On “Wild Justice”

 "Wild Justice: The Moral Lives of Animals," By Marc Bekoff and Jessica Pierce, is the most recent (for me) book that debunks myths about the differences between human and nonhuman animals. And those mythical differences, of course, have historically been used to legitimize our use and treatment of our nonhuman cousins. This particular group fits in with other Bekoff books as well as those by Jonathan Balcombe and Jeffrey Masson (see here for more on some of them from April of 2008).

Bekoff and Pierce (a philosopher) are the perfect combination to write this book because whenever you're presenting the similarities of nonhuman animals to human animals, a philosophical conundrum is created for humans, who like to think that we are worlds different, and above nonhumans. But as the frequently-invoked Darwin would say, those differences are of degree, not kind.

Just to be clear, this book deals with the nonhuman animals who are most like us: social vertebrates, and specifically social mammals (and there are a handful of references to cetaceans who behave similarly). "Morality is an evolutionary adaptation to social living" (45), and the hypothesis of Bekoff and Pierce is that "greater social complexity is linked with more complex and nuanced moral behaviors" (53). Also, Bekoff and Pierce present a descriptive view, not a normative view of morality. There are no judgments. They amassed an enormous amount of data, and then "allowed the data to do the talking" (151).

I'll get to what the data said in a moment, but first a few more clarifications.

• The authors make a distinction between narrative ethology and "'animal stories' that proliferate on the Web . . . . Narrative from seasoned ethologists provides interpretation informed by their knowledge about a particular species and its behavior, and their attention to context and individual peculiarities" (37).
• Bekoff and Pierce "advocate a species-relative view of morality. Each species in which moral behavior has evolved has its unique behavioral repertoire. The same basic behavioral capacities will be present–empathy, altruism, cooperation, and perhaps a sense of fairness–but will manifest as different social norms and different behaviors. . . . Despite some shared evolutionary history, wolf morality is different from human morality and also from elephant morality and chimpanzee morality" (19).
• "The scientific investigation of morality, in humans and nonhumans alike, is in its infancy" (39).
• Regarding accusations of anthropomorphism (which arise frequently and did in Bekoff's previous book, as well) and also evolutionary continuity, which provides for symmetry in comparisons, the authors write: "It isn't that we set out looking for humanlike traits in animals and hope to find some. Rather, we set out to understand what animals are like, and use the language and concepts that come closest to describing what we see" (41).

What did Bekoff and Pierce find?

They found a "suite of behaviors" including cooperation, empathy and justice, and various intelligences that make those behaviors possible. Each behavior comprises a "cluster" of behaviors that may or may not be considered moral, and also aren't necessarily defined as you would imagine. And therein is the necessity to pay close attention to the language in the book, although that is useful only to a degree as "not all ethologists and biologists agree that cooperation among animals is really cooperation . . . . [T]hey may be acting independently and simultaneously, without any cognitive decision to work together" (64). Furthermore, "We need to be careful about language and remember that [for example] altruism has a specific meaning within biology and isn't synonymous with morality" (82).

The authors discuss the three clusters of behavior (cooperation, empathy and justice) and the kinds and degrees of intelligences necessary for them to be present, with justice being the least certain of the three. But whether of not there is wide agreement on the existence of wild justice within social mammal communities (there isn't), we do find that the cognitive, social and emotional lives of these animals are far more developed and rich than most people are willing (or educated enough to) admit.

And therein lies one question the authors pose: Now that we are delving into the lives of animals in this way and are finding that they are not beings who are completly driven by instinct, never thinking about the future or past, and incapable of acting in a way that is good for others, particularly if there is a cost to themselves, aren't we obligated to seriously "[reconsider] the uses to which we put animals in research, education, and for clothes and food, among other things" (137)?