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Originally Posted by batair
Im not so sure i was just wondering what your take was. It seem just form looking at other animals the ones who have a higher level of consciousness also have the ability to know right form wrong on some level. I can train a dog to obey or disobey sometimes even against its nature like putting food in front of it and having the dog not eat it until i give the ok, but i cant do that with an ant.
I think consciousness is necessary for morality, I don't think morality is necessary for consciousness though. I'm not convinced animals can act morally - I've heard the claim put before, but havent seen any really compelling evidence.
In my opininon consciousness requires being self-aware (to some level) - morality requires another quantum leap (also in my uninformed opinion) namely that of considering others to have that same sort of existence as you've identified for yourself. I think it's possible to be self-aware without making the next step (perhaps there are some psychopaths like this, I don't know) so I think it's possible to be conscious and sentient but have no knowledge of right and wrong.
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Also good and bad right and wrong aren't just moral terms. That ability helps to keep you from touching a hot stove. It helps you decided who to date. It helps you judge all kinds of things about your world. It just doesn't seem like we would be close to what we are without that ability to judge good bad right wrong.
Well I was restricting the words to be moral terms. It's true people may say "it's not right" to date him without intending it to be a moral statement. I think Big Erf was talking about specifically in a moral sense though and that's certainly how I answered. I take your point that, if I was incapable of distinguishing between different possible worlds and choosing a preferred one (or similar) then I'd be a far cry from who I am now though.
Nonetheless, I don't object to identifying the two possible versions of "me" - if you don't allow such identity you end up making ludicrous linguistic constructions to try to account for sentences like "I had eggs for breakfast" which seems counterproductive.