So these are the pillars of morality. If you ask anyone, "What is morality based on?" these are the two factors that always come out. One is reciprocity, and associated with it is a sense of justice and a sense of fairness. And the other one is empathy and compassion. And human morality is more than this, but if you would remove these two pillars, there would be not much remaining I think. And so they're absolutely essential. (Frans de Waal. Official TED Talk transcript)
1. Reciprocity
Reciprocity is one of the most basic features of morality. At its simplest, reciprocity is just give and take. Chimps display this trait in sharing of food and in mutual grooming. In The Atheist and the Bonono, Frans de Waal tells the story of a hunter-gatherer who did not share the food he had hunted one day. The community acted in concert to shame him so that in the end he gave all his food away. His single act of selfishness would likely be remembered by the community for a long time. One of the basic rules of the social primate lifestyle is that we stand together or not at all. Anyone who does not share, threatens the survival of the group.
We often talk about morality in terms of metaphors of balance or accounting (Lakoff 1995). This reflects the fact that we keep track of give and take and aim to balance things out. Other social animals can also keep track of give and take, and are aware that others will share on the basis of being shared with. A chimp knows that if they do or don't share food with an individual that it will remembered. Chimps remember which other chimps share or don't share and they preferentially share or don't share on this basis. This is a feedback loop.
If the tendency is not to share, then social individuals end up in an every-one for themselves situation and their group breaks down and stops being an effective survival mechanism. Such a set up would be naturally selected against. Social animals must have both a bias for sharing and a bias against not sharing; i.e. both positive and negative feedback aimed at promoting reciprocity. Anything else would simply fail. Sharing encourages future reciprocal sharing; and sharing is the basis of success in social species. There is still some residual desire to get more for oneself, but being caught being greedy means that one is more likely to face retribution (violent confrontation in many primate societies); but one is also less likely to receive shared food in the future. Thus selfishness carries considerable risk for any social animal. Under normal social conditions for a chimp or a hunter-gatherer human, greed is self-defeating because it creates a reputation for not sharing, degrades one's status in the group, and makes it less likely that others will return the favour in the future. I'll return to the subject of reputation below, since it is absent from Searle's account of social reality.
If the tendency is not to share, then social individuals end up in an every-one for themselves situation and their group breaks down and stops being an effective survival mechanism. Such a set up would be naturally selected against. Social animals must have both a bias for sharing and a bias against not sharing; i.e. both positive and negative feedback aimed at promoting reciprocity. Anything else would simply fail. Sharing encourages future reciprocal sharing; and sharing is the basis of success in social species. There is still some residual desire to get more for oneself, but being caught being greedy means that one is more likely to face retribution (violent confrontation in many primate societies); but one is also less likely to receive shared food in the future. Thus selfishness carries considerable risk for any social animal. Under normal social conditions for a chimp or a hunter-gatherer human, greed is self-defeating because it creates a reputation for not sharing, degrades one's status in the group, and makes it less likely that others will return the favour in the future. I'll return to the subject of reputation below, since it is absent from Searle's account of social reality.
Only a disposition to reciprocity can survive in a social group. The logic is so obvious and so simple that as I work through it systematically, I cannot believe that anyone ever believed otherwise or fell for the rational choice theory or the errant nonsense of people like Ayn Rand. Selfishness is death to a social primate, not only individual death, but the death of the entire group. Selfishness only becomes a viable strategy in a situation where social connections have broken down or become ineffective; i.e. where there is none of the negative feedback that social connections would provide. And even in this case it can only be short term. An example might be the looting that occurs when civil order breaks down in a city. As a strategy, looting only makes sense if reciprocity is weak to start with and has has temporarily broken down; and if there are no (perceived) consequences to just taking what you can. In this narrow scenario, looting is the short-term rational choice. But even then, in the long-term, society is damaged by looting because trust is broken and can a long time to re-establish.
We can go further than this and say that social animals must have a predisposition to initiate sharing, i.e. to generosity. Without it, the negative feedback in which individuals do not share with non-sharers would result in the degrading of the group. In order for reciprocity to prosper, generosity must be the norm. And others must be willing to accept the obligation that this places them under to reciprocate. I'll say more about this under the heading of altruism.
