I was born in Den Bosch, the city after which Hieronymus Bosch named himself. [1]
This obviously does not make me an expert on the Dutch painter, but
having grown up with his statue on the market square, I have always been
fond of his imagery, his symbolism, and how it relates to humanity’s
place in the universe. This remains relevant today since Bosch depicts a
society under a waning influence of God.
His famous triptych with naked figures frolicking around — “The Garden of Earthly Delights”
— seems a tribute to paradisiacal innocence. The tableau is far too
happy and relaxed to fit the interpretation of depravity and sin
advanced by puritan experts. It represents humanity free from guilt and
shame either before the Fall or without any Fall at all. For a
primatologist, like myself, the nudity, references to sex and fertility,
the plentiful birds and fruits and the moving about in groups are
thoroughly familiar and hardly require a religious or moral
interpretation. Bosch seems to have depicted humanity in its natural
state, while reserving his moralistic outlook for the right-hand panel
of the triptych in which he punishes — not the frolickers from the middle panel — but monks, nuns, gluttons, gamblers, warriors, and drunkards.
Hieronymus Bosch Hieronymus
Bosch’s “Garden of Earthly Delights” depicts hundreds of erotic naked
figures carrying or eating fruits, but is also full of references to
alchemy, the forerunner of chemistry. The figures on the right are
embedded in glass tubes typical of a bain-marie, while the two birds
supposedly symbolize vapors.
Five centuries later, we remain embroiled in
debates about the role of religion in society. As in Bosch’s days, the
central theme is morality. Can we envision a world without God? Would
this world be good? Don’t think for one moment that the current battle
lines between biology and fundamentalist Christianity turn around
evidence. One has to be pretty immune to data to doubt evolution, which
is why books and documentaries aimed at convincing the skeptics are a
waste of effort. They are helpful for those prepared to listen, but fail
to reach their target audience. The debate is less about the truth than
about how to handle it. For those who believe that morality comes
straight from God the creator, acceptance of evolution would open a
moral abyss.
Our Vaunted Frontal Lobe
Echoing this view, Reverend Al Sharpton opined in a recent videotaped debate:
“If there is no order to the universe, and therefore some being, some
force that ordered it, then who determines what is right or wrong? There
is nothing immoral if there’s nothing in charge.” Similarly, I have
heard people echo Dostoevsky’s Ivan Karamazov, exclaiming that “If there
is no God, I am free to rape my neighbor!”
Perhaps it is just me, but I am wary of
anyone whose belief system is the only thing standing between them and
repulsive behavior. Why not assume that our humanity, including the
self-control needed for livable societies, is built into us? Does anyone
truly believe that our ancestors lacked social norms before they had
religion? Did they never assist others in need, or complain about an
unfair deal? Humans must have worried about the functioning of their
communities well before the current religions arose, which is only a few
thousand years ago. Not that religion is irrelevant — I will get to
this — but it is an add-on rather than the wellspring of morality.
Deep down, creationists realize they will
never win factual arguments with science. This is why they have
construed their own science-like universe, known as Intelligent Design,
and eagerly jump on every tidbit of information that seems to go their
way. The most recent opportunity arose with the Hauser affair.
A Harvard colleague, Marc Hauser, has been accused of eight counts of
scientific misconduct, including making up his own data. Since Hauser
studied primate behavior and wrote about morality, Christian Web sites
were eager to claim that “all that people like Hauser are left with are
unsubstantiated propositions that are contradicted by millennia of human
experience” (Chuck Colson,
Sept. 8, 2010). A major newspaper asked “Would it be such a bad thing
if Hausergate resulted in some intellectual humility among the new
scientists of morality?” (Eric Felten, Aug. 27, 2010). Even a linguist
could not resist this occasion to reaffirm the gap between human and
animal by warning against “naive evolutionary presuppositions.”
These are rearguard battles, however. Whether
creationists jump on this scientific scandal or linguists and
psychologists keep selling human exceptionalism does not really matter.
