Search Results

Most discussions of the continuity in compassionate concern between humans and other animals focus on continuities and on “good discontinuities,” areas in which humans appear to have superior moral abilities. This chapter focuses on “bad discontinuities,” areas in which human compassion appears diseased and obtuse in ways that correspond to no defect in other species. After offering an analysis of the cognitive structure of compassion, the chapter then examines the relationship between each component of compassion, as it appears in standard human cases, and its role in a variety of animal cases, mapping the differences between humans and a range of animal species. The chapter then attempts to pinpoint the ways in which human compassion goes awry, through the influence of distortions supplied both by defective cultural norms and by a more tenacious underlying anxiety about weakness and need that leads human beings to create classes of subordinate beings to whom they then refuse compassion. Finally, this analysis is used to illuminate a range of cases in which humans refuse compassion to other humans in ways that appear deformed and reprehensible.

The relationship between empathy, love, and compassion has long been contested in the history of moral theory. Drawing on Martha Nussbaum’s definition of compassion as a form of judgement, and its relationship to empathy as both emotive and cognitive, this chapter seeks to uncover some of the reasons why empathy and compassion are still contested by scientists working in moral psychology as being relevant for the truly moral life. It also draws on fascinating work by archaeologists that shows reasonable evidence for the existence of deep compassion far back in the evolutionary record of early hominins, even prior to the appearance of Homo sapiens. The long-term care of those with severe disabilities is remarkable and indicates the importance of empathy and compassion deep in history. This is not so much a romanticized view of the past, since violence as well as cooperation existed side by side, but an attempt to show that the rising wave of anti-empathy advocates have missed the mark. Compassion is the fruit of cooperative tendencies. Primatologist Frans de Waal has also undertaken important work on empathy operative in the social lives of alloprimates. The Thomistic concept of compassion in the framework of his approach to the virtues in the moral life is also discussed.

Social perspective-taking and development beyond the superficial also entail caring or feeling. Accordingly, we shift in this chapter from the right to the good, from justice to empathy, from the primarily cognitive to the primarily affective strand of moral motivation and development. We draw heavily on Hoffman’s theory, even as we also consider recent refinements, issues, and challenges (de Waal, Decety, Zahn-Waxler, Bloom). Much more than did Haidt, Hoffman has focused our attention on the role of empathy in moral development. Thanks to cognitive development, language development, and moral socialization, empathy progresses from biologically based responses to surface cues to a more complex and veridical emotional responsiveness to the joys, sufferings, and life situations of others. Attributions, inferences, and biases influence whether empathy eventuates in prosocial behavior. Within moral socialization, Hoffman focuses on parental practices of discipline (especially, “inductions” that make salient the perspectives of others hurt by the child’s transgression). The chapter concludes that Hoffman’s theory withstands recent challenges, and argues for co-primacy (both empathy and justice) in moral motivation.

Speculating about how ethics (morality) evolved is useful in explaining how a common morality developed. Frans De Waal writes about how monkeys and other social primates exhibit such traits as sympathy, gratitude and reconciliation behaviour. Being, of necessity, social animals, we too developed these and other traits that came along as our language skills matured. Early on, of course, we humans may not have developed a sense of guilt or of universalizability. But in time these and other concepts worked their way in our thinking to help give us a sense of ethics in its fullest manifestation. When this happened, we developed what is called the common morality.

This chapter begins with a careful analysis of the language, logic, and phenomenology of moral obligations, including their prescriptive strength, authority, and what Evans calls the “Anscombe intuition.” It then argues that a range of secular ethical theories fail to do justice to such features and thus fall short of providing adequate explanations. Among the secular ethical efforts at explanation considered are various evolutionary ethicists, including Frans de Waal, Cornell realists, and contemporary ethicists like David Enoch, Erik Wielenberg, and Derek Parfit. In each case it’s argued that, despite the insights furnished by such accounts, they fail to do justice to moral obligations, usually by watering down their prescriptive implications.

As professional science, Darwinian theory is now a fully functioning paradigm. Darwinism as religion continues and war continues as a good confirmatory case study. There is now, thanks both to fossil finds and to refined molecular techniques, a much better understanding of human evolution and its history. This is new; the interpretations are not. There is much talk about killer apes, owing as much to Augustine as to Darwin, with speculations by Konrad Lorenz backed by dramatic writings by the film-script-writer-turned-amateur-anthropologist Robert Ardrey. Starting to play a major role are sophisticated studies of the great apes, notably Jane Goodall on wild chimpanzees and Frans de Waal on caged chimpanzees, the former moving more toward the innate nature of ape violence and the latter rather the other way. Major clashes about nature versus nurture occurred with anthropologist Ashley Montagu on the one side and biologist Edward O. Wilson on the other. There are an increasing number of naysayers, especially the Quaker bird-song specialist, William Thorpe, but the traditional picture persists. War is part of our biological heritage; it had to be a good thing inasmuch as it led progressively upward to humans, but it is now outdated and dangerous, and we can and should eliminate it.

This chapter explores London’s two famous dog novels. The Call of the Wild and White Fang are analysed in relation to the themes of initiation, adaptation, captivity, and freedom. Particular emphasis is given to the conflict between the formation of social dominance hierarchies and the urge toward solidarity and cooperation—a key conflict that runs throughout London’s work. The two novels are also considered in relation to a phenomenon the fascinated London: The ability of an organism to override biologically inscribed behavioural scripts and adapt to changing environments. The chapter also examines the significant Naturalistic features London stresses and describe how each text depicts crucial distinctions among amorality, immorality, and morality. In addition to these harsher Darwinian themes, this section examines London’s depiction of altruism.

The other animals fail to construct sentences, and Descartes inferred from this that they entirely lack beliefs. Contemporary intellectualists—e.g. B. Williams (1973) and D. Velleman (2000)—allow non-human animals beliefs in an “impoverished” sense of the term, while emphasizing the importance of an animal’s “aiming at the truth” when constructing representations of her environment. The pragmatists reject these forms of intellectualism. Humans use sentences to attribute beliefs to themselves and other animals; but there is no further sense in which belief is an essentially “propositional attitude.” Field ethologists report wolves, dolphins, chimpanzees, and scrub jays reflecting and planning, teaching and learning, loving and forgiving. It is a mark in favor of pragmatism that it allows us to understand these behaviors as manifestations of complex bodies of animal belief.