Primates and Philosophers_How Morality Evolved

by Frans de Waal

  In such ambiguous cases, de Waal seems to have a tendency to favor cognitive over emotional anthropomorphic language. One example from Chimpanzee Politics involves the alpha male Yeroen and a lower status chimp, Luit, who has in the past accepted his subordinate status but will soon mount a challenge to Yeroen’s alpha position by initiating a fight. De Waal observes that, during the period leading up to the challenge, Yeroen began consolidating social bonds, notably by increasing the time he spent grooming females and otherwise interacting with them. From this de Waal infers that Yeroen “already sensed that Luit’s attitude was changing and he knew that his position was threatened.”1

  Yeroen presumably did in some sense or another “sense” a change of attitude, and this may well account for his sudden interest in the politically pivotal females. But must we assume, with de Waal, that Yeroen “knew” about—consciously anticipated—the coming challenge and decided on measures to head it off? Or mightn’t Luit’s growing assertiveness simply have inspired pangs of insecurity that pulled Yeroen into closer touch with his friends?

  Certainly genes encouraging an unconsciously rational response to threats could in theory thrive via natural selection. When a baby chimp or a baby human, sighting a scary animal, retreats to its mother, the response is logical, but the youngster presumably isn’t conscious of the logic. Or, to take an example more analogous to the Yeroen-Luit example: if a human being is treated with unexpected disrespect by some acquaintances, he or she may be filled with a feeling of insecurity and therefore, upon subsequently encountering a friend or relative, reach out to that friend or relative more than usual, and, upon getting positive feedback, feel more warmly toward that friend or relative than usual. Here “insecurity” is a proxy emotion for strategic calculation; it encourages us to strengthen our bonds with allies after encountering social antagonism.

  A more sweeping example of de Waal’s seeming preference for cognitive over emotional anthropomorphism comes when he refers to Luit’s “policy reversals, rational decisions and opportunism” and then asserts, “there is no room in this policy for sympathy and antipathy.”2 Actually, many of Luit’s policy reversals, and much of his opportunism, can in principle be explained in terms of sympathy and antipathy: he feels sympathy toward chimps when strategic interests dictate alliance with them and he feels antipathy toward chimps when strategic interests dictate conflict with them or indifference toward them. Any human being is familiar with how rapidly feelings toward another human being can swing between sympathy and antipathy; and any deeply introspective human being would have to admit that sometimes these swings have a certain strategic convenience about them.

  Of course, subjective experience being intrinsically private, it is hard to say for sure that de Waal is wrong—that the strategic behaviors in question are more under emotional than under cognitive guidance. But here are some interrelated considerations suggesting that this is the case:

  1) It is a cogent surmise, for various reasons, that in the primate lineage the emotional governance of behavior has preceded, in evolutionary time, the consciously strategic guidance of behavior. (One reason for this surmise is the relative evolutionary age of parts of the human brain associated with emotions, on the one hand, and with planning and reasoning, on the other. Also notable is the prominence of these respective parts of the brain compared with their prominence in nonhuman primates—e.g., the prominence of the human frontal lobes, associated with planning and reasoning.)

  2) Given that human beings, though manifestly capable of conscious strategizing, nonetheless have emotions that encourage strategically sound behaviors, it seems likely that our near relatives the chimpanzees, who exhibit analogous strategically sound behaviors, also have such emotions.

  3) If indeed chimpanzees have emotions that could generate strategically sound behaviors, one has to ask why natural selection would add a second, functionally redundant layer of guidance (conscious strategy). Of course, in the case of human beings evolution did ultimately supplement emotional guidance with cognitive guidance. But when we speculate as to why this is the case, we tend to cite factors that don’t seem to apply to chimpanzees (e.g., humans have complex language and use it to discuss strategic plans with allies, or to explain why they did things, etc.).

  For these reasons, when dealing with nonhuman primates, I would propose a bias that is the opposite of the bias de Waal seems to employ. In cases where either emotional guidance or consciously strategic guidance could in principle explain the behavior, I would favor emotional guidance as the tentatively preferred explanation, pending further data. That is: All other things being equal, I would favor emotional anthropomorphic language over cognitive anthropomorphic language when dealing with nonhuman primates.

  You might call this the principle of anthropomorphic parsimony. One reason I consider it parsimonious is that it involves the use of only one type of anthropomorphic language (emotional) whereas the alternative favored by de Waal, though ostensibly involving only one type of anthropomorphic language (cognitive), implicitly involves both kinds. After all, it seems very likely that, if chimpanzees indeed have the capacity for extensive conscious strategizing, as de Waal believes, they also have a parallel and intertwined system of emotional proxies for strategic calculation—since, after all, that is the case with the one primate species known to have the capacity for extensive conscious strategizing (us), a species, moreover, that is closely related to chimpanzees. Assuming this is the case—that a close relative of humans that had extensive conscious strategizing abilities would also have intertwined emotional proxies for strategizing—then to attribute conscious strategizing to chimpanzees is to implicitly attribute both conscious strategizing and some degree of emotional guidance to them. And in cases where emotional guidance alone would in theory suffice for explanatory purposes, this implied attribution of both cognitive and emotional guidance is the less parsimonious alternative.

