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INTRODUCTION: THE GREATER APES

INTRODUCTION: THE GREATER APES INTRODUCTION: THE GREATER APES All “primates are willing to sacrifice for the cause of justice.” Or so a recent article in Newsweek begins. It would be nice to regard altruism as an inborn trait of monkeys — the trait seems tenuous among the greater apes — so I read both the Newsweek article and the scientific paper that had made the news. The former concluded, on the basis of the latter, that we should not view the pursuit of justice among Homo sapiens as “a patina of culture slapped onto the human animal . . . forever on the verge of reverting to the natural state of brute selfishness.” “Many economists,” Newsweek has noticed, argue that “human motives . . . come down to one thing: self-interest.” Whereas primatologists have now shown that humans share “an inborn sense of justice” with brown capuchin monkeys. The scientific paper, which appeared in Nature, claims that (1) a “ ‘sense of fairness’ is probably a human universal” and (2) “inequity aversion may not be uniquely human.” But what the research in question demonstrates is not what the primatologists and reporters want to claim. Brown capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella) “dislike inequity”— but http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Common Knowledge Duke University Press

INTRODUCTION: THE GREATER APES

Perl, Jeffrey M.
Common Knowledge , Volume 10 (2) – Apr 1, 2004
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Publisher
Duke University Press
Copyright
Copyright 2004 by Duke University Press
ISSN
0961-754X
eISSN
1538-4578
DOI
10.1215/0961754X-10-2-214
Publisher site
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Abstract

INTRODUCTION: THE GREATER APES All “primates are willing to sacrifice for the cause of justice.” Or so a recent article in Newsweek begins. It would be nice to regard altruism as an inborn trait of monkeys — the trait seems tenuous among the greater apes — so I read both the Newsweek article and the scientific paper that had made the news. The former concluded, on the basis of the latter, that we should not view the pursuit of justice among Homo sapiens as “a patina of culture slapped onto the human animal . . . forever on the verge of reverting to the natural state of brute selfishness.” “Many economists,” Newsweek has noticed, argue that “human motives . . . come down to one thing: self-interest.” Whereas primatologists have now shown that humans share “an inborn sense of justice” with brown capuchin monkeys. The scientific paper, which appeared in Nature, claims that (1) a “ ‘sense of fairness’ is probably a human universal” and (2) “inequity aversion may not be uniquely human.” But what the research in question demonstrates is not what the primatologists and reporters want to claim. Brown capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella) “dislike inequity”— but

Journal

Common Knowledge – Duke University Press

Published: Apr 1, 2004

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