of human protest against the cosmos." I just can't bring myself to believe that morality just came out of nowhere. That doesn't necessarily mean it's solely biological, but I don't think society is the only reason either.

Kelly Dickens

Are we born moral?

I feel that in order to understand this article more fully, one has to understand its purpose is to explore whether or not humans are moral naturally or through the influence of our culture and if that morality is a human only characteristic or if it is shared with the rest of the animal kingdom. The article then is only a series of arguments from different big name philosophers and biologists and such that seem to dispute each other in smaller and smaller aspects of what it means to be moral; for example, though Hauser believes morality is an unconscious process (found in all animals?), he argues that the "part of the moral faculty that is unique to humans is that which they use 'to create judgements of permissible, obligatory, and forbidden actions,'" which connects with the monotheistic views that morality is a set of guidelines in becoming an ideal citizen. Maybe that is how morality should be viewed: not all moral choices come from teachings from outside sources (intuition rather) but a large influence from the outside world solidifies that particular "system of morality" we obey, which varies from culture to culture.

RR- Dog Unwelt

After reading this article, there was a lot of interesting things that I had never considered before. It’s very intriguing to try to emphasize the perspective of a dog, and how due to their biological make-up act the way they do, and why they do the things that they do. The way they process smell and how time relates to their sense of smell was very fascinating. The way they can inhale more air before having to exhale was something I had never considered before, however it makes more sense when I see my dog sniffing everything in the park while constantly moving. Also it was very interesting to read how the dog’s sense of time is related to how they perceive human facial expressions. But it makes a lot of sense when I reflect how playing catch with my dog, affected the way he acted as well as his own facial expressions. Once I picked up the ball, his ears would raise up and eyes would widen, and as soon as I released the ball and threw, it his ears would down again, and he would already be moving towards the direction of where the ball was thrown. I really enjoyed this article because it provided a lot of good insight into the minds and anatomical make-up of dogs and how it relates with how they interact with the environment and other organisms around them.

-Chris L.

Demonic Males

Because the Mentor session I am a part of we chose Demonic Males as one of our articles to do our presentation on. My thoughts on this article are fairly simple. Patriarchy is the leader in most cultures and seems like it always will be. To some cultures, killing a woman can be cleaned off your plate by exchanging 5 goats. How is that morally correct? It can't be, but it is in the !Kung civilization. See, woman are expendable in this Patriarchy it seems. Men go to war and woman go if men wish but most societies restrict woman from any form of fighting. There have been some successful female war heroes in some fights but they are not talked about. Compared to men, woman are just another "tool" that we can use to survive. I don't think this is true or should be in any way. If anything, woman should be in charge, because after all they are the nurturers of our offspring.

In the article, the authors ask the question "When women become as strong as men, in other words, will they be inclined to be as violent?" I'm sure they will be as inclined to be violent but I doubtfully they will use violence to express them selves in such a way. Even some of the larger woman today aren't violent one bit. As a gender? I don't think woman could be as violent as men, not because they don't have it in them, but because men have been violent since the beginning and it'd be hard for woman to catch up.

-Spencer

Evolution!

The Evolution readings are also meant to draw a line between humans and every other species. A lot of them have been challenging common ideas we have on humanity. I think we often think that we are an alien species compared to the other animals, like Hauser suggests in “Origins of the Mind”, but the readings have led me to understand that we are earthling animals like the others and are subject to evolution just as much everyone else. At first I thought that this view would be dehumanizing, but I realized it actually might have an opposite effect. I think that if we understood our common human condition- that we have evolved to our current complex form from a common ancestry and we are basically at the whim of this natural law- I think we might understand each other better and realize we are in it together and don’t have to compete??? :^S Although natural selection is based on this competition within a species, I think we, at our current state of consciousness, may find it beneficial to cooperate. I think at this state in our evolution, the regular natural selection is mostly irrelevant, and an evolution in society and consciousness is more probable, which would be better helped by cooperation rather than competition. Jeff F.

Dog's umvelt, Elephant Crackup, Le Guin

The last readings: Le Guin’s Buffalo Gals, Dog’s Umwelt, Elephant Crackup, and the Secrets of the Mind video we watched were connected by the idea that perspectives are taken for granted by humans (and for all we know, raccoons and/or chimpanzees have the same problem) and by understanding our unique perspective, we could have a better idea of what makes us human. This was also emphasized by the observation assignment as we slowed down to examine our own perceptions closer. This lesson has helped me to understand my perspective better by realizing first of all, that other people may have different perspectives, and by understanding where mine differ greatly from other species and where I may share some with others. This helps me see the bigger picture of the universe, by helping me realize that others may see a different bigger picture….maybe… Overall, I think the lesson was very informative and eye-opening.

Jeff F.

dog's umvelt

One of my favorite articles so far has been the dog’s umvelt. As it does with me, it should interest most people to be able to get a grasp on what it’s like to be something alive and not human. Things that could be seen as valued by us mean as little as a piece of paper to us. I myself have a Boston terrier, and it takes these deep breaths and they sound like sighs sometimes, but now I realize that he could be breathing in and out at the same time and getting those deeper breaths the article talked about. I can’t even fathom how he feels when he catches wind of something pungent, because he pulls in much more of the air he breathes than we do. The topic of time in the article was also informing. They tell time using their smell, for example the freshness of a dog turd or urine determines how long it has been there by how much it smells. The most interesting thing was that dogs have this better “flicker vision” than even humans. Dogs were the last animal I would expect to be able to see better than me. I can move just a little bit around my dog and he will react in crazy head nods and now I know it’s because they process the incoming light faster than we can. But at least i had something to fall back on now that I know we see better in a focused path that we look at and they can only see better up close.

Quinn P.