  AN EXTRA-SCIENTIFIC CONSIDERATION

  Though I consider this proposed rule for the use of anthropomorphic language desirable on scientific grounds—on grounds of parsimony—I should acknowledge that there is a second reason for my attraction to it: it encourages a perspective on human behavior that can be morally enriching. Appreciating how emotions can lead to strategically sophisticated behavior in chimpanzees helps us appreciate that we human beings may be more in the thrall of emotional guidance than we realize. In particular: our moral judgments are subtly and pervasively colored by emotionally mediated self-interest.

  To clarify this point, let me back up and approach the subject of human morality from another angle: in terms of the distinction de Waal made in his first Tanner lecture between a “veneer” theory of morality and a “naturalistic” theory. Veneer Theory holds that human morality is a thin “cultural overlay” that hides an amoral if not immoral human nature. The alternative, “naturalistic” theory, as I understand it, holds that our moral impulses are rooted in our genes— and that we are therefore to a considerable extent, as the title of one of de Waal’s books has it, “good natured.”

  De Waal classifies me as a “veneer theorist” on the basis of my book The Moral Animal. Let me briefly argue that I don’t belong in this category, and in the process argue that his dichotomy between “veneer” theory and a “naturalistic” theory is perhaps too simple, omitting a third theoretical category in which I do belong. Then I can argue that using emotionally anthropomorphic language to describe chimpanzee behavior helps illuminate this third theoretical perspective, and that viewing human behavior from this third vantage point has edifying effects.

  In The Moral Animal, far from describing morality as a “cultural overlay,” I in fact argue that various impulses and behaviors commonly described as moral are grounded in our genes. Kin-selected altruism is one example. Another example is the sense of justice—the intuition that good deeds should be rewarded and bad deeds should be punished; de Waal’s work, in fact, helped convince me that a rudimentary (and, I woul
d say, heavily emotional) version of this intuition is probably present in chimpanzees, and that in both chimps and humans the intuition is a product of the evolutionary dynamic of reciprocal altruism.

  These features of human nature, grounded in the genes, are often exercised in what I would call truly moral fashion. (That is—to adopt a crude and somewhat utilitarian version of the Kantian litmus test that Christine Korsgaard explicates in her paper—the world is a better place to the extent that the behaviors generated by these features are generated under comparable circumstances by human beings in general.) So I don’t think I deserve, in a general way, the label de Waal gives me—a “veneer theorist” who considers morality a “cultural overlay.”

  To be sure, I do believe that some of our genetically based moral intuitions are (sometimes) subject to subtle biases that steer them away from the truly moral. But even here I’m not conforming to the archetype of the “veneer theorist,” because I believe these biases to be themselves grounded in the genes, not mere “cultural overlay.” For example, in deciding how to exercise the sense of justice—in deciding who has done good and who has done bad, whose grievances are valid and whose aren’t—humans seem naturally to pass judgments that work in favor of family and friends and against enemies and rivals. This is one reason I don’t agree with de Waal’s apparent position that we are in some fairly general sense “good natured”—a view he seems to associate with “naturalistic theory.”

  Rather, I belong to a third category. I believe (a) that the human moral “infrastructure”—the part of human nature that we draw on for moral guidance, and that includes some specific moral intuitions—is genetically rooted, not a “cultural overlay”; but (b) this infrastructure is not infrequently subject to systematic “corruption” (i.e., departure from what I would call true morality) that is itself rooted in the genes (and is so rooted because it served the Darwinian interests of our ancestors during evolution).

  In this view, our moral judgments, though reached through a seemingly conscious and rational process of deliberation—a cognitive process—can be biased subtly by emotional factors. For example, an only semiconscious undercurrent of hostility toward a rival may bias our judgment as to whether he is guilty of some crime, even though we convince ourselves that we have weighed the evidence objectively. We may honestly believe that our opinion that he deserves, say, the death penalty is a product of pure cognition, with no emotional influence; but the emotional influence can in fact be decisive, and was “designed” by natural selection to be that way.

  My own view is that if everyone were more aware of the ways emotion subtly biases their moral judgments, the world would be a better place, because we would be less likely to comply with these morally corrupting biases. I thus see some virtue in anything that makes people more self-aware in this regard. And I think using emotionally anthropomorphic language to describe certain aspects of chimpanzee social life—in addition to being defensible on sheerly scientific grounds—can have this effect. For seeing how subtly but powerfully emotions can guide the behavior of chimpanzees helps us see how subtly but powerfully emotions can influence our own behavior, including behaviors that we like to think of as products of pure reason.