Fraud has occurred in many fields of science, from epidemiology to
physics, all of which are still around. In the field of cognition, the
march towards continuity between human and animal has been inexorable —
one misconduct case won’t make a difference. True, humanity never runs
out of claims of what sets it apart, but it is a rare uniqueness claim
that holds up for over a decade. This is why we don’t hear anymore that
only humans make tools, imitate, think ahead, have culture, are
self-aware, or adopt another’s point of view.
If we consider our species without letting
ourselves be blinded by the technical advances of the last few
millennia, we see a creature of flesh and blood with a brain that,
albeit three times larger than a chimpanzee’s, doesn’t contain any new
parts. Even our vaunted prefrontal cortex turns out to be of typical
size: recent neuron-counting techniques classify the human brain as a
linearly scaled-up monkey brain.[2]
No one doubts the superiority of our intellect, but we have no basic
wants or needs that are not also present in our close relatives. I
interact on a daily basis with monkeys and apes, which just like us
strive for power, enjoy sex, want security and affection, kill over
territory, and value trust and cooperation. Yes, we use cell phones and
fly airplanes, but our psychological make-up remains that of a social
primate. Even the posturing and deal-making among the alpha males in
Washington is nothing out of the ordinary.
The Pleasure of Giving
Charles Darwin was interested in how morality
fits the human-animal continuum, proposing in “The Descent of Man”:
“Any animal whatever, endowed with well-marked social instincts … would
inevitably acquire a moral sense or conscience, as soon as its
intellectual powers had become as well developed … as in man.”
Unfortunately, modern popularizers have
strayed from these insights. Like Robert Wright in “The Moral Animal,”
they argue that true moral tendencies cannot exist — not in humans and
even less in other animals — since nature is one hundred percent
selfish. Morality is just a thin veneer over a cauldron of nasty
tendencies. Dubbing this position “Veneer Theory” (similar to Peter Railton’s
“moral camouflage”), I have fought it ever since my 1996 book “Good
Natured.” Instead of blaming atrocious behavior on our biology (“we’re
acting like animals!”), while claiming our noble traits for ourselves,
why not view the entire package as a product of evolution? Fortunately,
there has been a resurgence of the Darwinian view that morality grew out
of the social instincts. Psychologists stress the intuitive way we
arrive at moral judgments while activating emotional brain areas, and
economists and anthropologists have shown humanity to be far more
cooperative, altruistic, and fair than predicted by self-interest
models. Similarly, the latest experiments in primatology reveal that our
close relatives will do each other favors even if there’s nothing in it
for themselves.
Frans de Waal Maintaining
a peaceful society is one of the tendencies underlying human morality
that we share with other primates, such as chimpanzees. After a fight
between two adult males, one offers an open hand to his adversary. When
the other accepts the invitation, both kiss and embrace.
Chimpanzees and bonobos will voluntarily open a door to offer a companion access to food, even if they lose part of it in the process. And capuchin monkeys
are prepared to seek rewards for others, such as when we place two of
them side by side, while one of them barters with us with differently
colored tokens. One token is “selfish,” and the other “prosocial.” If
the bartering monkey selects the selfish token, it receives a small
piece of apple for returning it, but its partner gets nothing. The
prosocial token, on the other hand, rewards both monkeys. Most monkeys
develop an overwhelming preference for the prosocial token, which
preference is not due to fear of repercussions, because dominant monkeys
(who have least to fear) are the most generous.
Even though altruistic behavior evolved for
the advantages it confers, this does not make it selfishly motivated.
Future benefits rarely figure in the minds of animals. For example,
animals engage in sex without knowing its reproductive consequences, and
even humans had to develop the morning-after pill. This is because
sexual motivation is unconcerned with the reason why sex exists. The
same is true for the altruistic impulse, which is unconcerned with
evolutionary consequences. It is this disconnect between evolution and
motivation that befuddled the Veneer Theorists, and made them reduce
everything to selfishness. The most quoted line of their bleak
literature says it all: “Scratch an ‘altruist,’ and watch a ‘hypocrite’
bleed.”[3]
It is not only humans who are capable of
genuine altruism; other animals are, too. I see it every day. An old
female, Peony, spends her days outdoors with other chimpanzees at the
Yerkes Primate Center’s Field Station. On bad days, when her arthritis
is flaring up, she has trouble walking and climbing, but other females
help her out. For example, Peony is huffing and puffing to get up into
the climbing frame in which several apes have gathered for a grooming
session. An unrelated younger female moves behind her, placing both
hands on her ample behind and pushes her up with quite a bit of effort,
until Peony has joined the rest.
