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Tim_Tyler comments on When Anthropomorphism Became Stupid - Less Wrong
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Right, but dogs know right from wrong, even if they don't have something akin to language. Much as they can catch a ball - even though they don't know how to solve the differential equations that describe the ball's arc.
Dogs have pretty complex social lives - as a result of their pack-hunting ancestry. This no doubt came in useful when it came to their more recent symbiosis with humans.
Yeah, agreed. Human morality is a very complicated thing, but it does seem like at least some parts of the circuitry we use for moral thinking does exist in other animals, like dogs. For example, dogs are so trainable because they're very good at learning that certain types of behavior are "bad" and they will be punished for them. They can even extrapolate (the dog knows he was yelled at for behavior X, so he knows he probably shouldn't do similar behavior Y either). It's not a fully developed form of moral reasoning, but there certainly is a similar mechanism in place in human children as their parents teach them "right from wrong."