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Who thinks that they can subdue Leviathan? Strength resides in its neck; dismay goes before it. It is without fear. It looks down on all who are haughty; it is king over all who are proud. These words inspired PJ Wehry to create Chasing Leviathan. Chasing Leviathan was born out of two ideals: that truth is worth pursuing but will never be subjugated, and the discipline of listening is one of the most important habits anyone can develop. Every episode is a dialogue, a journey into the depths of a meaningful question explored through the lens of personal experience or professional expertise.
PJ (00:04.233)
Hello and welcome to Chasing Leviathan. I'm your host, PJ Weary, and I'm here today with Dr. Victor Kumar, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Boston University. And we're here to talk about his book, A Better Ape, The Evolution of the Moral Mind and How It Made Us Human. Dr. Kumar, wonderful to have you on today.
Victor (00:22.264)
Hi PJ, thanks for having me.
PJ (00:23.945)
So tell me, Dr. Kumar, why this book?
Victor (00:28.108)
I wrote this book with my co -author, Richmond Campbell, and we'd been working on moral psychology and moral evolution for almost a decade and realized that we couldn't say everything we wanted to say in just one journal article. We had to write a book and we kind of, discovered that there was a really interesting story that other people hadn't been telling about the evolution of morality. Which is that it wasn't just an accident that human beings evolved to be moral creatures.
Morality was critical to human evolution. We were able to create complex social groups and evolved to be more intelligent than other apes because of morality. Morality was critical to human beings becoming as social and as intelligent as we've become.
PJ (01:16.831)
Yeah, it's interesting even as I'm looking at your book, I definitely feel like I've seen this story before, but it's always in bits and pieces. And I really appreciate kind of that, like you've brought something together that is important to see, important to the conversation. So, yeah.
Victor (01:33.762)
That was part of the aim too, you know, I think that one thing that philosophers and some scientists can contribute is synthesis, is taking a bunch of parts of a puzzle and putting them together and telling a cohesive story.
PJ (01:49.747)
And then when inevitably people will critique, it allows a wider discussion to take place. Because you can see people are like, well, that's not exactly how that fits together. But then they're forced to fit it together with the other pieces, right?
Victor (02:02.952)
I think that's absolutely right. I I think when we wrote this book, we were under no illusion that this was exactly the correct story about how morality evolved and how humans evolved. But we thought it would be useful to put it all together into one imperfect picture so that we, so that other people could use it as a, as a, as a target and, you know, improve our understanding of human evolution.
PJ (02:27.139)
My apologies. I wasn't trying to say like, your book is like... Anyways, I just realized that... I was supposed to be a compliment. I was like, man, this feels like a really important purpose. And then I realized I was like, man, your book really needs some work. No, that wasn't where I was going with it. Yeah. Okay. All right. So you kind of really emphasize the moral mind and how important that was, not just to... Not just that morality kind of developed because of evolution, but that it actually...
Victor (02:34.188)
Hahaha
Victor (02:38.228)
I didn't take it that way. I didn't take it that
PJ (02:56.831)
propelled evolution. Can you talk a little bit about what the, I think you give like three main things that make up the moral mind and can you give us a little bit of how each of those work?
Victor (03:06.028)
Yeah, so we think of the moral mind as involving three main ingredients, moral emotions, moral norms, which are rules about right and wrong, and a capacity for moral reasoning. So, you know, that's not everything that's involved in morality, but these are three of the principal aspects of the moral mind. And as you say, it's not just something that evolved, it's something that drove human evolution. so, you know, the short version is this, that
there's kind of a puzzle about why did we evolve to be such intelligent creatures? You know, the first creatures who know, or at least hypothesize where we came from, you know, where we evolved in the tree of life. and part of the story, many people think part of the story involves sociality. Humans started to live in large complex social groups and that favored natural selection on more intelligence, being better able to navigate our social groups.
The thing is though, those social groups could not have been stable. They could not have survived social conflict. They could not have managed all the forms of complex cooperation that they accomplished without morality, without moral norms, moral feelings, and a capacity for moral raising. So that's why morality helps drive human evolution.
PJ (04:27.391)
I think part of what you're getting at there, and I've often heard this kind of tongue in cheek that if you look at it from just a purely evolutionary standpoint, cockroaches are probably better off than humans, right? Like if there's a nuclear war, know cockroaches are going to make it out. And so part of what you're saying is that the idea of peace, for instance, versus nuclear warfare is going to come from like this morality.
