Good and Evil

[bennyboy]

I think you have given up the game right there.  Yes, people have feelings, but feelings are not knowledge.

Sure they are. Feelings are the experience of a state mediation between evolved motivations of a species and the environment. Positive and negative affect are literally expressions of our innate sense of good and evil.

 For example, almost every child is upset when other children are shown favor.  This quality is so common among people that I'd say it's a priori on a species level, i.e. that humans evolved ALREADY having the sense that seeing a sibling favored is evil.  There are other ideas which I'd say have been intrinsic to the species since before it evolved: love of family, fear of death, and a sense of biological satisfaction via sex, food, etc.

Many of those desires are shared with quite a range of animals.  What you are describing is more properly called "instinct" than reason.

That's what I said. A priori knowledge isn't "reason." You said that the idea of a priori knowledge was a way to "pretend that one's prejudices are based on reason." But I'm arguing that the a priori knowledge is not based on reason.

We seem to share a sense of fairness with other primates.

But none of this suggests that it is based on reason.  People feel as they do, largely due to evolutionary forces, but their feelings are not knowledge.  If you think about it, social animals need some way of cooperation, some motivating force to get them to cooperate.  Otherwise, it is every man for himself (as it were), and, for many species, that would not promote the survival of the species as well as cooperation does.

As I said, I mostly agreed with what you said, except the idea that people who believe in a priori knowledge are engaged in begging the question. But based on your most previous post, I think you are mostly saying what I'm saying, so debating you would be counterproductive right now.

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There are dozens of documentaries that are intensely blurring the 'line' between animal and human.  A dog that shakes hands again and again until a second one is brought by and fed treats for paw shaking.  A couple of monkeys in a similar situation where one was fed a better treat and the first one threw a temper tantrum.  I was watching a special on the Snub-nosed Monkeys of Shangri La and two babies were born to to separate mothers with one being cared for and the other abandoned.  'Dad' took over the care and other mothers helped to feed the baby.

Totally.  I think non-humans have an instinctive sense of right or wrong.  I'm not sure about fish or bugs, but birds and mammals show many human trains: anger at injustice and a sense of humor, for example.