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Good Natured: The Origins of Right and Wrong in Humans and Other Animals

Frans B. M. de Waal · 2 HN comments
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Amazon Summary
To observe a dog's guilty look. to witness a gorilla's self-sacrifice for a wounded mate, to watch an elephant herd's communal effort on behalf of a stranded calf--to catch animals in certain acts is to wonder what moves them. Might there he a code of ethics in the animal kingdom? Must an animal be human to he humane? In this provocative book, a renowned scientist takes on those who have declared ethics uniquely human Making a compelling case for a morality grounded in biology, he shows how ethical behavior is as much a matter of evolution as any other trait, in humans and animals alike. World famous for his brilliant descriptions of Machiavellian power plays among chimpanzees-the nastier side of animal life--Frans de Waal here contends that animals have a nice side as well. Making his case through vivid anecdotes drawn from his work with apes and monkeys and holstered by the intriguing, voluminous data from his and others' ongoing research, de Waal shows us that many of the building blocks of morality are natural: they can he observed in other animals. Through his eyes, we see how not just primates but all kinds of animals, from marine mammals to dogs, respond to social rules, help each other, share food, resolve conflict to mutual satisfaction, even develop a crude sense of justice and fairness. Natural selection may be harsh, but it has produced highly successful species that survive through cooperation and mutual assistance. De Waal identifies this paradox as the key to an evolutionary account of morality, and demonstrates that human morality could never have developed without the foundation of fellow feeling our species shares with other animals. As his work makes clear, a morality grounded in biology leads to an entirely different conception of what it means to he human--and humane.
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>Since Dawkins became fashionable

I am curious why people keep taking this attitude to Dawkins. And Dawkins himself was also curious why people had this reaction to his books. In his 1976 book The Selfish Gene, he says:

"We can rise above our genes, indeed, we do every time we use contraceptives."

As he makes clear, several times, in the book, our evolution allows a range of behavior that allows for more than simplistic game-theory calculations.

Personally, there were 2 main things that I got from The Selfish Gene:

1.) sometimes simple experiments, with simple motivations, lead to surprising results (or sometimes game theory models have surprising conclusions). For instance, the story of the 2 pigs was surprising -- they had to push a lever on one end of the pen to get a reward at the other end of the pen, and it turned out that it was the dominant pig who had to do all the work whereas the submissive pig got to eat most of the food.

2.) evolution is too slow to react to fast changing circumstances, so behavior was "invented" to allow creatures to quickly adapt to circumstances. The word "behavior" in this sense, is meant to suggest a range of possible actions that a creature can change without having to change its genes. Dawkins devotes a lot of time to this idea, and it seems to me this idea goes directly against the interpretation that so many people want to ascribe to Dawkins: "it risks creating a self-fulfilling prophecy of barbarism".

I suspect that a lot of people who criticize Dawkins have never actually read Dawkins.

This sentence deserves special criticism:

"How is it even possible to behave in a non-animalistic manner once you have internalised these ideas?"

Here the word "animalistic" is being used to suggest a failure of morality. There is history behind this usage, which I don't have time to get into. For now, I'll simply point out that humans are part of the animal branch of life, and therefore all human behavior is animalistic by definition.

The above sentence suggests that being an animal leads to immoral behavior. Frans B. M. de Waal has been especially good about undermining this idea:

http://www.amazon.com/Good-Natured-Origins-Humans-Animals/dp...

Good Natured: The Origins of Right and Wrong in Humans and Other Animals

Kindness is also a product of evolution. Our sense of decency is also a product of evolution. To be clear about this, all human behavior has been facilitated by evolution. Our genes do not control us in a rigid and deterministic way, but our genes do establish perhaps the outer limits of the possible for us. It might be best to use the word "facilitate" when describing the effect of evolution on our behavior.

When Saint Francis of Assisi gave all of his possessions to the poor, his actions were facilitated by evolution.

When Hitler ordered 6 million Jews killed, his actions were facilitated by evolution.

When marine Jason Dunham decided to sacrifice his life to save his fellow soldiers, by diving on top of a hand grenade, his actions were facilitated by evolution.

When Susan Leigh Vaughan Smith killed her 2 children, her actions were facilitated by evolution.

When Adrienne Rich decided to write a book denouncing male-dominated family life, and when she came out as a lesbian, her actions were facilitated by evolution.

