ASEBL Journal – Volume 10 Issue 1, January 2014
correct (or more precise) terminology should be “the evolution of reciprocity,” since
altruism is as slippery a term as Dawkins’ use of the word selfish (8). Krebs says that
a problem with Kohlberg’s approach is that “people’s conceptions of morality do not
necessarily get better as they develop . . .” so that there is no real equivalency between
high intelligence and morality (26). In fact, one could argue (as Nicholas Humphrey
has) that the biological function of the intellect is essentially Machiavellian. So from
where does morality then come?
Early on in the book Krebs covers the usual suspects, from Hobbes, Darwin, and
Huxley to more modern thinkers, such as Richard Alexander, George C. Williams,
and Stanley Milgram. Krebs notes that Williams follows Huxley (from Darwin
through Dawkins) and sees human beings as self-serving by nature. But as Krebs
points out, human morality is not about the fact of one achieving survival and
reproduction (which can be entirely selfish and apparently “bad”) but how one
achieves these – to what cost put on another. Unhealthy, dangerous competition
(which is not mutual in any way) creates tensions leading to punishment (by others)
and ultimately destroys any chance for coalition. While this bleak assessment is based
on evidence in nature, at the same time any so-called social contract is itself an innate
sensibility of fairness and quid pro quo, also roughly apparent in nature. Hobbes
erroneously speaks of the selfish bestiality of human beings and their need for an
externally imposed social contract: our innate capacities are (Roy Baumeister would
assert) for caring, helping, and cooperation (with selfish and deceptive variations, of
course).
At any rate, Krebs outlines the development of the moral sense, according to Darwin.
(The terminology “moral sense” had been used by the eighteenth-century British
moralists, such as David Hume and Adam Smith.) First there were the prosocial
instincts of primates and ancestral human beings; next came the conscience; third,
because of the facility of language, any such prosocial instincts were now concretized
into mores; fourth, those who adhered to such mores caused them to be “’strengthened
by habit’” (41). While this seems quaint when so succinctly stated, it is valid since
fundamentally Darwin saw continuity between sociality and the avoidance of others’
disapproval. (In fact, the early British moralists, such as Shaftesbury and Hutcheson,
saw the moral sense as an approval function.) Krebs points out that Darwin (no
philosopher himself) has an ethics which combines Kantian rationality (an ought) and
Humean sympathy. Frans de Waal (for one) has done quite a bit of fairly convincing
primate research in an attempt to place the emphasis on the side of an instinctual
sympathy (which is rationally balanced by the prefrontal cortex in human beings).
Whom are we to believe? Are we not good-natured at heart?
The difficulty with Darwin’s moral history (or any sweeping evolutionary story of
morality) is that it does not account for individual influences (or the power of the
individual to affect and alter the group), which a cognitive/developmental
psychologist might point out. (Jerome Kagan, for one, has concluded that in spite of
social-environmental factors, individual temperament persists over a lifetime.) Darwin
focuses (too much, Krebs believes) on cooperative behaviors among many and fails to
consider fairness and reciprocity, which can be highly individualistic and operate
between just two persons. Darwin also places emphasis on human reason in morality,
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