Biology Is Life !

first, this is long. very long.Anyway, babies may, at first glance, appear to be ignorant of the entire world around them, but they are actually quite intelligent. there is evidence that the are born with some concept of morals. they also have a tendency to learn quicker than adults in some situations. in an experiment to test morals of babies, a baby struck a puppet that had been seen carrying away a ball from another puppet in a puppet show he'd seen earlier. this shows that morals do develop at a somewhat early age, and are, therefore, easier to learn at a young age than adults. I do believe this is an accurate study. its quite intelligent, actually. it allows us insight into the minds of those we cant communicate with. they definitely used enough subjects and had a good situation.

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By the way, FIRST POST!!!!!!!!
 

In this study, a baby watched a puppet show, where two puppets were throwing a ball back and forth, and a third puppet came in and took the ball. The puppets were all placed next to a pile of treats where the baby was then asked to take a treat away from a puppet. The baby then continued to take a treat away from the "naughty" puppet. Some scientists now believe that babies are capable of choosing right from wrong. Since this test, many other test have been run, to try to prove babies do have morals.

I do not think this study is very accurate because everyone is different and you cannot say all babies are like that, if they are not. It is also a little early to decide if they can understand right from wrong because if they cannot talk, how can the know the difference between right and wrong. Also the baby was ask to take a treat away from one of them and the baby was not told to take it away from "naughty", so the baby might have just chose it for no good reason. Though this result may have occurred in a few tests, I do not believe this study is very accurate.

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I could not find a site with my opinion so I just used this one.

This site talks about a 6 month year old baby, that is believed to be able to tell the difference between right and wrong. The baby watched a puppet show where one puppet held up a hill and another pushed it over. After watching the show several times, the babies were shown the "nice" and "naughty" toys. They showed a clear preference for the "nice" toys; spending far longer looking at the "nice" shapes than the "naughty" ones.
 

In this article, is about the moral life of babies. Many people are studying this. In the study, a baby watches a puppet show in which a puppet was playing with a ball and and other puppets. When the puppets were playing, one of them took the ball and ran away. After watching the show, the baby had to pick a treat from one of the pills next to one of the puppets. The baby took a treat from the puppet that did not play fair as a punishment. This allows scientists to believe that babies are capable of developing morals.

I believe the study is and is not accurate because the same results happened several times. There may or may not of been a way for the scientists to influence the out come of the experiment. Also maybe the baby choose that pile because it was closest pile of treats to them but we will never know.

Moral Sense: Nature or Nurture?

This site is about how we have a moral sense right from the beginning. It also tells about other tests that babies have taken. And that most test suggests that babies have moral senses.
 

Haha Melanie, don't you just LOVE the conversations we have in Panzer's class? =)

Okay, so this article, as I gather, is about how babies react to the world around them. Do they really know the difference between what is morally accepted and what is not? I personally believe that we all were born with no concept of good or evil, those traits are characteristics we model after our parents or those in authority over us. When you are born, you are completely pure, with no ability to distinguish between what is considered 'right' and what is considered 'wrong'. This distinction is brought through the combined help of environmental factors and the teachings(or lack of)of our guiding elders. What they teach us is what we base our moral structure on. Truthfully, I believe that the studying of baies is very limited, as the data can only be seen physically, and even then, is suspectable to misinterpretation.

Are evil people made or born evil?

This link is actually to something a little different than my usual links. This is actually a CollegeNET forum, stemming from a post made by one of the students. It has a wide variety of opinions, answering the initial posting's questions of "Are people born evil or does bad company make a person evil?" and a question about applying these theories to Hitler, and whether it was outside forces that formed his deranged and twisted personality, or was he simply programmed to be that way?
 

Good Job everyone so far. Sorry the article is quite long. But it is actually interesting. I wonder what Panzer would think?
 

