Primates and Philosophers_How Morality Evolved

by Frans de Waal

  Although it is only when animals and humans have similar interests that the principle of equality can straightforwardly be applied—and determining which interests are “similar” is not easy—it is also often difficult to compare different human interests, especially across different cultures. That is no reason for discounting the interests of people with cultures distinct from our own. Granted, the mental capacities of different beings will affect how they experience pain, how they remember it, and whether they anticipate further pain, and these differences can be important. But we would agree that the pain felt by a baby is a bad thing, even if the baby is no more self-aware than, say, a pig, and has no greater capacities for memory or anticipation. Pain can also be a useful warning of danger, so it is not always bad, all things considered. Unless there is some compensating benefit, however, we should consider similar experiences of pain to be equally bad, whatever the species of the being who feels the pain.

  Compatibly with this general principle of equal consideration of interests, however, it remains possible to agree with de Waal that “apes deserve special status”—not so much because they are our closest relatives, nor because their similarity to us can “mobilize more guilty feelings about hurting them,” but because of what we know about the richness of their emotional and social lives, and their self-awareness and understanding of their situation. Just as such characteristics will often cause humans to suffer more than other animals, so they will often cause great apes to suffer more than mice. But of course, not all research causes suffering, and the test that de Waal thinks research on great apes should pass—that it should be “the sort of research we wouldn’t mind doing on human volunteers”—meets the standard of equal consideration of interests.

  There is, however, a further reason for giving special status to the great apes. Thanks in part to de Waal’s own work, alongside that of Jane Goodall and many others, we know much more about the mental and emotional lives of the great apes than we do about other animals. Because of what we know, and because we can see so much of our own nature in them, the great apes can help to bridge the gulf that millennia of Judeo-Christian indoctrination have dug between us and other animals. Recognizing the great apes as having basic rights would help us to see that the differences between us and other animals are matters of degree, and that could lead to better treatment for all animals.

  1 Peter Singer, The Expanding Circle, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981.

  2 Plato, The Republic, especially Books 4, 8, and 9; Phaedrus, 246b.

  3 Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. Mary Gregor, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997, sec. III.

  4 Cited from W.-T. Chan, A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1963, p. 213.

  5 This paragraph draws on Peter Singer, The Expanding Circle; see also Colin McGinn, “Evolution, Animals, and the Basis of Morality,” Inquiry 22 (1979): 91.

  6 Phillipa Foot appears to have been the first philosopher to discuss these problems, in her paper “The Problem of Abortion and the Doctrine of the Double Effect,” Oxford Review 5 (1967): 5–15; reprinted in James Rachels (ed.), Moral Problems: A Collection of Philosophical Essays (New York: Harper & Row, 1971), pp. 28–41. The classic article on the topic, however, is Judith Jarvis Thomson, “Killing, Letting Die, and the Trolley Problem” The Monist 59 (1976): 204–217.

  7 Joshua Greene and Jonathan Haidt, “How (and Where) Does Moral Judgment Work,?” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 6 (2002): 517–523, and personal communications. To be more specific, those who accept the personal violation show more anterior dorsolateral prefrontal activity, while those who reject it have more activity in the precuneus area.

  8 Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. Mary Gregor, sec. II.

  9 Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976, p. 215.

  10 Peter Singer, Animal Liberation, 2nd edition, New York: Ecco, 2003 (first published 1975).

  11 “Ian Parker, “The Gift,” The New Yorker, August 5, 2004, p. 54.

  PART III

  RESPONSE TO COMMENTATORS

  The Tower of Morality

  FRANS DE WAAL

  Whereas my respected colleagues focus on what seems missing rather than present in other primates, my own emphasis has rather been on shared characteristics. This reflects my desire to counter the idea that human morality is somehow at odds with our animal background, or even with nature in general. I do appreciate the general support for this position, though, and agree with the repeated suggestions to also consider the discontinuities. So, this is what I intend to do this time around, starting with my definition of morality.

  Except, of course, that I would never speak of “discontinuities.” Evolution does not occur in leaps: new traits are modifications of old ones so that closely related species differ only gradually. Even if human morality represents a significant step forward, it hardly breaks with the past.

  MORAL INCLUSION AND LOYALTY

  Morality is a group-oriented phenomenon born from the fact that we rely on a support system for survival (MacIntyre 1999). A solitary person would have no need for morality, nor would a person who lives with others without mutual dependency. Under such circumstances, each individual can just go its own way. There would be no pressure to evolve social constraints or moral tendencies.

