The point with Koko was that despite her being domesticated (or closer to humans than her peers, as I said) the cognitive abilities of personhood are indisputably there. That is also true for e.g. Washoe, Chantek, or Kanzi, and even more so for Loulis — “the first ape to learn signs from other apes, not humans.”
Yes, the studies of morality of non-human species are in their infancy, and there is not much work done in terms of actual research (merely some philosophical speculations). Then again, the little research that exists clearly proves that morality is present in non-human primates (individualistic as well as dyadic, and in the case of some social norms even from a 3rd party perspective). Funnily enough you may also find a behavior similar to Stockholm syndrome. You may also be interested in work of primatologist Frans de Waal (I would say the most important work in this regard).
As for Stockholm syndrome and slave mentality, I don’t think they are particularly strong arguments against naturalness of morality. In a sense you may even consider them to be moral coping mechanisms — the slave can become a murderer or accept the situation. In the same way, Piff’s Monopoly experiment proves little in terms of morality for the reason of players strictly obeying the rules of the game no matter how rigged it may be (“Give unto Caesar…”?). Plus all what is known about Piff’s experiment is what he said about it to popularize it/himself (AFAICT, no serious scientific output is available, thus it’s more like a urban legend than something to take seriously).
And, frankly, “hedonic treadmill” (even if I ignore all criticism), if it proves anything, then only what I said. That is, that the temporal pleasures are just that — temporal, and that the psychosomatic equilibrium is our default state, and there are certain natural, causal processes and intentional actions that can lead to it. Still, it’s a stretch to drag it into discussion about morality (we can as well discuss gravity, after all, it’s present while we perform moral/immoral acts).
I also won’t go into mentality of “tyrannical beasts” who’s social status and/or material assets create a buffer between them and consequences of their actions. Suffice to say, I’m fairly certain they are not “happy campers.”
It surprises me that you speak about some imaginary confusion between “unnatural” and “supernatural.” Where did the “supernatural” even come from in this context? O_o Strictly speaking, there’s neither in this universe (or elsewhere).
I get your point about what you call “artificiality,” but I consider it more a problem of scope and responsibility (maybe “intelligent use” would be a better term), than anything else. After all, there’s no single manifested force in this world that could make it collapse. Thus, when it comes to human-caused climate change, I have just one clue for you — “oxygen holocaust” (which was as natural as it gets). I leave discovering the parallels to you ;)
As a side note, going by your reasoning, I assume that you consider chimps’ use of tools, cultural inheritance, and essentially their whole civilization as unnatural, too. Just for the record, I do not.
Btw. I read you new article on spiritual love and I must say that you pretty much nailed it. I wanted to remark that illusions are also real, but reading your piece about aesthetics, art, and morality I saw that you hold that position, too. Nevertheless, when you talk about fraud gurus and “anything-goes” charlatans who claim to have “realized oneness of existence”, I would say that they are either masochists (obviously, since by definition they con and misuse themselves) or not what they claim to be. I vouch for the latter. Otherwise, as I said, you nailed it.
Anyway, thanks for inspiring conversation :)