Questions are being asked about the morality of infants and young babies. In recent studies, a series of tests have been conducted to observe and conclude whether or not babies are born with a sense of right or wrong. Babies were put in rooms where a puppet show would take place. One involved two animals playing with a ball and a third taking it away. They were then shown the puppets and more often than not, chose the "nice" character. This shows great insight into psychology and starts to bring up some moral questions and opinions I have.

I think that this study must further be tested before I can have a strong opinion about it. I think that maybe the scientists may have touched upon something that we cannot understand yet. This study may lead to other questions and their answers to explain why this occurs. This study is another reason to question other moral issues. This to me further backs up my stand on abortion. Why kill a child or baby when it may have an organic sense of right and wrong. It also opens questions about more artificial kinds of fertilization. Does this premeditated sense of morality still occur when a child is brought into the world by means other than nature? Does this mean that as parents, people should change their disciplinary actions? I think this study should definitely be looked into more deeply.

Baby Morality

This link has to do with an older test subject. Six to twelve year olds were being tested to monitor a portion of the brain that deals with ethical actions. Some of these tests are a little more complex, but not particularly puzzling.
 

Babies may not be as clueless when they enter the human world as people believe. They may be born with some kind of sense of what is moral and what is not, meaning what is right and what is wrong. Although they seem helpless and confused, babies are also able to acknowledge things that are presented to them and they often observe if there is something that seems like an odd occurance to them. Some babies even display remarkable ability to sense the emotions of people around them, and begin to express them themselves. We often belittle a toddler's abilities to discovery the world by him/herself.
I do not think that this study is as accurate as it could be. There are barriers of race and sex, and perhaps even age. Since all babies vary from one another, they think differently, and may not react in the same way as the baby before or after them, which is good for variety. Some babies may be under different circumstances as well, such as natural birth or C-section. However, I think this study is a good way to connect with how a baby's mind "works" since they do not know how to communicate with us, yet.

Baby
The website contains more info on what some people think babies are born with. They observe the habits of babies and their instincts. Also it talks about lying and how much the brain of a baby may really already know.
 

This is a super long article. SUPER LONG. Anyways, babies are usually ignorant in the beginning of there life and always want there way. But there brains develop fast and they soon long right from wrong. Babies are a lot smarter than we think. In the experiment to test the morals of babies, the baby hit the puppet that was taking the ball away from the other puppets. This shows that babies do learn morals at an early age, and easier than adult and older children do.
I do not think this is an accurate study. This because every baby is different and nobody is exactly the same. Also the baby was asked to take a treat away from one of them and the baby was not told to take it away from naughty one, the baby might have just chose it for no good reason. I think they should test more babies.

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This site is about how we have a moral sense right from the beginning. It also tells about other tests that babies have taken. And that most test suggests that babies have moral senses.
 

This article is basically saying that even though babies cant speack they can understand right from wrong. This study shows that most babies do know what is good and bad. Their actions sometimes take the place of their words. This experiment test the morals of these babies at a young age and studies show 9 out of 10 babies act this way. The puppet is way for them to understand who is good verses who is bad. There is more convincing evidence in this article then ever before. Although this may sound great, i do not think this is very acurate. Babies are all different and respond differntly. I believe some would be more apt to behaving better due to the way they are rasied. I also believed that this study could show how a child could possible act when they are older. Like many peple already know what you do and act as a child you portray as an adult in some respects. This article is informing and I thik further studies should continue.

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This link talks about other ideas on baby morals. There are many differnt sides of the story and ways you can look and the action of a baby. This article informative and includes more details.
 

It is interesting to that the so called "innocent" baby might be able to tell the difference from right and wrong. Most parents just perpetuate the stereotype that babies don't know what's right or wrong until we enforce it multiple times upon them. Babies were called by Jean-Jacques Rousseau as "perfect idiots." A baby learns to feel a type of remorse for the people of around them if they appear to be sad or hurt in some way at a young age. Most babies don't know how to act during the different types of events that happen around them. If it is good, then they clap and smile and if it is bad then they shake their heads and frown. They mostly follow by example but sometimes it is just a gut feeling. I believe that this study is fairly accurate, of course because it's at Yale, and I do believe that babies have the capacity and willingness to judge actions of others, and also have some primitive sense of justice. I also believe that babies had a small sense of bias against some people.
Do Babies Have Morality?
This page describes a theory behind the basis for saying babies have morality. It shows a study conducted from another scientist to prove this theory. Shows connections with Charles Darwin's theories as well on the subject.
 

