In what ways are the OTHER animals moral?
Primatologist Frans De Waal has spent much of his career pointing out how incredibly similar the emotional and moral behavior of human animals is to the behavior of many other animals (he focuses especially chimps and bonobos). In this post, I will comment on De Waal's 2005 work, Our Inner Ape, where De Waal substantiates his stunning conclusion (well, stunning to those who just can't bear to acknowledge that humans are animals - see here and here and here) that the precursors of morality are easily seen in animals other than human animals. More specifically, De Waal demonstrates that there is a well-substantiated continuity between the proto-moral behavior of chimpanzees and bonobos and the full-bloomed sense of morality that we see in human animals. De Waal is clearly frustrated that people consider only human aggression to be "animalistic," but not human empathy. De Waal describes studies clearly demonstrating empathy in many animals, ranging from rats to the great apes. Children as young as one year of age naturally reach out to comfort others. Household pets such as cats and dogs can become upset (just like children do) when family members feign distress. Empathy therefore develops even before language. This would seem to demonstrate that top-down rule-based (therefore language-based) versions of morality don't capture the essence of what it means to be moral. [More . . . ]
