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1) There was nothing in the clip about "morality."
2) The clip was about perceived "preference." - Preference for the "helpful character," says nothing about the baby's own character . . . since most of the babies preferred the "helpful characters," the way you framed the discussion, there could never be any "bad" or unhelpful or immoral people in the world.
The studies are interesting but you can't conclude anything about "morality" from this experiment (I could even say that in each example we saw, the person held the "helpful" character in their left hand, to the right of the baby - and seemed to push it forward a little bit (if even unconsciously, that could be a cue to the baby to reach for or look at a certain character) . . .
A growing body of evidence, though, suggests that humans do have a rudimentary moral sense from the very start of life. With the help of well-designed experiments, you can see glimmers of moral thought, moral judgment and moral feeling even in the first year of life. Some sense of good and evil seems to be bred in the bone. Which is not to say that parents are wrong to concern themselves with moral development or that their interactions with their children are a waste of time. Socialization is critically important. But this is not because babies and young children lack a sense of right and wrong; it’s because the sense of right and wrong that they naturally possess diverges in important ways from what we adults would want it to be.
The last sentence from the portion you quoted:
"it’s because the sense of right and wrong that they naturally possess diverges in important ways from what we adults would want it to be."
What exactly does that mean? It makes no sense, what-so-ever.
If this is the logic used in these studies, it has to make you wonder.
The last sentence from the portion you quoted:
"it’s because the sense of right and wrong that they naturally possess diverges in important ways from what we adults would want it to be."
What exactly does that mean? It makes no sense, what-so-ever.
If this is the logic used in these studies, it has to make you wonder.
From the article, there appears to be evidence, for example, that babies prefer their own race and expect others who share their tastes to be nicer than those that do not share these tastes. One year olds prefer people who speak their language rather than other languages. The studies also show that when children are segregated into groups on the basis of totally random things like the color of the t-shirts they are wearing, they are likely to favor their own groups.
So this is why they say that babies have a rudimentary morality, but not the morality that adults wish to teach and this is why teaching morality is as important as the traits that the psychologists observed in very young infants. It would appear that morality is a combination of rudimentary biological traits and consistent cultural teachings.
Quote:
The notion at the core of any mature morality is that of impartiality. If you are asked to justify your actions, and you say, “Because I wanted to,” this is just an expression of selfish desire. But explanations like “It was my turn” or “It’s my fair share” are potentially moral, because they imply that anyone else in the same situation could have done the same. This is the sort of argument that could be convincing to a neutral observer and is at the foundation of standards of justice and law. The philosopher Peter Singer has pointed out that this notion of impartiality can be found in religious and philosophical systems of morality, from the golden rule in Christianity to the teachings of Confucius to the political philosopher John Rawls’s landmark theory of justice. This is an insight that emerges within communities of intelligent, deliberating and negotiating beings, and it can override our parochial impulses.
It's interesting watching a 2 1/2 year old with his now crawling 7 month old brother.
The 2 1/2 year old was always allowed to get into kitchen drawers and throw items around all over the floor, but now that the baby is doing it, the 2 year old will say he's bad and try to stop him.
Kids certainly have an innate idea of property rights and ownership. Even toys long ago abandoned by the 2 year old cannot be touched by the baby, the baby can only play with his own toys except when the 2 year decides it's okay to share.
I would think humans have some innate sense of morality because you see it in animals, a mother horse will discipline a rowdy colt, a mother dog will discipline pups, as well as any older dog who will put them in their place.
There are also genes linked to compassion or levels of compassion, so it's not surprising that our morality starts from the get go. It's a part of our physiology.
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