
Primatologist Frans de Waal takes exception with human exceptionalism - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/issue/70/variables/empathy-morality-community-cultureapes-have-it-all
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dalbasal
When I was about 17 I read a Peter singer book on his ethical philosophy. It
was all about grounding ethics rationally in principles. It made me enroll in
a philosophy degree.

He flirted with all sorts of wierd conclusions. Babies are less
conscious/intelligent/etc than ravens or apes. Does that mean they have the
same moral standing as apes and birds?

However you try to rationalize human exceptionalism (or ethics in general),
you can usually find examples where they don't apply to all people, or some
other rational conclusion that doesn't feel right.

Anyway... I don't think our morals are or can be grounded in morality.
Ultimately, "Man is the measure of all things." Morality applies where we
decide it applies. There is no higher truth, no underlying rules we can
unvover. There is only subjective human judgement and our attempts to
rationalize it.

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
> There is only subjective human judgement and our attempts to rationalize it.

I feel that the very realization of that fact is the first step in becoming a
more moral person. Now that the previous model of morality has been shown to
be fundamentally flawed, one can begin building the next.

~~~
simonh
Quite. Recognising that animals have many of the same experiences as us should
inform but not necessarily dictate our moral position concerning them. I
believe humans evolved form a common ancestor with apes, so for me it is
completely unsurprising and to be expected that we share many of the same
behaviours, sensations, experiences and feelings because I believe we
inherited those from our pre-human ancestors. So when I see a human exhibit
emotional responses and an ape displaying similar responses, that seems
natural to me and I believe they have a common root in our evolutionary
biology.

That doesn’t mean I have to assign apes moral equivalence to humans. Rights
also imply responsibilities and apes are not capable of fulfilling the
responsibilities of a human being. But then you hit the argument that some
human beings aren’t capable of fulfilling those responsibilities either. Well,
we are communal and social beings. We have a tendency to treat members of our
community differently from outsiders, and generally better. For example we
treat citizens differently from non-citizens. Family differently from non-
family. I think it’s reasonable to treat humans differently from non-humans
and grant them enhanced rights.

However I do still accept our common biology and experiential and emotional
lives with some animals. I can accept that when an ape or a human sit watching
a sunset, relaxing and not actively thinking about anything, that they have
fundamentally the same kind of experience. I think that reasonably extends to
a bias against causing unnecessary suffering for example. How we treat others
and how we treat animals says something about our character.

~~~
mannykannot
Our experiences may differ most from other animals in the degree to which we
are aware of having them, and we assume that other people are similarly aware
of having their own experiences and similarly assume that they are thinking
the same of us -- we have a theory of mind (and in addition, we can discuss
it, with both ourselves and other people, using language.)

a surprisingly wide range of species display something similar in some cases,
though it is hard to say how aware they are of it, or how important it is to
their lives.

~~~
simonh
If animals behave as though they have a theory of mind (empathy, love, self-
sacrifice, etc) without actually having a theory of mind, that raises very
prickly problems concerning human evolution. After all if you don’t have to
have a theory of mind to exhibit the behaviours of having one, did our common
ancestors exhibit this behaviour before they developed a theory of mind?
Presumably the answer would have to be yes, because all of our close
evolutionary relatives exhibit this behaviour. It would be extraordinary to
suppose that this behaviour evolved completely independently in all these
animals and that our common ancestor didn’t have this behaviour.

So if our non-human ancestors exhibited this behaviour, but did not actually
have a theory of mind, how come we can say that our equivalent behaviour does
flow from having a theory of mind? That makes no sense. So we develop the
behaviour first, then we develop a theory of mind, and it’s a pure co-
incidence that the behaviour flowing from having a theory of mind just so
happens to be completely indistinguishable, even though the cause is
completely different? I just don't see how that can be credible.

The only coherent account, to me, is that the behaviour we have which we
believe flows from having a theory of mind, if exhibited by other animals,
must be evidence that they posses a theory of mind as well.

~~~
mannykannot
Firstly, let me make it clear that I am not saying that only humans have a
theory of mind, and I am also not saying that it is a binary property, either
you have it in full or not at all.

Having said that, one can still consider when, where, how and how often it
evolved. For example, there are many species that cache food. Some (some
squirrels and also scrub jays, for example) will either only pretend to cache
the food they are carrying, or move it later, if they notice they are being
observed. Is that an application of a general theory of mind at work, or an
instinct that evolved for one particular circumstance? As far as the ethical
treatment of animals is concerned, I have no objection to assuming the former,
but if we want a scientific understanding of what is really going on, that
assumption cannot be made without further evidence.

What you are overlooking, I think, is that there are several possible
explanations for the externally-observable behavior, and once you recognize
that, there should be no paradox. In our case, we, as privileged observers of
our own minds, can see our theory of mind at work, and, through language, we
can talk to other people and ask how it seems to them. Neither of these lines
of inquiry are an option when it comes to studying other species.

