Deriving a human "ought" from a monkey "is"

"Primates and Philosophers" is precisely what it looks like: a scientific and philosophical exploration of the origins and meaning of human morality. The main contributor to the book is Frans de Waal, the well-known primatologist. (In case you don't know what a "primatologist" is: de Waal studies apes and monkeys for a living!) His ideas about morality are then scrutinized and critiqued by science writer Robert Wright and philosophers Peter Singer, Philip Kitcher, and Christine Korsgaard. (Yes, *the* Peter Singer and *the* Philip Kitcher.) In the final chapter, de Waal responds. The entire debate is excellently and even-handedly introduced by Stephen Macedo and Josiah Ober. In other words, the book is a real meeting of the minds!

De Waal believes that large parts of what we call human morality can be found already in apes, and sometimes even in monkeys. He admits that rational thinking is (probably) present only in humans, but argues that such thinking cannot exist without prior building blocks that do exist among other primates, for instance empathy, reciprocity, a sense of fairness, and at least some steps towards community concern. Thus, human behavior doesn't represent a fundamental break with animal behavior. There isn't a radical discontinuity between animal and human nature. Rather, humans have erected their rational thinking on top of a "tower of morality", most of which we share with apes and some monkeys. De Waal further believes that our rational thinking is somewhat overestimated. We don't really make moral decisions based on abstract rational reasoning around maxims and imperatives. Rather, emotions play a large part in our decisions. This shows that rational thinking is based on emotions such as empathy, present already in apes.

De Waal's main adversary, at least as he sees it, is something he dubs "Veneer Theory" (VT). According to VT, humans are at bottom selfish, bad and brutish. Morality is a thin veneer, a purely pragmatic response to the fact that the egoist needs other people to get along. "Scratch an altruist, and watch a hypocrite bleed" is the slogan of VT. Thomas Huxley and Thomas Hobbes are prime representatives of this perspective. In reality, de Waal argues, humans are social, empathic and altruistic by nature. Our morality is hard-wired into our genes. Naturally, the author considers apes to be moral in the same manner, and gives many examples of empathy, cooperation and peaceful conflict solution among chimpanzees and bonobos. At the same time, de Waal also admits that our morality has a darker side. It's only valid within our own group, while very different rules apply to outsiders. At one point, he even exclaims that morality and warfare goes together, and that this too is derived from the apes. Apparently, chimpanzee flocks sometimes attack each other, with deadly consequences.

De Waal's critics share his conviction that morality is something real and objective, and also that humans evolved from apes through natural selection. However, they believe that de Waal has overstated the case against VT, in effect setting up a straw man. They also argue that there is a strong tendency towards anthropomorphism in de Waal's writings, and that he often draws too far-reaching conclusions from his research. The critics suggest that there is a discontinuity between apes and humans in the moral realm, perhaps connected to the rise of language, and that morality cannot be reduced to emotion. They also question whether the behavior of apes can really be called "moral" in any meaningful way. Doesn't morality entail rational reasoning, the concept of an impartial spectator and a universalizing spirit? Apes can solve conflicts within the flock, but their non-rational nature make them easy prey to their emotions, making the flocks unstable, which requires that all their energy is spent on a never-ending cycle of conflict/conflict-resolution. Apes are "wantons", and ape society is stuck. Human society, by contrast, is more socially stable but also more dynamic, precisely because of our rational nature. We can solve in-group conflicts on a more long-term basis, directing our energies to other tasks. One of the critics, Peter Singer, also feels that de Waal isn't sufficiently supportive of animal rights (or perhaps not sufficiently clear on the subject).

As an impartial (?) spectator, I get the feeling that the differences boil down to two things.

First, de Waal fears that the discontinuous perspective offered by Kitcher and others, somehow runs the risk of downplaying Darwinian evolution. If Darwin was right, something all contributors to this volume agree with, shouldn't we expect a more fundamental continuity between ape and man? Shouldn't we expect change to be a modification of already existing structures or behaviors, as when human morality turns out to be a revised version of ape behavior, rather than something dramatically new? After all, that's how evolution through natural selection usually works! To de Waal, the opponents run the risk of veering towards a kind of moral saltationism (unless I'm mistaken, the Kantian philosopher Korsgaard explicitly calls human morality a "saltation" compared to the animals.)

Second, de Waal and his opponents seem to disagree on the following question: What exactly *is* morality? To the critics, morality by definition must be rationally thought out and universally applicable. In-group solidarity cannot properly be called morality at all. De Waal concedes this in an unguarded moment (something Singer uses against him), but his main position seems to be the opposite: morality is based on the instinctive, prerational parts of our nature, and we share these with the apes. To a sympathetic observer, the positive side of this notion is that morality isn't something that dualistically comes from the outside, but is rooted in our very nature, and hence can be empirically studied without a lot of philosophical mumbo-jumbo. The negative side, of course, is that war against out-groups is "moral", since the prerational part of our nature tend to divide humans into in-groups and out-groups.

De Waal's solution to this is to look at morality as a pyramid that slowly emerges out of the water. The top of the pyramid represents self-interest plus altruism towards family and close relatives. Altruism towards the nation comes somewhere in the middle, while universal morality is the bottom of the pyramid. How much of the pyramid that emerges above the water depends on the resources available. While this is certainly true empirically, it could still be argued that de Waal cannot explain why we *ought* to share large resources with out-groups. Why not keep them to ourselves? I suppose his response would be that somehow our prerational empathy reaches out to others like us, in this case out-group humans (or even apes in medical research!), provided scant resources doesn't stop us.

While I'm not sure if I fully agree with Frans de Waal, he at least gives the reader much food for thought.

The book is warmly recommended.

PS. I agree with another reviewer that the book isn't an easy read for people completely unfamiliar with philosophy. (By contrast, advanced philosophy students will probably find it too simple!) Frans de Waal has won international fame as a popular science writer on chimpanzees and bonobos, but "Primates and philosophers" is one of his more technical books.