Seems some animals have a (very small) knowledge of morality?

That is apparently called partial interventions. Not only are there impartial interventions in some animal groups but studies show that both types of interventions are effective for prosocial policing. As for herd animals I could not verify either my claim or yours. But I have little doubt that my claim is not valid for all herd animals but is only the case in very few herd animals.

This “image-bearing” terminology sounds a bit tortured to me. It seems to me my own understanding of being in the image of God having to do potentiality in the first place avoids such difficulties.

I think it is the worst argument of all of them, requiring morality to be authoritarian and arbitrary rather than rational. It is good example of how these arguments for God create huge distortions replacing the faith in God with a faith in something quite different. Some might even call this idolatry.

I’m not particularly a fan of “image bearers” and “image bearing” terminology either, but I’m answering the question on its own terms. I don’t remember your understanding of the image of God.

This is from an upcoming article that I’ve written. I think you’d appreciate it:

In his 1932 classic, The Moral Development of the Child, Jean Piaget studied children of various ages playing games and concluded that the younger ones regarded rules “as sacred and untouchable, emanating from adults and lasting forever. Every suggested alteration strikes the child as a transgression.” This matches quite well the attitude of many interpreters toward the command not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge. The first humans should have accepted it without question, obeyed it and, presumably, lived forever in paradise. But is unquestioned acceptance of the rule truly a mature moral choice? That condition belongs to the state of childhood.

Updating Piaget’s work, developmental psychologist William Kay observed, “A young child is clearly controlled by authoritarian considerations, while an adolescent is capable of applying personal moral principles. The two moralities are not only clearly distinct but can be located one at the beginning and the other at the end of a process of moral maturation.” In what could be called the first instance of peer pressure, the serpent introduced doubt from the outside, and the woman determined her personal moral principles vis-à-vis the command. She applied her own moral judgment, a phenomenon that begins in adolescence and continues throughout the rest of life, and weighed whether the rule was hypothetically non-binding and contrary to her own self-interest (the fruit was “good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom”). The universal nature of temptation and sin appears at the end of a process of moral maturation that all children undergo. In the end, the adolescent applies her own moral principles, considers her self-interest, and declares her independence, albeit prematurely. In the second instance of peer pressure, the man takes the fruit from the woman and eats it without apparent thought. If everyone else is doing it, me too!

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It is that our infinite potentiality is a reflection of God’s infinite actuality and that this is the basis of an eternal parent child relationship with no end to what God can give or what we can receive from Him. This is also my explanation of the meaning of “eternal life.” Thus…

  1. I see creating in ones own image as the essence of parenthood – relational rather than ability.
  2. A quantitative difference in potentiality rather than qualitative difference from other living things.

Good bet considering my psychology inundated upbringing. Piaget’s name is very familiar even if I cannot exactly remember my previous exposure(s) to his ideas. It seems he made contributions to many areas where I his ideas would have been talked about: education, artificial intelligence, philosophy, cognition, and morality in addition to developmental psychology.

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I haven’t read the book, but it seems worth checking out.

Hume, is compelling, don’t get me wrong, “Reason is, and ought to be, the slave of the passions.” But where I disagree with Hume (ethically speaking) is where he says you can’t get an ought from an is. Too skeptical, methinks. If you really put your brain to the task, it is indeed hard to see how we get oughts from is’s.

But at a basic level, it isn’t too hard to understand. “My child fell into the water. I ought to dive in and rescue her.” It’s hard to choreograph the processes from which you can derive an ought from an is, but such processes are there. Otherwise you have to assume all of our “oughts” come from basic impulses. And that simply isn’t true. We think we ought to do things based on our assessment of how things are. (In other words, excluding our basic instinctual drives, all of our oughts “come from an is.”)

This is also where I disagree with @mitchellmckain on ethics. Instinctual drives (such as those found in animals) can be neither moral nor immoral. They’re just there. Jay put it better than I did, scientifically speaking. We have all kinds of drives (as do animals). Some of them are moral, others are destructive. Only a logical mind can tell the difference. And that was my point. My point wasn’t that animals don’t behave morally. They do. But animals don’t (intellectually) know the difference between moral and immoral. They can only follow (or not follow) their drives. This makes them free of moral responsibility.