In Searle's deontological terms, each group member experiences an obligation to share. Being a group member is a function imposed on individuals by collective intentionality. You count as one of us while we think of you as one of us. And if you are one of us we expect you to fulfil the obligations that we understand are entailed by being one of us. For chimps, this mainly means functions like sharing food, mutual grooming, and respecting the group hierarchy. Anyone who is considered one of us and acts like one of us, gets mutual support in the form of protection from predators or competing members of our own species, and reciprocal sharing of food, access to mates, and mutual grooming. This is not anarchy or the communism, because there is a hierarchy and the alpha male exploits the group to get preferential treatment in terms to food and mates. He does this with the help of a coalition or clique, with whom he is then obligated to share with ahead of non-supporters.
Keeping track of the hierarchy, the coalitions, and the necessary reciprocity is as important as keeping track of sharing more generally. The necessity of keeping track of all this information is what lends it to the bookkeeping or accounting metaphor. Indeed it may be that this is not a metaphor, that morality is literally a bookkeeping exercise. The development of the brain power to keep track of all this in primate groups is an important part of Robin Dunbar's account of human evolution (Dunbar 2014). Brain size, especially the ratio of neo-cortex to overall brain volume, is correlated to social group size, suggesting that we use the neocortex to keep track of social information. Larger group sizes require a larger brain to keep track of all the relevant relations; while a larger brain facilitates keeping track of a larger number of peers. Since larger group sizes are better for survival, there is pressure to always operate of the limit of how many relationships we can track and for group size to creep up if possible. What makes an increase in neocortex size possible seems to be related to food sources. Quite possibly the exploitation of protein and omega-3 fatty acid sources such as shell-fish, oily fish, and algae were pivotal in the evolution of our larger brain. Cooking food also helped. But larger group size also requires more time commitment to keeping track of reciprocity and maintaining relationships. One to one grooming is inefficient and humans seem to have adopted a number of many to many activities that meet the same need: for example, dancing, singing, and laughing in groups produces the same sense of well-being in humans as grooming does in chimps. The efficiency of our methods of generating social cohesion allow us to maintain much larger groups that any other primate.
Keeping track of the hierarchy, the coalitions, and the necessary reciprocity is as important as keeping track of sharing more generally. The necessity of keeping track of all this information is what lends it to the bookkeeping or accounting metaphor. Indeed it may be that this is not a metaphor, that morality is literally a bookkeeping exercise. The development of the brain power to keep track of all this in primate groups is an important part of Robin Dunbar's account of human evolution (Dunbar 2014). Brain size, especially the ratio of neo-cortex to overall brain volume, is correlated to social group size, suggesting that we use the neocortex to keep track of social information. Larger group sizes require a larger brain to keep track of all the relevant relations; while a larger brain facilitates keeping track of a larger number of peers. Since larger group sizes are better for survival, there is pressure to always operate of the limit of how many relationships we can track and for group size to creep up if possible. What makes an increase in neocortex size possible seems to be related to food sources. Quite possibly the exploitation of protein and omega-3 fatty acid sources such as shell-fish, oily fish, and algae were pivotal in the evolution of our larger brain. Cooking food also helped. But larger group size also requires more time commitment to keeping track of reciprocity and maintaining relationships. One to one grooming is inefficient and humans seem to have adopted a number of many to many activities that meet the same need: for example, dancing, singing, and laughing in groups produces the same sense of well-being in humans as grooming does in chimps. The efficiency of our methods of generating social cohesion allow us to maintain much larger groups that any other primate.
This brings us back to a factor not discussed by Searle in his account of society, i.e. reputation. Frans de Waal points out that even amongst chimps, an individual who shares, gains a reputation for sharing; while one who hoards gets a reputation for hoarding. Reputation amongst the group is important because it can determine our position in the hierarchy. If our reputation is for not sharing, then this might override the more general obligation to share: persistent freeloaders are excluded from society. Reputation encompasses how well the group thinks we are living up to the obligations placed upon us. Are we a reliable team player, or are we likely to go rogue and disrupt things? Reputation can be very difficult to shift. Just look at how we deal with criminals. On one hand we say that someone who has served their jail term for a crime has "paid their debt to society", but they typically have a permanent criminal record that restricts employment opportunities amongst other things. Despite the rhetoric of "paying debts", it is a fact that once one has a criminal record one has the status-function of criminal. Because morality is based in these evolutionary imperatives to help groups function, we can feel very strongly about immorality. At some level immorality threatens our survival, because it undermines our group. A reputation for immorality is a millstone and outlaws are often outcasts. Many societies still take reputation very seriously indeed, up to and including killing family members who act in ways that undermine reputation.