And so if we look at things purely from like this physical standpoint or the even I don't know exactly how to phrase it, but I think I feel a little bit going on there between like it's not just about adaptability as like a unit, but it's about these larger units. Does that make sense? Or like I know that was very incoherent. Sorry.
Victor (05:17.488)
Yeah. No, no, no, that's right. mean, you know, humans are far from the only social species on the planet. And one species or set of species that's arguably even more social than us are ants and termites. They live in these ultra -social nests or hives and where individuals, you know, sacrifice their lives routinely for each other, for the queen. But I think one difference
among many, relating to human sociality is how flexible and adaptive we are. The way that human groups can, at least sometimes, change the way they organize themselves, change their rules, change their institutions in order to confront radically new problems that they haven't confronted before.
PJ (06:09.715)
There's kind of this cultural consciousness that allows us this cultural mind that is able to adapt. So we're able to adapt apart from purely through our DNA. Is that part of the strength? Am I reading that correctly?
Victor (06:23.988)
Yeah, that's part of it. So, you know, generally evolution works through our genes. There's variation in genes and some of them cause traits that are fitter than others. humans, like some other species, but I think, you know, we're different in degree. We have this richness of culture. We don't just transmit genes to the next generation, we transmit culture too. That is
our beliefs and habits and skills and strategies and tools and all of that stuff. And that can vary too. the stuff that often, the stuff that helps us survive and meet the environmental and social challenges tends to be passed on to the next generation. So it's true that culture evolves too in the same way that genes do.
PJ (07:15.411)
And we passed down a lot of info, in same way we passed on information through our genes, we passed down information through our language and this kind of random, but I was just talking to my daughter about a book I got that was recommended somewhere on social media. But when languages die, I don't know if you're familiar with it. They did some research, I think it's like tens of thousands of languages are dying every year. And we're actually losing huge knowledge systems in that. And some of it is
Victor (07:32.513)
not know.
PJ (07:45.151)
not necessary for our survival anymore, but for instance, I believe the Eskimo language that they're trying to save has like 40 different words for snow. And so like, I think of that as like a good example of like adaptability. It's like, well, we don't need, I live in central Florida. I don't need 40 words for snow, right? But in an environment that is dominated by snow, I just think there's a lot that we kind of live with and then we pass down through our language.
that gives us kind of these tools. And it reminds me a lot of what you're talking about with moral feelings, moral norms, and moral reasoning. Is there a connection there between language and those three things?
Victor (08:23.117)
Mm
Victor (08:27.202)
I think that's right that one element of culture that we transmit to the next generation is language and words and concepts. And among those are moral concepts. We have concepts of rights and justice that we had to invent. They may correspond to something real in the world, but they weren't always with us. And so I think we develop these moral concepts.
because they help us make sense of and navigate the particular social arrangements that are present around here. you know, like if you move from the Arctic to Florida, you don't need snow concepts anymore. It's possible that changing our environments or our institutions, the way we organize society means we might lose old moral concepts and gain new ones.
PJ (09:22.495)
Can you talk a little bit about what's the distinction between moral feelings and moral norms and moral reasoning? Like you kind of break those out and because each one of those I feel like in your book you do a good job of breaking those out and I think that's those are just incredibly useful concepts.
Victor (09:28.822)
Yeah, sure.
Victor (09:38.36)
Yeah, yeah, these are concepts for thinking about moral culture. Yeah. So moral feelings, mean, we say, we call them moral feelings or moral emotions. You know, examples are things like feeling guilt or anger or sympathy or respect. They're, they're affective states. It feels a certain way to be in these states.
and they motivate behavior and they usually cause certain facial expressions, they cause physiological changes, they also change our patterns of attention as well. One thing about emotions is that they can be relatively rigid. It's hard to change your emotional dispositions.
in any quick way. Maybe, you know, if you do cognitive behavioral therapy or something, you can change your emotions. Norms are different and one difference is that they're more flexible. So norms are not feelings. They're not, they're not, they don't have the same functional role as emotions or feelings. They're rules. They're rules that say you're supposed to do, supposed to share your food equally, or you're supposed to, if somebody looks after your child today, you should look after their child tomorrow.
sometime in the future. There are these rules that tell you what to do, what not to do, and they also license social sanctions, punishment, blame, if people don't follow the rules. That's another difference between emotions. Emotions don't necessarily support punishment and blame. And the last thing is reasoning. so moral reasoning is trying to
articulate moral principles that, you know, that apply in lots of different situations, trying to achieve consistency between, you know, the way we feel in one situation and the way we feel in another situation. You know, sometimes, for example, I sometimes am struck by the way in which people feel so much kindness and care towards their pets, like their dogs, but not so much to
Victor (12:01.058)
factory farm animals that are every bit as sentient and intelligent as your dog, pigs for example. So like reasoning is that process we just underwent right there, which is like thinking about consistency between our different feelings and attitudes.