We humans, on the other hand, can rationalize the difference. (Or if you want to get metaphorical, we’ve eaten of the fruit). THAT makes US morally responsible. Wild rams clash horns. They brutalize their fellows to have a better chance at mating. What are they doing? Following their impulses.

But are these impulses good or bad (destructive or non-destructive) this only a rational mind can distinguish. In short, calling non-destructive animal drives “moral” misses the mark.

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I’d like to take my time with this but my immediate impulse is to say we don’t get oughts from ises. ‘Oughtness’ is the felt quality of an instinctual drive as expressed verbally by language using creatures such as ourselves. A careful assessment of our duty to others augmented by logic has no power to generate the compelling drive of an ought. We can’t do it and neither can God no matter how thorough ones theological approach. But my words, like the topic, are a hot mess. I’ll try to do better when I come back to it.

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@vulcanlogician

Logic by itself has no ability whatsoever to tell the difference between moral and immoral. It is not true that animals cannot tell any difference in this at all – only that they have limitations in this regard. It is true that we can rationalize things and animals cannot. It is the claim that our rationalizations add what you claim which is questionable. We pick our premises to get whatever rationalizations we want for whatever conclusion we prefer. The idea that only our rationalizations give us any moral responsibility is even more dubious. It is instincts and social relationships which give us moral responsibility and animals have both of these – to a far lesser degree I would certainly agree, but that is all. This is what our language and rationalizations give us – a measure of social interaction and relationship which far surpasses any of the animals. It makes our social environment far far more important than the natural environment. And if we compare it with the advent of multi-cellular organisms the significance of this cannot be overstated. It is life and evolution on whole different level.

Besides compatibility with scientific findings, there are the philosophical consequences of this to explore. In addition to cutting ties with the rational poverty of authoritarian morality, the above realizations give morality both a cultural, religious, and species independent foundation which greatly strengthens our grasp on morality itself – so we can distinguish the arbitrary relative elements of mere convention from those things which are absolute and essential. We can understand what kind of morality makes society function with greater well being for its members – for that is what we ultimately expect from a morality which we can all embrace whole-heartedly.

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I think the points of our agreement easily outweigh those where we disagree. Probably more a testament to our improving ability to understand one another than of our ability to score debate points, and that points to some initial points of agreement I think.

I think it may have a lot to do with having pretty much having the same foundation and basement, and perhaps even ground floor so to speak. I may have embraced the Bible and Christianity, but that is what I have added on the top most floors, not where I have started. I think people who start with those build in very different direction in order to embrace the findings of science as much as they can. It makes communication and understanding a bit difficult when the orientations are all different… a lot like we are in completely different worlds.

Though… since I don’t really know where you started, my metaphor may required some adjustments. I started with parents majoring in psychology and not so much interest in religion other than the criticisms of the Christian establishment by the extreme liberals of the 60s. I went from there right into the scientific worldview with floors in SF&F fiction, Buddhism, existentialism, math and physics at university, and only exploring the whole spectrum of Christianity on top of that.

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I like the analogy of a house. I’ve done some exploring myself and have been through many passages and rooms. But I can’t recall having constructed any of it. I wouldn’t know how to begin though it may be that what we read and dwell on do influence what we discover next.

Tell that to Kant.

Yes… not for me is the pretense to restricting myself to objectivity and observation which I see as only suitable to the activity of science. The scientific method is a tool I can and often use, but the pretense of doing this always is practically delusional for living ones life. Life is about building and creating – all subjective participation to the max. Perhaps it is the SF&F floor of my building that gave my search for truth the strategy of imagining all the possible answers to a question and picking the one which best fit the evidence, was the most logically coherent, and had the best pragmatic implications for living a good life.

Thank you for your response, though I’d like to say something more. I said that some animals have a small knowledge of morality and that they can know better than to do a particular deed that goes against it. Therefore this means that there had to be an animal with little knowledge of morality who was the first to start doing bad deeds while knowing they must not be done. The driving force for this is unknown to me and no, natural selection is not an answer because what we’re dealing with here is a moral obligation, not a physical need. I guess the best way to answer to this would be that it’s a mystery comparable to the mystery of how the first image bearing human being started doing something immoral. What you say about self preservation does not answer my question and you seem to hold to the position that animals have ZERO knowledge of morality (because you say they can’t conceive of bad deeds), which is contrary to what I say in the question.

The basis of morality is love in the form of empathy and compassion.
God has given us a conscience, which is the moral guide. And this can only be viable if there is love. We are made in the image of God, which means we are conscious and we have love. Thus we feel for others. That is what makes us humane.