When George F. Gilder wrote a book denouncing feminism, his actions were facilitated by evolution.

What we are capable of has been facilitated by our history so far, all 4 billion years of it. This includes all behavior, including what some might regard as "good" and some might regard as "bad". But, while keeping all this in mind, it is also important to realize that we are still evolving today, still inventing the new, day by day. Possibly the pace is so slow that it is hard to see, but still, evolution is still happening, for every species on the planet, including humans. If we could get in a time machine and skip 100,000 years in the future, we would probably note the emergence of many new behaviors in the human line.

joe_the_user
I am curious why people keep taking this attitude to Dawkins. And Dawkins himself was also curious why people had this reaction to his books.

Well perhaps both you and Dawkins are naive - or perhaps only you are...

It should be rather obvious that ninety percent of the impact any book or idea system is the elevator pitch. The elevator pitch for Dawkin is "we are controlled by our (selfish) genes". If Dawkins includes caveats, well, how sweat of him but it really doesn't change the basic effect of writing a book called "The Selfish Gene". All your caveats are fine too but I suspect only reading the executive is definitely facilitated by evolution...

arvinjoar
A scientist shouldn't be defined by those who misinterpret him/her.
yters
If evolution explains everything, it explains nothing.
saturn
A meaningless platitude.
yters
No, it's good science. If a theory is supported by both a piece of evidence and its contrary, and it can predict one thing and its contrary, then the theory doesn't explain anything, nor is it falsifiable. Geez, I wish they'd teach kids science in schools today.
thyrsus
Good science accepts all non-fraudulent evidence. In the case of evolution, we're dealing with large, highly variable populations. Thus, no individual observation will falsify the theory. Evolution is almost tautological in predicting that traits which increase the likelihood of reproduction in a population will become more common in that population. To falsify evolution, you would have to observe a population in which traits that increased the likelihood of reproduction became less common.

There is an important subtlety with social groups: a trait that decreases the likelihood of an individual's reproduction may increase the likelihood of the group's reproduction. For instance, worker ants have near zero probability of reproducing, yet they highly increase the likelihood of the group's (colony's) reproduction.

yters
Ever heard the reproduction rates across the western world are dropping off the charts? Oh, did I just falsify evolution?
EGreg
I think saying "evolution theory" is very vague. There is the theory of common descent. That is what is being supported here: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/

But claiming that mutation and natural selection alone explains ALL speciation and ALL behavior that we observe today is just a simplistic position, almost an article of faith. How do you know there is no other factor involved? How do you know no other process WAS involved in the past?

We don't. So far as I know, we have never observed macro evolution taking place in recorded history (although I would be happy to be shown wrong on this point), so what actually causes speciation is just speculation at this point.

Common descent is one thing. "Evolution" is a loaded term. What does it mean?

It's a bit like the people who claim that the Bing Bang Theory describes an explosion in the first seconds of the universe. Actually, the BBT just extrapolates backwards from what we observe today -- which is that the visible universe is expanding, and there is microwave radiation at its edges. How do we know there wasn't some other process earlier in the real universe, which would make our extrapolation completely erroneous? How do we know that the universe isn't infinite beyond our visible universe? Every year objects disappear further beyond the light horizon, due to the expansion of space. Who knows hoc much lies beyond that? And yet people talk about "the universe had a beginning" ... how do they KNOW?

Okay I just wanted to throw a crazy idea at the end: Maybe our universe is like a reverse black hole, with a singularity at the edges instead of its interior. Meaning that just as gravity increases as you approach the singularity in a black hole, so the universe expands faster the bigger a "sphere" you take in it.

tel
No on many counts. Evolution theory is an umbrella term for a number of predictions including common descent, mutation, natural selection which is sufficient in theory and observation to create genetic and then physical changes in a population.

We have observed macro evolution countless times in bacteria and viruses. It's not even difficult.

I'm not sure why you'd call Evolution a loaded term in a scientific domain. It's clearly loaded in politics these days, but it's a very clear and celebrated theory with sharp and validated predictions in scientific domains.

