[MD] Stuck on a Torn Slot

[Ham Priday]

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