The Paragon of Animals
Dialogs May 31st, 2007He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man Samuel Johnson
I am going to argue that we share many characteristics with primates and if we try to understand ethics in humans, we should consider if it would apply to our (distant) cousins.
Humans share a common ancestor with various other primates*. Our genetic design is 99% shared with the chimpanzee genome and 97% with the rhesus monkey. Our brains are relatively large compared to our body size, especially compared to other primates. I don’t mean to imply that a human has a directly scaled design from our common primate common ancestor (we don’t), but it has many similarities.
You have made your way from worm to human, and much in you is still worm. Once you were apes, and even now a human is still more ape than any ape. NSZ, Nietzsche
Our common ancestor with primates live around 85 (or 65?) million years ago. Humans seem to have be around for 100,000 years. We are distant cousins in a literal sense from all primates. (In fact we are probably related to all living things! but that is a broader topic.) A thought experiment which was proposed by someone but annoyingly I can’t locate the source (Dawkins?) went: Imagine if a species between us and Chimpanzee survived? Perhaps a tribe of Neandertals was discovered… What then? Would they be given human (homo sapien) rights?
Many ethics systems have the rule “do not kill” (Exodus 20:12, Quran 5:32). But where do we draw the species line? On 4th cousins perhaps? 
There is often no guidelines. Should we draw it at the species line?
Most textbooks define a species as all the individual organisms of a natural population that generally interbreed at maturity in the wild and whose interbreeding produces fertile offspring Wikipedia
The definition of species (which is itself a complex matter) would seem to be an arbitrary standard! The rule could be restated as “do not kill any creature that can interbreed with you”. Nice I think we do need a point we can kill things for food (I am personally an omnivore) but I hope to highlight this ambiguity. (Animal murder is touched upon in the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?)
Looking at our behavior, we have many behaviors in common and additional skills primates can learn from humans. Examples:
Currency, Gambling, Prostitution(!)
Spoken Language (Listening and limited speaking), Sign language
Altruism, tendancy for social conformity, capacity for self-awareness, tool use (or was that just a movie?! lol no it’s real).
(In one study, there was evidence found that even fruit flies have free will – which I find slightly questionable since we cannot say if free will exists!)
Humans do have more mental functions in some areas than other primates. Large brains can handle increased social group sizes which some think is the driving factor for big brains. Arguably, we have a complex culture with highly abstract concepts. We have language with lots of words. (which I am beginning to think is non-central to ethics/truth/good/evil.. more on this when I can develop the idea – if I dare) We have philosophy, which other animals don’t seem to have(?).
A thought popped into my head: if anyone thinks a chimp is not developed enough to understand truth, ethics, culture – can they provide evidence that humans have a significant advantage over a chimp to grasp these things?….. I don’t think so Is understanding linear with “brain size”?
Remember, there is no reason to think we have stopped evolving. Incidentally, it is sometimes addressed in sci-fi (2001, B5, X-Men). Wacky Nietzsche embraces this and declares it “the meaning of the earth” – although he was focusing on ethical evolution not eugenics. In some ways, we are taking the reins of evolution with use of medicine (which alters evolutionary pressure) and offspring genetic screening.
What is the ape to a man? A laughing-stock, a thing of shame. And just so shall a man be to the Superman: a laughing-stock, a thing of shame. NSZ, Nietzsche
To sum up I ask:
1) Does ethics apply to chimps as well as us? Are they moral beings with good actions and evil actions?
2) Can we kill other animals who are all in fact literally our cousins? (Do I have to become a vegetarian – or are they distant relatives? *checks science book* D’oh! looks like we murdered that carrot!)
3) Does our brain development over other primates give us a significantly improved understanding of anything?
4) What will replace homo sapien? What will our species be condemned for?
*Note: this discussion assumes we have descended from a common single celled ancestor. The mechanism (often thought of as natural selection by Darwinists) is not necessarily assumed.
May 31st, 2007 at 11:46 am
My posting reminds me of: “Listen up, maggots. You are not special. You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake. You’re the same decaying organic matter as everything else.” Tyler Durden, Fight Club
May 31st, 2007 at 7:49 pm
nice post, much to think about, in the spirit of previous dialogs will provide a response on just one single issue. I guess as an ethicist the best place to start for me will be your first question.
