Dina asked:

Is there morality among the animal kingdom?

Do animals have morals?

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Roger Scruton says in Animals Rights and Wrongsthat animals don't have morals in the sense that
we have in that they don't belong to our moral community. We invite pets into our moral community,
treating them as humans, but they can't reciprocate. For sure, animals don't recognise duty and
principle, they don't feel remorse nor (though I'm not so sure about this one) empathy. We treat our
pets like persons who have rights, requirements and needs, but they don't treat us like that. On the
other hand, I think that we love and honour our pets, and they do reciprocate in this respect. But this
is just pets, not animals in general.

The question is, what is fundamental to morality? It could be belonging to a community with a code of
behaviour which would mean all animals have a moral code (albeit not explicitly known to them
perhaps), or the foundation to morality could be love and honour, and in this case pets might be said
to have a basic ethical attitude as well as a code of behaviour proper to their species.

The philosopher, Martin Buber (Between Man and Man) believed that the ethical relation, which he
called the "I-Thou" relation could be entered to with all animals, and not just pets. He claimed to have
entered into an I-Thou relation with a horse, recognising the otherness of the horse and feeling the
horses's approval as he let Buber approach to stroke his mane. Buber also felt in the glance of a cat
"the language of anxiety". He said "the eyes of an animal have the capacity of a great language".
Communication with animals, the recognition of their approval or anxiety is a reason for us to treat
them morally and it is not just a matter of sentimentality about pets. That this communication exists
indicates to me that were greater communication possible, i.e. greater understanding on the part of
the animal of the nature of humans, we might expect a developed ethical attitude of concern to
develop. But for sure we can say that animals do have the fundamental capacity for the ethical
attitude towards humans.

A lot of animals care about one another, feeding their young, sticking together in packs, sleeping
together for comfort, licking one another's wounds. If the attitude of the mother and the healer, and
the ability to live communally indicate a moral kingdom, then yes, in this other sense there is morality
within the animal kingdom.

Rachel Browne

What is the meaning of "morals"? What makes the difference between moral and im-moral? Since
animals cannot see that difference (why?), their behavior cannot be "moral" — and by the same
argument cannot be "im-moral" either. Do babies have "morals"? Do madmen have? In the Middle
Ages even an animal could be sentenced for "false behaviour", since it had violated the order of God
and nature. But even this we would not call "im-moral" but "im-proper" behaviour in an objective
sense. The dragon has to be slain even if he is only displaying his nature as a dragon and could not
be in any way "im-moral". Some people look upon mass murderers or upon people raping children as
upon dragons or beasts to be slain.

To be moral means to have options to behave this way or that and to be able to justify your choice by
some "moral" value you adhere to. So if a child decides to have the lolly offered to him because it
tastes sweet, this is no moral decision, but if it deliberates to steal the lolly from a shelf or from
another child then it is. The first is only a "preference" by taste, the second is a (false) preference by
moral standards. But a standard is something somebody holds it to be. So who is "somebody" in this
case? That is "the moral community" or your own conscience, which is in part (not all!) a copy of the
former. Your conscience is not completely a copy of the standards of "the moral community", since
you may (and should) have your own thoughts on some values. Rebels are rebels because they do
not conform in some important points to the standards of the moral community they live in.
Sometimes — as in the cases of Socrates and Jesus and Antigone and Morus and Bonhoeffer and
many more — this is good for the moral community, but often — as in the case of a murderer or a liar
or a thief — it is not.

There is some sort of "moral intelligence". Little children think "bad is everything forbidden" or "good
is what mom and dad said". Later on they learn that mom and dad may be wrong by thinking or by
doing. And still later on they may be thinking that even the teacher and the priest and the Prime
Minister may be wrong by thinking or by doing. But look up Lawrence Kohlberg on this. Kohlberg was
a pupil of the child-psychologist Piaget of Geneva, Switzerland. Kohlberg is famous for his theory of
"Six stages of moral development". You get at all relevant information on the life and theory of
Kohlberg in the Kohlberg Tutorial

Hubertus Fremerey

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