We have also seen Peony getting up and slowly
move towards the water spigot, which is at quite a distance. Younger
females sometimes run ahead of her, take in some water, then return to
Peony and give it to her. At first, we had no idea what was going on,
since all we saw was one female placing her mouth close to Peony’s, but
after a while the pattern became clear: Peony would open her mouth wide,
and the younger female would spit a jet of water into it.
Frans de Waal A
juvenile chimpanzee reacts to a screaming adult male on the right, who
has lost a fight, by offering a calming embrace in an apparent
expression of empathy.
Such observations fit the emerging field of
animal empathy, which deals not only with primates, but also with
canines, elephants, even rodents.
A typical example is how chimpanzees console distressed parties,
hugging and kissing them, which behavior is so predictable that
scientists have analyzed thousands of cases. Mammals are sensitive to
each other’s emotions, and react to others in need. The whole reason
people fill their homes with furry carnivores and not with, say, iguanas
and turtles, is because mammals offer something no reptile ever will.
They give affection, they want affection, and respond to our emotions
the way we do to theirs.
Mammals may derive pleasure from helping
others in the same way that humans feel good doing good. Nature often
equips life’s essentials — sex, eating, nursing — with built-in
gratification. One study found that pleasure centers in the human brain
light up when we give to charity. This is of course no reason to call
such behavior “selfish” as it would make the word totally meaningless. A
selfish individual has no trouble walking away from another in need.
Someone is drowning: let him drown. Someone cries: let her cry. These
are truly selfish reactions, which are quite different from empathic
ones. Yes, we experience a “warm glow,” and perhaps some other animals
do as well, but since this glow reaches us via the other, and only via the other, the helping is genuinely other-oriented.
Bottom-Up Morality
A few years ago Sarah Brosnan and I
demonstrated that primates will happily perform a task for cucumber
slices until they see others getting grapes, which taste so much better.
The cucumber-eaters become agitated, throw down their measly veggies
and go on strike. A perfectly fine food has become unpalatable as a
result of seeing a companion with something better.
We called it inequity aversion, a topic since investigated in other animals, including dogs. A dog
will repeatedly perform a trick without rewards, but refuse as soon as
another dog gets pieces of sausage for the same trick. Recently, Sarah
reported an unexpected twist to the inequity issue, however. While
testing pairs of chimps, she found that also the one who gets the better deal occasionally refuses. It is as if they are satisfied only if both get the same. We seem to be getting close to a sense of fairness.
Such findings have implications for human
morality. According to most philosophers, we reason ourselves towards a
moral position. Even if we do not invoke God, it is still a top-down
process of us formulating the principles and then imposing those on
human conduct. But would it be realistic to ask people to be considerate
of others if we had not already a natural inclination to be so? Would
it make sense to appeal to fairness and justice in the absence of
powerful reactions to their absence? Imagine the cognitive burden if
every decision we took needed to be vetted against handed-down
principles. Instead, I am a firm believer in the Humean position that
reason is the slave of the passions. We started out with moral
sentiments and intuitions, which is also where we find the greatest
continuity with other primates. Rather than having developed morality
from scratch, we received a huge helping hand from our background as
social animals.
At the same time, however, I am reluctant to
call a chimpanzee a “moral being.” This is because sentiments do not
suffice. We strive for a logically coherent system, and have debates
about how the death penalty fits arguments for the sanctity of life, or
whether an unchosen sexual orientation can be wrong. These debates are
uniquely human. We have no evidence that other animals judge the
appropriateness of actions that do not affect themselves. The great
pioneer of morality research, the Finn Edward Westermarck,
explained what makes the moral emotions special: “Moral emotions are
disconnected from one’s immediate situation: they deal with good and bad
at a more abstract, disinterested level.” This is what sets human
morality apart: a move towards universal standards combined with an
elaborate system of justification, monitoring and punishment.