  In order to promote cooperation and harmony within the community, morality places boundaries on behavior, especially when interests collide. Moral rules create a modus vivendi among rich and poor, healthy and sick, old and young, married and unmarried, and so on. Since morality helps people get along and accomplish joint endeavors, it often places the common good above individual interests. It never denies the latter, but insists that we treat others the way we would like to be treated ourselves. More specifically, the moral domain of action is Helping or (not) Hurting others (de Waal 2005). The two H’s are interconnected. If you are drowning and I withhold assistance, I am in effect hurting you. The decision to help, or not, is by all accounts a moral one.

  Anything unrelated to the two H’s falls outside of morality. Those who invoke morality in reference to, say, same-sex marriage or the visibility of a naked breast on prime-time television are merely trying to couch social conventions in moral language. Since social conventions are not necessarily anchored in the needs of others or the community, the harm done by transgressions is often debatable. Social conventions vary greatly: what shocks people in one culture (such as burping after a meal) may be recommended in another. Constrained by their impact on the well-being of others, moral rules are far more constant than social conventions. The golden rule is universal. The moral issues of our time— capital punishment, abortion, euthanasia, and taking care of the old, sick, or poor—all revolve around the eternal themes of life, death, resources, and caring.

  Critical resources relating to the two H’s are food and mates, which are both subject to rules of possession, division, and exchange. Food is most important for female primates, especially when they are pregnant or lactating (which they are much of the time), and mates are most important for males, whose reproduction depends on the number of fertilized females. This may explain the notorious “double standard” in favor of men when it comes to marital infidelity. Women, on the other hand, tend to be favored in child custody cases, reflecting the primacy assigned to the mother-child bond. Thus, even if we strive for gender-neutral moral standards, real-life judgments are not immune to mammalian biology. A viable moral system rarely lets its rules get out of touch with the biological imperatives of survival and reproduction.

  Given how well orientation towards the own group has served humanity for millions of years, and how well it serves us still, a moral system can impossibly give equal consideration to all life on earth. The system has to set priorities. As noted by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon over a century ago: “If everyone is my brother, I have no brothers” (Hardin 1982). On one level, Peter Singer is ri
ght to declare all pain in the world equally relevant (“If an animal feels pain, the pain matters as much as it does when a human feels pain”), but on another level, this statement collides head-on with the in-group versus out-group distinction bred in our bones (Berreby 2005). Moral systems are inherently biased towards the in-group.

  Morality evolved to deal with the own community first, and has only recently begun to include members of other groups, humanity in general, and nonhuman animals. While applauding the expansion of the circle, this expansion is constrained by affordability, that is, circles are allowed to expand in times of abundance but will inevitably shrink when resources dwindle (figure 9). This is so because the circles track levels of commitment. As stated before: “The circle of morality reaches out farther and farther only if the health and survival of the innermost circles are secure” (de Waal 1996: 213). Since we currently live under affluent circumstances, we can (and ought to) worry about those outside our immediate circle1. Nevertheless, a level playing field, in which all circles count equally, clashes with ancient survival strategies.

  Figure 9 The expanding circle of human morality is actually a floating pyramid viewed from above. Loyalty and duty to immediate family, clan, or species serve as counterforce to moral inclusion. Altruism is spread thinner the further away we get from the center. The pyramid’s buoyancy (i.e., available resources) determines how much of it will emerge from the water. The moral inclusion of outer circles is therefore constrained by commitment to inner ones. From de Waal 1996.

  It is not just that we are biased in favor of the innermost circles (ourselves, our family, our community, our species), we ought to be. Loyalty is a moral duty. If I were to come home empty-handed after a day of foraging during a general famine and told my hungry family that I did find bread, yet gave it away, they would be terribly upset. It would be seen as a moral failure, as an injustice, not because the beneficiaries of my behavior did not deserve sustenance, but because of my duty to those close to me. The contrast becomes even starker during war, when solidarity with the own tribe or nation is compulsory: we find treason morally reprehensible.

  Animal rights advocates sometimes downplay this tension between loyalty and moral inclusion even though their own behavior tells a different story. When I commented that those who argue against medical research on animals nevertheless make use of it, I was seeking a full acknowledgment that there are two sides to this debate. One cannot silently practice loyalty to the innermost circles (e.g., by accepting for oneself and one’s family medical treatments developed on animals) while vocally denying that these circles take priority over other forms of life. Measured along the dimension of kinship, bonding, and group membership, an intellectually disabled human does indeed possess greater moral value than any animal. This loyalty dimension is just as real and important as one that considers sensitivity to pain or self-consciousness. Only by considering both dimensions and reconciling potential conflicts between them can we decide how much moral weight to assign to a sentient being, whether human or animal.