PJ (12:18.175)
It's interesting to me, people refuse to go the other way. this kind of leads to an interesting question I have about feelings and the roles they play in creating norms and reasoning. I had a good friend who grew up in Cambodia and she lost two of her dogs to her neighbors eating her dogs. And so, of course, when I tell most people that story, they're horrified, right? But in Cambodia, they actually didn't know. They actually offered the dog to her.
Victor (12:22.733)
you
PJ (12:48.055)
They didn't even realize that it was her dog, even though they'd seen it around. Of course, they'll brag about eating bacon all day, but then they're like, how could they do that? They don't see the difference. From a moral reasoning standpoint, there's that. One that comes up is, I don't think most people have even really thought about why incest is bad.
Victor (13:17.016)
Sure.
PJ (13:17.661)
Like they just like respond, they're just like, you know, it's like eating a dog. You're like, you know, how does that, what's the back and forth between things like moral feelings and moral reasoning and moral norms? It feels like there's some kind of interconnected network there.
Victor (13:37.878)
I think so, yeah. So, you know, I think everyone sometimes constructs moral rules or principles and philosophers spend a lot of time doing it. Another form of moral reasoning I think comes much more naturally to people is what we call in the book and also our journal articles, consistency reasoning, which is like treating like cases alike and applying how you feel and what you believe and what your norms are in one situation to another situation that doesn't seem
different in any morally relevant way. So, you know, to take your example of incest, sometimes people say, well, the reason why incest is wrong is because it creates a risk of having babies with severe genetic defects if the two parents are closely related. Someone might say, well, you know, imagine they're using birth control, the condom, and
consider two other people, both of whom have recessive genes for a very severe genetic condition. Do you think those two people shouldn't be allowed to be partners? We wouldn't say that. I mean, you know, probably a good idea to be careful and avoid, you know, having a child that has this harmful genetic disease. that can't be the reason that incest is wrong because we don't in this other
case that is the same in the ways that people think. We don't think that a romantic relationship or sex between two people is wrong, even though the same conditions are there.
PJ (15:21.231)
You mentioned earlier, and this was a fascinating thing to me, for moral feelings that it directs our patterns of attention. Can you give some examples of that and why that's, I mean, I think we can, in our economy, like, attention's everything, so, but why is that important?
Victor (15:30.882)
Please.
Victor (15:39.617)
Yeah. Well, think, you know, emotions and moral, moral emotions included are really important for how they shape our behavior, especially interpersonal behavior. And one thing that emotions can do is draw your attention to your own behavior or someone else's behavior in ways that really matter because that behavior has to change in order for the relationship for the community to function properly. So
Now, for example, when people feel shame at something they've done or who they are, that makes them attend to the thing they've done or the person, the trait that they have, and also makes them, draws their attention to the way that other people think about them. And that's important for motivating people to reshape who they are so that they
can survive social scrutiny from others.
PJ (16:40.447)
Can you give like a I think I understand what you're talking about, but can you give like a more Detailed like like at a dinner party or like in a like in a coffee shop What are some examples of like this directing these patterns of attention?
Victor (16:54.86)
Yeah, that's good. I mean, I think maybe we could use a different emotion. One of the other moral emotions we talk about in the book is sympathy. And you feel sympathy, concern, compassion when somebody is suffering and you can do something about it. I mean, I think that if you're commuting,
to your work and you see someone on a bike get hit by a car, draws your feelings of sympathy, draw your attention to that person. Are they okay? Are they getting up? They make you attend to the person suffering rather than the thing that you were just thinking about, which is like catching a connecting bus so that you can get to work. So yeah, that's another case where I think sympathy is directing your behavior in ways that we need to expect one another. We need to expect one another to
attend to situations like that so that we can help each other, especially in situations of dire need.