During the study, one baby proved it knew right from wrong. It punished the "bad puppet" for its selfish actions. The study was really showing if the babies had good intentions at a young age. The study showed that the baby was very intellegent too. Multiple tests were done on different children, all with the majority punishing the "bad puppet." How much could tests about punishing a puppet by taking away candy from it really prove?

Summary-ish of the original link

The link basically shows what the original did, although much more condensed. It talks about the baby really knowing more than just what meets the eye. The babies really aren't "blank canvases," they're intelligent beings that know, on some level, right from wrong.

BTW, maybe shorter articles next time?? :)
 

Hey! I was the anonymous comment, it never showed my name as Penguin. :( grrr @ the blog.

<3,
Sarah P
 

Scientists now believe that babies know right from wrong. They are also intelligent. Studies show babies are born with concepts of morals. Babies also learn quicker then adults in some situations. They study had a baby pull a treat away from the bad puppet. This proves that babies know right from wrong.

This website explains how baies know morals and how. It talks about how intelligent they truly are.
 

I think it is interesting how even though humans aren't born with moral sense, they still demonstrate slightly, knowing right from wrong at a young age. I am not surprised that even babies have some sort of understanding of the way people think and act. Also, like it said in the article, if a n object is still, they baby will lose interest, but if it has emotion or movement or expression, the baby will become engaged and try to interact. This just shows how even though a baby brain is so undeveloped, they still have abilities to act human. It also said they develop expectations about social interactions.

This study seemed accurate and clever to me. The qualities that were tested, like expectations, judging actions of others, and interacting with alive objects are the qualities that stay with a human their entire life. The tests were very basic, but explained a lot. Also, they were done at Yale so they must be intelligent!


LINK

This website talks about the behaviors of babies. They naturally get sad when having a toy taken away. They know right from wrong naturally. And, how they develop facial expressions when encountering similar situations.
 

This article is very cool. It is true that babies are not able to speak but they can tell right from wrong. The study in this article shows that they know what's good and what's bad. Their actions sometimes take the place of their words. This experiment test the morals of these babies at a young age and studies show 9 out of 10 babies act this way. The puppets let them understand what is bad and what is good. I think this is very interesting that babies behave moral but all people act differently. So the research must go on for a more accurate result. I honestly think that people are born good then something along the paths of their lives change them.


http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/biology_evolution/article7120735.ece


More experiments at Yale University (:
 

This article was about babies and if they know what is right and wrong. Babies may just seem like they know nothing but scientist are beginning to believe they can be quite intelligent. The baby in the study would watch a puppet show of one puppet steal a ball from two other puppets. Afterwards the baby would be prompted to take the treat away a puppet. They would continually take it away from the one that stole the ball from the other two. This makes scientists believe that babies do have moral sense.

I believe that babies are not born with a sense of or evil. I think they quickly acquire it as they grow and learn daily. Babies are influenced very easily and will take the moral values of their surroundings. Babies are not born with moral values but they develop almost instantaneously as they grow and learn. I do believe that babies do have moral value.

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This site is similar to the one given but it talks about how they develop a sense of morals by six months old. Babies were able to point out the “bad guys” and learn from what they saw in the videos. The babies had a moral sense.
 

Babies knowing right from wrong is a true statement. Even from the very start, moral behavior surrounds the newborn, making them aware of what they are doing-good or bad. Studies say that babies are learning younger than usual the right things to do over the bad things, which could have a tremendous affect later in life. However, bigger moral choices are brought upon later in life rather then when you are a toddler, making the grown child lead down the wrong path. Nevertheless, scientists are still constructing experiments to see if babies are really capable of choosing right from wrong at such a young age.

