Jessica C. Flack and Frans B.M. de Waal

Journal of Consciousness Studies, 7, No. 1-2, 2000, pp. 1-29

Any Anima! Whatever

Darwinian Building Blocks of Morality in Monkeys and Apes

To what degree has biology influenced and shaped the development of moral systems? One way to determine the extent to which human moral systems might be the product of natural selection is to explore behaviour in other species that is analogous and perhaps homologous to our own. Many non-human primates, for example, have similar methods to humans for resolving, managing, and preventing conflicts of interests within their groups. Such methods, which include reciprocity and food sharing, reconciliation, consolation, conflict intervention, and mediation. are the very building blocks of moral systems in that they are based on and facilitate cohesion among individuals and reflect a concerted effort by community members to find shared solutions to social conflict. Furthermore, these methods of resource distribution and conflict resolution often require or make use of capacities for empathy, sympathy, and sometimes even community concern. Non-human primates in societies in which such mechanisms are present may not be exactly moral beings, but they do show signs of a sense of social regularity that - just like the norms and rales underlying human moral conduct - promotes a mutually satisfactory modus vivendi.

Any animal whatever, endowed with well-marked social instincts, the parental and filial affections being here included, would inevitably acquire a moral sense or conscience, as soon as its intellectual powers had become as well developed, or nearly as well developed, as in man. Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man (1982 [1871], pp. 71-2)

Thomas Huxley, in his famous lecture, Evolution and Ethics (Huxley, 1894), advanced a view of human nature that has since dominated debate about the origins of morality. Huxley believed that human nature is essentially evil - a product of a nasty and unsympathetic natural world. Morality, he argued, is a human invention explicitly devised to control and combat selfish and competitive tendencies generated by the evolutionary process. By depicting morality in this way, Huxley was advocating that the search for morality's origins be de-coupled from evolution and conducted outside of biology.

Journal of Consciousness Studies, 7, No. 1-2, 2000, pp. 1-29