PJ (17:58.227)
And I think that you mentioned altruism kind of at the beginning of the book and that's a great case of it because
from a coldly individual standpoint, that person will probably never help me. If you stop, you do 911, that person may feel some obligation towards you, but the odds of that person ever really changing your life is pretty low. Sometimes it does, but yeah, it's one of the things. you see that by evolution pushing this, it gives kind of this safety net to the broader kind of social network. Is that one way?
Victor (18:13.794)
Right.
Victor (18:19.234)
Yeah.
PJ (18:35.163)
of thinking about it.
Victor (18:37.482)
I think that's right. I think that, so, mean, I think the, you know, the original source of altruism isn't for strangers. the original source of altruism is for kin and our children and people who are in a community, tight knit communities with us. and in those cases, I think you're right. Maybe you can see how
PJ (18:52.201)
Hmm.
Victor (19:06.784)
altruistically helping someone might benefit you in the long run. And I do think that's, you know, that's the original reason why altruism evolved because it was a way in which not just you could take care of one person, one shot, but a way in which members of a family or community could reliably take care of each other over time. But I, so I think, I do think altruism is originally has a
I don't think people are ultimately self -interested, but from a genetic point of view, altruism benefited you and your genes. But the thing that sparks our altruism is not reciprocity. It's not getting back in the long run. And so that means we have this sympathetic concern for people that can be elicited even in cases where there isn't any return for us.
We're such moral creatures that we really care about that intrinsically, that it matters to us. It would bother us if we didn't help someone who really needed our help. And we could provide it without much cost to ourselves.
PJ (20:21.055)
I think that's a point you make quite a bit in the book is it's not just that our morals helped us evolve, but that our morals evolved with us as well. And so we see this kind of universalizing part of the story where it started out like, well, I'm going to take care of my kids. They have my genes. I'm going to take care of my kin. They have my genes. then we start to, all throughout history, there's this kind of ongoing moral story of welcoming the stranger.
Victor (20:50.698)
Right. Yeah. mean, it's not like morality evolved and then stopped changing. You morality has continued to evolve. people and it's also, you know, human agency and thought has contributed to the evolution of morality. People have developed religious traditions that don't just reflect our morality, but shape our morality. You know, we have
rules and principles, have stories and parables that shape our morality and command us to expand our sphere of concern beyond just ourselves and our family.
PJ (21:37.887)
And so, and this is a common question for this sort of thing, so I'm gonna go a little bit on different track, what's kind of, and maybe it's just the wrong question altogether, and I'm fine with that answer too, what's kind of the teleology? Like you end with conclusion survival, what then is the goal of morality and what kind of anchors it? What are we aiming at, or is that the wrong way to even position it?
Victor (22:02.166)
Yeah, I mean, think other people, people, philosophers who write about morality are more comfortable with thinking about it in teleological terms. I don't know that there is any purpose to morality. I mean, it's, it's played a function historically. It's allowed us to get along with each other and not kill each other and cooperate in larger and larger and more and more complex groups. but ultimately I think
morality is a tool for us. you know, there's nothing that your hammer points to. It's what you can use your hammer to do to satisfy your own goals. And I think, you know, there's, each of us has different goals and collectively we have many goals that conflict with each other. But I think one goal that most of us share is,
the continued survival of our community, our communities, our species. And so I think that's really one of the most important tools that we want to put morality to use for, which is to figure out how to live together peacefully in a world that doesn't disintegrate because of nuclear war, climate change, AI.
PJ (23:27.187)
Yeah. You know, when you list all the bad things together or all the possible bad things together, you're like, yeah. I normally only see one news article at a time. When you put it all together, that's a lot. So part of why I ask is you talk about consistency reasoning. Do you see that as just like it's a better tool? It works with logic in some way and it works better for survival?
What's the, how do we make decisions about shaping our morality better for us? Is it just our individual purposes and how they, like, is it just negotiation?
Victor (24:02.465)
Hmm.
Victor (24:08.785)
I mean, there's a classic view of morality, is, you know, we've all got our self -interested, interested aims. And then morality is the social crunch contract that allows us to negotiate and best satisfy our aims. And I think there's something right about that picture. But I think what it misses is that one of our aims is being moral, is, you know, doing the right thing. It's not like, it's not like
We only care about morality instrumentally in so far as it can help us satisfy our antecedent goals. so, mean, I think, you know, consistency reasoning and other moral tools can help us, you know, help us live together peacefully, but we also care about things like justice in and of itself. And, you know, so we don't just want to use consistency reasoning.
to, you know.
justify why you shouldn't take my stuff. We also care about other people getting what they deserve as well too. so, consistency gets used to better accomplish our moral goals.