You're somewhat right in the statement that BBT extrapolates from data observable today, but due to the nature of the universe, data observable today provides evidence that is not fully localized in time. We believe that the universe is infinite beyond our light cone because if we make the minimal possible assumptions on the net geometry of the universe you end up with three choices, each having to do with the sum of the angles in a very large triangle. We measured this triangle (see WMAP) and found the angles to be very nearly 180 degrees corresponding to a flat, infinite universe. So long as we have no compelling reason to invent more exotic geometry (which if GR holds would require some rather incredible momentum-energy that we haven't observed --- all possible, but very, very exotic) then this is a safe prediction.

BBT theory doesn't even describe an explosion anywhere. There wasn't something to explode in to. It instead suggests that the invariant metric has been expanding throughout the lifetime of the universe making things grow further and further apart. It's unclear that there wasn't more exotic behavior in there again, but without evidence of it, the best prediction is the simplest prediction.

I could go further into how we KNOW things and why that's not really a great way to think about it, but this is already grown long. But if you want your crazy idea to be meaningful at all, please specify it formally enough so that it predicts something about the shape or behavior of the universe different from current theories and then see if that prediction holds. Without at least claiming a prediction, it's difficult to even begin to understand what a crazy idea might mean.

EGreg
1) re evolution: when I say it's a "loaded" term, it's because it is sometimes by people who seem to make the additional assumption that mutation and natural selection are sufficient to produce the results we see today. I think that assumption is unfounded and seems to be more like a wish to keep things simple. I don't for example see how gay people could be genetically predisposed to be gay, since they would have a reproductive fitness level far lower than others. But that's not even the biggest thing. Little mechanisms which could hardly make a difference in survival one way or the other are doing an amazing job. Maybe it's sexual selection. But where is the evidence that all that we see around us was produced with simple mutation and natural selection?

Regarding bacteria and viruses: that's micro-evolution, isn't it? Why is it macroevolution?

2) Regarding the BBT: so why do people think there was a "big bang" and talk about the "first few seconds of the universe" if the universe is probably infinite, and it is only the visible universe that we see expanding?

3) I don't know, I'm not a physicist... seemed like an intriguing way to think about the expansion though

saturn
I gave up arguing with creationists long ago, but on the off chance you actually do want to improve your understanding: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macroevolution#Misuse
EGreg
Yeah I read that already, but what I said doesn't necessarily imply creationism. What arguments do you have to show that everything we see today came about SOLELY through mutation and natural selection?
saturn
Unless you have some truly spectacular competing theory, with plenty of hard evidence to back it up, there is only one conceivable reason for your attempted nitpicks at evolutionary biology and that is religious conviction. I'm pretty sure you don't have the former, so changing away from this very repetitive channel..
tel
This is a shortsighted and reactionary post: DH1 or DH2 at best [1]. I understand your frustration, but if you only have frustration to contribute then HN prefers silence. It's the path to maintaining a respectful community.

It turns out, unsurprisingly, that all human phenotypes cannot be explained by naïve evolutionary biology but instead require more genetics and biochemistry to describe. Consider the specifics of eye color: evolution does not specify this feature, so a theory which goes above evolution (not contrary to what EGreg is asking for) is necessary to predict this phenotype. We're just more complicated than that.

This is a rebuttal to using pure evolution to model the shape of human physiology that doesn't introduce religion.

[1] http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html

saturn
You're right, I shouldn't have taken the bait. Entirely deserving of the downvotes ...
EGreg
I don't know why you'd think religion is the only conceivable reason. I think both religious people and others start to see enemies where there aren't any (I guess it's an evolutionary psychology instinct, right? Because the human brain evolved to find tigers better, at the expense of false positives, etc.)

To be honest I didn't remember a lot of my gripes off the bat when I wrote it, but a big one is the gratuitous use of evolutionary psychology by all armchair theorists and their book writing moms these days. How is that religious? They take any sort of human behavior and start speculating evolutionary reasons for it purely in terms of reproductive fitness, because in essence they are saying it all boils down to mutation and natural selection + it must be super simple. WHY?

Science doesn't work this way. "Unless you have some truly spectacular competing theory, I'm just gonna use empty speculation to explain why people have non-advantageous trait X, because we know that mutation and natural selection take place". It works by making falsifiable predictions. What falsifiable predictions do armchair speculators about tiny human behavior make? Do they test them?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zv7b-KPg9hY :P

Here is one that I remember was posted by a friend of mine on facebook. Note the empty speculation at the end. Really, narrator? Just because you have a British accent we should implicitly accept that assertion?

tel
It's the true form (generalization) of the old "new proposals require evidence" catchall. The space of possible ways things could happen and be in accordance with our ignorance is enormous. If you want the best chances of being right, you keep you guesses maximally simple!

