Was the Golden Rule Born in the Mind of a Monkey?

[Chris]

Now I don't buy it but Was the Golden Rule Born in the Mind of a Monkey? proposes the view that morality/ethics is biological/evolutionary. Do watch the video because it is hilarious!

Frans de Waal says that his research with primates shows that “instead of fairness and justice being intellectual products, something we have arrived at through reason, they are embedded in basic emotions, some of which are found in other primates,” possibly through a shared evolutionary history. “This is basically the [Occupy] Wall Street protest that you see here,” de Waal says at the end of the video clip. If his point about fairness is right, then arguments about inequality take on a biological imperative—greater equality can be seen as the “natural order” of things, and inequality as an inherently destructive force. As de Waal himself has argued in his The Age of Empathy, our capacity for building a stable society rests in part on knowing what kind of animals we humans are.

I don't buy it because I think it's a projection of human thinking onto animals much the same as you can read about some prehistoric tribal behavior and project communism or capitalism on it.

[carolina73]

LOL. That monkey was not happy.

[RMNIXON]

More of B F Skinners "Behaviorism" BS and he also did a lot with Monkey's.

This is also a way to deny you have Free Will (The Foundation of Liberty). To claim your a product of "Conditioning" and therefore "Society" has a right to condition your behavior.

[Chris]

More of B F Skinners "Behaviorism" BS and he also did a lot with Monkey's.

This is also a way to deny you have Free Will (The Foundation of Liberty). To claim your a product of "Conditioning" and therefore "Society" has a right to condition your behavior.

Indeed, what is liberty without the free will to choose, and to constrain yourself.

[Peter1469]

Funny. I would just say the cucumber monkey wanted the different thing his buddy was getting.


I wouldn't read anything more into it.

[Standing Wolf]

.... I don't buy it because I think it's a projection of human thinking onto animals much the same as you can read about some prehistoric tribal behavior and project communism or capitalism on it.

Perhaps concepts like communism or capitalism can be expressed in simpler ways than we're used to - that they don't necessarily have to be excessively complex or dressed up in a lot of extraneous, nonessential institutional structures.

[jet57]

Now I don't buy it but Was the Golden Rule Born in the Mind of a Monkey? proposes the view that morality/ethics is biological/evolutionary. Do watch the video because it is hilarious!






I don't buy it because I think it's a projection of human thinking onto animals much the same as you can read about some prehistoric tribal behavior and project communism or capitalism on it.

It’s simply a demonstration of equal pay for equal work. Fairness is socially embedded in us as a true measure of right and wrong as is empathy.

[Chris]

Perhaps concepts like communism or capitalism can be expressed in simpler ways than we're used to - that they don't necessarily have to be excessively complex or dressed up in a lot of extraneous, nonessential institutional structures.

But they weren't until Marx came along.

[Chris]

Funny. I would just say the cucumber monkey wanted the different thing his buddy was getting.


I wouldn't read anything more into it.

Right, he wanted the damned grape, not the stinking cucumber.

Really don't see how that can be stretched to the golden rule.

[Chris]

It’s simply a demonstration of equal pay for equal work. Fairness is socially embedded in us as a true measure of right and wrong as is empathy.

Perhaps but that's not the golden rule nor has it anything to do with morality.