Morality and feral children

[CeT-To]

Do humans have morality by nature on their hearts are do they learn these thinsg through life?

If humans do have morality by nature without having to learn them then where do feral children fit in?

God bless!!

[Canuckster1127]

Morality or a conscience? What is it about feral children that raises a question for you?

[CeT-To]

Ah sorry i ment conscience, well im doing a philosophy assignment where im explaining one of Sartre's arguments in a passage from "existentialism is a humanism" and seeing if it stands or if any of the premises have problems . So his first premise is :
P1- Man begins to exist, encounters himself, experiences the world and then defines himself.

So what he is saying is that humans dont have have a "human nature" that they are born with but rather are blank pieces of paper that as time goes on information is stored or “written” on it which then defines its meaning. At least that what i understood as he argues that we dont have a human nature if there is no God to give one to humans in his conclusion.

So what i was thinking is that if feral children having no conscience because they are raised by animals is true then he is justified in saying that humans have no "human nature" .

Any thoughts?

[Canuckster1127]

Ah sorry i ment conscience, well im doing a philosophy assignment where im explaining one of Sartre's arguments in a passage from "existentialism is a humanism" and seeing if it stands or if any of the premises have problems . So his first premise is :
P1- Man begins to exist, encounters himself, experiences the world and then defines himself.

So what he is saying is that humans dont have have a "human nature" that they are born with but rather are blank pieces of paper that as time goes on information is stored or “written” on it which then defines its meaning. At least that what i understood as he argues that we dont have a human nature if there is no God to give one to humans in his conclusion.

So what i was thinking is that if feral children having no conscience because they are raised by animals is true then he is justified in saying that humans have no "human nature" .

Any thoughts?

Take it back to it's logical conclusion. If conscience is not present first in an individual, how does it come to be manifested within a community? If it's learned behavior who is it learned from?

[CeT-To]

Well in Sartre's opinion it is learned from experiences of the world eg people, situation etc etc since he said thats how all things a learnt.

P1- Man begins to exist, encounters himself, experiences the world and then defines himself.

What i think is that if it can be shown that humans do have a conscience that they are born with then that first premise ultimately fails. Because then man is already defined as a being who has a conscience.

EDIT: Ahh i just realised what you said. Although couldn't it be the case that conscience is developed thru the experience of suffering??

For example do kids who have been isolated all their life by their parents who locked them in a room have a conscience? or do feral kids have one?

One thing that i thought of is that humans ( especially young kids) are highly adaptive creatures more so than any other animals, for example ill use the feral children ...they have been brought up not by their own species and have adapted to the likeness of another species such as wolves or dogs etc etc... im pretty sure that no animal can do that like the human could. My dog grew up in this house but it doesn't act like a human and not even close. What i'm saying is humans have a highly adaptive nature. So wouldn't Sartre be wrong then?

LOL if i said this i fear that i would need some kind of reference of an expert in this field.. blehhh hahah

[MadHatter]

I don't think we have morality by nature or a conscience. I think it is learned. If it wasn't learned, then God wouldn't have had to spend so much time teaching us the difference between right and wrong and Jesus wouldn't have had to either. What do studies say about feral children and morality?

[SnowDrops]

Hi everybody,

I just read an article on CNN. I was going to post it in a new tread, but it seems kinda relevant here so I'll put it here:
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/07/ ... google_cnn

Basically my point is that people can do all sorts of crazy things, that can't necessarily be explained by "normal" factors, which seems to point to that by default we are sinful and seek our own gain. Maybe that's why young kids tend to have tantrums and stuff... Because they are completely selfish and just want whatever they like.