EVERY SPOKEN WORD
120 min read · 23,920 words- 0:00 – 0:32
Intro
- VKVictor Kumar
I think the best hope for finding some kind of objective moral philosophy is to think about how and why these progressive changes happened, and to think about the psychological and cultural mechanisms behind them, and whether those mechanisms can be exploited in the future. We're not gonna figure out whether utilitarianism is true or not, but we might be able to figure out how we made progress in ways that we all agree are progress, and how to build on those, and to find agreement about other pressing problems that we haven't solved yet.
- CWChris Williamson
Why would
- 0:32 – 6:50
Is Evolution Relevant to Morality?
- CWChris Williamson
evolutionary theory at all be involved in a conversation when studying morality?
- VKVictor Kumar
It's a pleasure to be on the show. Uh, the reason is because we are evolved beings. We are, uh, we didn't create morality from scratch, we inherited it from our ancestors. We have similar capacities for morality that are shared with other animals, like chimpanzees. And so the first step to understanding morality is to understand where it came from.
- CWChris Williamson
Okay. Does morality not just come out of culture? Is this not just something that humans create out of the wishy-washy nowhere of interacting with each other?
- VKVictor Kumar
I mean, it comes out of culture too, because culture evolved. Uh, so culture evolves just like our genes do. We have information, we pass it on. Information that allows us to, um, succeed in our environment is more likely to be transmitted to the next generation. So when we think of morality as being evolved, it's not just genetic capacities to, uh, feel pro-social emotions and care about other creatures. It's also a culturally evolved system of norms and institutions. And all of these things combine to produce human morality.
- CWChris Williamson
So you call that gene-culture co-evolution?
- VKVictor Kumar
That's right, yeah. There's been a huge literature over the past couple of decades trying to explain how it's not just that genes evolve and culture evolve, but they co-evolve together. They influence each other's evolution.
- CWChris Williamson
Okay. So, could you give me an example of how culture has influenced genes?
- VKVictor Kumar
Yeah, that's a great question. So one of my favorite examples of this has to do with the gene that creates alcohol aversion. So there are some populations in different parts of the world that, uh, are averse to alcohol. That is, when they drink it, their face blushes, they get kind of sick, and, uh, nauseous.
- CWChris Williamson
Asian flush, Asian flush. My business partner-
- VKVictor Kumar
That's right, that's right. (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... my business partner's got it, yeah.
- VKVictor Kumar
That's right. And the reason for that is that the, those populations in Asia were among the first people to take domesticated rice crops and turn them into alcohol. And so there was, um, this evolved cultural practice of domesticating rice, turning it into alcohol, and that created a selection pressure on our genes. That is, individuals who were averse to alcohol were less likely to become alcoholics and get drunk and ruin their own lives and those of their family, and so they were more likely to pass along their genes to the next generation.
- CWChris Williamson
No way. That's where Asian flush comes from?
- VKVictor Kumar
That's right, yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
That is incredible. So because the sort of person who would be either neutrally or positively predisposed to consuming alcohol would be more likely to be in situations that would stop their survival and reproduction, people for whom their bodies ended up having this response where they got hot and red-faced and they felt sick were less likely to do that. They're less likely to take the risks and make the errors, which means that they're more likely to pass their genes on. So Asian flush is an adaptive response to encourage people genetically to not drink in order to not do stupid shit while they're drunk?
- VKVictor Kumar
That's right, yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Dude, you're blowing my mind. That's so interesting. That's so good.
- VKVictor Kumar
Yeah, I mean, there's tons of exam- tons of examples like this, and...
- CWChris Williamson
Keep them coming. I wanna know some more.
- VKVictor Kumar
I mean, this is a-
- CWChris Williamson
Give me some others.
- VKVictor Kumar
Sure, yeah. So another famous one has to do, um, with, um, lactase tolerance, so, uh, sorry, lactose tolerance. So m- you know, most mammals lose the genes for producing the enzyme lactase that allows us to digest lactose in milk. Humans are one of the only exceptions. There are some populations across the world that keep this enzyme and that allows us to continue drinking milk and dairy pro- eating dairy products through adulthood. And, uh, the reason for this is, and this is just, uh, you know, it seems like the best hypothesis because of where those genes are located in the world, is that those are the places where, uh, human beings had domesticated cows or goats and, um, so there was a selective advantage in being able to continue to, to consume dairy, um, without getting sick. And, you know, there's been some new research on this that adds a little twist, but bas- basically the only twist is that, um, these, this really happened in places that were prone to starvation. And so the key thing was to be able to drink dairy without experiencing diarrea, diarrhea and becoming, um, uh, dehydrated. So that's, that's another example though of a, a culturally evolved practice, which is raising goats and cows for milk influences the evolution of our genes to produce, um, this enzyme that allows us to eat milk, drink milk, uh, eat milk, uh, drink milk, and eat dairy products without experiencing dehydration.