My brief (tongue in cheek) responses to your questions goes like this:
1) Chimps can benefit from a human posited ethic (simian rights) but until they can prove their ability to understand human ethics (beyond simple reward and pain avoidance motivation) they are not obliged to follow human ethics. Any chimp ethic quite probably exists within chimp culture and is probably concerned with social taboo.
2) We can kill anything, but ought we? ‘Thou shalt not kill’ is a misquote. The term should be murder/kill without authority. An anthrocentric philosophy/belief that promotes humanity above the other species could justify killing of our ‘relatives’ on the authority clause. But could also reject killing by invoking the ‘stewardship’ clause. Interesting note, industrial pollution and high toxic emissions all followed the development of capitalism, they did not precede it. A materialistic philosophy and ethic could (would!) evaluate species by their ‘value’ in capital accumulation and could contentedly for example wipe out the Borneo rainforest and destroy the Orangutan habitat. The same materialistic philosophy could also argue against the existence of the soul, describe humans as being animals, and justify primate killing as a survival of the fittest motive.
Buddhism alternatively rejects all killing, as all species are interconnected, and more importantly the next fly you swat could be the karmic reincarnation of one of your ancestors, and killing one of them will not look good on your karmic c.v.
3) To answer this question we need to ask other species… no answer, ok then I guess we then need to try to understand their communications, they obviously are in possession of sense data, they obviously have the mental faculty to understand and respond to sense data but can they deal with theoretical concepts (minus sense data) or anticipate possible responses to impending and unexpected sense data?
4) 2 questions really. What will replace us? hmmm there is talk of a split with some humans evolving and others regressing (who knows). I like the idea of Teilhard de Chardin’s that the focal point for our evolution is the Omega Point.
What will our species be condemned for? Alas a relative question, if our successors have evolved they would probably condemn our species for quite a lot. Or maybe they would just excuse us with a ‘well they were animals’ condescention. If we persist in threatening the environment the earth may not live long enough to allow for another species to evolve that would be able to condemn us.
My own opinion, our intellectual arrogance in every field of knowledge, from creationists to evolutionists, none of us ever like to think we might be wrong.
May 31st, 2007 at 7:52 pm
Thats not my full response to the dialog, I will post tommorow on your first question.
Once again excellent post.
May 31st, 2007 at 10:27 pm
Just a quick come back on your comment. You stated: “‘Thou shalt not kill’ is a misquote.” I am slightly confused – that _is_ one of the ten commandments! Do you mean there is additional context in Exodus, or its a mis-translation?
By the way, it’s restated in Matthew 19:18.
AC1
June 1st, 2007 at 7:18 am
And since you are going to follow up with a full response, you mentioned “but until they can prove their ability to understand human ethics … they are not obliged to follow human ethics”. The point I was trying to make was in the most important aspects of human ethics, chimp ethics is the same. Perhaps some counter examples?
AC1
June 1st, 2007 at 6:02 pm
On second thoughts, lets not quibble over Bible references. It is too off topic and I think we would better spend time on the topic I raised.
(I am still interested in “thou shalt not kill” but I don’t want to get side tracked. Perhaps answer it in a comment only?)
AC1
June 1st, 2007 at 7:16 pm
Regarding Chimp ethics and Human ethics in my post (tommorow hopefully) I will point out certain of the compatible similarities between the two. The point that I will be making is that despite similarities chimp ethics and human ethics have evolved seperately from their common source. And inter-species ethics is a nice idea but falls at quite a few fences.
For the bible quotation, re-read what I say as meaning that the English translation is unsatisfactory.
The hebrew word used can be variably translated. When translated into Latin as non occides it was subsequently retranslated in the vulgate languages as kill. The correct term is thou shat not kill without authority.
Killing in self defence for example is perfectly acceptable, as are situations where God has given permission (so to speak) to kill (i.e. Samson and the Philistines). The difference becomes important to ethics, much the same way that the philosophical understanding of chaos is somewhat different from the Scientific definition.
June 1st, 2007 at 7:17 pm
By the by, my response on animal/human ethics raises some interesting questions and problems, which conveniently I think also add to our discussions concerning alien philosophy.
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