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Animals and Morality
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 May 2010
Extract
Somewhere in Africa or Asia a band of unusual apes leaves the safety of the trees in the early morning light and stealthily approaches a grassland waterhole. A wounded antelope is sighted and the males, approaching quietly from all sides, spring to action. The thrashing animal is quickly subdued with rocks and clubs. Chunks of meat are ripped from the carcass and the band quickly retreats to the forest. All eat well and they multiply. The weapon using primate had arrived – the ancestor of homo sapiens.
The above scenario depicts what some of the best evidence of biology and anthropology suggests concerning the origin of man. The evolutionary forerunners of homo sapiens probably diverged from primitive ape stock in becoming co-operative, systematic carniverous users of weapons. Perhaps modern man would not have evolved had it not been for this development, and the most highly evolved primate of the modern age would have been arboreal, primarily vegetarian apes.
- Type
- Articles
- Information
- Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 17 , Issue 4 , December 1978 , pp. 683 - 695
- Copyright
- Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1978
References
NOTES
1 Hereafter, I shall misuse ‘animal’ as synonymous to ‘non-human animal’.
2 Animal Liberation, N.Y. Review, Random House, N.Y., 1975Google Scholar.
3 Victims of Science, Davis-Poynter, London, 1975Google Scholar.
4 Articles found in the Reagan/Singer volume will be noted in brackets with the page number(s)-e.g., (R/S:102).
5 See also Morris, Desmond, The Biology of Art, Alfred Knopf, N.Y., 1962Google Scholar.
6 Wilson and many geneticists explain the occurence of such traits as being genetically determined. This has led to enormous difficulties for genetics, giving use to the theory of group selection; the problem being that altruism often is disadvantageous, from a reproductive point of view, to individuals who exhibit it. The question arises why no attempt has been made to explain these human traits similarly.
7 Ethical Theory, Prentice-Hall, N.J., 1959, pp. 102–3Google Scholar.
8 Hopi Ethics: A Theoretical Analysis. (Univ. of Chicago Press, 1954)Google Scholar
9 Tooley, Michael, “A Defence of Abortion and Infanticide” in The Problem of Abortion, ed. Feinberg, J.. Wadsworth, Calif. 1973Google Scholar.
10 The Moral Argument for Christian Theism, George Allen & Unwin Ltd., London, 1965Google Scholar.
11 A System of Ethics, trans. Gutermann, N., Yale Univ. Press, 1956Google Scholar.
12 Tooley, op. cit., p. 60.