Animals Exhibit Moral Behavior?

In Chapter two of Moral, Believing Animals Christian Smith argues that human beings are moral animals because they are strong self-evaluators who inhabit morally based orders. In the next chapter, smith adds that humans are moral animals because they also believe. This ability to believe and act morally allows humans to stray away from our instinctive minds. In other words, it is apart of what makes us human. Smith finds that this way of viewing humans provides a better account of human religiousness. Religion is the manifestation of our capacity to be self-conscious. Smith uses Narrative morality writing to help explain his views on religion and human beings, which allow us to recognize our true moral capacity.

A highly popularized and debated topic in our modern society is the promotion of animal equality or animal rights. Many people, philosophers included, have a wide range of opinions on this topic. Two of the philosophers studied in class who discussed animal rights were Peter Singer and Carl Cohen. Singer, who has the more extreme view on animal rights, believes that all animals are equal and that the limit of sentience is the only defensible boundary of concern for the interest of others (Singer, 171). While Cohen, who’s view is more moderate than that of Singer’s, believes that animals do not have rights, stating that to have rights one must contain the ability for free moral judgment. Though, he does believe that we as

In the article “A Change of Heart about Animals” Jeremy Rifkin uses scientific evidence to reason with us that “many of our fellow creatures are more like us than we had ever imagined”. Rifkin suggests that animals should be treated better and be provided with better living conditions. He uses Betty and Koko as examples that animals have higher intellectual abilities and emotions than we thought. Many scientists also argued that animals do not have an understanding of death or capable of grief, but Rifkin counteracts that argument by using elephants as evidence to show that they are capable of grief.

The article “A Change of Heart About Animals” written by Jeremy Rifkin informs readers that animals feel emotions very much similar to humans and should be given more rights. I agree with Rifkin’s statement, but to a certain extent.

In an article based on an interview published in Time Magazine, “A Change of Heart About Animals”. Jeremy Rifkin expresses his views about the similarity behavior and emotional state between us humans and animals, with the purpose to change the way of how we see and feel about them. “We’re so skewed toward efficiency that we’ve lost our sense of humanity. What we need to do is to bring back a sense of the sacred”, Rifkin, argues. He supports his arguments with the findings of many researchers around the globe. Researchers that come from very prestigious institutions using different species of animals, we’re talking about crows, elephants, geese, etc. Not your ordinary lab rats and monkeys (which they don’t have anything

Jeremy Rifkin had made such impact on readers through his article “A Change of Heart about Animals”. Not only did he inform us the reality that animals do have feelings, he also unbounded the label we had long given to the animals, thus fully altered our perspectives about these fellow creatures. In regard to the influence, I myself am not excluded. As a matter of fact, since I was a kid, I have started raising pets. As long as it seems, I have built myself an assumption about these domestic animals as they don’t differ much from humans’ natural behavior in life. They have feelings, family and awareness of surroundings.

The subject of morality and ethics is a topic that so many individuals have difficulty understanding: and practicing. Many factor come in to place when thinking of one’s knowledge to treat or behave in an ethical and moral way to consider the feeling of others. Thus, an individual’s culture, religion, and environment may hinder the general idea of morality. In the interview of Martin Luther King Jr: Speech Civil Disobedience and obeying Just vs Unjust laws; he discusses how some laws that have been created: do not make right just because there laws. Likewise, Michael Pollan: An Animal’s Place talks about animal cruelty, and how animals should been have the same rights as human beings. Additionally, new laws can be created to adjust to new ethical and moral laws; that would benefit the way of living for humans and animals.

When thinking about morality, it is necessary to consider how aspects from both nature and nurture, along with free will, may form ones moral beliefs and dictate ones moral actions. To understand how moral beliefs as well as actions formulate and operate within individuals and societies, it is imperative that a general definition of morality is laid out. Morality, then, can be defined as ones principles regarding what is right and wrong, good or bad. Although an individual may hold moral beliefs, it is not always the case that moral actions follow. Therefore, in this essay I aim to provide an explanation that clarifies the two and in doing so I also hope to further the notion that one’s moral framework is a product of all three factors; nature, nurture, and free will. The first part of this essay will flush out what exactly morality it and how it manifests similarly across individuals and differently across individuals. Contrariwise, I will then explain how morality manifests similarly across societies and differently across societies. Alongside presenting the information in this order, I will trace morality back to primordial times to showcase how morality has evolved and developed since then, not only from a nature-based standpoint, but also from a

To the editor of “A change of heart about animals” Los Angeles Times, September 1, 2003: thank you for the well-written article by Jeremy Rifkin on animal emotions and cognitive abilities. Animal emotions are, indeed, important. When watching the full documentary last week on Koko, the gorilla who can, do sign language, and understand several thousand English words made me eager to write you. I agree with your statement that animals are more like us than we imagine in your opening sentence. We do need to respect animals around us because we take them for granted lots of times.

