and I can’t be sure why I went off on that tangent, should have saved that for the pyschology forum.
I don’t have a conscience and what little bit I had upon my social cultural acquisitive upbringing has deteriorated into nothingness upon the cruel gestures of society inflicting me.
I am plagued by nothing except for the idiosyncrasy of humanity that surrounds me.
Anthropomorphic fallacy.
If you ever had a conscience it is unlikely that you could lose it. Maybe you have just buried it. If you don’t have one, that’s sad and possibly dangerous for the people around you. Morality has survival value. It didn’t just fall out of the sky on humans. Believing that such feelings and behavior are limited to humans is an anthropocentric fallacy. If you can’t see it in animals, perhaps you have been desensitized. Maybe you are suffering from post traumatic stress from the cruelty you suffered. You should seek help.
The anthropomorphic fallacy is derived from Enlightenment Thought and, by extension, Christian notions of an impermeable barrier between humans and the rest of the universe. Given that humans are now thought of as being a part of nature, rather than apart from nature, the anthropomorphic fallacy can no longer be said to be valid, as such.
Exactamente!
I don’t know if the fallacy itself has a complete lack of validity, but certainly less. To argue hat my cat acted maliciously when it peed on my carpet is the naturalistic fallacy: my best friend did not pee on my carpet because he could analyze the decision and choose (what he believed to be) the moral outcome, my cat peed on my carpet not because it could analyze the deicision and decide on something morally but because it needed to pee. With that said if traditionally human attributes have been identified in non-human species then discussing these attributes in regards to those species is not fallacious at all.
I am not entirely convinced of that. A friend of mine’s cat would regularly pee in her room if she went on a vacation of more than 5-or-so days. Otherwise the cat would never pee in the room.
When my cat is hungry (because we’ve put him on a diet) he will knock over the kitchen garbage bin. He doesn’t eat what falls out, nor does he do this if we’ve fed him what he considers to be a proper amount.
Is that malice? Is there intent? I’d say that there is something very close to both going on in those instances. Close enough that, while I certainly can’t know whether it is just like the human emotional experience (indeed, I do believe it is different) that I’ll call it “close enough for government work” as they say.
Now, if I were to say that the mildew that appeared in my bathroom recently (stinky, nasty stuff) was somehow a malicious reaction to, gosh, I don’t know what, then I would be committing an anthropomorphic fallacy since mildew lacks anything resembling a central nervous system so, even if it does think (which I sincerely doubt) its thoughts would be so alien to us that we could not draw any sort of reasonable parallels, even if the motives were assumed to be common.
Darcia Narvaez (“The Neurobiological Roots of Our Multiple Moral Personalitiesâ€, 10/05/06) identifies three levels of ethics that correspond to the reptilian, mammalian and human brain. They are, respectively, the ethics of security, engagement and imagination. On the reptilian level are behaviors necessary for physical survival and flourishing. On the mammalian level we begin to see altruistic behavior that we commonly associate with social ethics. The neo-cortex is involved in the ethics of imagination when, for example, one sees people that are outside one’s own socials group as deriving of equal rights. Evidence supports the conclusion ethical behavior is an emergent property not limited to the human species.
That is one way looking at the anthropomorphic fallacy while the other way is the fallacious comparison of applying sapient thought and emotion to non-sapient creatures.
And where do we make the cutoff for sapience?
Actually it is possible if you walk the malicious boundries of man too long.
Doubt it. You don’t even want to know what my plans are if I can’t get a book published.
Let us just leave it there…
If I ever became dangerous I would say,
“Behold look at what monstrosity you have created for I am the very image incarnated of societal motion.”
No it doesn’t.
Darwin- Truth is unnecessary for survival or reproduction.
Truth being the so called abstract value of morality which I believe in neither.
Lies! Show me a moral creature.
Morality is only an indulgent convenience of beings who live in a state of so called normalcy. There is no convenience amongst nature.
There is no all encompassing price or value of life as such an existance has a form of pricelessness. Without such a price or value of life there is no reason to support morality.
What sort of hope would you install in me? Is it the one where I see someone trying to tell me how good civic determinism is where I should play the part of the good conforming complacent slave instead of being a bad boy?
Sapience is the cuttoff of sentience.
I think you are confusing the two.
Not at all. I’m merely asking you how far you think this trait penetrates in the natural world.
At what point do creatures not judge?
It is not about judgement as all creatures judge extended from forms of natural selfishness.
Sapience- Is having a imagination of the future, to question purpose and everything, Invention, and the ability to process abstract thought.
That is the cutt off.
Sapience is actually just the ability to judge.
But, using your definition, how deep do you think the trait penetrates?
Even if it was the ability to judge our human forms of judgement differ greatly apart from that of other animals even though we are animals ourselves.
I am not understanding your question.
You are asserting that human judge differently from other creatures, so that would be near zero penetrance of the trait in other creatures.
I do not think that is a valid way of perceiving the world. Why should it be that way? Our brains aren’t terribly special at the end of the day, a parasite that controls rat behavior can play us like a fiddle. Our brains are more rat-like then not.
I am not trying to be mean but I still don’t understand your post.
Could you find a easy way for me to understand your proposition or reply?
I am not terribly good with metaphors.
Xunz,
Sapience is the definition of alive or dead. You know that. All living cells plant and animal ‘judge’ information from their immediate environment. Accept -reject judgements are the pervasive environment of all things living. This does not mean that there is considered intent, however. Getting away from semantics, it becomes an issue of sentience, which has a fuzzy definition among animals except that we put ourselves at the top of the order - naturally.
Still I see what you’re trying to do, you clever rascal. Sentience requires the capacity of memory so that a stimuli may be compared to past experience. That your cat tips over the waste basket when not fed accustomed amounts of food and doesn’t tip over the basket when given routine amounts of food suggests a deliberate intentional reaction best explained by rudimentary sentience. But that is an inductive fallacy, and you know that as well. When ALL (or most) cats exhibit the same or similar behavior under the same general circumstances, then we might have something to work with. It could be, you have an unsually sensitive cat, or more likely, you are making erroneous ‘connects’ ascribing attributes to your cat.
Actually I like that. I’m a cat person, and my cat is far more intelligent than I am… 
Tent,
It is repeatable for the cat. Given how slight I think the divide between humans and other animals is, I would expect them to be as different from each other as I expect people to be different from each other.
I am sure you can identify readily repeatable characteristics in your pets, and other animals as well. Because they aren’t shared across all of them is expected, given the high degree of variability between subjects.
Especially since it has been shown that cats, rats, dogs, and a variety of other animals are capable of learning. Their faculty is, of course, more limited than the human one but we’re hyper-specialized in that area, so that is also to be expected.
Joker,
You are asserting that there is a much wider gulf between animals and humans then I am, that is all.