Searle argues that though rules are discernible and may be conscious, in fact most of the time we are not following rules. Rather, in the process of learning the necessary skills we internalise rules to create dispositions. These dispositions give rise to behaviours that are consistent with the rules, without actually referencing the rules most of the time. This is important here because most of the time we are behaving and judging other people's behaviour according to standards that we may find difficult to articulate. This may account for the popularity of simplistic moral formulas like the Ten Commandments or the Five Precepts. They give focus to strongly felt, intuitive responses to pro- and antisocial behaviours and help to rationalise how we treat rule breaches. It may also explain the interminable arguments around morality as each disputant is struggling to articulate rules that are deeply felt, but not immediately available to consciousness.
The problem with most sets of moral precepts, however, is that the generalise too far up the taxonomy. The argument I'm making here is that empathy and reciprocity are the two general principles on which morality is based. For a moral system to be successful, it has to generalise these principles: to reward group members who empathise and reciprocate and punish those who do not. The Christian commandments are too culturally specific and have to be continually re-contextualised; the Buddhist precepts are general in the right kind of way, but they are conceived of as representing the idealised behaviour of the arahant who has no need of social connections. As one of my colleagues proposes, the Buddhist precepts are "not about being good". I think grounding ideas morality in the necessity of living together in large groups is essential.
The problem with most sets of moral precepts, however, is that the generalise too far up the taxonomy. The argument I'm making here is that empathy and reciprocity are the two general principles on which morality is based. For a moral system to be successful, it has to generalise these principles: to reward group members who empathise and reciprocate and punish those who do not. The Christian commandments are too culturally specific and have to be continually re-contextualised; the Buddhist precepts are general in the right kind of way, but they are conceived of as representing the idealised behaviour of the arahant who has no need of social connections. As one of my colleagues proposes, the Buddhist precepts are "not about being good". I think grounding ideas morality in the necessity of living together in large groups is essential.
Dunbar in fact describes a social milieu in which each of us is surrounded by shells of increasing numbers of other people expanding in factors of 3: on average roughly 5, 10, 15, 45, 150, 450, 1000 etc. The obligation for reciprocity applies most strongly to family and intimates (5, 10, 15) and naturally extends outwards to our group of 150, i.e. to our village if we were living in the New Guinea highlands or medieval Europe. Where we are part of larger communities there will be a weaker obligation, in diminishing degree, extending to tribes and larger units. But beyond this, obligations are not so natural and often have to be enforced by the use of physical power. Feudal lords require standing armies to enforce the obligations of peasants and put down revolts. The bourgeoisie have "managers" and the threat of being fired to do the same job.
Where reciprocity often does not apply, is to strangers, i.e. to those who are completely outside our social circles. Jared Diamond describes strangers being killed on sight in New Guinea. Chimps and bonobos will attack and sometimes kill strange males, but welcome new females. Humans are capable of entering into reciprocal arrangements with strangers, but are not obligated to. In some cases agreements with strangers are not obligations. It is not for nothing that most surviving examples of early writing involve records of trade and/or treaties between kings. Writing enabled obligations between strangers to be binding.
Where reciprocity often does not apply, is to strangers, i.e. to those who are completely outside our social circles. Jared Diamond describes strangers being killed on sight in New Guinea. Chimps and bonobos will attack and sometimes kill strange males, but welcome new females. Humans are capable of entering into reciprocal arrangements with strangers, but are not obligated to. In some cases agreements with strangers are not obligations. It is not for nothing that most surviving examples of early writing involve records of trade and/or treaties between kings. Writing enabled obligations between strangers to be binding.
We have what novelist Orson Scott Card aptly called a hierarchy of exclusion. In the sequence of novels centred around the character of Andrew "Ender" Wiggins there is a tension between alien species and humans (with humans guilty of xenocide or wiping out a whole alien species; xeno is Greek for stranger). The category of "human" is extended in a hierarchy to 1. those we know; 2. those who are like us but from somewhere else; 3. those from another species who have recognisable "human" qualities that make communication possible. Beyond this we have 4. truly alien species, that might be intelligent, but with whom no communication is possible (with the suggestion that war is the only possible interaction). In addition there are non-intelligent beasts or monsters who are inimical to human existence. In this system we perceive an obligation to treat aliens as humans if we can communicate with them, but not if we cannot (See Hierarchy of Otherness and cf. Why Artificial Intelligences Will Never Be Like Us and Aliens Will Be Just Like Us. 27 June 2014).