PJ (25:27.615)
And if you don't want to continue down this road, that's fine. I think kind of what I'm asking and the one that was a good answer to the question, but to continue, why should we care about morality? So you're just like, we do care about this. Is that just something that's built into us? Is that something that like a person could train out if they had proper purposes to do that? Or would you say that's like not a good idea? Like, does that make sense?
Victor (25:40.546)
Mm.
Yeah.
Victor (25:54.562)
Yeah, yeah, why should we care about being moral, about doing the morally right thing? I mean, this is one of the perennial questions of philosophy, and it's a really hard question. Well, I was gonna say, it used to be one that bothered people, but I'm gonna solve it now, so it won't bother people anymore. So, I mean,
PJ (26:08.093)
Yeah, yeah, If you solve it for everybody in all times, that would be amazing, but yeah, that's...
Victor (26:23.786)
maybe one way to think about it is sort of come at it from a different angle. Cause I think many people think, well, if we just evolved to care about morality, then we don't really have any reason to care. You know, it's just like evolution debunks morality. And I think, I think that that isn't correct. And I think one way to think about that is to think about other things that we care about. you know,
I care about my children, you care about yours. But did you know that you care about your children only because evolution designed you to be that way? Because that was the best way of transmitting your genes to the next generation to care and nurture your children. I find that I think about that, I'm like, that's not make me care about my children any less. I still love my children. I don't care that, you know, evolution programmed me to do that. And likewise, I think I still care about the wellbeing of other people. I care about justice.
And just the fact that evolution programmed me to do that doesn't undermine those beliefs or concerns or cares. yeah, I think that we care about a wide range of things. And in many cases, they're mutually reinforcing. I think caring about our children and caring about our communities, those things go together because our communities...
the health of our communities contributes to the well -being of our children and vice versa. And so I think sometimes we can lose certain ultimate goals because they don't fit with the rest. But what we want to do is find some way in which the things that we ultimately care about all fit together. And I think morality is like that too. I think it fits with the other things that we care about. You know, I care about the survival and success of my family, my children, but morality is important for that.
too, because you know, I want a well functioning society that, you know, doesn't, where people can't take advantage of each other. And that that's something that benefits benefits my family and having, you know, healthy, successful family, healthy and well functioning children also contributes to the moral health of my society too. So these are, these are ultimate goals that fit with each other. I don't think there's any way
Victor (28:47.19)
to justify our goals by some other criteria and it's just about whether we care about them and how we can make them fit together.
PJ (28:56.159)
Would it be similar to how you can people have even tried to debunk art with evolution, right? But after describing how evolution makes us feel about art, generally people's response is like, okay, I still like it. It's like, doesn't, you know, it's like, I'm still going to make the art, you know, like, it's, it's just something I do. And it brings me joy, right? Is that kind of a similar?
Victor (29:04.663)
Mm.
Victor (29:12.598)
Yeah.
Victor (29:20.576)
Yeah.
I think so. mean, evolution also explains why I like sugary, fatty food, but I still like it.
PJ (29:33.823)
But then we have conflicting goals. feel like that one gets really good. you're like, okay, I can only have so much sugary fatty foods and then I like I will not be able to enjoy my my children anymore. You know, like, yeah.
Victor (29:36.13)
That's true,
Victor (29:45.674)
Exactly. Yeah. Won't be healthy. Won't be around for my, for when my children are my age, for sure. I mean, it's a great, mean, I didn't intend it that way, but I think you, you pointing out why this is a great example because unlike the other examples we've been talking about, it's one that really conflicts deeply with your other goals. And in those cases, you have to prioritize based on just, you know, what matters more to you.
PJ (30:12.925)
Yeah, I mean, the art one too. I mean, I've definitely watched way less rated R movies, you know, since I've had kids, right? Like it's like, we're going to, we're going to wait until you're a little older to like have this, you know, just floating around the house. Right. So thank you. Very, I appreciate how graciously you answered that. That feels like an obligatory question. I'm sure you get that kind of question all the time, but I don't know.
