Animals 'are moral beings'

by Gerard 14 Replies latest social current

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  Gerard

  http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3014747.stm

  Animals 'are moral beings'

  By Alex Kirby BBC News Online environment correspondent Some animals can feel and think in ways not too dissimilar from us, welfare campaigners say. The weight of scientific opinion is that it's certainly right to give the benefit of the doubt to all vertebrates Dr James Kirkwood, Ufaw They say there is evidence of altruism, with some animals acting disinterestedly for the good of others. Animals which live in communities, they say, often exhibit signs of morality which resembles human behaviour. They say there is scientific backing for their claims, with huge implications for human use of animals. The campaigners are from Compassion in World Farming (CIWF), a UK group which accepts that farm animals will be killed for their meat but argues they should be treated humanely. CIWF is holding a conference in London on 10 May entitled Understanding Animals. Its theme is animal awareness, emotions and intentions. The concept that animals are sentient - possessing a level of conscious awareness, and able to have feelings - was recognised by the European Union in 1997. Shifting debate In a briefing paper, CIWF says: "There is evidence that some animals do have some level of morality and some concern over other animals. Pigs are very sensitive to fear "Living within a group requires a moral code of behaviour... Most animals that live in communities exhibit similar moral codes to humans. "Zoologists who have spent their professional lives studying animal behaviour, either by observation or by experiments to test their mental capacities, believe that many animals feel and think." Joyce D'Silva, chief executive of CIWF, told BBC News Online: "The whole climate over whether to accept sentience has changed hugely in the last 15 years. "It has huge implications for all the ways we use animals. It implies all farm animals are entitled to humane lives and deaths - and millions are denied them." Robust rejection Dr Jackie Turner, research director of the CIWF Trust, told BBC News Online: "There's far more rationality and mental complexity in farm animals than we acknowledge. "But our attitudes to them are tremendously culturally determined - look at the different ways we feel about dogs and pigs." Sheep can remember 50 other sheep faces for several years The claim of scientific backing for the concept of animal sentience has its critics, who say it is simple anthropomorphism, the projection of human traits onto animals. A spokesman for the Countryside Alliance told BBC News Online: "There seems to be a trend towards anthropomorphism throughout society. "It's leading people to suggest animals can feel sensation and emotion in the same way as humans, and this is obviously nonsense." Proof impossible But Dr James Kirkwood, chief executive and scientific director of the Universities' Federation for Animal Welfare (Ufaw), gives qualified approval to CIWF's approach. He told BBC News Online: "Animal sentience has been a matter of debate down the centuries. "We can't prove absolutely even that another human being is sentient, though it would obviously be unreasonable to assume they are not. "But the weight of scientific opinion is that it's certainly right to give the benefit of the doubt to all vertebrates." Pig and sheep images courtesy of CIWF
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  DanTheMan

  Very interesting, thank you for sharing that.

  When I was a JW, of course we had the tracts with illustrations of kids playing with lions and the like. I used to think how horrible it would be to live forever and witness infinite generations of vertebrate animals so similar to ourselves live, breed, and die. Just didn't make sense.

  "It's leading people to suggest animals can feel sensation and emotion in the same way as humans, and this is obviously nonsense."

  I think this is a stupid comment. Sounds like the WT, with the "obviously" thrown in to try to make those on the other side of the debate appear as if they are deluded and ignoring reality.
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  Warrigal

  Thanks for your post, Gerard. Animals are far more complex mentally and emotionally than we give them credit for.
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  yucca

  I have a little chiwuawua that amazes me. he has a basket of toys and he will go over and look and i can tell he is looking for a certain toy. i will tell him go look down the hall its probably there. He goes running down the hall and comes back with it. He has to be thinking about what he wants and making a decision. If one of my little great grand children over and they start getting in his basket of toys he looks at them and then looks at me as if to say mom they are into my toys with a worried look on his face. Then i have to tell him its ok they are going to play with you. My daughter took in an old dog Lucy because the lady died who had her. She was going blind and she was deaf and my daughters two big dogs helped take care of Lucy and it was sweet watching them. when Lucy died the two dogs were very upset about it. I dont think animals are moral like us but they have feelings. I feel like i have a little kid in the house. I think elephants are the amazing animals with morals . The way they care for each other and their little ones. They grieve when they come across elephants bones.
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  onacruse

  Hey Gerard

  For animals to be "moral," they'd have to demonstrate the ability to "abstract," including, among other things, having a conception of the "past" or "future" (neither of which are actually "real"). All the behavior of animals mentioned above can be explained as a "situational/conditioned response mechanism."

  Don't take me wrong, I love animals, and Katie and I just adopted a little stray cat that showed up on our patio last month (we named him Farkel LOL). And he is a character. We're both just a couple of mushes.

  Craig
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  Abaddon

  "Most animals that live in communities exhibit similar moral codes to humans."