  I do worry about animals in medical research, and find it wrenching to decide whether, for example, we should continue hepatitis C research on chimpanzees or forego its potential benefits (compare Gagneux et al. 2005 with VandeBerg and Zola 2005). Do we want to cure people or protect chimpanzees? I lean towards protecting chimpanzees in this particular debate, while at the same time admitting that I will take any vaccine that may save my life. The least I can say, therefore, is that I am conflicted. This is why I find animal rights language, with its stridency and absolutes, distinctly unhelpful. It does nothing to lay bare the profound dilemmas that we face. I much prefer a discussion in terms of human obligations to animals, especially animals as mentally advanced as the apes, even though I agree with Singer that, in the end, the conclusions we arrive at may not be that different.

  THREE LEVELS OF MORALITY

  Even if the human moral capacity evolved out of primate group life, this should not be taken to mean that our genes prescribe specific moral solutions. Moral rules are not etched in the genome. An old literature tried to derive the Ten Commandments from the “laws” of biology (e.g., Seton 1907; Lorenz 1974), but such endeavors inevitable fail. Philip Kitcher’s tongue-in-cheek Solid-to-the-Core Theory will find few supporters nowadays.

  We are not born with any specific moral norms in mind, but with a learning agenda that tells us which information to imbibe. This allows us to figure out, understand, and eventually internalize the moral fabric of our native society (Simon 1990). Because a similar learning agenda underlies language acquisition, I see parallels between the biological foundation of morality and language. In the same way that a child is not born with any particular language, but with the ability to learn any language, we are born to absorb moral rules and weigh moral options, making for a thoroughly flexible system that nevertheless revolves around the same two H’s and the same basic loyalties it always has.

  Level 1: Building Blocks

  Human morality can be divided into three distinct levels (table 2), of which the first one-and-a-half seem to have obvious parallels in other primates. Since the upper levels cannot exist without the lower ones, all of human morality is continuous with primate sociality. The first level, extensively discussed in my introductory essay, is the level of moral sentiments, or the psychological “building blocks” of morality. They include empathy and reciprocity, but also retribution, conflict resolution, and a sense of fairness, all of which have been documented in other primates.

  In labeling these building blocks, I prefer to employ shared language for humans and apes. Robert Wright’s discussion of shared language failed to address the main reason behind it, which is that if two closely related species act similarly the logical default assumption is that the underlying psychology is similar, too (de Waal 1999; appendix A). This holds true regardless of whether we are talking about emotions or cognition, two domains often presented as antithetical even though they are almost impossible to disentangle (Waller 1997). The term “anthropomorphic” is unfortunate as it slaps a disapproving label onto shared language. From an evolutionary perspective, we really have no choice other than to use shared language for similar behavioral phenomena in humans and apes. Most likely, they are homologous, that is, derived from shared ancestry. The alternative is to classify similar behavior as analogous, that is, independently derived. I realize that social scientists comparing human and animal behavior tend to assume analogy, but with respect to closely related species this assumption strikes the biologist as utterly unparsimonious.

  TABLE 2

  Three Levels of Morality

  Occasionally, we are able to unravel the mechanisms behind behavior. The example Wright offers of reciprocity based on friendly feelings versus cognitive calculations is a case in point. Over the past twenty years, my coworkers and I have collected systematic data and conducted experiments to illuminate the mechanisms behind observed reciprocity. These mechanisms range from simple to complex. All of the different ways proposed by Wright are actually indicated in other animals. Next to humans, chimpanzees appear to show the cognitively most advanced forms of reciprocity (de Waal 2005; de Waal and Brosnan, 2006).

  Level 2: Social Pressure

  Whereas the first level of morality seems well developed in our close relatives, at the second level we begin to encounter major differences. This level concerns the social pressure put onto every member of the community to contribute to common goals and uphold agreed-upon social rules. Not that this level is wholly absent in other primates. Chimpanzees do seem to care about the state of affairs within their group and do seem to follow social rules. Recent experiments even indicate conformism (Whiten et al. 2005). But in relation to morality, the most important feature is the already mentioned community concern (de Waal 1996), reflected in the way high-ranking females bring conflicted parties together after a fight, thus restoring the peace. Here is the original description of this mediation:

  Especially
after serious conflicts between two adult males, the two opponents sometimes were brought together by an adult female. The female approached one of the males, kissed or touched him or presented towards him and then slowly walked towards the other male. If the male followed, he did so very close behind her (often inspecting her genitals) and without looking at the other male. On a few occasions the female looked behind at her follower, and sometimes returned to a male that stayed behind to pull at his arm to make him follow. When the female sat down close to the other male, both males started to groom her and they simply continued grooming after she went off. The only difference being that they groomed each other after this moment, and panted, spluttered, and smacked more frequently and loudly than before the female’s departure. (de Waal and van Roosmalen 1979: 62)