I was curious to see how you'd answer it. That was a great answer. Thank you. Can you talk a little bit about moral cultures? You have tribes and institutions. What kind of distinguishes a tribe from an institution?
Victor (30:57.962)
Yeah. So, you know, things are complex in the modern world. It was a lot simpler tens or hundreds of thousands of years ago. A tribe was this group of people that share an ethnicity and a language, and they cooperate with each other. They rely on each other as a safety net. And they did not extend the same consideration to other tribes that had a different ethnicity and a different language.
You know, there might've been some limited cooperation, trade, exchanging mates, know, peace treaties, other times and places there might've been warfare or raiding between different tribes.
Institutions are, I think the best way to think about them is examples. know, we've got family institutions, religious institutions, political institutions, military institutions. They're all very complex social adaptations. You know, they involve rules and norms and rituals, but they're all about sort of coordinating our behavior in some domain when it comes to
say how to treat family members or how to organize ourselves politically to make decisions about big things that affect the group. So tribes are these ethno -linguistic groups and institutions are these complex social systems that we use to coordinate our behavior and
a given tribe might have quite a few different types of institutions, like I say, family institutions, religious institutions, economic institutions. Now, things are a lot more complicated nowadays because it's a lot harder to draw the boundaries between different tribes. mean, in many ways, each of us is a member of multiple tribes.
Victor (33:09.12)
a resident of the United States. Is that my tribe? I'm also resident of New England and Massachusetts. I'm also an academic. Academia is another tribe. There's also my school, Boston University. And that's just beginning. There's dozens of other ways in which people are members of dozens of other tribes that we're a part of. So I think, you know, one thing about the modern world is that,
conflict is between different tribes is more common and has higher stakes, but also it's a lot harder to resolve the conflict in part because people have multiple allegiances and they're I mean, I think in the past, you know, the way we resolve a conflict is we fight with the other tribe or we negotiate with them. But nowadays,
It's much harder to find a sort of univocal position among the tribe because people are pulled in so many different directions. But I think there's still some tribes that are kind of preeminent in understanding conflict in any given society, I think.
left -wing versus right -wing tribes are particularly important at this moment in history in the US. part of the problem is that nowadays, you know, back in the day, each tribe had its own social institutions, and now different tribes share the same institutions. And so some of the conflicts are about how, what...
to shape those institutions and who gets to control them, given that they're supposed to be, in many cases, kind of neutral between different tribes, between, for example, left -wing and right -wing tribes.
PJ (35:23.699)
I think part of this is that my mind keeps wanting to make a binary out of these. so I appreciate your patience with me asking this. So we're talking about ethnic, ethno -linguistic groups with the tribes, and then we have family institutions, right? And it's like, those two are distinct things. that the, when we're talking about family institution, we're talking about how it's developed in our culture as a complex social adaptation, because, and I guess I could see how like,
Victor (35:36.642)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm. Yeah.
PJ (35:51.997)
What we think of as the family is in many ways different, but there's a lot of similar mechanisms too in other cultures and especially historically what the family was. Does that make sense?
Victor (36:04.272)
Yes. So, yes, I mean, the tribe is bigger than the family because tribes contain many families. I think the way to think about this is family institution. It's not the family. It's the complex set of rules and rituals that are shared by different families within the tribe. know, like it's true that within a tribe, we've got this family and that family. They're different, but they share
whether they share rules about whether marriage is supposed to be between one man and one woman, for example. There's that more abstract thing that they share, that is that they participate in the same family institution.
PJ (36:52.063)
Good. That's I, I mean, you explained it much clearer than I would have, but that's I, I'm just tracking with you then. That's really helpful. And so when you talk about left wing, right wing, that's like even, I mean, it's a little bit ethno, but it's definitely more linguistic, right? When like, I mean, there are going to be some different ratios or whatever, and I don't have looked at the latest polls or whatever, but like it seems like is that has been, has that been part of the moral progression that we're seeing the move away from?
And maybe I'm just totally on the wrong track here, but that we're moving away from the ethno side of things into the linguistic side of things for these tribes.
Victor (37:31.17)
I mean, I think in the American context, you know, obviously left -wing and right -wing tribes are not completely divided by ethnicity. You know, there's more white Europeans on the right, perhaps, than on the left, but plenty of them on the left too, and plenty of them have non -white people on the right. I don't think language is the thing here either, because I mean, I think that...
PJ (37:55.965)
Okay.