For most modern people, we don't just in large groups, but in large groups of people who are mostly strangers or out-group. The difficulty of creating a moral system that everyone will follow in a multi-cultural society is substantial. And this is why many people want to live in familiar, homogeneous groups and why first generation migrants tend to cluster together. They are not necessarily racists, or if they are then their motivation is not necessarily fear or hatred of strangers. Humans crave the sense of well-being that comes from belonging to a group where everyone knows what the social rules are and can be fairly sure that everyone is keeping to them; where we can be assured that reciprocity will hold us together. This is really only certain in groups up to the limit of 150 imposed by the size of our neocortex, which is a problem if we live in a city with a hundred thousand, a million, or even ten million people in it. Yes, an outcome of this might be xenophobia, the fear of strangers, but it comes from a deeper desire that ought to be taken seriously and met: a sense of belonging. An ersatz version of belonging in the form of nationalism is promoted by states, and ersatz communities of people using computers do form, but there is no substitute for being a member of a flesh and blood, local community. This is something the Amish and related sects understand better than any other communities in the Western world. They haven't let technology or the demands of capitalism tear them apart. They remind us of how we could live if we chose to. Neal Stephenson coined the term Amistics for the study and limitation of the impact of technology on society.
For most modern people, we don't just in large groups, but in large groups of people who are mostly strangers or out-group. The difficulty of creating a moral system that everyone will follow in a multi-cultural society is substantial. And this is why many people want to live in familiar, homogeneous groups and why first generation migrants tend to cluster together. They are not necessarily racists, or if they are then their motivation is not necessarily fear or hatred of strangers. Humans crave the sense of well-being that comes from belonging to a group where everyone knows what the social rules are and can be fairly sure that everyone is keeping to them; where we can be assured that reciprocity will hold us together. This is really only certain in groups up to the limit of 150 imposed by the size of our neocortex, which is a problem if we live in a city with a hundred thousand, a million, or even ten million people in it. Yes, an outcome of this might be xenophobia, the fear of strangers, but it comes from a deeper desire that ought to be taken seriously and met: a sense of belonging. An ersatz version of belonging in the form of nationalism is promoted by states, and ersatz communities of people using computers do form, but there is no substitute for being a member of a flesh and blood, local community. This is something the Amish and related sects understand better than any other communities in the Western world. They haven't let technology or the demands of capitalism tear them apart. They remind us of how we could live if we chose to. Neal Stephenson coined the term Amistics for the study and limitation of the impact of technology on society.
It is a principle of propaganda that to sustain war, people must hate the enemy. And the easiest way to generate that hate is to insist that the enemy is subhuman and that we cannot communicate with them; they are monstrous and lacking in morality; and they are a direct and present threat. Although the idea was first fully enunciated by Nazi propagandists, we see the technique of dehumanising an enemy throughout history and into the present. The UK invaded Iraq on the basis of the fantasy that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction that it could deploy into Europe within 40 minutes. In reality Iraq had neither the weapons, nor the deployment capability, nor the desire to attack Europe (probably most of the terrorism ascribed to Iraq was in fact sponsored by Syria anyway, which makes sense because Syria had a genuine reason to be angry with us). Ironically we are often allied with the worst offenders. Gaddafi was our friend, then our enemy, then our friend, then our enemy again. Saddam Hussein also went in and out of favour depending who his enemy was: when he invaded Iran we sold him armaments (though we also sold arms to Iran); but when he invaded Kuwait, we sent an army to defeat him. Most egregiously our ally, Saudi Arabia, is one of the most brutal dictatorships in world and practice punishments such as physical beatings and death by stoning. Not only that, but they export the brand of Islamism that inspires Muslim terrorists. They are at least as bad as Assad of Syria and yet the Saudis are our allies and Assad our enemy. We've betrayed Syria many times and earned their hostility. This is one reason the UK is sometimes referred to as Perfidious Albion.
Governments regularly use propaganda to manipulate public opinion and rewrite history in their own favour. The British have a genius for turning their defeats (e.g. the first and second invasions of Afghanistan, the charge of the Light Brigade) into triumphant stories that demonstrate the superior British character. The media gleefully join in, because the propaganda is often more exciting than the real situation or history, and excitement is what they sell. Propaganda trades on the ingroup-outgroup distinction in how we perceive our obligations and theirs. There is so much propaganda at every level, that the truth is almost completely and permanently obscured.