- CWChris Williamson
Does this suggest that all humans went through a stage of lactose intolerance and then there was a re-mutation which was adaptive and the people that were-
- VKVictor Kumar
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
... descended from that particular cohort became better? Or does it seem like the, uh, the sort of loss of the lactase occurred all at the same time and then it was stopped within certain cohorts? Does that make sense?
- VKVictor Kumar
... I think the idea is that it was, uh, the original universal trait is that this enzyme disappeared in- after childhood and then just in a few populations there evolved this ability to retain the enzyme, um, in adulthood.
- CWChris Williamson
Does mother's milk... is that... when you say, "After childhood," is that because you need to be able to ha-
- VKVictor Kumar
Hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
Is mother's milk... like, it's not dairy, but how does that work?
- VKVictor Kumar
Uh, yeah, I mean, it is a form of dairy, uh, that has lactose in it. And so that's why we have this gene in childhood so that we can drink mother's milk.
- 6:50 – 14:10
How Dr Kumar Defines Morality
- CWChris Williamson
morality a lot. W- what are you defining-
- VKVictor Kumar
Hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... as morality?
- VKVictor Kumar
Yeah. So, I mean, ultimately the idea is to understand morality in the same way that we understand our, uh, agricultural practices as this co-evolution between culture and genes. But what is it that we're trying to explain? Um, I think there's lots of different things that fall under the category of morality, but some of the main things we'd want to explain is our emotions, the feelings that we have towards mo- one another, like sympathy, caring about other people suffering in and of itself. That's one aspect of morality. Another aspect of morality, and this is something that we don't seem to share with other animals, is humans have social norms. They have rules that prescribe how we should and shouldn't behave and that we enforce on other people as well. So these are two of the key ap- key elements of human morality, emotions and norms. We want to understand how these things evolve through biological and cultural evolution.
- CWChris Williamson
All of the examples that you've given there are social in one form or another.
- VKVictor Kumar
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
They involve multiple people. Is there such a thing as individual morality in your view?
- VKVictor Kumar
Uh, I think that people do develop moral codes that apply to themselves. You know, people think that I have an obligation to keep myself healthy and that has nothing to do with other people. But I don't think that that is, uh, an evolutionarily ancient tendency, the, uh, the tendency to apply morality to yourself. The thing that's evolved is the social, the social aspect of our thinking and our behavior. And the more individual stuff, that just comes later. That's sort of a, a byproduct of evolved social morality.
- CWChris Williamson
Okay. So most traits that have stuck about except for some strange byproducts are here because they're adaptive, right? They help us to survive and or reproduce. In what ways is morality adaptive?
- VKVictor Kumar
Yeah. Well, so morality is adaptive in that it enables cooperation. You know, one of the things that we have in common with other animals like chimpanzees is that we live in social groups that, in which we rely on another, one another to survive. But the thing about humans is that we have lived in richer cooperative groups than other animals. So we cooperate in a wider range of ways. We cooperate when it comes to childcare in the ways that other animals don't. We cooperate when it comes to fighting other groups in ways that animals don't. W- our cooperative schemes are much richer and so we need a richer morality in order to cooperate with one another.
- CWChris Williamson
So in this way, is morality, uh, just a set of inbuilt guidelines and rules that create effective, more effective cooperation under incredibly complex and criss-crossing situations?
- VKVictor Kumar
That's right. I mean, that's part of it. Part of it is that it's these inbuilt tendencies. But remember, because morality is the product of gene culture co-evolution, it's also this culturally transmitted set of rules and practices and institutions that in each generation combined with our inborn inheritance to produce the morality that different societies construct.
- CWChris Williamson
Presumably, this must mean that over time, uh, progressions in culture unlock particular genetic progressions and progressions genetically unlock particular cultural progressions.
- VKVictor Kumar
That is definitely the tr- the case when it comes to the long view of human evolution over the course of tens or hundreds of thousands of years. It's a much more difficult question to know whether that is continuing to happen, whether different groups across the world are changing the morality in terms of their genetic inheritance in response to different cultural conditions. You know, it's very hard to study... it's easier to study evolution over the long scale. It's much harder to know how humans are evolving now or in the last, you know, few decades or centuries.
