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To: Dark Mirage
Will an unsocialized human be moral?

I'm not sure I understand the question. Are you asking if such a person will act in morally and ethically acceptable ways, or are you asking if such a person will have moral capacity? By 'unsocialized' do you mean a person who has not had contact with other human beings? Is there such a person anywhere? If there were, it would show, not that the person did not have a moral nature, but only that his moral capacity had been stunted by some abnormal circumstance. In fact, if a moral nature were not part of what it means to to be a human person, there would be no way to tell if our hypothetical man were in an 'abnormal' circumstance in the first place. It couldn't be considered 'abnormal'. It would just be 'different'. Where there is no standard there can be no measure of failure. You cannot derive an 'ought' from an 'is'.

We have a dog that acts just like your cat. I would judge the appearance of guilt to be just that - an appearance. Our dog and your cat are ammoral creatures that are simply responding to our conditioning, and are not acting out of a sense of moral obligation the way you or I do.

Cordially,

602 posted on 07/18/2002 11:54:23 AM PDT by Diamond
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To: Diamond
If there were, it would show, not that the person did not have a moral nature, but only that his moral capacity had been stunted by some abnormal circumstance.

This would be very hard to contemplate, or theorize about, since there either *is* or *is not* an innate moral capacity in human beings. Also that moral capacity is corrupted to differing degrees from human to human. If there is a universal moral code imprinted on each human heart, there is no way to demonstrate otherwise. You can look at society however and note the effects of continued degradation of conscience (a natural outflowing of moral capacity.). You can look at animals who can watch the male of their species kill their babies and within a week be begging for that male to impregnate them (lions). You would be hard pressed to find that as universally true among humans as it is in animals. This kind of thing would be very hard to quantify, and likely you could make a study say whatever you wanted it to.

675 posted on 07/20/2002 5:50:19 PM PDT by Terriergal
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To: Diamond
I'm not sure that last post was very clear. Let me know if it doesn't make sense, or if you have any ways I could have better expressed it.
676 posted on 07/20/2002 5:51:51 PM PDT by Terriergal
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