This seemingly long digression serves to highlight the natural context for reciprocity. Humans have a remarkable ability to extent our sphere of reciprocal interactions out beyond our in-group, but we don't feel the same level of obligation at every level. And we are quite capable of beastly behaviour as long as we can define the strangers as non-human. It is notable that for many isolated traditional cultures, their word for themselves is simply "human". Strangers are automatically not humans; not included in the network of obligations; not protected by norms and conventions. One of the great advances that come with civilisation is precisely this ability to expand the category of "human" to include strangers.
The consequences of the failure of reciprocity only serve to highlight how centrally important it is to the survival of social primates. This brings us to the question of fairness, which is our knowledge of when reciprocity is working and when it is not.
Governments regularly use propaganda to manipulate public opinion and rewrite history in their own favour. The British have a genius for turning their defeats (e.g. the first and second invasions of Afghanistan, the charge of the Light Brigade) into triumphant stories that demonstrate the superior British character. The media gleefully join in, because the propaganda is often more exciting than the real situation or history, and excitement is what they sell. Propaganda trades on the ingroup-outgroup distinction in how we perceive our obligations and theirs. There is so much propaganda at every level, that the truth is almost completely and permanently obscured.
This seemingly long digression serves to highlight the natural context for reciprocity. Humans have a remarkable ability to extent our sphere of reciprocal interactions out beyond our in-group, but we don't feel the same level of obligation at every level. And we are quite capable of beastly behaviour as long as we can define the strangers as non-human. It is notable that for many isolated traditional cultures, their word for themselves is simply "human". Strangers are automatically not humans; not included in the network of obligations; not protected by norms and conventions. One of the great advances that come with civilisation is precisely this ability to expand the category of "human" to include strangers.
The consequences of the failure of reciprocity only serve to highlight how centrally important it is to the survival of social primates. This brings us to the question of fairness, which is our knowledge of when reciprocity is working and when it is not.
1.1 Fairness
Out of reciprocity comes the notion of fairness, i.e. if I have shared with you, it is only fair that you share with me. If you do not reciprocate, that is unfair. It might be thought that fairness is a distinctly human notion that is associated with our superior reasoning ability, but this is not the case. An appreciation of fairness has been documented in apes, elephants, dogs, and some birds.
The following video an extract from a TED Talk by de Waal on moral behaviour in animals. It became a sensation in its own right (it has been watched 10.8 million times on YouTube).
In the video we see two capuchin monkeys performing a simple task for a reward. The two monkeys are able to see and interact with each other. Both are happy to perform this task when the reward is cucumber. But when one monkey starts getting a preferred food, a grape, the other goes on strike, actually flinging the previously acceptable cucumber back at the researcher. These monkeys clearly understand fairness. They would rather forego their reward all together, than participate in an unfair experiment. The reaction is instantly recognisable to de Waal's audience who spontaneously burst out laughing when the monkey flings his piece of cucumber back at the researcher with evident disgust. The fact that the video went viral and has been viewed more than 10 million times reinforces this impression. We know, that they know, that this grape business is bullshit. And we appreciate the way they let the research know that they know.
In a refinement of the experiment one of de Waal's colleagues has shown that in chimps the individual who is getting preferential treatment may actually refuse the preferred reward until their peer also gets the same. It is thought that they are aware that being seen to get preferential treatment by a peer may mean that they are punished later. Chimps keep track of failures to share and may retaliate violently. This suggests that not only do chimps appreciate fairness, but that they may well also be concerned with justice, i.e. with some attempt are making an unfair situation fair and enforcing the sharing norm. More on this in a moment.
In stark contrast to these observations of behaviour, is the economists' Rational Choice Theory (aka Homo economicus). This is the idea that consumers are narrowly self-interested and behave rationally, where "rational" relates to maximising utility, i.e. to getting the most value for money . The realisation that in the real world consumers are almost never rational, but make emotional decisions that are rationalised after the fact, and almost never maximise utility, led to the development of so-called behavioural economics, but this almost immediately got bogged down in Game Theory which also sees humans through a distorted non-empirical lens (it was designed by John Nash who suffers from paranoid-schizophrenia and who, ironically, became the subject of a film called "A Beautiful Mind"). An uglier view of humanity can be found, but his has become so popular that it deserves special attention.
