Reaction to a review by David Copp of 'Frans De Waal: Primates and philosophers'

Reaction to a review by David Copp of:

Frans De Waal: Primates and philosophers: how morality evolved, edited by Stephen Macedo and Josiah Ober. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016, 232pp. 9780691169163

I was excited to find this in my to-do reading list as I did not know that a 2016 revamped version of his 2003 Tanner Lectures on Human Values was out, and it also included some responses to these lectures.

I’ve not read those lectures, but his later books.

In this book review I learn of somes critique of de Waals’ punching bag of what de Walls labels ‘Veneer theory’: that view that morality is just some veneer over our baser selves, but the reviewer is not sure that de Waals knows what this his negative opposition punching bag actually is.

In the positive corner, we have the emotions, so I guess it is the red corner, as indeed it is agreed do animals. And respondents also agree chimpanzees appear to be empathic and world with some kind of reciprocation.

The reviewer then covers related species homologues (empathy etc) and their disputations. Continuity across the hominid genera? I guess we could call this argument a type of taphonomy.

The discussion then is all focussed on the individual as individuals, or individuals in groups, and how we get from there, evolutionary and stepwise, to morally reasoning agents (a phrase which I suspect says too much) given the 'continuity' across genera.

Then we get back to decisions by individuals, or rather impulse control and its lack. Language steps in to dance with us, perhaps allowing us impulse control (Kitcher).

Here the building blocks would rely on talking in stopping the self, is this some sort of reality principle I see before me?

We are back to empathy, and the building block for that is parenthood. The child is parent to the world, just as the parent is themselves with their children. [Ellen Dissanyake's thesis 'making special'.].

Copp, David. “Reflections on the Evolutionary Basis of Morality.” Metascience (2017): via academia.edu Web. 1 Aug. 2024. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11016-017-0278-7

A list of reactions to other evolution~morality papers and chapters and stuff can be found at Reactions to papers on evolution~morality.