Wrest from the Hands

            On the nature of being moral, Kant and De Waal arrive at different conclusions while pursuing essentially the same idea on two parallel courses, those of philosophy and biology.  While De Waal believes that “evolution needs to be part of any satisfactory explanation of morality,” Kant reserves the term precisely for that which is independent from, among other things, evolution. (218) Both authors, however, attempt to provide a satisfactory guideline for understanding morality without resorting to supernatural explanations and indefinite social constructions.  Whether founded in the conceptual capacities of the rational mind or the physical workings of a selective natural process, both ideas about morality rely on the existence of a universal law more ancient than any human determinant.
            Both authors establish a general belief that human nature is dual:  with a capacity to reason but with an emotional predisposition.  De Waal sees these “powerful inclinations” as elements that “bias out thinking and behavior,” and that it is incorrect to classify chimp behavior as instinctual and human behavior as proof of moral decency.  He thus simultaneously expands the range of what is considered instinctual and the range of moral characteristics, suggesting that if moral foundations can be found in other species, then our derivative moral behavior is also instinctual.  This threatens the notion of free will, the first precondition of Kant’s system.  For Kant, rational decision-making is unique to autonomous “persons”, while all other “things” follow the inescapable chain of cause and effect of the natural world.  De Waal, however, introduces the evolutionary order, a component of the natural world which all species, including humans, are subject to.  According to Kant’s system, humans can be subject to evolutionary determinants, but not limited to them.  De Waal’s primary focus, however, is not to disprove free will, but to acknowledge that behavioral foundations are part of the process that formulates our decisions and therefore our moral characteristics.  “While some moral rules reinforce species-typical predispositions and others suppress them, none blithely ignore them” (39).
           Good Natured further suggests that ethics can be biologicized if a coherent framework is erected from observations of the natural world.  It tries to “illuminate how  we may have moved from societies in which things were as they were to societies with a vision of what ought to be” (39).  By demonstrating that this evolutionary step was part of a natural progression that ensured the survival of such a socially complex species, De Waal hopes that neurobiological studies could, at a deep enough level, more accurately explain morality than any abstract stipulations of philosophy.  Even if the human psyche were fully understood, it seems scientific provisions about the intellect would still rely, even if to the minimal degree, on judgment calls of the scientific community about which inclinations benefit the survival of the species and are therefore certified moral components of evolution.  This necessitates, once again, precisely the “vision of what ought to be” which De Waal referred to.  Decision-making, it seems, cannot escape itself.  Kant’s philosophical elaborations are therefore still necessary in any form of “biologicized” ethics.  Perhaps philosophy itself was our species’ way of evolving in a social environment.
            The main difference between both positions lies in the range of actions that would deserve moral praise according to either of their systems.  Kant provides an intangible yet clear definition;  De Waal provides concrete means but indefinite conclusions:  “Evolution has produced the requisites for morality:  a tendency to develop social norms and enforce them, the capacities of empathy and sympathy, mutual aid and a sense of fairness, the mechanisms of conflict resolution… How  all of these factors are put together to form a moral framework is poorly understood.” (39) De Waal’s identification of moral patterns in other species does more to clarify Kant’s position than to discredit it.  If ours and other species can be conditioned in certain modes of seemingly moral behavior, the ideal toward which to strive is not negated, but elevated higher than any evolutionary training.
            De Waal indirectly disputes this idea with an analogy:  “To disparage this common ground is a bit like arriving at the top of a tower only to declare that the rest of the building is irrelevant, that the precious concept of ‘tower’ ought to be reserved for the summit” (212).  According to him, animals occupy a number of floors in the tower of morality.  A more accurate representation of Kant’s philosophy would be morality as the unattainable rooftop of a tower of human/animal limitation.  Kant would not disparage the floors populated by the animal kingdom, but perhaps his position entails that an autonomous person could only discover universal moral laws if his gaze were directed toward the uppermost ceiling of the tower, rather than the surface of steps already trodden.  Of course, if he were not to also glance at the step directly below he would trip and fall.  Kant’s is an intriguing model that is far-reaching yet with consideration for day-to-day contingencies.
            Within Kant’s philosophy there is plenty of space for De Waal’s exploration of neurobiological consciousness and its evolution.  The case of Phineas Gage in particular allows him to clarify definitions of instinct and reason.  Gage’s loss of emotional restraint due to a localized brain injury is interpreted in Good Natured as a case where “the equilibrium between intellectual faculties and lower impulses had been disturbed” (216).  De Waal then attributes to the brain not only the source of balance but the source of consciousness itself, comparing it to a moral compass that when demagnetized would spin wildly.
            How interesting that the force of attraction that stabilizes the compass is intangible and separate from the compass itself, and still an integral part of its functioning.  One damaged compass would not signify the negation of magnetic forces, neither would a perfectly functional compass sufficiently explain the reason for its rectitude.  In a metaphorical sense, this allows biology to identify in minute detail the properties through which the human species may develop highly refined and functional moral magnetism.  These properties are also not far removed, it seems, but rather closely related with conditions that can potentially send a compass in evolutionarily dangerous directions.  It would then be the function of free will that, through one method or another, the compass either augments its magnetism by its own volition according to capacity, or perhaps spins freely on the foundational axis of a predetermined level of magnetism.
            Speculations aside, some of De Waal’s conclusions about biology can also be dissected from a philosophical perspective.  His idea that “we need to re-evaluate traditional attitudes developed over a long history without realistic alternatives” evolves into: “we seem to be reaching a point at which science can wrest morality from the hands of philosophers” (218).  From a developmental perspective, it is indeed logical to re-evaluate traditions that may have been appropriate or necessary during primitive stages of history, but that now hinder the establishment of wide-spread coherence of thought.  However, that these myriad components of the apparatus of knowledge and reason exist are a testament to their evolutionary effectiveness.  Even as the biological common ground of related species must not be disparaged, millennia of history and accumulated knowledge predating the rise of empirical science is still telling of the relentless human exploration of self.  As De Waal stated, “consciousness is not [a] concept that can be understood only on the basis of culture and religion,” and evidently it is firmly grounded in neurobiology.  Yet to suggest that the working principles of revolutionary leaders in cultures and religions of the past were somehow incomplete or inaccurate, within their historical contexts, is to undermine the effect they had in the evolution of humankind.  From the measure of their fruits, accomplishments and legacies, one cannot be compelled to say their understanding of reality and moral precepts was somehow delusional or merely accidental.
            Kant is most accurate when determining that the capacity for discovering moral laws is universal, therefore occurring at any time in history and within any variety of knowledge – whether it be of the natural world or any abstract concepts derived therefrom – essentially expressions of the same truth.  De Waal’s idea of biologicized ethics is therefore equivalent to an attempt to biologicize a conceptual study such as mathematics.  While this is impossible, one can still find mathematical patterns in biological processes and structures.  A reconciliation of both positions on morality is thus attained.  Kant and De Waal demonstrate together that we as a human species are naturally inclined through evolution to develop a certain moral capacity through the foundational means of our animal “childhood”.  The resulting vision of moral conduct is that of a continual refinement, through the rational apparatus, of natural predispositions in order to yield acts of good will.  While this idea of growth does not represent the Kantian absolute freedom from circumstance, maturation is not possible without keeping the ideal of freedom constantly in mind.  It is through these visions of “what ought to be” that the seed of progress is planted, so that we may see their eventual realization in material realities, once they’ve been created out of abstraction.

 

Work Cited
De Waal, Frans.  Good Natured:  The Origins of Right and Wrong in Humans and Other Animals.  Harvard University Press; Cambridge, Massachusetts:  1996.

 

back to writing