Good afternoon, everybody.

Stefan Moll and you from Freedom Main. Please help spread philosophy, the greatest thing of the world, at freedomain.com slash donate. Questions from people on X. Hi, Steph. I've been wondering, if love is an involuntary response to virtue, can, how can a parent love an infant? Can't animals display virtues, at least in a rudimentary fashion, as much as babies. Thanks. Well, no, animals cannot be virtuous because virtue is when we compare proposed actions to ideal standards and then choose

the ideal standards. The ideal standard called, you know, telling the truth, being peaceful,

morally courageous, and so on, right?

And so animals don't have the capacity to compare proposed actions to ideal standards, and therefore

they don't have moral free will in the way that we would understand it.

Animals are programmed by dopamine, and they're programmed by instinct and so on, so

birds are programmed to feed their babies,

but they don't love their babies and they don't love each other. There's just an attachment

that is genetically and biologically programmed into them, which is not to say that the affection

of animals is bad, right? I mean, my daughter and,

well, my family as a whole, we've had a whole series of ducks over the years, and the ducklings

are super cute, and they follow you everywhere around, and it's really nice. I don't, of course,

imagine that they love me for my virtues. they would follow around anyone who fed them.

It's not, I mean, you've seen ducklings, I don't know if you've seen these studies where

the ducklings will imprint upon an orange balloon and will follow that around if it's the first

large thing that they see when they emerge from their eggs. So, no, animals are not virtuous, and babies are not virtuous. Now, of course, I was

there for the present. I was present for the birth of my daughter, and she treasured her, and had

massive affection for her as a baby. You know, we're programmed that way, and I was so overjoyed

to be a father, and it's wonderful, it's a beautiful bonding thing. But I did not love her virtues when she was a baby, of course, because she did not display any particular virtues when she was a baby. I mean, she was great fun, she giggled, she laughed. She, I guess early on, she started feeding me back when I would sort of feed her. So that was cool. But no, I mean,

she was not morally courageous. She did not stand with great integrity against the steadfast

evils of the world. So, and there's nothing wrong with that. And that's not her job. She's a baby. She's a

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