An inhumane person has deadened their conscience and that can only be done when they act to do harm and feel firstly indifference and then pleasure for seeing the pain and suffering of the other. What they have effectively done is to separate themselves spiritually form other conscious beings. The connectivity, which is love, is gone.

The very fact that we have a conscience and we have love, i.e., we are spiritually connected is poof that God exists.

I noted this reality in my yard recently. I give the bush turkeys some food so they gather in my yard, which is part of the bushland adjoining my house and yard. One day a bush turkey died in my yard. It was a female and obviously one of the females of a particular male turkey. The male turkey moved to bury it in dead leaves and soil. Another male bush turkey came to kick off the covering and there was an argument between the male turkeys. And the offender was chased off. The male turkey returned and finished burying the dead female. I saw in the following days that none of the bush turkeys scratched in the area where the buried turkey lay. So they showed respect. I was amazed at what I saw. It certainly showed that they do have morality.

They sure fight among themselves and can be quiet nasty, but here too I have seen several cases of turkeys intervening to stop the arguments and even punish the offender.

This is not convincing because it is a mere assertion. That love and conscience exists is not controversial. That they are evidence for being “spiritually connected” needs support as well as some clarification.

I do think the experience of conscience is part of the grounds for what gives rise to God belief. That traditional notions of God are all justified by this will seem convincing to those who need no convincing. The rest of us are wondering whether you have even an ounce of skepticism or any clue why arguments which include the conclusion as a premise are looked down on.

I do think that what gives rise to and supports God belief is important. But what that really is is not something which our logic and language can accurately pin down or demonstrate. You need to develop some humility about our actual epistemic position and realize that if there is something beyond ourselves, it is beyond our powers to reduce to a concept. The effort to do so regardless of this limitation is misguided.

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How interesting. It inspired me to read up on bush turkeys. What with Thankgiving here and the traditional American turkey dinner, I am glad they fare a little better not being traditional table fare.

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If we are dishonest or half-hearted philosophers we prefer some conclusions over others. But otherwise, we’re careful to find the correct conclusion, even if we don’t like it. I disagree with the premise: “Logic by itself has no ability whatsoever to tell the difference between moral and immoral.”

It’s true insofar as logic needs information to produce truth-statements. Logic in a vacuum does nothing. But once it has some axioms and/or basic information, logic does a lot of work. For example, if you are a hedonist, you have the axiom “pleasure is good; pain is bad.” And then all the rest of your ethics can be deduced by logic alone.

Aren’t you begging the question here? Maybe not, but I think you may be. You are stating as a premise that our instincts and social relationships give us moral responsibility. And from that you conclude that morality is subjective.

What about our ability to work out mathematics? We attained this ability through evolutionary means, perhaps to count berries gathered or antelope hunted. But that doesn’t matter. Are math problems subjective then? Is 5+2=7 a matter of opinion? No. We were given the rudimentary tools via evolution to work out basic math. Once we applied logic and axioms (like the Greeks did) then we took mathematics to a higher level. Likewise, our moral sense has it’s roots in instinct. But once logic got ahold of it, logic could extrapolate firmer “mathematical truths” concerning ethics than instinct can discern.
Nowadays we say, “A human being has rights.” And that may be the basis of all ethical claims, really. But did tribal humans and proto-humans recognize “human rights.” Not conceptually. Only by their intuitions. In the same way that an archer knows Newtonian physics. An archer is roughly familiar with how arrows arc… but cannot say why.
Similarly, ancient humans, while perhaps okay moral practitioners, were terrible moral theorists. We can go back and look at their moral theories and find them wanting. Ethics can determine more now than it ever could as far as right and wrong are concerned. But that’s because of (and only because of) intellectual progress.

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The Australian bush turkey is protected. We are not allowed to eat them. In fact a person doing harm to them can even do jail time. There was though an exception during the great depression.

There are about 100 or more that come to my house every day. Some come in through their own special windows (2 windows are theirs) and the balustrade and my gazebo. And together with the other wildlife I feed they cost about a thousand dollars a month.

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Incorrect. Logic uses premises, not all of which can be simply called information. Your use of this word is an attempt to railroad people in accepting premises where there is no reasonable expectation that other people should do any such thing.

