De Waal notes

De Waal: morally evolved

Two models of human beings: as social by nature and as individualistically a-social by nature

Social contract theories and the individualist model; even if taken hypothetically they distract us from the biological reality of humans as "obligatorily gregarious."

homo economicus models in economics and the social sciences.

Issues:

· enlightened self-interest (utility maximization) as prescriptive?

· Behavioral game theory

Veneer Theory: we are "naturally" selfish; morality is a cultural overlay. Hence, morality is, at most, a byproduct of adaptive traits.

Issues:

· Links to original sin stories?

· Curbing of the explanatory powers of evolution: it’s hard to see what evolutionary story can lead from selfish subjects to prosocial and moral ones.

· Implicit dualism: by adopting morality we create ourselves and, in a sense, transcend nature. Hidden anti-naturalism?

Huxley, Kropotkin, Darwin, Westermarck

Issues:

· Darwin resorts to group selection. De Waal is skeptical, maybe because of unit of selection problems

· De Waal: no need of group selection; kin selection and reciprocal altruism are sufficient to get to morality. Are they?

The Russian Doll model: morality as an outgrowth of animal sociality. The ‘bottom up’ construction of morality

Two different stages of empathy:

1. Emotional contagion: having same feeling as the other. This results in personal distress, which produces helping behavior to relieve one’s own distress

2. Empathy proper: being able to "know" what the other is feeling. This leads to sympathy: one feels sorry for the other without having the same feelings as the other. Seems to involve being able to put yourself in the other's shoes.

Empathy allows targeted helping (observed in apes, dolphins and elephants) and consolation behavior (observed only in hominoids). They may require

1. the self-other distinction,

2. ToM.

More sophisticated behaviors involve gratitude and a sense of fairness

· Gratitude requires time lag, memory, and the ability to recognize benefactors. Note deWaal’s experiments with chimps involving grooming followed by food sharing

· Capuchin monkeys’ sense of fairness, understood as anger at not being treated according to a ‘sense of social regularity’, socially based expectations. Note De Waal’s distinction between this and human fairness, based on a principle, he says.

Humans are naturally parochial, very sensitive to community concerns. This makes morality restricted: its main problem is the expansion from in-group to universality. This expansion depends on available resources.

Since parochialism is enhanced by enmity towards outsiders, war and morality are linked: War served as selection pressure for socialization.

Issue

As for Hume, moral sentiments are partial but social, not egoist. If they were merely egoist, any sort of altruism would be hypocritical. By contrast, one may hope that social sentiments can be expanded to include strangers and other living creatures.

Morality is a ‘logical outgrowth’ of cooperative tendencies rooted not in rationality but in the passions. De Waal presents some psychological evidence:

· Haidt on affect driven intuitions and moral automatism

· developmental psychology on very early and reliable ontogeny of moral sentiments and capacities such as the spontaneous comforting of others in babies

Continuist views of morality have been overlooked because of the ‘Beethoven error’: the idea that a cruel process (evolution) can't produce morality, just like it's hard to see that Beethoven's messy apartment could be the site for his precise compositions. It’s a variety of the process/product fallacy.

APPENDICES

Georgia’s ambushes, anthropomorphism, anthropodenial, and the conflict between:

· cognitive parsimony (explain behavior by appealing to the lowest possible mental capacities)

· evolutionary parsimony (if closely related species act similarly, probably they have similar mental processes)

True, we shouldn't just project human emotions and intentions onto animals, but the attribution to hominoids of affective and cognitive abilities similar to ours is necessary if we want to understand anything about them.

The asymmetry of the animal/human relation rules out the attribution of real rights to animals. Instead, towards them we should develop an ethic of care. In particular, all research on the great apes should be mutually beneficial and enjoyable.

COMMENTS

R. Wright

There are two types of anthropomorphic language, emotional and cognitive. De Waal credits animals with too much cognitive ability (planning, strategizing) when emotional regulation is probably enough because

· many emotions have been designed by evolution as proxies for strategic calculation favoring gene multiplication, and therefore they are often effective

· they are presumably based in older parts of the brain

· one should adopt the principle of anthropomorphic parsimony: use only one of the anthropomorphic languages if possible and if no evidence militates against it.

Wright distinguishes between

1. Veneer theory, which considers morality a purely cultural overlay grating against our true nature, and has anti-naturalistic tones

2. naturalistic veneer theory: our moral impulses are rooted in our genes, that is, in ‘heavily emotional’ intuitions, about kin, justice, etc.

He adopts (2) and not (1). He also claims that sometimes our genetically based moral intuitions are lead astray by other genetically based intuitions, for example when our justice intuitions become biased against our enemies and in favor of friends.

C. Korsgaard

In spite of being popular in the social sciences, the veneer theory is unsatisfactory on several grounds:

· the principle of self-interest is

o not proven to be an effective principle of practical reason because nobody has been able to establish its normativity.

o actually not followed, as we often fail to act on it by following fancy and ‘vagrant inclinations’, as Butler says.