- CWChris Williamson
You say that received wisdom has it that just because a trait is biological does not mean that it is inevitable. But another piece of wisdom not yet widely received is that just because a trait is cultural does not mean that it is optional. What does that mean?
- VKVictor Kumar
Mm-hmm. Yeah. So I think that, um, a lot of people think that, um, if something's merely cultural, if it's not part of our genes, it's not part of our built-in biology, then it's something we can change, but that's not necessarily true. I mean, there's many aspects of our culture that we need for development to unfold in any kind of normal predictable way. I mean, think about, for example, one aspect of culture that we take for granted, which is, um, care by child, uh, by, um, caregivers in very early, early childhood. I mean, often historically has come from mothers, but of c- of course can come from other parents as well. Um, this is something that is cultural, at least in part.... but, uh, it's not optional. That is, human beings cannot develop, uh, in a normal functional way unless they have this important cultural input in their childhood.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs) Interesting. So, it's, that's, that's an interesting example because it's not optional for the child, but it is optional for the parent.
- VKVictor Kumar
Mm. It's, yeah, optional for the parent, but not optional for, um-
- CWChris Williamson
The genes.
- VKVictor Kumar
... the child and for, and, and, well, and for the, and for future generations-
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- VKVictor Kumar
... to continue-
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- VKVictor Kumar
... to exist and to flourish. Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Yes. If you're, if you're a grandparent optimizing machine, it's no longer optional. Yeah, that was, that's more about the reproduction rather than the survivability part. Is there any, are there any other examples-
- VKVictor Kumar
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... of this, about the op- sort of the optionality, or lack thereof, of, of cultural stuff?
- VKVictor Kumar
Yeah. I mean, so one of the lessons that has come out of work in cultural evolution over the last decade or two is really the important way in which human beings are social learners. We don't come up with our ideas from scratch. We don't, uh, mainly experiment with the world on our own. We learn ideas from other people. We learn ideas especially from peers who are a little bit wiser than us. And so, uh, learning from peers is, having peers that are social models that you can learn from is a part of culture that's necessary for humans to develop properly to, uh, raise the next generation. Um, but it, it's not optional. We need social learning from peers in order to succeed in our environments.
- CWChris Williamson
Without social learning from peers, you would be at a severe disadvantage when it came to survival.
- VKVictor Kumar
That's right. Yeah.
- 14:10 – 19:05
Features of the Human Moral Mind
- CWChris Williamson
what does the human's moral mind consist of?
- VKVictor Kumar
Yeah. So, there, you know, human minds, moral minds are incredibly diverse across societies, but, um, I think there are some features that each human being has in common, at least as long as they've had proper caregiving in their early childhood. Um, so one aspect is we have a rich set of moral emotions that we feel toward other people, especially within our family and our social groups. So, these are emotions like sympathy, but also trust, respect. This is, respect is a good one because it's something that other, um, other primates don't have. You know, in chimpanzee groups, respect only flows in one direction. It flows up to the dominant male in your group. But humans have mutual respect. We, um, we, uh, we don't try to dom- I mean, we, we don't always try to dominate each other. We have an impulse to, um, have relatively, um, egalitarian groups where we can, can, we, we stand on the same, um, same level as other people in our group. So, this is one aspect of, of, uh, evolved morality. Another aspect is moral norms. So, norms like not hurting other people, helping people when they are in need of help. Um, norms about, um, respecting other people's autonomy. Um, there's quite a, a wide set of norms, but they all- Human societies all tend to have some similar types of norms in common. So, we have norms, for example, about not causing harm to other people. We have norms that are about respecting other people's autonomy, norms that have to do with fairness. And these are interpreted in wildly different ways across societies. In some places, fairness is about equal distribution of resources. In other places, it's about giving people what they're owed, depending on how much effort they put in or what their social status is. Um, so these are two aspects of human morality. And the third one, and this is one that I think psychologists don't pay enough attention to, is the human capacity for moral reasoning. Um, this is another thing that sets us apart from the apes. We, um, have the ability to change what our moral views are, and we don't do it in the way that philosophers generally reason about morality. We don't start off with first principles and apply them to specific cases. Um, a more typical way that humans reason about morality is we do something called moral consistency reasoning, or treating like cases alike. You know, somebody in your group, somebody that you trust might say, "Well listen, why are you treating him that way? You wouldn't wanna be treated that way yourself." Or, to think of a more modern example, many people come to be vegetarians or vegans or reduce their meat consumption because they think, somebody in their social group pointed out like, "Hey, you, you really care about dogs. You wouldn't want dogs to be tortured in that way. Why, why do you think it's okay to torture pigs or cows in that way?" So, moral emotions, moral norms, and a capacity for moral reasoning. These are the main ingredients of evolved biocultural morality.