I feel that these experiments can not work for every baby, seeing that each individual is made up of different genes, making them unique. There are also many factors that can make the baby chose from right or wrong, mainly there own decision, which is affected by their conscience. If this study wants to still be researched, scientists have to come up with a more accurate test.

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This link describes a test that babies went through for another study. It states how we babies' choices are different from ours, making us believe they can start choosing at such a young age. Parents still need to teach their child from right from wrong as they grow up and develop into the world where right and wrong decisions flood our lives.
 

This article was mainly about the fact that babies can view the world from a perspective commonly left to kids and adults. Most parents just perpetuate the stereotype that babies don't know what's right or wrong until we enforce it multiple times upon them. Babies were called by Jean-Jacques Rousseau as "perfect idiots." A baby learns to feel a type of remorse for the people of around them if they appear to be sad or hurt in some way at a young age. Most babies don't know how to act during the different types of events that happen around them. When they are feeling happy they will smile and clap and when they feel sad they will frown and cry. I do believe that babies have the capacity and willingness to judge actions of others, and also have some primitive sense of justice. I also believe that babies had a small sense of bias against some people due to the way they were brought up. A way to improve this
experiment would be to get a larger group to take data from.

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This article has another scientists opinion on the topic. He uses the origional article and Darwins theory to prove how he thinks babies work. He stays on the fence fo rmost of the articla but sortof leans to the idea that babies can think.
 

This study involves showing a baby a puppet show. in the show one of the charachters takes a ball from the other two puppets. They then tell the baby to take a treat away from one of the puppets. a baby had taken the treat from the puppet who had taken the ball from the puppet who had taken the ball. The baby also smacked the puppet. i think this study is legitimate. I have heard a few things about how babies can learn faster than a human at any other stage of their life. I would beleive that them learning a sence of morality would be be one of the many things that they could absorb at this time period.
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my link talks about other thngs that babies can do that we originaly thought they couldnt.
 

What I have read from this article has enlightened me about how smart babies are at birth from the experiments. Also, the article says that humans are said to be animals at birth taught by the parents, but I do not agree because of the examples of how babies are indeed smart in some ways at birth. An example of moral in babies is in the article, the baby slaps the puppet who ran away with the ball. This shows that babies indeed do have moral at a young age and even at birth.

In my opinion, this study is acurate. I do believe the proof that babies have moral at young ages. Although I believe some babies have more because it seems some babies are smarter than others, even though that could not be true. Also, I think this study is not accurate because you have no idea what a baby is thinking so you do not know if it has moral. But that is the only thing I think is inaccurate.

My link is about the opinions of people and stories of people experiencing the moral life of babies. It also discusses the behavior of babies. Lastly, there are other links on the site to websites about the moral of babies.
 

Studies show that babies are born with the concept of morals. The main concept in this article is that young infants and babies are able to distinguish between what is right an what is wrong. What this study is showing is that supposedly babies know what is right and what is wrong. They try to prove this with and through puppets. I personally do think that this study is accurate. The study and its results were good and convinced me to believe that babies do indeed know the difference between good and bad. Babies are intelligent and learn from their surroundings and whats's near them.
LINK
My link talks about how babies know right from wrong. It also talks about the test and study that the Yale researchers had done.
 