In “The Lowest Animal,” Mark Twain’s story declares that man is not the “Top animal,” but is in fact the animal of lowest descent. Twain points out how man is needlessly cruel, greedy, indecent, brutal, etc. Animals do not have the ability to decipher between right and wrong. They do only what they

Thus, besides through our perspective, an interpretation based on an animal perspective is demanded, but due to an insurmountable fact that we’re not animals so we cannot possibly know their feelings and thoughts, it starts to get tricky when we’re trying to delve into the animal world. For animals’ immeasurable cognitive, we might apply Behaviorism, the study of stimulus and responses, and neural-data to measure; nevertheless, whether these techniques are effective is being questioned, because no animal ever stands out to express its feeling and prove the theory. Generally we hypothesize that “animals may feel emotions and that human emotions evolved from the same mechanisms,”(Panksepp, J. (1982). "Toward a general psychobiological theory of emotions”.) but is it fair to assume that animals have same feelings and way of thinking as we do, while admitting countless differences between us and them? From my understanding, I don't think this assumption is valid. Take pain as an example: we human regard pain as an obstacle on way to “happy life”, so we justify everything we do could console suffering animals but ignore to contemplate whether animals need our help. During the evolution, animals including early human beings developed pain, a signal warning for damage and a cue to survival. Later then human beings’ rapid development stayed ahead of those of all other species, starting to discriminate us from other animals. With time passing, such discrepancy grew larger and larger. By cooperations, human being acts as a unity and created societies, where mature food chains and comprehensive medical system gradually developed. The more concretely our society develops, the less we depend on pain as a tool for survival.

Both in and out of philosophical circle, animals have traditionally been seen as significantly different from, and inferior to, humans because they lacked a certain intangible quality – reason, moral agency, or consciousness – that made them moral agents. Recently however, society has patently begun to move beyond this strong anthropocentric notion and has begun to reach for a more adequate set of moral categories for guiding, assessing and constraining our treatment of other animals. As a growing proportion of the populations in western countries adopts the general position of animal liberation, more and more philosophers are beginning to agree that sentient creatures are of a direct moral concern to humans, though the degree of this

Research by Yamamoto, Humle and Tanaka in 2009 concluded that chimpanzees show altruism only when prompted or pressured rather than voluntarily [5]. This particular empirical research challenges the evidence proposed by prior researchers and tests the limits of chimpanzee’s altruistic nature. Using colour-coded tokens, one of which allowed for a partner to share the reward with the test subject and one of which gave the test subject all of the reward, several chimps were tested as to their response. Results showed a tendency for the chimpanzee to take the prosocial option in situations both with and without peer pressure. Abnormally results showed that pressure or harassment from partners reduced the chimpanzee’s inclination to take the prosocial option. Although these results challenge prior research [5] they are limited as they are not conclusive and raise questions of their own to reach a complete understanding. These research results are significant in challenging an already established understanding of chimpanzee’s altruistic traits and acts as a good contrast to other references. This resource stands out as it does not make conclusive statements out of abnormal results but rather opens up a reader’s opinion and presents issues further

And this is a big concern to many people who are interested in justice and equity and not many people have accepted or allowed themselves that animals also have moral standings with us, humans. To many people, this is embarrassing and cannot take that

Frans de Waal begins his argument by first stating the question as to whether or not a human’s moral actions originated from the psychological and behavioral nature of our evolutionary ancestors. He concludes this thought by saying that our moral actions do, in fact, originate from the psychological and behavioral nature of our evolutionary ancestors. De Waal further argues that the foundations of human morals are found in the primates of today. They are composed of actions and emotions whose evolutionary role assists us in our social organization and unity. In the beginning pages of his book, De Waal