On 12/04/2010, 4.49 PM, Horse wrote to Mark:
Rape and murder are defined at the social and/or intellectual level
and refer to specific acts of a biological nature. Just because animals
don't have concepts of rape and murder when they have sex and
kill doesn't mean that certain acts of sex and killing by humans are
not rape or murder. ,,,
[Mark responds]:
My point is that rape and murder do not exist at the biological level,
they are social constructs. Let's take the animal world for example
(bacteria are a little more difficult). There is no rape or murder at
this level unless we want to anthropomorphize it. As such, the biological
level is not predisposed to rape and murder, the social
level is. This is an important distinction. Each level creates it's own
reality.
I think Mark's assessment of morality as "a social construct" is correct.
What human behavior is not an "act of a biological nature"? Cannibalism is
a biological act. Robbing a bank is a biological act. Even legislating
laws against rape and murder is a biological act. I fail to see how
compartmentalizing human activity into "biological", "social" and
"intellectual" levels makes the result more or less moral than the act
itself. Society is the adjudicator of morality, and society is a collection
of like-minded human beings. Animals collect into flocks, packs, gaggles,
herds, hives, etc., not law-abiding "societies"; so animals do not have
morality other than what is instinctual for the preservation of the species.
Now, one can argue that the urge to copulate has a biological basis, as does
the need to satisfy hunger by eating, whereas the desire to rob a bank is
motivated by monetary greed and thus is more "intellectual in nature". But
this does not affect the morality of the act perpetrated as adjudged by
society. The concept of a universal moral standard to which evolution
subscribes has no empirical or metaphysical basis. If it did, neither
nature nor mankind would exhibit "immorality", and we would not be having
this discussion.
In my opinion,
Ham
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