And if I believe that people are moral agents that have been highly shaped and influenced by their enviroments, what does that make me?
I am very intrigued by the research being done by economists - who'd have thunk that economists would actually do field research? The experiment I am thinking of involved giving some monkeys two pieces of fruit for performing a task, while a group of monkeys watched.
Then they tried giving the watching monkeys one piece of fruit for the same taxk, and they refused to do it. They wanted two pieces of fruit, or no work!
Is a sense of fairness nature or nurture? What difference does it make in real life? We have a sense of fairness.
Most men are not going to rape babies even if nobody is watching them to make sure that they don't.
Sixteen year olds, maybe. Well developed twelve year olds, maybe. Babies, almost certainly not.
There are place in the world, we are told, where for a price you can have anything you want, including sex with little children. And for the people who are ordinarily forced to pay through the nose for their unusual tastes, or forced to rely on fantasies, war time must be like being given the keys to the candy store.
People are reduced to a state of nature that is ordinarily kept under tight control, and can act out their fantasies.
Maybe Mary's point is that we all have our temptations, so shouldn't judge others. I admit that if I found a big bag of money with nothing to identify the owner, I'd probably keep it, if I thought I could get away with it. But babies don't turn me on.
Not even when nobody's watching. |
