Re: [asa] Elephant altruism

Heya Iain,

I believe there's other animals who are argued to pass the mirror test, but
the results are controversial (there's even some controversy with
elephants.)

EIther way, I have no doubt that Collins' idea is that the Moral Law is
applicable to humans. But I think if it was discovered that the "Moral Law"
was more broadly applicable - if there were other, particularly
remotely-"related" creatures, for whom there was an awareness of the Moral
Law, his point would not be weakened. It would be strengthened. It would
bolster Collins' musings about the God we're speaking of not being the
(stereotyped) uncaring God of the deists, but the God of the theists - a God
who created our world with a plan, and an intimate one. And it would further
bolster Conway Morris' own aggressive speculations along those lines.
Certainly Collins is allowing for other animals showing some glimmerings of
a moral sense, and noting this does not detract from his point. Nor does
Collins or Lewis, at least in what you quote, indicate that the lack of a
"scientific explanation" is what their views are based on.

Personally, I don't doubt that animals - not just elephants, or particular
apes - have some role and relationship with God, beyond merely being at
man's behest. The same relationship? That I'm tremendously doubtful of - but
then, not every relationship needs to be the same to be valuable.

That said, I'd point out that these examples of altruism are pretty weak in
and of themselves, and are getting by heavily on projection. The example of
the elephant refusing to put the log in the hole, for example, involves a
lot of speculation about what the elephant is thinking - is he refusing to
put the log in the hole because there's a sleeping dog in there, he knows
the log would harm it, and he thinks that would be wrong? Is he simply
confused because there's normally not a dog in the hole? Was he trained to
avoid putting logs in holes if there was someone or something nearby?

Similar goes for the 'self-awareness' test. It's not as if we're able to ask
these creatures what they're thinking of when they look at their reflection
in the mirror - the conclusions come from quite a lot of inference and
guesswork. Self-awareness may not be a staple of the species, and there may
be degrees to it. Or we could just plain be wrong that the mirror-test is
highlighting actual self-awareness, as opposed to operationally similar but
mentally far more cloudy behavior.

It'd be nice to be able to say 'See, altruism and self-awareness is a
reliable end towards which evolution is biased - even these disparate
creatures are part of the trend'. I know some ID proponents and TEs who'd be
overjoyed at that. But we're going to need better evidence, and probably a
better understanding of minds, to get there than this.

On Sun, Nov 29, 2009 at 10:19 AM, Iain Strachan <igd.strachan@gmail.com>wrote:

