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> Makes me wonder if eventually in the future there would be some moral prerogative to somehow tame the natural world That would get at the core of the absolut

> Makes me wonder if eventually in the future there would be some moral prerogative to somehow tame the natural world That would get at the core of the absolute vs relative morality debate and I don't think humanity will ever settle on that. It's far more likely that a "Prime Directive"-like non-interference law comes into effect instead. The natural world is cruel but heavily interdependent; as long as we assume that each creature or plant has a right to exist and reproduce, all we can do is eliminate our own effects on ecosystems. Humans are nature's worst transmission vector for pathogens, invasive species, habitat destruction, etc and there's little evidence we'd do anything but make the suffering a lot worse.

erhk 5y ago
You're assigning morality to a nervous system which is inherently absurd. Corn doesn't feel fear, it doesn't lament or suffer it just grows. We don't question the morality of capillary action in plants why should we assign morality to animal systems? Won't someone think of the blood salinity of all living things? Is there not a divine optimal amount of salt in all creatures? Similarly we are foolish to concern ourselves with the quantity of serotonin or histamine in any given creature. Humans are generally social, we developed to be concerned with our community rather than our individual survival and it has served us well. We developed systems to extend that concern to future generations, and sometimes we disguised them as deities. Now in our ever blooming quest to socialize we are assimilating more species into the fold, but at a point we should stop and ask if our moral tools are overstepping.