Tracing the roots of human morality in animals
Tracing the roots of human morality in animals
21 May 2013 by Bob Holmes
The Bonobo and the Atheist and How Animals Grieve show that we must be careful when studying animals to learn about the origins of human traits and behaviours.
Book information
The Bonobo and the Atheist: In search of humanism among the primates by Frans de Waal
Published by: Norton
Price: $27.95
Book information
How Animals Grieve
by Barbara J. King
Published by: University of Chicago Press
Price: $25.00
WHERE does morality come from? Throughout the history of Western civilisation, thinkers have usually answered either that it comes from God, or else through the application of reason.
But in The Bonobo and the Atheist, primatologist Frans de Waal argues that there's another answer that fits the data better: morality comes from our evolutionary past as a social primate. Like our closest relatives the apes, humans evolved in small, tightly knit, cooperative groups. As a result, again like the apes, we are exquisitely sensitive to one another's moods, needs and intentions.
This well-developed empathy provided the trellis on which morality later flowered. De Waal, who is based at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, has been making this case eloquently for many years and over several books, notably in Good Natured back in 1997, and in Primates and Philosophers, 12 years later.
In his new work, he bolsters the argument by drawing on a lot of new research, carefully footnoted for those who want to dig deeper. De Waal distinguishes two degrees of morality. The first he calls "one-on-one morality", which governs how an individual can expect to be treated, and the second "community concern", a larger, more abstract concept that extends to the harmony of the group as a whole.
More:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21829172.300-tracing-the-roots-of-human-morality-in-animals.html?cmpid=RSS|NSNS|2012-GLOBAL|online-news
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