Why Can animals Be Like THIS WITHOUT RELIGION? No bigotry Here!

[Mike Cl]

Notice ... you used "we" and "ourselves".

Oh.....yeah................I need to reread Anthem. 

[Solitary]

I don't think it was fare that I was left out. I think so therefore you exist to me, and you think, therefore I exist to you, I think. So do we really exist, or just think we do? Are we more than our thoughts? I am, therefore I think I am. 

[Baruch]

Solitary ... don't get too hung up with Descartes ... people experience ... and thinking is part of experience.  So is feeling.

As far as what is absolutely real or not ... I think it is a mistake to think that anyone knows it.  So it isn't that you or I are an illusion, but that me misinterpret our experience.  Words often carry a lot of baggage that really isn't intended.

[wbuentello]

So, for you, morality is an evolutionary development and it is any behavior that promotes social cohesion.

More precisely, I would say that it is behavior that affects social cohesion.

I will google some animal studies--this area interests me.   

did you find anything interesting?

As for the rest, I think this convo has sunk into the muddy waters of epistemology. I think therefore I am is all that really needs to be said on that subject. 

[Mike Cl]

More precisely, I would say that it is behavior that affects social cohesion.


did you find anything interesting?

As for the rest, I think this convo has sunk into the muddy waters of epistemology. I think therefore I am is all that really needs to be said on that subject.

Epistemology can kill many a good discussion--yeah, it can. :) 
Yeah, I googled and found too much to share.  But a little:
Virgina Morell---Animal Wise: The Thoughts and Emotions of Our Fellow Creatures.
Frans de Wall----The Bonobo and the Atheist.
Mark Rowlands----Can Animals be Moral?
Marc Bekoff and Jessica Pierce----Wild Justice

Those books look to be very very interesting.  And all suggest that morality is shared by the animal world--and not just mammals either.  Evolution is the culprit. 

A video from Nova--Animal Morality, featured an interesting experiment with rats.  A rat was put into a see through trap.  Next to him was another trap of the same type with chocolate chips (5).  The free rat first freed the captive rat (and neither had been exposed to that type of trap prior to the experiment), then opened the other trap and allowed the former captive rat some of the chips.  Apparently this is what happened in each case.  And speaking of rats--in one of the above books an experimenter said that rats often played and uttered a sound that sounds like laughter--except it is a sound that we cannot hear without special audio equipment.  My estimation of rats just went way, way up! :))

[wbuentello]

Yeah along time ago I read a story about a guy on that Alaskan dog sled race, I forget what it's called, but he stopped on a bridge to take a rest and heard a very loud commotion on the banks. He then observed elk taking turns sliding down the frozen banks only to end up caroming haphazardly onto the icy river and judging by their booming vocalizations on their way down the embankment they where thoroughly enjoying it.
Then years later I had a aquarium that I used to keep some little red efts  in. Basically tiny salamanders. Half was dry land and the other was water. In the water half I had a semi submersible water filter that laid on its side and I positioned it so the water would shoot out of the filter upwards into the air. I just thought it looked cool. Then one day I noticed something very interesting. One of them must have crawled onto the filter and got caught in the upwards shooting water flow and went airborne only to fall into the water again. Then I realized there was a line on the filter! The efts  were actually lined up on the filter and taking turns walking into the spout of water! They would shoot off into the air and then swim to shore and climb back up and wait for their turn again!
If we only look around us we will see evidence of where we really fit into the world around us. One of my biggest gripes with the abrahamic religions is how they separate humanity from nature and elevate us above nature. That the world is ours to do with as we please. It was put here for us, to accommodate our needs. This flies in the face of what a scientific understanding of our world tells us. These outmoded abrahamic concepts are detrimental to the survival of humans. It encourage thoughtless and wasteful resource management practices.