· The very concept of self-interest is not ‘well formed’ when it comes to social animals like humans because our own self-interest cannot be set apart from that of others.

· Most of us don’t in fact have to struggle to act in a moral manner. Only psychopaths have to restrain rampant self-interest.

· It’s ‘absurd’ to think that non-human animals can act in their self-interest because:

o This requires a cognitive sophistication (grip on the future and ability to calculate) they don’t have

o Acting in one’s best interest involves being motivated by the abstract notion of one’s overall good. They don’t have such type of motivation because they are wantons: they act on the instinct/desire which is strongest at the moment.

Some animals are very similar to us in being intelligent, curious, loving, bellicose as we are. However, there is a sharp discontinuity between humans and other animals evidenced in

(1) Our elaborate cultures, historical memory, languages, art, literature, science, philosophy, jokes, and our ability to make friends with members of other species

(2) the fact that we seem psychologically damaged, as Nietzsche and Freud hold, which suggests a break with nature.

Although some animals are aware of their goals and think about how to achieve them, only humans can choose them, namely, think whether they are worth pursuing; by contrast, animals pursue their goals because they are driven by affective states. That means they are determined, and have no freedom, which can exist only in “normative self-government”. Choice presupposes reason, as distinct from intelligence, namely a type of self-consciousness involving the consideration of grounds of action as grounds. It is this epistemological stance that is unique to humans and makes the transition between us and animals not merely a matter of degree but of kind.

P. Kitcher

Both veneer theory and its polar opposite, that morality is already present in animals, are not held today. More troublesome is the ‘Hume-Smith lure’, namely the idea that:

· Evolutionary theorists can show how sympathy and psychological altruism could have evolved;

· Such sentiments are already present in animals (Jackie, Krom, and the tires);

· morality can be obtained from them, Hume-Smith fashion.

This is a lure because it underestimates the complexity of psychological altruism, which can be considered in terms of intensity, range, extent, and skill, so that its representation would live in a four dimensional space. We need to know what type of altruism is relevant to morality

The basic difference between human and animal altruism is that the former can be expanded to include all humanity. Animals can’t universalize their sentiments; we can, albeit with difficulty, by trying to adopt the ‘impartial spectator’ point of view. Even chimps cannot do that because they are wantons.

Human morality probably arose from our linguistic ability to share formulation and evaluation of plans, which in turn led to the regulation of conduct in small groups. Group selection would then favor the more smoothly run groups, and cultural evolution would favor the expansion of morality.

P. Singer

Distinction between two positions

1. Human nature is inherently social and the roots of morality are in the psychological traits we share especially with primates

2. All of morality derives from our evolved nature as social animals

The first is true; the second is false. De Waal at times seems to accept both because the rejection of (2) implies some version of the veneer theory; at other times he seems to accept only (1).

The basic difference between us and animals is reason, which

· Does not have a purely social genesis because it also provides individual general advantages, e.g., in finding food.

· allows us to see that non-group members have interests and concern similar to ours

· can be called into play against evolved instincts as in the utilitarian answer to the trolley problem, as evidenced by brain scans.

The use of reason beyond group-based social instincts is an essential part of morality so that some aspect of morality is veneer, not reducible to the underlying structure.

Rights can be granted in asymmetrical relations and can be partial (adults and babies, for example); however, De Waal is right in focusing on our moral obligation towards animals more than on animal rights. The basic idea is equal consideration of interests, which results in attributing special moral status to apes.

De Waal’s reply: The Tower of Morality

Morality is a group oriented phenomenon concerned with the regulation of actions that could hurt or help others; the rest is just “social convention”. Morality builds on, not against, our animal nature.

The floating tower of morality with concentric disks: self, family-clan, community, tribe-nation, humanity, all life. They are listed in order of importance: only when the needs of the more important are satisfied can those of the others be satisfied if resources are available. (The denser the fluid, the more of the tower emerges from it). This is not only factually true but also normatively right: we owe special loyalty to the smaller disks.

There are three levels of morality, where the higher ones cannot exist without the lower, and each is associated with one of the following:

1. Moral sentiments: empathy, feeling of reciprocity

2. Social pressure: insisting that one behaves in ways that favor the group by means of punishment, reward, and reputation-building.

3. Judgment and reasoning: asking why we think what we think; looking for coherent justification for our choices

The first level we share with some animals; the second we share with primates, although they tend to punish bad behavior only when they are directly affected. The third is only human, even though we never fully transcend ‘primate social motives’. So, the break with animals is found somewhere in the second level.

Four different types of altruism:

1. Functional (biological): an action is altruist if it produces a net loss for the agent and a net gain for the recipient

2. Motivational: an action is altruist if it is the result of concern for the recipient

3. Intentional: an action is altruist if the agent intends to bring about a net gain for the recipient even at a net loss.

The first is very widespread in nature, from bacteria to us. The second is present from relatively large brained social animals to us; the third is present in apes, us, and possibly some other animals.

A peculiar case of ‘altruism’ occurs when one engages in functional altruism out of enlightened selfishness; this is very rare because it requires strategic choices.

Selfishness can be treated analogously.