WRONG! I conclude no such thing! Where did you get that from? You just made that up? In any case, your whole soapbox on that is one which I simply ignore for now, since any critique of your reasoning there is only likely to confuse things.

There are elements of morality which are subjective and elements which are objective. Likewise there are elements of morality which are relative and elements which are absolute. Here is an elucidation of each of these.
Relative - These consist conventions and it is unavoidable because sometimes it is more important that we have rule than what the particular rule is. Sometimes these are like lines drawn in the sand. Since different cultures and societies make different decisions on such matters these tend to vary considerably between them.
Absolute - These are the things in morality we have by necessity such as the fact that rule is necessary even when the particular rule is less important, and the fact we need a line drawn somewhere. For example it necessary to have a line to say when killing another human being is justifiable and when it is not. Without such a rule social relationships become untrustworthy and human life very difficult.
Subjective - These are things which are a matter of personal conviction but without any reasonable expectation that other people should agree. Most dietary restrictions are common examples of this.
Objective - These are things which we can demonstrate to be harmful or necessary for the well being of people and thus we have a reasonable expectation that other people will agree.

While others have argued morality is all subjective because science cannot tell us whether or not we should do some things, I have argued that there are basic premises the rejection of which stretch credulity too far to where we must doubt “ought” and “should” have any meaning at all.

So now let’s consider your implied proposition that rationalization are required for morality to be objective. When things can be demonstrated then these are things which can be learned by anything with the capability of learning and that is something which all living organisms can do. We can learn the harmful and beneficial effects of certain types of behavior even when we do not have any language for expressing what they are. To be sure the language and rationalizations help, but then I have never argued that they do not, quite the contrary.

We cannot reduce God to a concept. God is unknowable because even in an enlightenment experience, where there is “knowledge of God” in that God exists because there is union with God, there is not knowledge of what God is. In enlightenment there is a sudden shift of identity from personal self (the identification with a body-mind) to the identification with conscious being, a soul, the true self. And with that identification comes the experience of union with God.

I did give evidence of spiritual connectivity, but maybe I didn’t clarify it enough.
However the understanding of it will also depend on a person’s world view.

An atheist, who believes that there is only the physical and nothing else, will try to explain both conscience and consciousness and even love as biological processes. So these are explained as biochemical/ bioelectrical activity. Thus there is no connectivity of any sort other than hugs and kisses etc. They essentially see only individuals, separateness.

A theist, who believes that there is a spiritual realm, as well as a physical and mental realm, will understand the connectivity. Love in the universal, unconditional aspect, which includes also love of God is Agape (from Greek ἀγάπη). It is the basis of charity and empathy, sympathy and compassion.

There is no way this is a biological process or emotion. It is not some biological program that evolved out of some complex chemistry. It is a characteristic of the soul or conscious being. This characteristic is illuminated in the light of conscience, the sense of right and wrong. This sense is based on being able to “feel for others”. This feeling for someone else, and often someone you don’t even know, can only be based on a spiritual connectivity. Let me give you an example.

One of my father’s friends told the story that when he was in Greece fighting against the Germans he was injured and lay unable to move without help on the side of the street. There was a ambulance on the far end of the street but he could not get to it. A German soldier came by and he immediately helped my father’s friend to walk up to the ambulance. The Greeks thanked him, but asked why did he help when he could have just shot him dead. And indeed he would have been obliged to do so by the German army or more correctly the Nazi soldiers in the German army. This German soldier said “I wouldn’t be able to feel right about the situation if I didn’t help him to the ambulance”. He quickly left so as not to be seen by any other Germans.

This was war time. He helped an enemy soldier, who was wounded. He didn’t know the man from chalk. But he had love in his heart, which is a spiritual quality. And that spiritual quality can only be viable if it is based on a spiritual connectivity with others. This is none other than charity.

We help, not out of pride or even to “feel good about ourselves” as many atheist suggest. We help because we feel for the other, we feel their pain and suffering and as a result we are moved to help. Like the German said “he could feel right about it if he didn’t help”.

In addition we have the evidence of the person, who moves to become inhumane. Their actions in deadening their conscience is to behave in a way that destroys the spiritual connectivity.

Our spiritual nature, which is in essence consciousness (awareness plus knowledge), love and being, arise from God. We are made in the image of God. And this is true really of all life. So our spiritual nature, which is illuminated through our conscience and thus our morality, is a proof of God.