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Hey gang,

Sorry I couldn’t make it to lecture this past week, but it looks like you guys had a really interesting discussion. I will try and pick up on some points that seem to have come up in class.

Being a linguistics minor, the thought of a universal language is an intriguing one, and I think Andrea’s point about the idea of a universal grammar of morality. Maybe it’s just me, but it seems like a universal grammar for language is easier to comprehend than one for morality since morals are a very personal thing and language is something learned. Of course, there are social and situational effects on one’s morals, and they are absolutely not static, but it still seems that ones morals are formed independently of a set “grammar” and are highly dependent on social situations. Language, on the other hand, seems to have more rules and is less flexible with how one learns.

I think it’s also important to differentiate between morals and altruistic behaviors. Rebecca’s post mentioned that chimps have been shown to adopt social rules, but does this mean they are moral beings? To me, having morals means having the ability to show remorse for going against those morals, but also being able to articulate (not literally) what your morals are. I don’t mean to say that because chimps can’t verbalize (to us, anyway) that they think cannibalism is bad, but more along the lines of being aware that they think it’s bad…bad for them personally and bad for society. Altruism, on the other hand, seems more like, I’m doing this but it’s not that I’m doing it because I feel bad if I don’t, but because I know something will go wrong if I don’t. I'm not saying that animals are incapable of morality, in fact I dont think that's something we can determine. But in discussing the topic, we should clearly define morality and altruism.