How To Be An Agnostic
more desirable to the monkeys, and so the one who is offered
only the cucumber will refuse to eat it. It seems as if the creature
is aware that its fellow is being rewarded more generously, and
that it is protesting at the inequity. It seems to have a natural
sense of fairness. This is seized upon as another indicator that
morality has biological roots and that those roots can inform the
way we live. The science, it is said, is providing an account of
our good behaviour and that account goes something like this.
Many animals, perhaps most, don’t live in isolation; they co-
operate. Even bacteria work together for the sake of the group.
There is good reason to think that this co-operation gives rise to
behaviour that can be called altruistic: it’s good for others but
not necessarily for the individual. The story develops further
when it’s observed that higher animals, like chimps or dogs,
don’t just behave in ways that might be called altruistic. They
have social emotions too. They feel shame; they empathise;
they take pleasure in pleasing others.
The implication for the human animal is that our morality is
based upon an evolved set of predispositions. Cognition has a
role to play, as there are often quite complex trade-offs to assess
when different values confl ict. But when we take pride, feel
guilty, act honestly, show trust, we are experiencing social emo-
tions that steer our behaviour by playing on our feelings. We go
for the pleasurable and avoid the disagreeable, which implies,
in turn, that it’s not moral reasoning that underpins our good
behaviour, but feeling. Socrates was, in fact, wrong.
Except that, again, no such conclusion is warranted. Recall
the experiments with the capuchin monkeys. Further control
experiments have been done in which a single monkey is
offered cucumber when a grape is lying in view but out of reach.
No second monkey is being rewarded with a grape, and yet, still
the single monkey will refuse the cucumber. In other words, it’s
not inequity that’s the problem: the monkey is not demonstrat-
ing its sense of injustice. It just prefers grapes.
That capuchins could have no moral sense, just food prefer-
ences, undermines what is often presumed in the interpretation