Selfishness in a social primate is, as we have seen, irrational, since it leads to the breakdown of reciprocity. That "rational self-interest" is an oxymoron for any social animal seems not to bother economists or game-theorists. Studies of social animals show that there is some competition amongst group members, but that they are all oriented to being pro-social. They ensure their own welfare by ensuring the welfare of the group. Social animals will forego rewards to ensure fairness, just like the monkeys in the video, but also like workers who go on strike and forego wages in order to ensure a fair workplace for all. Attunement to fairness is a key disposition for social mammals. It ensures that the group all prosper together, rather than some members of the group leveraging the others to get ahead. Such unfair leveraging is pathological in social primates and detrimental to the survival of the group.
Selfishness in a social primate is, as we have seen, irrational, since it leads to the breakdown of reciprocity. That "rational self-interest" is an oxymoron for any social animal seems not to bother economists or game-theorists. Studies of social animals show that there is some competition amongst group members, but that they are all oriented to being pro-social. They ensure their own welfare by ensuring the welfare of the group. Social animals will forego rewards to ensure fairness, just like the monkeys in the video, but also like workers who go on strike and forego wages in order to ensure a fair workplace for all. Attunement to fairness is a key disposition for social mammals. It ensures that the group all prosper together, rather than some members of the group leveraging the others to get ahead. Such unfair leveraging is pathological in social primates and detrimental to the survival of the group.
The Taj Mahal, the beautiful and iconic shrine of Mumtaz Mahal, built by Shah Jahan in the mid 17th Century, is a good example of the problems that unfair leveraging or economic exploitation causes. Shah Jahan is celebrated as a patron of the arts, but he seems to have levied taxes amounting to about 40% of GDP to "support a lifestyle of exceptional ostentation and self-indulgence" (Key 2016). These days we would say that the Shah was a Totalitarian Fascist. The Taj represents the accumulation of vast wealth by a ruler at the expense of his people, and his wasting that wealth on gratuitous, self-indulgent monuments. It was built by forced labour and at a cost that so weakened the fabric of Mughal society that the Empire collapsed leaving a power vacuum filled by the British, who continued the virtual enslavement of the peasants of India. By contrast Sweden levies taxes of ca. 45% of GDP, but spends extravagantly on providing free healthcare, education, and welfare for its citizens. The Shah's son, anxious to maximise his own share of the loot and concerned by the scale of the levies on the population, overthrew him, but it was too late. Far from being a romantic icon, the Taj should stand as a monument to the folly of exploitation, inequality, totalitarianism, Fascism, forced labour, and short-sighted leadership. The building of Ankor Wat similarly placed an intolerable strain on the economy of the kingdom of Suryavarman II, leaving the state bankrupt and on the verge of civil war (Del Testa 2014: 178).
Once we have the idea of fairness and unfairness, then justice becomes possible. Justice is the idea that the condition of fairness can be sought and attained by our actions; that unfairness can become fairness, that wrongs can be righted. We not only keep track of obligations and notice if someone is reneging on theirs, but we are motivated to see balance restored; to enforce fairness.
As with the Taj Mahal, when an individual or group appropriates too much of the wealth in a society, it harms the prosperity of all. Inequality is a big issue in economics today, as the 1% appropriate the wealth of the 99% at an increasing rate and use their money unwisely (with a few notable exceptions). In 1848, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote
"You are horrified at our intending to do away with private property. But in your existing society, private property is already done away with for nine-tenths of the population; its existence is solely due to its non-existence in the hands of those nine-tenths." (Marx & Engels: 1848, 20)
In modern terms, what this says is that the 1% have appropriated a majority of the world's wealth, all of which is either created by workers or is the result of gambling on the price of the products of labour. I'm not advocating for Communism, merely pointing out that Marx and Engels identified the problem 150 years ago. The 99% largely live on the wages they receive for labouring. Wages are a minimal share of the wealth created by production, with many companies seeking to drive wages down, while the lion's share of the wealth created by labour goes to shareholders. Yes, production also requires capital and land, but the division of the profits is presently inequitable. And this is detrimental to society, because when workers don't have enough to spend in shops, the shops don't have enough to spend at wholesalers, who don't have enough to spend with manufacturers, and so on. The 1% own most of the media outlets that shape public opinion and have been unstinting with propaganda to the effect that workers must accept less, while bosses get more, and shareholders take most. So greedy are they, that the government has to legislate a minimum wage, and even then this is insufficient to live on in many cases. Even monkeys cannot help but notice and respond negatively to unfairness like this.