- CWChris Williamson
Are there any emotions that aren't moral?
- VKVictor Kumar
Oh yeah, plenty of mo- emotions. So, uh, fear is not, uh, doesn't need to be an am- a moral emotion. I mean, sometimes you can feel fear towards other people that are, uh, trying to exert their moral power over you, but many times you feel fear towards ina- you know, uh, non-human objects or in situations that don't have anything to do with morality. Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
That's interesting. So wha- a- other primary moral emotions are there, are there the most moral emotions that we've got? Are there a, a little bundle of them?
- VKVictor Kumar
Yeah. So, this is like, uh, you know, it's an open question what falls in here, but I think some of the main contenders are sympathy...... um, uh, reciprocity, or rather the trust, the emotion of trust that underlies reciprocity, um, respect that we have already talked about, and there's another one that doesn't get much play in Western ethics and Western thinking too, which is, um, uh, h- and it's connected with loyalty, but it's like the emotional bonding that forms between people, not just because we're part of the same group, but because we're bonded as mates or as close friends or coalition partners.
- CWChris Williamson
When it comes to respect, you said that-
- VKVictor Kumar
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... typically, uh, i- in terms of primates, respect
- 19:05 – 29:11
Why Humans Differ to Chimps on Respect
- CWChris Williamson
flows one way-
- VKVictor Kumar
That's right.
- CWChris Williamson
... which is from the subordinate to the person that's in charge, the chief ape-
- VKVictor Kumar
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... or chimp or whatever.
- VKVictor Kumar
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
W- what is the difference between humans and chimps that makes us require mutual respect as opposed to one-way respect?
- VKVictor Kumar
Yeah. I think it, again, has to do with the, the richer and more egalitarian forms of cooperation that humans have relied on for hundreds of thousands of years. So, chimpanzee groups can... They don't have to... They cooperate but not very much, and so they can get away with one dominant ape hogging all the resources, if that's what they want, hogging all the mating opportunities, if that's what they want. Um, but the... This kind of has li-... This limits cooperation in a way. Like, for example, if you and I are in an ape group and you're taking all the food, the fruit, or the meat when we get it, then I have kind of less of an incentive to, to give it my all in the next, on the next cooperative run. But if, you know, we are in circumstances which humans found themselves in, where they really desperately ne- needed to cooperate in order to fend off, um, their territory from attackers, in order to access new forms of food, like for example scavenging and hunting other animals, um, then we need to operate on terms of relative equality if we're gonna really, both of us, give it our all and, um, and, and cooperate to do these, these harder, more complicated tasks. So, we had to give up dominance relationships in order to cooperate in a more comple- complex and reliable way.
- CWChris Williamson
I had David Putz on the show not long ago, and he was talking about how chimp societies are 100 times to 500 times more violent, in terms of the number-
- VKVictor Kumar
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... of violent incidents than humans are, but they are 100 times less lethal. So, he said-
- VKVictor Kumar
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... that interestingly-
- VKVictor Kumar
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... one of the, one of the outcomes that you get from that is a huge predisposition amongst humans to avoid conflict. As soon as you move on from it being a, uh, a pushing, shoving match that's actually gonna take quite a while for you to kill somebody else to you-
- VKVictor Kumar
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... with a heavy rock or a sharp stick or a spear or a gun or a, you know, progress on with your lethality of weapon of choice, you end up having an incentive to very, very much avoid, uh, that kind of physical interaction. And I suppose that this is where dominance versus prestige, from a leadership perspective comes in. (clears throat) Why, in a human society, would you want a complete tyrant at the absolute top unless-
- VKVictor Kumar
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... it was somehow helping you? And that means that the only way really that tyrants in human society can stick about is if they have a little cohort of sycophants or whatever around them that can help them to kind of keep every- And then they need a military arm, and they need a, a, a bunch of sort-
- VKVictor Kumar
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... of supporters below them as well. Um, when it comes down-
- VKVictor Kumar
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... to sympathy, I remember reading, I think it was Jonathan Haidt or Robert Wright maybe, who said, uh, they put forward they thought sympathy was investment advice. They said that sympathy suggests to humans which other humans will be the most appreciative of their efforts toward them. So I'm gonna guess that sympathy helps us to redistribute resources in a more efficient manner. Is that right?
