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As I was reading the articles, I was very struck by the fact that many of the authors tended to comment on great apes as if they had aspects of morality but were NOT fully moral beings because "People enforce their society’s moral codes much more rigorously with rewards, punishments and reputation building. They also apply a degree of judgment and reason, for which there are no parallels in animals." However, just a few paragaphs before they were saying that if young Rheus monkeys do not behave properly they may get a finger or a toe bitten off. I would definitely say that is punishment! I would agree with Danielle that they indeed do show morality. We do not know for certain about what causes them to behave in the seemingly moral ways that they do, and so it could be that they DO have a form of judgement and reason. If we observe them behaving in certain ways that in humans we would characterize as moral, why then is this not just "chimp morality"--species specific, perhaps, as Danielle says?

I also was so interested by what Natsu said about "morality class." If she (who had been raised by Japanese parents but NOT in Japan) had similar feelings about morality as the students that were being taught it from books, then it makes me wonder if the books/class were necessary at all. If they had been taught by their parents as well, would they still have similar ideas about morality? Personally I never took an organized class on morality, but I would say that I have a sense of what in my opinion is right and wrong. What about a class (and a text book) would change those beliefs?

I wonder though, about more informal teachings about morality. In a classroom setting there are certainly plenty of times a child is told that something (like sharing) is the right thing to do and something else (like fighting) is not, which is a moral lesson. Perhaps her experiences in Holland (that I am guessing had only informal morality lessons) ended up teaching the same lessons as she would find in Japan in the more organized setting? I would be very interested in finding more about the ways in which these experiences were different and how the situations they learned about differed from what I might call moral from what I learned from my own experiences in American school.