Victor (38:00.074)
language or just dialect is really mostly shared between the left and the right. I mean, there are some differences, but those differences are going to exhibit a lot of variation within the left or within the right. I mean, you might imagine like, you you think of the dialect of people from the South. That's sometimes associated stereotypically with people on the right. Of course, the right -wing culture in the United States is so much broader than that includes many people who don't.
PJ (38:06.345)
Hmm
Victor (38:29.068)
have that particular dialect. So I don't think it's ethnicity or language that makes the division here. I think it's complicated, but it involves a set of...
PJ (38:41.439)
That's Ferreza.
Victor (38:49.48)
shared moral beliefs about things like, I don't know, our obligations to immigrants, our attitudes towards policing, towards abortion, towards affirmative action. It also includes factual beliefs. mean, know, factual beliefs little bit whether climate change is an existential risk. It also includes, you know, who we who people on the left and the right think of as role models.
So it's pretty complicated and none of these things is necessary. You don't need any particular moral value or factual belief or role model to be on the right or to be on the left. But it's kind of a web of interrelated moral and non -moral attitudes and beliefs.
basically you need a big chunk of them, if not all of them, to be on one side or another. so I think that's the thing that separates left and right tribes in the US.
PJ (40:03.377)
And so when you're saying ethno -linguistic for tribes, a lot of that is part of the story you're telling from earlier on, but even now when you use it and as humans have continued to evolve, largely culturally at this point, it includes things like class. And I know that doesn't cover everything you just said, but it seems to cover a good chunk of what you were talking about there. So you can have tribes in the way that you're talking about it according to class.
Victor (40:19.115)
Mm
Victor (40:23.756)
Mm.
PJ (40:32.959)
Is that an appropriate way to think about it?
Victor (40:36.66)
Yeah, I I think that it's possible. right now, it's hard to think about economic class as being really a thing that separates left and right because I think... But I think you could think about other tribes where economic class is more important. mean, know, classically, if you think about...
PJ (40:50.195)
Yeah, it's just a yes. I understand what saying. Yeah.
Victor (41:06.484)
the distinction between proletariat and the bourgeoisie that had to do with socioeconomic class and in some historical context that I think it makes sense to think of these people as two different tribes that you know had each tribe having shared interests and seeing the other as a competitor and sometimes as an enemy.
PJ (41:32.767)
So I've really kind of asked a lot of questions about kind of the present day and even maybe a little bit about the future. What does that story look like? You're talking about morality pushing evolution, progressing evolution. What did that look like at the beginning from that kind of you mentioned the ethno -linguistic tribes? Like how did morality give humanity a leg up, so to speak, in like the race of life or whatever?
Victor (42:06.238)
How did morality give humanity a leg up? Yeah. So it's hard to answer this question without kind of focusing on a particular historical era. I mean, I think the one that comes to mind for me is when our species is evolving.
and when there are other human species on the planet. you know, one of the things that I'm struck by all the time is that for most of our time on this planet, we weren't the only human species. There was Homo erectus and Homo heidelbergensis and Homo neanderthals. you know, many, it's not clear that any, many of these other, like neanderthals for instance, it's not clear that we were innately.
smarter or more intelligent than them. What seems to have been the difference is that we spent our time in parts of the world that allowed for more density and higher density social groups, which meant we had to develop cultures that allowed us to get along and allowed us to cooperate on a bigger scale, whereas Neanderthals tended to live in parts of Europe where they were more sparsely distributed. So they didn't have to cooperate and they have to have
as big tribes. I think morality allowed our species to live in bigger tribes. It wasn't just, you know, our moral genes. It was our, it was the moral cultures that we evolved that allowed us to cooperate with each other better. And it meant that we could compete better against the Neanderthals. And maybe sometimes that meant fighting them, you know, but sometimes it might've just meant, being able to survive environmental challenges.
because we could rely on each other better than they could.
PJ (44:07.551)
Can you give an example of an environmental challenge? I have a couple like, like they come to mind for me, but I'm sure yours are better, so.
Victor (44:15.158)
Yeah, mean, you know, many important moments in human history involve severe climatic fluctuation. So.