> I think Collins is fairly big on the idea that the Moral Law is applicable
> (mostly at least) to human beings. He writes (The Language of God, p23):
>
> "As best I can tell, this law appears to apply peculiarly to human beings.
> Though other animals may at times appear to show glimmerings of a moral
> sense, they are certainly not widespread, and in many instances other
> species' behavior seems to be in dramatic contrast to any sense of universal
> rightness. It is the awareness of right and wrong, along with the
> development of language, awareness of self, and the abilitity to imagine the
> futures, to which scientists generally refer when trying to enumerate the
> special qualities of Homo Sapiens".
>
> And later ... (p29)
>
> " .... "Would this be a deist God, who invented physics and mathematics
> and started the universe in motion 14 billion years ago, then wandered off
> to deal with other, more important matters, as Einstein thought? No, this
> God, if I was perceiving Him at all, must be a theist God,* who desires
> some kind of relationship with those special creatures called human beings,
> and has therefore instilled this special glimplse of Himself into each one
> of us.*"
>
> (Emphasis mine).
>
> However, if the observations of Elephant altruism are true and valid, then
> it would appear the same argument applies to them - does God want a
> relationship with elephants, who have also some special glimpse of Himself
> instelled into them?
>
> It is also interesting to note his comment in the first quote about
> "awareness of self". In a recent TV programme given by Marcus du Sautoy
> (Dawkins's successor as prof of Public Understanding of Science in Oxford),
> it was shown how self awareness can be tested by the "mirror
> self-recognition test". In this test you place a child in front of a mirror
> and watch it interact with the image. Then the mother takes the child away,
> and under cover of wiping the child's nose, makes a mark on its cheek.
> Above the age of around 18 months, children become "self-aware" and on
> seeing the image with the mark on the face, immediately touch the mark on
> their own face, implying that they have recognised the image as "me". The
> program made the interesting observation that only three species could pass
> this test, Humans, Orang-utans, and another ape (poss chimpanzee). However
> I have read on another web-site, that elephants too pass this test, and will
> touch a mark painted on them with their trunks when seeing themselves in a
> mirror.
>
> All this leaves me wondering if there is a clear scientific explanation,
> related to self-awareness, that leads to altruistic behaviour, and, if so,
> whether this somewhat weakens Collins's/C.S. Lewis's argument.
>
> Iain
>
>
>
>
> On Sat, Nov 28, 2009 at 4:12 PM, Schwarzwald <schwarzwald@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > Heya Iain,
> >
> > I'm not sure even the presence of such behavior in other animals would
> > affect Collins' argument, since (from what I know of it) it's not totally
> > predicated on human uniqueness, but rather a question of how such would
> come
> > up through an evolutionary process - particularly the evolutionary
> process
> > as commonly described ("Darwinism"). And 'fixing' the evolutionary
> process
> > such that certain traits are likely to show up seems to bolster Conway
> > Morris' own view.
> >
> > That said, the examples seem too grey-area for me. I'd like to know how
> they
> > knew the elephant was trying to rescue the baby rhino (stuck in the mud,
> if
> > I read the same site as you), rather than any other explanation (being
> > curious, mistaking the rhino for a baby elephant, etc). Or how the
> > worker-elephant was refusing to place the log out of concern for the dog,
> > rather than due to some kind of training or general confusion. The
> elephant
> > and the worker with the broken leg seems very interesting, but as with
> the
> > other stories I can't find a site that goes into greater detail - and a
> lot
> > more detail would be needed to take it seriously.
> >
> > Either way, I think it's a win either way for Francis Collins' argument.
> If
> > it's something unique to the human species, then it further bolsters the
> > general uniqueness of humanity. If it's something that seems to pop up in
> > evolutionarily distant species, then it suggests that the moral law is
> > something built into biological development, either as an innate tendency
> or
> > something that is discovered rather than invented.
> >
> > On Sat, Nov 28, 2009 at 10:37 AM, Iain Strachan <igd.strachan@gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> >>
> >> As I recall, Francis Collins in his book "The Language of God" makes
> >> much of the argument for the "moral law" (after C.S. Lewis), in other
> >> words the innate sense of right and wrong that we all seem to have,
> >> which on occasion prompts us to act altruistically - helping others
> >> for no return benefit to ourselves, and often to our own risk. As I
> >> recall he seems to indicate that this is unique to the human species
> >> and is possibly a pointer towards God (though he warns about the "God
> >> of the Gaps" argument).
> >>
> >> However, I've recently been looking at a web-page about "Elephant
> >> Art", and came across a sub page about elephants engaging in behaviour
> >> that seems to be highly altruistic in nature. Googling "Elephant
> >> Altruism" brings up a number of well-known anecdotes (there are
> >> several instances of these being cited). These are, of course only
> >> anecdotal evidence, but would seem to indicate that elephants, at
> >> least act according to the moral law. Some examples:
> >>
> >> (1) An elephant that spent considerable time attempting to rescue a
> >> baby rhinoceros, despite being attacked repeatedly by the mother of
> >> the animal. (Altruism with no personal benefit).
> >> (2) A worker elephant that was assisting in lowering logs into holes.
> >> At one point it refused to lower the log. It was discovered that the
> >> apparent reason for this was that there was a dog trapped in the hole,
> >> and the elephant would not complete the task till after the dog had
> >> been rescued. (Sense of right and wrong?)
> >> (3) A remarkable tale of a herder on a camel that was stampeded by the
> >> matriarch of the elephant herd. He was knocked off and broke his leg.
> >> When he didn't return to base, his colleagues came out to search for
> >> him. When they found him, they also found a female elephant standing
> >> guard over him who had moved away from the herd to look after him.
> >> She had picked up the man with her trunk (according to the account),
> >> and placed him under a shady tree and stood guard, occasionally
> >> touching him gently with her trunk, apparently to soothe and comfort
> >> the man. ( Altruism, compassion, empathy?)
> >>
> >> As I say, these are only anecdotal evidences. But I'm wondering what
> >> folks on the list thought about this kind of thing, and where it
> >> leaves Francis Collins's "Moral Law" argument?
> >>
> >> Iain
> >>
> >> --
> >> -----------
> >> Non timeo sed caveo
> >>
> >> To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
> >> "unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.
> >
> >
>
>
>
> --
> -----------
> Non timeo sed caveo
>
>
>

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Received on Sun Nov 29 10:57:22 2009