At this point, religion comes in. Think of
the narrative support for compassion, such as the Parable of the Good
Samaritan, or the challenge to fairness, such as the Parable of the
Workers in the Vineyard, with its famous conclusion “The last will be
first, and the first will be last.” Add to this an almost Skinnerian
fondness of reward and punishment — from the virgins to be met in heaven
to the hell fire that awaits sinners — and the exploitation of our
desire to be “praiseworthy,” as Adam Smith called it. Humans are so
sensitive to public opinion that we only need to see a picture of two
eyes glued to the wall to respond with good behavior, which explains the
image in some religions of an all-seeing eye to symbolize an omniscient God.
The Atheist Dilemma
Over the past few years, we have gotten used
to a strident atheism arguing that God is not great (Christopher
Hitchens) or a delusion (Richard Dawkins). The new atheists call
themselves “brights,” thus hinting that believers are not so bright.
They urge trust in science, and want to root ethics in a naturalistic
worldview.
While I do consider religious institutions
and their representatives — popes, bishops, mega-preachers, ayatollahs,
and rabbis — fair game for criticism, what good could come from
insulting individuals who find value in religion? And more pertinently,
what alternative does science have to offer? Science is not in the
business of spelling out the meaning of life and even less in telling us
how to live our lives. We, scientists, are good at finding out why
things are the way they are, or how things work, and I do believe that
biology can help us understand what kind of animals we are and why our
morality looks the way it does. But to go from there to offering moral
guidance seems a stretch.
Even the staunchest atheist growing up in
Western society cannot avoid having absorbed the basic tenets of
Christian morality. Our societies are steeped in it: everything we have
accomplished over the centuries, even science, developed either hand in
hand with or in opposition to religion, but never separately. It is
impossible to know what morality would look like without religion. It
would require a visit to a human culture that is not now and never was
religious. That such cultures do not exist should give us pause.
Bosch struggled with the same issue — not
with being an atheist, which was not an option — but science’s place in
society. The little figures in his paintings with inverted funnels on
their heads or the buildings in the form of flasks, distillation
bottles, and furnaces reference chemical equipment.[4]
Alchemy was gaining ground yet mixed with the occult and full of
charlatans and quacks, which Bosch depicted with great humor in front of
gullible audiences. Alchemy turned into science when it liberated
itself from these influences and developed self-correcting procedures to
deal with flawed or fabricated data. But science’s contribution to a
moral society, if any, remains a question mark.
Other primates have of course none of these problems, but even they strive for a certain kind of society.
For example, female chimpanzees have been seen to drag reluctant males
towards each other to make up after a fight, removing weapons from their
hands, and high-ranking males regularly act as impartial arbiters to
settle disputes in the community. I take these hints of community concern
as yet another sign that the building blocks of morality are older than
humanity, and that we do not need God to explain how we got where we
are today. On the other hand, what would happen if we were able to
excise religion from society? I doubt that science and the naturalistic
worldview could fill the void and become an inspiration for the good.
Any framework we develop to advocate a certain moral outlook is bound to
produce its own list of principles, its own prophets, and attract its
own devoted followers, so that it will soon look like any old religion.
Frans de Waal’s essay is the subject of this week’s forum discussion among the humanists and scientists at On the Human, a project of the National Humanities Center.
Also, view an excerpt from a
Bloggingheads.tv discussion about this post between Frans de Waal and
Robert Wright, author of “The Moral Animal.”
NOTES
[1] Also known as
s’Hertogenbosch, this is a 12th-century provincial capital in the
Catholic south of the Netherlands. Bosch lived from circa 1450 until
1516.
[2] Herculano-Houzel, Suzana (2009). The human brain in numbers: A linearly scaled-up primate brain. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 3: 1-11.
[3] Ghiselin, Michael (1974). The Economy of Nature and the Evolution of Sex. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
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