If you create a more complex model that includes more factors than mutation and natural selection and it is able to predict reality better than one that only includes those factors then you win. As it turns out, people have by using more complete understanding of the actual mechanics of human genetics, but a rough and basically accurate picture can be painted without invoking those mechanisms.

That "mostly accurate" picture is where most people stop when they argue "for evolution". It's a fantastic rule of thumb.

EGreg
What makes it fantastic, though? What is the hypothesis / theory exactly that they are espousing, when they talk about evolutionary psychology for example?

Isn't it the fact that our behaviors all have an evolutionary basis, including e.g. the desire for a human male to sleep after sex? Each of these gets its specially concocted rendition of the narrator's fantasy -- e.g. "so that the women could get away more often after copulating".

I find this to be completely unscientific and wonder what falsifiable predictions these theories make. I mean the ones that imply that everything can be explained simply in terms of "evolution" by mutation and natural selection.

tel
Nobody ever claims that evolution explains everything. The claim is something closer to "Of all theories of equivalent or lesser complexity as evolution, no other one yet discovered has better predictive power".

I'm not sure of my scientific history here, but I believe one extraordinary falsifiable prediction drawn from evolution in its earlier days is that there should be some common structure of generational information between almost all living things, a prediction which the discovery of DNA clearly validated.

tel
Genetic algorithms are a pretty simple to replicate demonstration that mutation and selection together constitute a sufficient condition for descent with modification.

Evolution doesn't claim to explain all changes, just the "force" which causes populations to grow to resemble the units of the population which are best selected for in later generations. It, for instance, doesn't explain eye color either; there isn't sufficient reproductive pressure to affect those aleles. Eye color requires understanding of DNA and the structure of our genetics to begin to make sense of.

Microevolution and macroevolution are the same thing at different (orthogonally arbitrary) scales. The appearance of a significant difference occurs under strong selective pressure or differential selective pressure leading to punctuated equilibria or genetic splitting, but really it's just a matter of sharp changes of a smooth parameter instead of actual categorical differences.

---

Because there were presumably first few seconds of the universe. The cosmic microwave background radiation is a picture of these first few seconds when everything was closer together and thus interacted strongly! The resolution to this conundrum turns out to not be tied to the finiteness of the universe but instead the astounding fact that if you fix two objects in space the distance between them will still grow (very slowly) with time.

---

I'm not a physicist either, so I avoid seriously proposing strange theories of cosmology. It's gotta be pretty equivalent to having a manager ask for some new feature assuming it'll be trivial to build.

Natsu
Actually, it's a perfectly reasonable statement. That which truly proves anything would be able to prove a statement and its own converse, creating a contradiction.

Evolution, of course, is true, but that doesn't mean that everyone who tries to claim that X is an effect of evolution is correct. There are other causes for things, after all and people are right to be wary of easy explanations trotted out without any discussion of the basis for them.

wvoq

  converse
Negation. There are plenty of true conditional statements whose converses are also true.
Natsu
Oops. You are correct.
None
None
andrewflnr
In an atheistic viewpoint, using contraceptives is basically a bug. Look at the real motivations; it's so you can have sex (satisfy reproductive drive) but not have the burden of actually reproducing, so you can still be comfortable. One way or another, it boils down to that. The drive for comfort (or laziness, depending on how cynical you are) is, I assume, another survival instinct to encourage conservation of energy for when it's needed.

Basically, if you don't have an immaterial soul, all your actions are determined by evolution. It's just a question of how optimal your evolutionary programming is. Almost no one really believes this and persists in believing that there is such a thing as moral behavior, which really ought to be a clue.

redsymbol
Very insightful write-up. Thank you for taking the time to compose it.
This is by Frans de Waal who wrote the fascinating book "Good Natured: The Origins of Right and Wrong in Humans and Other Animals". http://www.amazon.com/Good-Natured-Origins-Humans-Animals/dp...

I picked this book up for like $1 or something at the annual Penn State book sale (all books not sold are pulped) and it's been very influential for me.

He has a fascinating discussion on the "circle of empathy" and how it widens as our resources increase (from family unit, to tribe, clan, nation, world, and finally non-human animals...).

Great read!

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