A psychologist at the Infant Cognition Center at Yale University, in collaboration with his colleague, did an experiment to test the moral lives of babies. Contrary to common beliefs, a growing body of evidence suggests that humans do have a rudimentary moral sense from the very start of life. New studies found that babies have an actual understanding of mental life: they have some grasp of how people think and why they act as they do. Babies and toddlers might not know or exhibit any moral principals such as choosing between what is good or evil. Their sympathetic reactions and motivations, including their desire to alleviate the pain of others, may not be much different in kind from purely nonmoral reactions and motivations like growing hungry. Babies probably have no conscious access to moral notions, no idea why certain acts are good or bad. They respond on a gut level. I believe this study is accurate because all the evidence gathered points directly to these conclusions. Also I myself have seen babies in action firsthand and find that babies seem to punish the "bad guys" per say. Also I prefer to look on the positive side of this, that babies are not ignorant individuals when they are born into this world.
Babies Born With Morals
Contrary to some popular beliefs, a baby’s mind isn’t just an empty canvas waiting to be painted. Instead, their little minds are busy making sense of the world around them and their instincts are advanced enough to start distinguishing fair and unfair, which seems to be an evolutionary basis for more complex concepts in morality and ethics. Rather than being a totally feral and rudderless animal from birth, humans, and perhaps their evolutionary cousins, are endowed with a basic sense of morality from the start and develop it into complex abstractions over their lifetimes.
 

I found out that supposedly babies are born with an ability to decide between what is right and wrong. A baby learns to feel a type of remorse for the people around them if they appear to be sad or hurt in some way at a young age. These studies found that babies have an actual understanding of mental life: they have some grasp of how people think and why they act as they do. Babies probably have no conscious access to moral notions, no idea why certain acts are good or bad. They respond by instinct. I believe this study is fairly accurate. I believe that this sense of morality can be justified because of predetermined evolutionary, unconscious instincts, such as those of the monarch butterfly which flies south for the winter. These assumptions, although scientifically unexplainable, may help us gain a better understanding of our perception of life and our origins and who we as humans were meant to be.
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Parents spend a lot of time teaching their children to know the difference between right and wrong. However, recent studies show that children are born with a sense of right and wrong. They believe "babies possess certain moral foundations -- the capacity and willingness to judge the actions of others, some sense of justice, gut responses to altruism and nastiness."
 

Scientists are now exploring whether babies can tell the difference between right and wrong. Babies seem to be innocent, naive and ignorance but may be quite knowledgeable. Some sense of good and evil seems to be bred in their bones. Morality, then, is a synthesis of the biological and the cultural, of the unlearned, the discovered and the invented. Babies have some moral foundations like the capacity and willingness to judge the actions of others, a sense of justice and gut responses to altruism and nastiness. I think this study is accurate. Many experiments have shown that most babies can tell the difference between good and bad.
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This link is from times online. It discusses how six month babies can tell good from evil.
 

Interestingly, babies are fairly intelligentl and understand and notice inconsistencies in their environment. Scientists have studied the intellect and a baby's ability to drawn conclusions on their environment by studying their eye movement and how long a baby focuses on certain interesting and surprising events. Scientists have concluded and theorized that babies are not as ignorant as we perceive them to be but rather have a prewired intellect and understanding of what to pay attention to in order to become smarter and more analytical of their environment. Scientist, through animations, have also determined that babies have some concept of morals and good and bad. Babies tended to prefer a helper to a hinderer and also have some concept of just rewards and punishments.
I believe these studies are accurate and are extremely creative ways of experimenting on babies. All the theories stated make perfect sense and provide some insight into the origins of adult behavior. I definitely believe that babies have some prewired intellect so that they may learn quickly and efficiently because I feel the first three years of life are crucial for a baby to development into an intelligent and good person. But I feel there is more to the puzzle, frankly I agree with Thomas Hobbes philosophy from the Enlightenment Period in Europe that humans are born innately evil and selfish. This can be supported by the two word baby's learn to say first, NO, and MINE.
Thomas Hobbes
Pre-wired intellect
The first link is about Thomas Hobbes theories about human evil and his book the Leviathan. The second link is about another study conducted in the UK also confirming a trend that babies have an innate ability to learn. In this case the scientists have tested babies' abilities to understand and quickly learn language and grammar.
 