- VKVictor Kumar
Mm-hmm. I think that's certainly part of it. I mean, part of this view of sympathy that you just suggested seems to be about the communicative function of sympathy, me expressing sympathy for you communicates something to you about, uh, w- who's worth, you know, reinvesting in. Um, but I, I also think that another aspect of sympathy is just that, um, if we are really bound up together, uh, if, if my interests are bound up with yours, then it behooves me to make sure that you have enough food, that you're happy, that you're not gonna run off and join another cooperative scheme without me. So, when, you know, the, to... When, when social interaction becomes less and less of a zero-sum game, when, um, your, your positive outcomes are really bound up with mine, then it, it benefits me not just in a communicative way, but it benefits me to act in ways that serve your interests because your i- your interests will, um, serving your interests will, will benefit mine.
- CWChris Williamson
Okay. What I've got in my head here is the fact that, in a small-scale society, sympathy makes an awful lot of choice.
- VKVictor Kumar
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
If you were to start to scale that up a little bit more, where you are less reliant on the others in your group, less reliant on the others in your group surviving, that would suggest to me that sympathy would start to get turned down. Does that, does that seem to make sense?
- VKVictor Kumar
Absolutely. And, I mean, the thing about human societies for hundreds of thousands of years is that we've lived in very small groups, where-... you, uh, you know other people, you really are, um, bound up to them in, in terms of all kinds of cooperative, uh, activities. And, uh, you know, this, this may be true at least for tens of thousands of years, but certainly in the last few hundred and thousands years, we live in much larger societies where, um, there aren't the same cooperative dependencies between people who are living in the same city or the same, um, village as you. And so, here, I think, um, there really is, uh, uh, there, there isn't the same incentive to feel and express sympathy towards others. And what we've seen, I think, in, in soc- societies that have persisted is that we've seen that there have evolved cultural institutions that manage the work of cooperation for us, so that we don't have to rely on you and I having a personal relationship. We've got a system of laws that will punish me for, um, for hurting you, and you know, uh, a bunch of people who will enforce it in less-
- CWChris Williamson
So if I was to s-
- VKVictor Kumar
... or more reasonable ways.
- 29:11 – 35:06
Are There Bad & Good Emotions?
- CWChris Williamson
right to say that there are good or bad emotions?
- VKVictor Kumar
I think that emotions can be used in good and bad ways. I think that, uh, it's... There are philosophers who argue that some emotions are inherently bad, like anger or disgust. Disgust may be one of those that you had in mind that is kind of halfway immoral. Um, but I think all of these emotions have their place. I mean, anger, of course, can lead to violence, it can, uh, be self-stultifying because, um, expressing anger, um, may lead other people to distrust you or avoid you, but anger is also important as a motivator. I mean, it can motivate people to fight against injustice, it can motivate people to hold people responsible in their interpersonal relationships. If you don't feel anger at your wife or your husband, um, unless they're a perfect moral being, um, you're probably not gonna have a functioning relationship where you are holding each other responsible and, um, and, and, and you know, developing and, uh-... developing a relationship in positive ways.
- CWChris Williamson
Moral disgust is an interesting one because drawn into that-
- VKVictor Kumar
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... is, uh, all manner of bigotry and, and, and p- prejudice and predisposition and stuff like that. What, what role does moral disgust have? I understand the reason why looking at rotting meat or the smell of feces or open wounds, stuff like that, I understand why that would create a sense of disgust.
- VKVictor Kumar
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
First off, i- is the moral disgust system, I don't know whether you've ever looked at it from, like, a neurobiological, neuroscientific perspective, is it the same system that's activated?
