Veneer theory is a term coined by Dutch primatologist Frans de Waal to label the Hobbesian view of human morality that he criticizes throughout his work. Although he criticizes this view in earlier works, the term in this form is introduced in his 2005 book Our Inner Ape, denoting a concept that he rejects, namely that human morality is "a cultural overlay, a thin veneer hiding an otherwise selfish and brutish nature".[1] The idea of the veneer theory goes back to Thomas Henry Huxley and has more recently been advocated by biologists like George C. Williams.
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Frans de Waal: Morality Without Religion
Transcription
Well, religion is an interesting topic because religion is universal. All human societies believe in the supernatural. All human societies have a religion one way or another. Which for the biologists must mean that religion has some advantages -- offers some advantages to a society. Otherwise we wouldn't have that strong tendency to develop it. And so for me that's actually a far more interesting question of whether God exists or doesn't exist. That sort of question I cannot answer. But the question of why we have religions is an interesting question. And my view is that morality, our human morality, is older than religion so instead of saying morality comes from God or religion gave us morality. For me that's a big no-no. Our current religions are just 2,000 or 3,000 years old which is very young. And our species is much older and I cannot imagine that, for example, a hundred thousand years or two hundred thousand years our ancestors did not have some type of morality. Of course they had rules about how you should behave, what is fair, what is unfair, caring for others -- all of these tendencies were in place already so they had a moral system and then at some point we developed these present day religions which I think we're sort of tacked on to the morality that we had. And maybe they served to codify them or to enforce them or to steer morality in a particular direction that we prefer. So religion comes in for me secondarily. I'm struggling with whether we need religion. So personally I think we can be moral without religion because we probably had morality long before the current religions came along. So I think we can be moral without religion but in large scale societies where we are not all keeping an eye on each other because we -- in societies with a thousand people or several thousand or millions of people we cannot all keep an eye on each other. And that's maybe why we installed religions in these large scale societies where a God kept watch over everybody. And then the question becomes is this really needed? Now in northern Europe -- I'm from the Netherlands -- there is basically an experiment going on. In northern Europe the majority of people are not religious anymore. When you ask them they say they're nonbelievers. And they still have a moral society as far as I can tell. And so there is a sort of experiment going on there -- can we set up a society where religion is not dominant at least? It may be present but it's not dominant anymore, there is still a moral society. And until now I think that experiment is going pretty well. And so I am optimistic that religion is not strictly needed. But I cannot be a hundred percent sure because we've never really tried -- there is no human society where religion is totally absent so we really have never tried this experiment.
Proponents of the theory
As evidenced by de Waal's characterisation of this theory as "Hobbesian", one of the earliest and most influential thinkers criticized by him for having popularized this view is Thomas Hobbes:
The traditional view is that of a contract among our ancestors, who decided to live together “by covenant only, which is artificial,” as Thomas Hobbes put it.
— Frans de Waal, Our Inner Ape
A few centuries later, Thomas Henry Huxley developed the idea that moral tendencies are not part of the human nature, and so our ancestors became moral by choice, not by evolution. Thus it represents a discrepancy in Huxley's Darwinian conviction. Social behavior is explained by this theory as a veneer of morality. This dualistic point of view separates humans from animals by rejecting every connection between human morality and animal social tendencies. George C. Williams, as another advocate of the veneer theory, sees morality as "an accidental capability produced, in its boundless stupidity, by a biological process that is normally opposed to the expression of such a capability".[2]
Psychologist Abraham Maslow argued that humans no longer have instincts because we have the ability to override them in certain situations. He felt that what is called instinct is often imprecisely defined, and really amounts to strong drives. For Maslow, an instinct is something which cannot be overridden, and therefore while the term may have applied to humans in the past, it no longer does.[3]
Richard Dawkins seems to condone the veneer theory when he writes:
we, alone on Earth, can rebel against the tyranny of the selfish replicators
Some argue that veneer theory presents a false dichotomy; the adaptations of a cultural overlay of pseudo morals, and de Waal's biologically-based morals might coexist, and are both evolutionarily advantageous. [4]
Critics of the theory
De Waal criticizes the veneer theory and sees our morality as a direct outgrowth of the social instincts human beings share with other animals. He argues that the advocates of the veneer theory don't have any indications or empirical evidence which support the theory, and that it is highly unlikely that humans can deny their genes and improve morality merely by choice. As an example he compares Huxley's theory with a school of piranhas deciding to become vegetarian. De Waal bases his argument against the veneer theory on observations of behavior of humanity's relatives in his long work as primatologist. "Building blocks of morality"[1] can be already observed in other primates, and by the principle of parsimony, it is quite possible that some sort of morality is evolutionarily ancient and shared with our ancestors. De Waal assumes that the evolutionary origins lie in emotions we share with other animals, e.g. empathy.[5] Human morality is according to him a product of social evolution, and instead of Huxley's theory, this point of view — a continuity between human morality and animal social tendencies—is unitary and thus more compatible with the evolutionary theory. Other critics of the veneer theory are Edward Westermarck and E. O. Wilson and Rutger Bregman.[citation needed]
Psychologist Christopher Ryan and psychiatrist Cacilda Jethá also express similar concerns in their book Sex at Dawn, where they criticize what they call the "neo-Hobbesian" narrative of human nature:
Hobbes took the madness of his age, considered it “normal,” and projected it back into prehistoric epochs of which he knew next to nothing. What Hobbes called “human nature” was a projection of seventeenth-century Europe, where life for most was rough, to put it mildly. Though it has persisted for centuries, Hobbes’s dark fantasy of prehistoric human life is as valid as grand conclusions about Siberian wolves based on observations of stray dogs in Tijuana.
They also cite Stephen Jay Gould as a critic of this view:
Why should our nastiness be the baggage of an apish past and our kindness uniquely human? Why should we not seek continuity with other animals for our 'noble' traits as well?
See also
- Animal faith
- Evolution of morality
- Hobbes's moral and political philosophy
- Moral psychology
- Sociobiology
- Theory of mind
References
- ^ a b de Waal, Frans; Robert Wright; Christine M. Korsgaard; Philip Kitcher; Peter Singer (2009). Macedo, Stephen; Ober, Josiah (eds.). Primates and philosophers: How morality evolved. Princeton: Princeton University Press. p. 6. ISBN 978-0-691-14129-9.
- ^ Williams, George C. (1988). "Reply to comments on "Huxley's Evolution and Ethics in Sociobiological Perspective."". Zygon. 23 (4): 437–438. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9744.1988.tb00857.x.
- ^ Maslow, Abraham H. (1954). "Instinct Theory Reexamined". Motivation and Personality. New York: Harper & Row.
- ^ Dreifort, Daniel. "of dichotomies and morals". Dirty Rag. Retrieved 10 August 2015.
- ^ de Waal, Frans (2008). "Putting the Altruism Back into Altruism: The Evolution of Empathy". Annual Review of Psychology. 59: 279–300. doi:10.1146/annurev.psych.59.103006.093625. PMID 17550343.
This page was last edited on 17 March 2024, at 06:28