PHLB02H3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Environmental Ethics, Incorporeality, Sphex
Document Summary
So you could explain everything animals do without invoking incorporeal soul: incorporeal soul: use of language, engage in flexible behaviour based on knowledge. You need incorporeal soul to engage in feelings of suffering, experiences, etc. Hence, since an animal doesn"t have incorporeal soul we can do anything we want to it: fix sentence : act from knowledge not languuage, only human beings have incorporeal souls not animals, problems with his argument: 4 categories of distinction: culture, general intelligence, language, ultra-sociality/morality. He"s going to argue against all of the questions he posed on this slide. Sphex wasp: he digs a hole, then he finds a cricket and paralyzes, takes it into the hole and makes sure it"s okay, when he"s done checking his hole he takes it to the hole. Behaviour of wasp lines up with descartes about animals not acting from knowledge. Wasp doesn"t have the knowledge to come up with new ways of doing things.