- VKVictor Kumar
Yeah, so this is a, this is an open question. There are people in the literature who argue on, on different sides of this issue. I don't think it's been solved yet. Um, there does seem to be, um, uh, things in common between basic pathogen disgust and moral disgust. So for example, there are studies suggest that, um, that similar parts of the brain, um, the insular cortex, are activated when people experience disgust towards rotten food versus, um, towards people who are dishonest or exploitative. Um, there's also research that su- uh, suggests that when you, um, when you're experiencing moral disgust, people, uh, people make the gape face. They do the disgusted facial expression that's typical of pathogen disgust. So that's some evidence that suggests it's one and the same emotion or similar variation on the same emotional system that's responding to pathogens and moral issues. But I think this is maybe one of the best cases for an emotion that is a moral emotion, it's related to morality, but it's not good. It's a bad emotion. I don't think that's right because I think that disgust has its place too. One of the things that people feel moral disgust towards is, is a class of violations that have to do with reciprocity, so things like cheating, dishonesty, exploitation, people experience moral disgust towards those things. And one reason disgust is useful as an emotion is because of what it motivates. It motivates us to withdraw and avoid and engage in distancing, and that can be a really effective form of punishment. That is, in a cooperative species like ourselves, when people are avoiding you or withdrawing from you, that is a very powerful indirect punishment because it deprives you of social connections.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- VKVictor Kumar
So I think that even moral disgust has its place too.
- CWChris Williamson
I saw a study that came up recently that looked at the greatest status-affecting criteria for attractiveness. Uh-
- VKVictor Kumar
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... most status-increasing criteria, uh, and this is on a scale of naught to eight, how many points it increases or decreases. So being a trusted group member, 3.05. Being intelligent, nearly three. Getting accepted at a prestigious university, being ex- an exceptional leader, having a wide range of knowledge, being creative, always being honest, being able to speak well in public, having a job that pays well, having a good sense of humor, having an executive position, being kind, being brave in the face of danger, having a college education, and being a hard worker, so that goes from, like, five to two and a half. And then the reverse, the most status-decreasing criteria, failing to perform a group task, getting dismissed from school, being lazy, being unable to control one's sexual behavior when drunk, being unreliable, acting immature or irresponsible, being mean or nasty to others, expressed racist remarks, bringing social shame on one's family, having bad manners, takes illegal drugs, getting a sexually transmitted disease, being stupid, being unclean or dirty, and being known as a thief. Being known as a thief, by 20%, is the biggest status-decreasing criteria, and that made me think about what you were just talking about, that it is, it is inherently, it is inbuilt with the trust within the group, the moral disgust that you would have toward a thief, somebody that can't j- by their very nature, cannot be trusted to have the group's interests at heart, so we need to move away from them.
- VKVictor Kumar
Yeah, that's fascinating. I, I do think that this study indicates that morality, being a m- um, a moral person continues to affect your reproductive potential, and, um, I think that disgust can underpin this exact kind of response that people have towards immoral people, which is to avoid them.
- CWChris Williamson
You've mentioned
- 35:06 – 43:12
When Humans Developed Moral Emotions
- CWChris Williamson
that our closest relatives in the primate world do not have these moral emotions. Have you got any idea at what point humans would have evolved these?
- VKVictor Kumar
Yeah, so I do think that chimpanzees and bonobos have some analog of moral emotions. They do have emotions like sympathy. The key one that I think distinguishes us from bonobos is respect, mutual respect. And so, um, it's, you know, it's, it's very hard, the evidence is so, um, depleted and scattered, to figure out when these things evolved. I think the best way to think about it is to piece together different kinds of evidence, genetic, archeological evidence, and to try to figure out when forms of cooperation evolved that would have required more equality between primates compared to the kinds of, uh, co- cooperative activities that chimpanzees, and presumably, our common ancestors with them, engaged in. Um, one thing, this is something that Michael Tomasello points to, um, one thing that you see in the archeological record is that humans, around the time of when our genus evolves, two million, two million years ago, this is a period of time where humans are starting to rely in a regular way on meat.... you know, initially probably scavenging meat, maybe even just finding bones and breaking it open and getting the marrow from them. But eventually cooperating in way to chase off other, um, predators, bring down prey ourselves. And this was the kind of thing that we needed to do. We needed to cooperate in order to do it. We needed to cooperate in a more dependable, um, fine-tuned way to carry out a hunt. And, you know, lions can do it w- without human morality, but they're much fiercer predators than us. We needed to, um, use our intelligence rather than our, um, our bare strength or speed. We also needed to use something you mentioned earlier, the more elaborate tools that humans had begun to create around this period of time. So this is, this is one form of cooperation among others that seems to have arisen around roughly two million years ago, when our genus homo was evolving in Africa. And so this is likely the period of time where a- a- a more complex and richer set of moral emotions, including mutual respect, probably evolved.
- CWChris Williamson
I'm thinking about the relationship, the sort of gene culture co-evolution element of emotions. Have you looked at any particular cultures or sub-groups of people that have unique blends of emotions where maybe, uh, one particular group shows a particular emotion way higher or lower than others based on whatever pressures or environment is happening around them?