  To put the matter another way: When we see chimpanzees behaving in a strikingly human manner, we can describe the parallel in at least two ways. We can say, “Gosh, chimpanzees are more impressive than I’d thought”—a conclusion we’re especially likely to reach if we see their behavior as cognitively driven. Or, alternatively, we can say, “Gosh, humans are less exalted than I’d thought”—a conclusion we’re especially likely to reach if we see that relatively simple and ancient emotions can yield seemingly sophisticated behaviors in chimpanzees and hence, presumably, in humans. The latter conclusion is, in addition to being valid, edifying.

  I want to stress, in closing, that most of the anthropomorphic language de Waal uses in Chimpanzee Politics and elsewhere I have no quarrel with (such as his speculatively attributing a sense of “honor”—i.e., something like pride—to chimpanzees). Still, I do think the two examples I’ve cited are telling, and that they are not wholly unrelated to his (too simple, in my view) dichotomy between a “veneer” theory of morality and a “naturalistic” theory of morality. Appreciating how subtly and powerfully emotions can influence behavior is the first step, I think, toward appreciating the existence of, and the importance of, the third theoretical category I’ve outlined.

  I’m tempted to call this third theoretical orientation “naturalistic veneer theory,” since it does see humans as often covering self-serving motives with a moralistic veneer, but sees the veneer-building process itself as genetically, not just culturally, grounded. That label has the shortcoming of not conveying that a good many of our natural moral impulses do have truly moral consequences (by my lights, at least). Still, combining “naturalistic” and “veneer” gets us closer to the truth, in this context, than leaving these words by themselves.

  1 De Waal (1982), Chimpanzee Politics, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, p. 98.

  2 De Waal (1982), p. 196.

  Morality and the Distinctiveness

  of Human Action

  CHRISTINE M. KORSGAARD

  What is different about the way we act that makes us, and not any other species, moral beings?

  —Frans de Waal1

  A moral being is one who is capable of comparing his past and future actions or motives, and of approving or disapproving of them. We have no reason to suppose that any of the lower animals have this capacity.

  —Charles Darwin2

  Two issues confront us. One concerns the truth or falsehood of what Frans de Waal calls “Veneer Theory.” This is the theory that morality is a thin veneer on an essentially amoral human nature. According to Veneer Theory, we are ruthlessly self-interested creatures, who conform to moral norms only to avoid punishment or disapproval, only when others are watching us, or only when our commitment to these norms is not tested by strong temptation. The second concerns the question whether morality has its roots in our evolutionary past, or represents some sort of radical break with that past. De Waal proposes to address these two questions together, by adducing evidence that our closest relatives in the natural world exhibit tendencies that seem intimately related to morality—sympathy, empathy, sharing, conflict resolution, and so on. He concludes that the roots of morality can be found in the essentially social nature we share with the other intelligent primates, and that therefore morality itself is deeply rooted in our nature.

  I begin with the first issue. Veneer Theory is, in my view, not very tempting. In philosophy, it is most naturally associated with a certain view of practical rationality and of how practical rationality is related to morality. According to this view, what it is rational to do, as well as what we naturally do, is to maximize the satisfaction of our own personal interests. Morality then enters the scene as a set of rules that constrain this maximizing activity. These rules may be based on what promotes the common good, rather than the individual’s good. Or they may, as in deontological theories, be based on other considerations—justice, fairness, rights, or what have you. In either case, Veneer Theory holds that these constraints, which oppose our natural and rational tendency to pursue what is best for ourselves, and which are therefore unnatural, are all too easily broken through. De Waal seems to accept the idea that it is rational to pursue your own best interests, but wants to reject the associated view that morality is unnatural, and therefore he tends to favor an emotion-based or sentimentalist theory of morality.

  There are a number of problems with Veneer Theory. In the first place, despite its popularity in the social sciences, the credentials of the principle of pursuing your own best interests as a principle of practical reason have never been established. To show that this is a principle of practical reason one would have to demonstrate its normative foundation. I can think of only a few philosophers—Joseph Butler, Henry Sidgwick, Thomas Nagel, and Dere
k Parfit among them—who have even attempted anything along these lines.3 And the idea that what people actually do is pursue their own best interests is, as Butler pointed out long ago, rather laughable.4

  In the second place, it is not even clear that the idea of self-interest is a well-formed concept when applied to an animal as richly social as a human being. Unquestionably, we have some irreducibly private interests—in the satisfaction of our appetites, in food and a certain kind of sex, say. But our personal interests are not limited to having things. We also have interests in doing things and being things. Many of these interests cannot set us wholly against the interests of society, simply because they are unintelligible outside of society and the cultural traditions that society supports. You could intelligibly want to be the world’s greatest ballerina, but you could not intelligibly want to be the world’s only ballerina, since, at least arguably, if there were only one, there wouldn’t be any. Even for having things there is a limit to the coherent pursuit of self-interest. If you had all the money in the world, you would not be rich. And of course we also have genuine interests in certain other people, from whom our own interests cannot be separated. So the idea that we can clearly identify our own interests as something set apart from or over against the interests of others is strained to say the least.