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Rudy Garns

Is there wisdom in disgust? - moral psychology - 0 views

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    Dan Jones writes an interesting essay in a recent issue of Science (PDF here) on how work in evolutionary theory, moral philosophy, and neuroscience casts doubt on the idea that disgust embodies a deep-seated wisdom. Instead it provides an emerging portrait of an evolutionarily constrained emotion that is a poor guide to ethical action. (Deric Bownds' MindBlog)
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Online editing services - 0 views

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    Welcome to Manuscriptedit.com, your online partner for English language editing, proofreading, medical writing, formatting, design & development and publication support services. We offer a comprehensive manuscript editing service before its submission for publication as well as after acceptance by the peer review process.
Rudy Garns

Scientist Finds the Beginnings of Morality in Primate Behavior - New York Times - 0 views

  • Marc Hauser, an evolutionary biologist at Harvard, proposed in his book “Moral Minds” that the brain has a genetically shaped mechanism for acquiring moral rules, a universal moral grammar similar to the neural machinery for learning language.
  • Frans de Waal defends against philosopher critics his view that the roots of morality can be seen in the social behavior of monkeys and apes.
  • human morality would be impossible without certain emotional building blocks that are clearly at work in chimp and monkey societies
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  • other chimpanzees would console the loser.
  • Social living requires empathy
  • reconciliation
  • human morality may be severely limited by having evolved as a way of banding together against adversaries, with moral restraints being observed only toward the in group, not toward outsiders.
  • eciprocity and fairness
  • Chimps are more likely to share food with those who have groomed them.
  • These four kinds of behavior — empathy, the ability to learn and follow social rules, reciprocity and peacemaking — are the basis of sociality.
  • People enforce their society’s moral codes much more rigorously with rewards, punishments and reputation building. They also apply a degree of judgment and reason, for which there are no parallels in animals.
  • Capuchin monkeys show their displeasure if given a smaller reward than a partner receives for performing the same task
  • reason is generally brought to bear only after a moral decision has been reached
  • Morality, he writes, is “a sense of right and wrong that is born out of groupwide systems of conflict management based on shared values.” The building blocks of morality are not nice or good behaviors but rather mental and social capacities for constructing societies “in which shared values constrain individual behavior through a system of approval and disapproval.”
  • Some animals are surprisingly sensitive to the plight of others.
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