- VKVictor Kumar
Yeah, one of the great studies of this, um, this is, um, by, uh, psychology, uh, psychologist Richard Nisbett and his co-author, uh, Dov Cohen. So this has to do with honor cultures. Um, so, there's traditional honor cultures in different parts of the world, um, and these are places where people in these cultures are more likely to feel anger in response to perceived insults or threats. So this is a, these are distinct populations where people are- are, experience more intense anger and, uh, experience it in response to these insults and threats at- kind of at a more hair trigger. And the explanation, and this is a, uh, a cultural evolutionary explanation that Nisbett and Cohen give, is that these are parts of the world that in which people had portable property. They, um, had... They were, for example, goat herders, whose property could be easily stolen, and they also lived in places that didn't have that ins- institutional apparatuses, those kinds of institutional apparatuses that we talked about, robust legal and political institutions that would enforce property rights. And so what- what you needed to be like in these- in these honor cultures is you needed to get angry when people insulted or threatened you, because if you didn't, people would think you're weak and they'd take your property. Um, so this is... You know, human morality is flexible and it can- can and continues to change in different places and times, but this is one clear way in which moral anger seems to have been, um, heightened in response to the- this adaptive problem, which is keeping your property in a world where there's no institutional support.
- CWChris Williamson
I learned a couple of weeks ago about a law in Texas, which is where I currently am, that allows-
- VKVictor Kumar
Mm.
- CWChris Williamson
... any two willing participants to legally fight as long as a police officer is present to act as a referee.
- VKVictor Kumar
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
So this is... This is completely-
- VKVictor Kumar
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... permitted. Both of them don't even need to give verbal agreement, although I think Washington is somewhere else that this is permitted too, but you do need to have a police officer present and you need to say, "This is what we're going to do," and this is completely legal. Uh, I also found out that the distance between the two benches in the House of Lords in the UK is one sword held out at arm's length.
- VKVictor Kumar
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
So if you were to hold a sword out at arm's length and that's the distance between the two... And I'm going to get... I mean, the British thing is m- much more vestigial, I suppose, in that it's no one's taking a sword into the House of Lords anymore, but you can still see there, right? It's like here is a transgression and here is one solution which is an outlet which allows people to use this on a culture and enact it in a particular way, and then another one is a protective mechanism to ensure somebody who tries to enact on a culture, uh, can't get too carried away and chop the head off their political opponent.
- VKVictor Kumar
Mm-hmm. Yes. And one of the things that Nisbett and Cohen talk about is the way in which honor culture is typical of the American South and has persisted there in part because the first settlers of the American South came from parts of the UK that relied on, um, uh, herding animals and, you know, same conditions. Property was portable, no institutions to enforce it. Um, I wonder... I mean, I don't think that Cohen and Nisbett talk about this, but, you know, you have to wonder whether this is the ancestral condition, that these are the conditions that humans tended to live in throughout most of human history. Property was portable, no robust institutions, and really the... it's the- the absence of honor cultures in various parts of the world that is historically unusual, um-
- CWChris Williamson
Oh, that's interesting.
- VKVictor Kumar
... and it's much more common to have... Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. So, I mean, that would play... Kind of hard to prove I suppose, but that would play very much into the, um, Jonathan Haidt, uh, theory around the- the progress that we're seeing at the moment, you know, if you were to live at any time in history, uh, even going back... And everybody has this idea, you know, when you've spent way too much time on your phone one afternoon, you think, "God, I just wish I was a... I wish I was a nomadic caveman. This would be way easier. I wouldn't-"
- VKVictor Kumar
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
"... I wouldn't be distracted by all this technology and I'd get enough sun on me and all the rest of it." But maybe you would be living in a human society where there is three times the amount of anger-... that we have now, because you don't have the external-
- VKVictor Kumar
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
... institutions or apparatus to be able to enforce norms. So it's your job. Somebody transgresses-
- VKVictor Kumar
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
... it's your job.
- VKVictor Kumar
Right. Right, and of course, Steven Pinker's been another person who's written a lot about this and about the ways in which violence was much more a regular part of our lives until the last few centuries.
- 43:12 – 47:55
How General Altruism Evolved in Humans
- CWChris Williamson
What's your thoughts about altruism here? You know, e- e- i- it's commonly spoken about in the evolutionary psychology literature, and we've mentioned sympathy, we've mentioned sort of cooperative resources, hunting, so on and so forth. Ho- what have you come to believe about how altruism came about?