Humans are so attuned to fairness and justice that many, probably a majority, of us believe that it must be built into the fabric of the universe. This is the idea of the the moral universe or the just world. I've previously explored why evolutionary psychologists think people find the idea of a just world is plausible, even in the face of ample evidence that the world is not fair. We can now see more clearly why people might think like this. The fact that we share reciprocity and a sense of fairness with other animals suggests that it evolved many millions of years ago, i.e. it predates the emergence of the genus Homo, let alone the species Homo sapiens. In all likelihood, we've appreciated fairness for millions of years. From this, and other knowledge of how our body-mind works, we can infer that we experience fairness/unfairness at an emotional level, rather than at an intellectual level. In other words, fairness is not a rational calculation, but am emotional, even a visceral, response. And for this reason it makes sense to us, despite evidence, not because of it. It makes so much sense, that we come to see it as fundamental to the universe. Since the world clearly is not fair, and because a supernatural realm also seems plausible to many people because of a fundamentally dualistic outlook on mind and body, the afterlife as a place where justice is meted out also seem plausible to the majority.
1.2 Altruism & Justice
I said above that we must have a predisposition to share if reciprocity is to provide any benefit to the group. In fact all group members must be willing to initiate sharing with other group members because otherwise the feedback loop leads to the disintegration of the group and the death of the individual. We can call this predisposition to share, altruism. De Waal describes altruism as the empathetic response to perceived need in others (2013: 32-3).
Altruism has been one of the most controversial subjects in biology of recent years. The mainstream were concerned to deny the value of altruism because it undermined the idea that everyone is motivated by self-interest (and at the same time undermined the idea of "selfish" genes). If scholars did admit that altruism existed, then it would be accompanied by some explanation which involved revealed the hidden self-interest in the apparently altruistic act. In other words, in this view, we are fundamentally selfish really only help others if we perceive some benefit to ourselves. They might argue, for example, that mothers only care for infants because they benefit from passing on their genes. This is a particularly alienated and, I would say dangerous, point of view. De Waal's response to this is to point out that altruism blurs the lines between self and other, and thus between motivations which are selfish and selfless. But he also points out many examples of behaviour where altruism has no benefit other than making the altruist feel happy. Simple examples like caring an ageing parent with dementia, which has no genetic reward and no other obvious pay off for the child. Of course it may be motivated by a sense of obligation, but this is still not self-interested, since the obligation is imposed by society. In discussing Searle's approach to social reality I said that "the most important fact about deontic powers is that they give us reasons for acting that are independent of our immediate inclinations." Which suggests that in being prosocial we have to put aside our immediate inclinations, our selfish desires. Of course we may still have selfish desires, but in order to be a social animal we have to be able to restrain them most of the time in favour of what is good for the group, or the group dies and the group is what keeps us alive.
Part of the problem for biologists dealing with altruism was and is political. The rise of Neoliberalism and the application of Neoliberalism to the field of biology and in particular to genetics to create the "selfish gene" theory, combined with the ideological commitment to reductionism inherited with physics, and with a Victorian sensibility with respect to class and privilege, created a vigorously defended, but weird and distorted normative view of humans and animals. Darwinism was already ripe for misinterpretation along these lines, because Darwin was part of an elite, imperialist class that was systematically exploiting both workers in Britain and the people and natural resources of colonised places. Keep in mind that On the Origins of Species was published in 1859, eleven years after the first edition of The Communist Manifesto, and it already identifies the essentially exploitative character of Darwin's class, i.e. the Bourgeois.
Neoliberal biology is epitomised by Richard Dawkins' metaphorical selfish gene. Dawkins, like many scientists before and since makes the error of taking descriptions from one level of the hierarchy of science to apply universally. And some scientists and philosophers erroneously concluded from this that if genes were selfish, then this confirmed their intuition that people were also. This is similar to the error that many physicists make in considering free will, i.e. they reason that if the behaviour of matter and energy is deterministic at some level, then it must be deterministic at all levels. Thus human behaviour must also be deterministic and there is no such thing as free will. This assumes that all levels of structure behave identically and that properties of behaviour are transmitted upwards through levels of structure, which is equivalent to stating (reductio ad absurdum) that all organisms behave as though they were atoms. This is patently not the case. Thus we find ourselves in the invidious position that the mainstream argument about human nature is largely specious, though it is paradigmatic amongst physical scientists; just as selfishness in social animals is specious, but paradigmatic amongst biologists.
Even if genes were selfish in the sense that Dawkins claimed they are (and I do not grant that this is so), there is no reason at all to suppose that humans are selfish as a result because there are multiple levels of structure between gene and social animal. Simple observation shows that while modern urban humans can be very selfish, that selfishness is a very rare trait in small-scale human societies and all primate societies, which still rely on reciprocity within a defined group for survival.
