Even if you want to scratch that point, I think there are tons of ways to release that desire to harm in ways that won’t actually harm. Right now it is not OK to do that, and then that pent up energy has to be released somehow (usually in harming someone, since it wasn’t released in a different way).

My point is that it is much less natural to hold back and let things build up psychologically when if it were socially acceptable we could work together to figure out ways let those things out. Right now it is taboo to talk about sociopathic behavior as natural. I think there would be much less harming each other if this taboo were broken.

How would sociopaths who wish to hurt others act according to their nature? Doesn’t this only work if you already have a benign nature?

I was assuming cannibalism in the sense that we eat someone after death. You seem to have figured that out, though.

I think people go against their nature all the time. A homosexual will marry the opposite sex due to cultural norms. People withhold all sorts of sexual and anger issues, because it would be inappropriate according to societal norms to express them.

I’m advocating using our brains to enable us to act according to our nature. We don’t have to repress things, because we now can figure out ways to release them without hurting others.

In the animal kingdom of course cannibalism means killing a creature by eating it not eating a corpse, and your original comment seemed to condemn it.

Also when you say we should do what’s in our nature, is it even possible to do something against your nature? If by that you mean we should be more like indigenous cultures, it’s nothing to imitate.

I guess the argument shouldn’t be made from a “do what other animals do” standpoint, but it should be more along the lines of “do what is in your own nature.” Chimps don’t gang rape because they look at animals and think, “This is nature, so this is what we’ll do.” It is in their own nature.

When I think of the argument from naturalism, I think that what is natural to us is good. If there is a question as to whether something can occur in nature, then we look to see if it occurs in other places.

We should do what is in our nature, but we also have cognition, and so we should do it in such a way that we don’t harm others.