ASEBL Journal – Volume 11 Issue 1, January 2015
29. Panksepp, J. (1998) Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions, Oxford University Press.
30. When I talk about “life” here, I recognize that it is not a singular entity with conscious desires. Looking at the specifics of life though, I believe we can generalize this larger rule. I
think we can look at a sunflower and say that it “wants” to face the sun. Does it have agency
and free will to do so? Most probably not. But there are those who say we humans don’t have
agency and free will either, yet we still use the word "want" for our motives. To me, the word
"want" does not imply agency, it just implies a chemical / emotional pull. Objectively speaking, we see that living things act to remain alive. We therefore say they "want" to remain alive,
even if they are not aware of that fact themselves, and the "wants" are hard coded in their
genes.
31. As Sam Harris pointed out in The Moral Landscape (2010), non-biological objects don’t
enter into our area for moral concern. Can I break this rock? You can, as long as it doesn’t disturb any forms of life. Can I eat this carrot? You might not want to if it were the last carrot on
earth, because life is currently impossible to recreate once it’s gone, unlike a rock or gas that
can be reproduced using physical or chemical processes. This is another example that points to
the link between biology and morals.
32. As listed in Curry, O. (2006) p. 236, these traits have been detailed in many studies, including the following: Aureli, F., and de Waal, F. B. M. (Eds.) (2000) Natural conflict resolution,
University of California Press; Axelrod, R. (1984) The Evolution of Cooperation, Basic Books;
Clutton-Brock, T. H., and Parker, G. A. (1995) Punishment in animal societies, Nature, 373,
209-216; Crespi, B. J. (2001) The evolution of social behaviour in microorganisms, Trends in
Ecology and Evolution, 16(4), pp. 178-183; de Waal, F. (1996) Good Natured: The origins of
right and wrong in humans and other animals, Harvard University Press; Hamilton, W. D.
(1964) The genetical evolution of social behaviour, Journal of Theoretical Biology, 7, pp. 116, 17-52; Hamilton, W. D. (1971) Geometry for the Selfish Herd, Journal of Theoretical Biology, 31, pp. 295-311; Harcourt, A., and de Waal, F. B. M. (Eds.) (1992) Coalitions and Alliances in Humans and Other Animals, Oxford University Press; Hepper, P. G. (Ed.) (1991) Kin
Recognition, Cambridge University Press; Johnstone, R. A. (1998) Game theory and communication, in L. A. Dugatkin and H. K. Reeve (Eds.), Game Theory and Animal Behavior, Oxford University Press pp. 94-117; Kummer, H., and Cords, M. (1991) Cues of ownership in
long-tailed macaques, Macaca fascicularis, Animal Behaviour, 42, pp. 529-549; Maynard
Smith, J., and Price, G. R. (1973) The logic of animal conflict, Nature, 246, pp. 15-18; Trivers,
R. L. (1971) The evolution of reciprocal altruism, Quarterly Review of Biology, 46, pp. 35-57;
Zahavi, A., and Zahavi, A. (1997) The Handicap Principle: A missing piece of Darwin’s puzzle. Oxford University Press.
33. Taleb, N. (2010) The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, 2nd Ed., Random
House.
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