To a field which accepts the basic selfishness of humanity, altruism is anathema. No sense can be made of acts that benefit others at all, let alone acts that only benefit others and may even occur at a cost to the altruist. But of course examples of helping others where there is no possible benefit to the helper are ridiculously common. As de Waal argues, it seems that altruism just feels good. And like other things that evolution has equipped us to enjoy—high energy foods, sex, company, etc —altruism is probably enjoyable because it is essential to our survival. Pleasure motivates us to seek these experiences out and thus helps us stay alive. There is nothing mysterious about this.
Altruism makes perfect sense in a system where reciprocity is the norm. We would naturally evolve to kick-start the positive feedback loop of reciprocity through unprompted generosity or response to a perceived need. If we did not, then reciprocity would never get started. This need not involve calculating an anticipated future reward, it would simply feel good to an animal evolved for social living to be generous and altruistic. Humans have this ability evolved to such a peak that we frequently help complete strangers who are in no position to offer us anything. Donations pour in to help those affected by disaster and calamity. We adopt children and raise them as our own, house stray dogs, care for drug addicts or elderly parents, and any number of other acts which promise nothing in return except the pleasure of giving.
Conclusions
Altruism makes perfect sense in a system where reciprocity is the norm. We would naturally evolve to kick-start the positive feedback loop of reciprocity through unprompted generosity or response to a perceived need. If we did not, then reciprocity would never get started. This need not involve calculating an anticipated future reward, it would simply feel good to an animal evolved for social living to be generous and altruistic. Humans have this ability evolved to such a peak that we frequently help complete strangers who are in no position to offer us anything. Donations pour in to help those affected by disaster and calamity. We adopt children and raise them as our own, house stray dogs, care for drug addicts or elderly parents, and any number of other acts which promise nothing in return except the pleasure of giving.
Conclusions
I hope I have demonstrated the centrality of reciprocity to the lives of social animals and that I have dispelled the egregiously false notion that human beings are fundamentally selfish. Where there is an understanding of the need for reciprocity then fairness and unfairness become obvious even to monkeys. Once we understand fairness, it is only a short step towards wanting to ensure fairness, to take steps to make the unfair situation fair. We call this justice. I hope too I have gone some way to explaining why inequality is toxic for human societies. The examples I used were rather extreme, but we are in a period of extremes. It is true that generally speaking everyone is better of on average, but average often obscure extremes, and must always be considered in relation to the standard deviation. The 1% have set things up to be inequitable. We all feel the injustice and unfairness of having to break our backs just to earn our day of leisure, while those who exploit us effortlessly obtain everything they tell us we should aspire to. We all want to fling our cucumber back at them. But we are also afflicted by a concerted and persistent propaganda campaign aimed at convincing us of the benefits of consumerism, merchantilism, and the desirability of having a super-wealthy clique controlling our lives. And we, unlike the monkey who cannot think ahead but merely acts out the disgust it feels, are all afraid that in complaining we might lose what we have worked so hard to gain.
Allied to our understanding of reciprocity, fairness, and justice is our ability to act with altruism. In order for the social lifestyle to work for mammals (I'm excluding social insects) we must have a predisposition for sharing. Often this sharing is motivated by the expectation of reciprocity. But all too often we see true altruism in which the action has no benefit to the actor, and may even have a cost. Caring for an elderly parent with dementia is paradigmatic of this. We are able to see a need in another and act to fulfil that need without expectation of reward (or of punishment if we fail to act), and possibly at some cost to ourselves. De Waal argues that we are altruistic because evolution has equipped us to experience helping others as pleasurable. The "pay-off" from selflessness is that we feel good.
This view of humanity and the world is less optimistic than one which proposes a moral universe and just rewards in heaven, but I would argue it is more realistic. At the same time it is far less pessimistic than the standard picture promoted by economists, game theorists, and some biologists in which selfishness and greed are the norms; let alone the idea shared by physicists and some neuroscientists that all our actions are deterministic responses to stimuli. As a social mammal, humans are born with all the tools they need to solve the major problems that we face. We have inherited a legacy of dour and apocalyptic views of humanity from religion, and equally miserable and pessimistic views from certain mainstream scientists. If we can just substitute a realistic idea of humanity and what we are capable of then I believe we have reason to be hopeful. And we have yet to even discuss empathy which is the main topic of the next part of this essay.
~~oOo~~
Three parts: one | two | three |
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