There is an interesting parallel in ethics: some people are well-behaved
because they are fearful of punishment or ostracism, while some do so out of
respect for other people. You can't always tell motive from actions alone.

~~~
simonh
I’m aware of the idea of parallel evolution. You’re quite right, it’s entirely
plausible and not something we can dismiss out of hand.

With species like squirrels that are more remotely related to us, there is
more scope for an argument of parallel evolution, sure. Maybe their similar
behaviour developed independently and has a different cause especially when
other mammals do not exhibit this behaviour.

With our much closer relatives such as apes though that exhibit so many more
behaviours that are very close to ours it’s much less plausible. If all of
them exhibit a common pattern of social behaviour with ourselves, arguing all
of them could have independently developed this behaviour separately from us
and each other, to appear indistinguishable, that seems highly implausible.

Even with squirrels though, as mammals they exhibit many behaviours common to
all mammals. Behaviours we exhibit as well. So if all mammals have these
behaviours and we do too, if our behaviour has a different cause, at some
point our ancestors must have switched from exhibiting the behaviour due to
the common mamalian cause to exhibiting it due to this new cause unique to us.
I don’t find that account very plausible either.

Did our ancestors stop exhibiting this behaviour first, then develop new
neurological mechanisms that happened to replace the lost behaviours? When did
that happen, before or after we diverged from other apes? Maybe they have
these behaviour for the same reason as us but other mammals don’t? Did we
develop a parallel mechanism and the behaviour transitioned to the new causal
mechanism? I’d expect to see some residual evidence in our neurology or
behavioural patterns of that having happened.

~~~
mannykannot
Parallel or convergent evolution is coincidental to the point I was making,
which is that you cannot assume a theory of mind from observations that might
be consistent with it; you also have to give due consideration to the other
possibilities, such as it being an instinctive behavior evolved for a
particular situation.

>Even with squirrels though, as mammals they exhibit many behaviours common to
all mammals. Behaviours we exhibit as well. So if all mammals have these
behaviours and we do too...

Here you are combining speculation with an argument from the general to the
specific. There are some behaviors common to all mammals, but are there any
theory-of-mind-like behaviors in that category? No, so the rest of that
paragraph and the one following are built on a false premise.

I am no expert, but FWIW, I happen to think that apes, or at least chimpanzees
and orangutans, do have a nascent theory of mind, and that it was more
developed in the various hominins that are now extinct.

------
Grustaf
I don’t think most people care about what parts of the human brain are present
in monkeys. Even if the difference is just quantitative, it still remains a
fact that humans talk, make music, feel remorse and have civilisations. So
clearly we are fuyndamentally different from all other animals, even if we
have the same components.

The thing is really that when it comes to the mind, physical components are
not really the interesting thing, holisitic, virtual components are what
matter. Mice probably can’t feel remorse, but that is probably not because
they lack a remorse center, it\s because their brains are too small or have
too few connections to provide that functionality.

~~~
circlefavshape
We had no civilisations for most of our time on earth.

~~~
Grustaf
We do now. Ants never will.

~~~
apocalypstyx
However, they managed to master animal husbandry, agriculture, and slavery
before homo-sapiens.

[https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/slave-ants-
and...](https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/slave-ants-and-their-
masters-are-locked-deadly-relationship/)

[https://modernfarmer.com/2014/04/meet-earths-oldest-
farmers-...](https://modernfarmer.com/2014/04/meet-earths-oldest-farmers-
ants/)

[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/11/science/ant-fungus-
farmer...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/11/science/ant-fungus-farmers-
evolution.html)

~~~
Grustaf
All work and no play

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lordnacho
Maybe the expression he's looking for is that humans are part of a continuum.
So we're not off the animal chart entirely, to be described by a whole other
set of ideas, but we are at least somewhat special in where we've gone with
things.

About religion, I don't think his argument holds. Sure it's human nature to
believe in it, but it's also human nature to be quite violent. And we've come
a long way in reducing violence, so why not also remove a way of thinking that
no longer serves a purpose?

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biztos
I recently discovered that de Waal is a rather controversial figure in
primatology circles. I’m probably getting this wrong since IANA(P|Z|B)[0] but
I believe the gist was that he’d studied Bonobos in captivity and made all
kinds of sweeping generalizations and questionable extrapolations based on his
observations, and it turned out that the same animals studied in the wild
behaved quite differently and a lot of people think his conclusions are not
only wrong but dangerous, in that a lot of lay people use his work to give
scientific legitimacy to popular but distinctly unscientific ideas.

FWIW I too dislike human exceptionalism, I just happen to have run across the
“de Waal controversy” recently and thought I’d mention it.

[0]: Primatologist? Zoologist? Biologist? But at least I’m a primate!

------
JoeAltmaier
This seems a silly article, where the primatologist says 'we're not different'
then proceeds to list all the ways we are different.

~~~
Grustaf
It’s clickbait for reductionists