  Yeah, right. Another way of putting it is that "apparently altruistic behaviour in communities of animals, even in humans, is not". Vampire bats are altuistic, fi they have a full belly and a vampire bat that has never 'cheated' on them is in need of food.

  That example can be extrapolated to most instances of altruistic behaviour or seeming 'morals' in communal animals. A communal animal has to be aware of the benefits of sharing; a female chimp is more likely to copulate with a male chimp that has played with her offspring or shared food. A communal animal that did not 'punish' 'cheaters' would be disadvantage through natural selection, so such behaviour is no more surprising in animals than in humans.

  Now, whether a dog can have a debate about the rights and wrongs of being able to pull a lever and get $1 million, and someone somewhere you don't know dies, but no one ever knows you did it, is a differenmt question of morals.

  Identifying sheep with collars in sheep herding or liking one toy over another and being capable of following direction is another. Stick the pooches toy under a pillow and tell it to go look down the corridor when it's searching for something, it will still look down the corridor. Ask it to look down the corridor and it'll most likely go even if it isn't searching for a toy. Wolves look at the alpha wolf to see its reaction... wolves go potty when the alpha wolf returns, wriggling and jumping and licking its face. Hardly surprising dogs regard us as their alpha wolves.

  Mark you, I don't know why the cat always €raps on the kitchen floor in the sweep of the door so you either step in it or wipe it over the floor with the door... and I've seen animals miss friends, even of a different species... but let's not gild lillies, animals are amasing enough without attributing farsical levels of human abilities to them.

  Don't get me wrong, animals are smart. I firmly believe some (whales, dolphins, porpoises, great apes, elephants) have levels of intelligence that allow strong evidence of culture, and that anything smart enough to have a culture needs more protection than less intelligent animals.
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  Nathan Natas

  Not without good reason has it been said that there are those who believe that man is a "special creation" of God, and this "specialness" endows him with powers and abilities far beyond those of the rest of the animal kingdom. Man is in God's image, they will tell you.

  Those who reject the idea of a Creator have to find another way of explaining the reality they behold. If the finger of God did not imbue man with "special gifts," how did we get them? Answer: they "grew" with us as we became what we are.

  I believe that whatever abilities we have is part of a coninuum of sensory and mental abilites that spans all living things. Humans understand the "interior life" of humans - we have no idea really what it is like to be a dog, a cat, a bird, or a fish. Throughout history we have consumed other animals as food, and so we have to resort to some kind of objectification of them. While I am nowhere close to being a vegan, I am also nowhere close to being a species chauvanist. WE ARE PART OF THIS WORLD, in no way a separate creation.
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  Holey_Cheeses*King_of_the juice.

  You would want to rethink the statement that "animals are moral beings" if you were to have witnessed the activities of a pair of labradors outside the supermarket this afternoon. Moral they may be - but certainly not modest or discreet.

  cheeses - who was saying -"ohhhh, they can't do that here......"
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  DanTheMan

  I believe that whatever abilities we have is part of a coninuum of sensory and mental abilites that spans all living things. Humans understand the "interior life" of humans - we have no idea really what it is like to be a dog, a cat, a bird, or a fish. Throughout history we have consumed other animals as food, and so we have to resort to some kind of objectification of them. While I am nowhere close to being a vegan, I am also nowhere close to being a species chauvanist. WE ARE PART OF THIS WORLD, in no way a separate creation.

  This is why I found the comment from the article I quoted above to be so stupid. To say that people who view animals as being sentient creatures possessing humanlike morals is foolish "anthropomorphization" I think is putting way too much stock in the idea that man is something wholly separate from the animal kingdom. I don't think we are, we're just the most dominant and intelligent species. I do believe that dolphins, elephants, and some of the higher apes may experience an interior life that if we were to somehow experience it, we would find it to be similar (but of course more primal) to our human experience. But I could be wrong, and of course it is impossible to know for certainty what's happening between Shamu's ears.
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  Gerard

  http://www.polaris.net/~rblacks/dolphins.htm

  Nineteen centuries ago, Plutarch, a Greek moralist and biographer made this statement: "to the dolphin alone, beyond all other, nature has granted what the best philosophers seek: friendship for no advantage". 1 In our own times Barbara Tufty made the comment "he [Dolphins] also exhibits a friendly willingness to cooperate with other earth creatures -- a rare attribute which another animal, Homo Sapiens, has not yet learned to do with any consistency".2 Apparently there is something quite impressive about Dolphins. Not only now, when we are learning so much more about them, but even in the year 62 AD!

  Outside of his striking friendliness, the Dolphin seems to have been blessed with a well developed sense of humor. Dolphins have been known to silently maneuver behind an unsuspecting pelican and snatch its tail feathers -- usually leaving the bird minus a few. Other pranks include grabbing unsuspecting fish by the tail, pulling them backward a few feet as well as bothering slow turtles by rolling them over and over. Once a dolphin was seen placing a piece of squid near a grouper's rock cranny. When the fish came out, the dolphin promptly snatched the bait away, leaving the puzzled fish behind.