During the study, scientists found out that babies will stare longer at something that is surprising or interesting. They did a test by showing babies magic tricks, the babies then stared for a long time, showing that they have some expectation of what an object should do. For example, leaving a block in midair, this was interesting to the babies because they probably expected the block to fall with gravity. I think this study could be very accurate. I say "could" because I think they need to delve a little further to find out if babies just stare at the interesting stuff as a coincidence. This study is definately groundbreaking and pretty interesting. I wonder who comes up with these ideas. :)

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This site talks about how likely it is babies have morals. It also talks about tests that scientists did. These tests showed that babies may have some morals.
 

The article is about the morality of babies and how they might be able to choose right from wrong. Some scientists did this experiment with a baby. They made it watch a puppet show. In the show, two puppets were playing with a ball and then a third one comes and takes away the ball. After watching this, the baby was to take away a pile of treats set near to each puppet. The child takes the one from the "mean puppet". The article says that this was repeated with the same results. Therefore this must be true. In my opinion,this is absolutely true as this is not the only experiment that proves this theory to be true. Also, nothing that is part of us comes one fine day. It was already there in a developing stage. This means that there is a sense of morality in its developing stages even as a baby.
This linksupports my point that babies do have some sense of morality in them. The website gives information on many experiments created that proves this argument to be true. For example, a bear tries to help a dog to open a box while another bear sits on the box refusing to help out. The baby watching this liked the "helping" bear more.
 

First off, I just want agree with all of you guys in saying that this article was really long! This article was basically talking about how babies are smarter than most people think. A study at Yale University was taken by babies in which they were shown different scenarios in which a character in the situation in either being helped or hurt. At the end of both scenarios. the baby was asked to choose which of the secondary characters were either the helpers or the hurters. Personally, I think that this study was extremely accurate in showing the morale of early life and is a great step forward in learning how the human mind develops. Now we can finally take kids seriously, especially babies and give them more credit than what we already think of them.

Baby Geniuses, Anyone?!

This link goes well into the hidden psyche of babies and makes us ask the question, "Are babies really as cute and innocent as they look?
 

This artical was basically about a study that was done to prove weather or not babies are really as clueless as we think they are. It is saying that even though babies can't talk maybe they really are able to tell the difference between right and wrong. The study revealed that infact most babies can at least somewhat tell the difference between right and wrong; good and bad. They used a puppet as a way for the babies to understand who is good aposed to who is bad. In the experiment that was a test of the morals of babies, a baby hit a puppet that was supposed to appear as "bad" and to the baby it obviously did. This happening shows that it may not seem like much matters to babies but morals do infact form in children an early age.

Based on the evidence produced in this study, I have to say that I believe that further studies need to occur to make a acurate decision about babies having a sense morality or not. I do however believe that it is very posible children can begin to develope moral concepts at a young age, im just not so sure about it happening in babies.
 

In this article, a baby was to watch a puppet show where two puppets through a ball back and forth, then another puppet came into the show and took the ball away. The child was then put next to the puppets which had treats next to them and was asked to take a treat from one of the puppets. The baby happened to take the treat in front of the mean puppet. This experiment made scientists wonder, Do babies know right from wrong? From there several other experiments have been done to try and prove or disprove this theory.

I think this experiment does not have enough evidence to make the assumption made. I defiantly think it is possible that babies do know the difference between right or wrong but by this experiment alone , taking the treat in front of the mean puppet could have just been coincidence . I think several other tests should be run; ones that really show that babies know right from wrong because picking treats is very random and several different outcomes can occur.

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I could not find a link that supported my idea but i though this article was similar to the other link.

This link basically talks about the theory of morality being inherited and babies being born with the knowledge of knowing right from wrong.
 

Can babies really tell right from wrong? I kinda believe they do. Personally I never remember being taught right from wrong and I still know what I would do. Also this article talks about how babies are perfect idiots and they are as ignorant as loaves of bread.I think they quite intelligent and they tend to learn quicker and lear a lot more than adults. That's why a lot of kids know two or more llanguages at an early age because younger brains are like sponges. they tend to ssoak everything up.

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This link tells you how to raise a smart kid. It can all happen from the very negining of a childs life.