Well, maybe that's not the best example here. mean, one of the things that, one of the other striking things about the archaeological record, besides seeing evidence of other human species that are no longer with us, is that, you know, human beings leave Africa and they colonize other continents. And basically what you see is that as soon as they get there, these large animals, megafauna,
disappear shortly after our species gets there. And it's like, maybe it's a coincidence. Probably not. Yeah. And, you know, successful hunting of large animals could only be done cooperatively. And, you know, they're a very important food source, not in all places or times, but often. And if human beings had a morality that allowed them
PJ (45:05.897)
Yeah.
Victor (45:29.982)
cooperate more so than other human species, then that's a reason why we would be more resilient in the face of, say, droughts when we could still rely on each other to engage in cooperative forms of hunting.
PJ (45:49.523)
Yeah, I thought about really big challenges, right? And I mean, we see this with wolves, we see this with tigers, you know, it's gotten to the point where we're actually trying to get them to come back, right? Like, people are so, you know, because we're scared of them, we don't realize like how scary we are, right? But the other one I thought of was like dealing with really, like really small predators, to put it that way, that
Victor (45:53.709)
Mm.
PJ (46:18.685)
your chances of surviving sickness, which we've obviously had to deal with, I mean, previous generations would really, did not have the same kind of medicine, but having someone who is willing to nurse you back to health would be an incredible, like incredibly important advantage. Would that be another good example?
Victor (46:30.306)
Yeah.
Victor (46:37.41)
Mm -hmm. It's another good example. It's funny that you bring that up though, because there's a famous example of an older Neanderthal, remains of an older Neanderthal who'd suffered a very severe injury, but then the bones, the fossils tell us that that person went on to live for decades afterwards. And so they needed someone to look after them as well. I'm not so sure. mean, we're in the realm of speculation here.
like we've been in other parts of the conversation. And I guess I would speculate that other human species might've had, you know, the same kinds of relations of intimate care with one another that we did. What was different about us was the way we could organize ourselves at a larger scale. Not the kind of small scale one -on -one relationships, but being able to function not just in a small group of a dozen
family members, but a large group. And maybe we seem to have had a morality that allowed us to cooperate at the level of groups of groups, that is different communities who lived in different places, but shared the same ethnicity and language and were therefore part of the same tribe and able to cooperate when we needed each other.
PJ (47:46.409)
Mm
PJ (48:00.295)
Do you see any, is there any connection between kind of the parts of the brain or what's at work here between art and morality? Like you're talking about coordination and things like I've seen some on the evolutionary origin of music. like, I mean, that music was really about kind of this communal coordination. Is there, is there any kind of continuum here? Like obviously they've become separate disciplines, but in some ways was that.
Victor (48:13.666)
Mm.
Victor (48:21.356)
Mm
PJ (48:29.669)
I understand like a lot of this is speculative, is there a crossover there?
Victor (48:37.322)
Yeah, mean, part of the some of the recent work on the evolution of music has been that it evolved because it was a way of forging bonds of solidarity with each other, know, singing together and dancing together in a rhythmic way made our groups more tightly connected. And, you know, that's what morality does as well. So
interesting, know, we think about morality in the book as being the thing that the psychological adaptations that allow us to cooperate and coordinate and work together. I think one thing you're pointing to is that morality is not the only thing that has that function, right? Maybe music has that function too.
PJ (49:27.967)
So one, I wanna say Dr. Kumar, been absolutely awesome having you on. I wanna be respectful of your time. Before we wrap up, what is one thing that you would encourage our audience either to do or just to think about over the next week that they could take away from this episode?
Victor (49:43.5)
Yeah, well, I think one thing that I find myself thinking about a lot is how, what are the important ways in which our morality has to evolve now and in the coming decades? So we were talking briefly earlier about treatment of animals on factory farms. That's one thing, but,
You know, there's lots of ways in which the world might improve that have nothing to do with morality. know, technological development, economic growth, those are hugely important for human well -being and peace. But...
some, in some ways, we need to not just, you know, get wealthier and stronger and have better tools, we need to, we need to become better people. And so one thing that I think about is, what are some of the big moral problems that our societies face, where we need to improve not just our technology, but who we are? In what ways do we need to become better people to face the social challenges that are
in front of us right now.
PJ (51:02.473)
feel like I'm talking to the evolutionary Socrates. love that. Sorry, I just love that like know thyself kind of feel to it. Wonderful answer. Dr. Kumar, been an absolute joy talking to you today. Thank you.
Victor (51:14.55)
Thank you so much, was really a pleasure to talk to you as well.
PJ (51:22.676)
it's taking a while to stop, but.