- VKVictor Kumar
Yeah, I mean, I think that we've been talking about altruism. Uh, these moral emotions are forms of altruism. There are cases where people, um, at least in- to some degree care about the interests of other people in and of themselves, and not just as a means to their own happiness or their own interests. So, uh, you know, sympathy, it's not just sympathy for you as long as you can do something for me. It's, um, you had to be able to do something for me over the long history of time for this sympathy to evolve, but sympathy now, in human beings, is caring about other people for their own sake. And we also even, you know, think about the norms too, enforcing norms, punishing people for violating norms. That is a kind of altruism too, because it involves, um, making a personal sacrifice and maybe exposing yourself to retaliation. Um, but you care about making sure others are doing their part in, in various kinds of cooperative activities.
- CWChris Williamson
What ways do norms differ from emotions, in that case, or, or even culture?
- VKVictor Kumar
Yeah. Um, so one thing about norms is that they can have a really specific content. They can, you know, emotions are kind of broad in general. They're like, "Mm, care about this other person in some way." But norms are much more specific. They can say, "Well listen, if, uh, you have cooperated to take down this bison, then you get these parts and the other person gets these parts. That's what the rules say." Um, so, you know, this, this kind of follows the, one of the developments we've been talking about in human e- evolution, which is cooperation becomes richer and more complex. And the more complex cooperation becomes, the m- the, the less you can rely on, um, fuzzy emotions and the more you need concrete norms with very specific instructions about what you are and are not allowed to do.
- CWChris Williamson
Okay. Are there categories of moral norms? Have you lumped them into particular buckets that are commonly found?
- VKVictor Kumar
Yeah, so Jonathan Haidt, who you mentioned before, is somebody who has tried to come up with a set of categories for moral norms. And, um, I, I've offered a s- uh, similar kind of classification in my work. So, we both think that harm norms are one category.
- CWChris Williamson
Right.
- VKVictor Kumar
These are norms that tell us, harm norms that, not to hurt other people or to aid them when they're in need. Um, uh, fairness norms are another category, uh, that we've a- also talked about, which is things like equal distribution, giving people what they're owed. Um, reciprocity norms are another kind. These are like tit for tat. You do your, what y- you do for me, and I do what I promise to do to you. Promises kind of fall under this category. And then another really important one is, um, autonomy norms, which I think h- Haidt talks about, but not, not, not quite in, in the way that, uh, not, not quite emphasizing this aspect of, um, being free from interference and domination from other people. So, um, these are some categories of norms, and each of them kind of fits with an emotion. You know, harm norms fit with sympathy. It's because we feel sympathy, sympathy helps us conform to norms pro- proscribing harm. Um, respect is the emotion that leads us to fulfill autonomy norms. It's because, uh, we have mutual respect for each other that we're not gonna interfere in each other's projects or try to control what, what each other do. And so there are these different categories of norms, and I think what other people haven't noticed yet is that there's also these, these categories of emotions, and it seems like how they all arose is that they co-evolved. The emotions are part of our genetic heritage. The norms are part of our cultural heritage, and it's because we've had both of them for so long that we have this system of emotions and norms that fits together.
- CWChris Williamson
What I'm fascinated
- 47:55 – 51:23
Evolution of Virtue-Signalling
- CWChris Williamson
about talking about this is the, uh, how would you say, most recent prevalence of moral grandstanding, scapegoating, uh, performative empathy, and stuff like that. Uh, it's been enabled by the internet and social media for people to be able to take positions which are, um, socially praised, but it has removed most of the cost of somebody having to have a, a hard signal of authenticity that they've actually done it, right?
- VKVictor Kumar
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
That's the performative part.
- VKVictor Kumar
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
Have you considered how stuff like moral grandstanding and scapegoating and performative empathy kind of fit into this broader worldview and how all of the incentives work and stuff like that?
- VKVictor Kumar
Yeah, virtue signaling is another example in the same category that you're talking about. I think it comes down to this difference that you pointed to earlier, which is that for most of human history, we've lived in these small groups, maybe, uh, you know, 50 or 100 members, and we really, uh-... had reliable information about other people's character and what they do in hard times. And now we live in much larger societies where you don't h- ha- you know, there's not the same opportunity to know what's really behind other people's words and so we've had to, um... People can, uh, engage much more in cheap talk, uh, because, you know, we don't have the same, uh, awareness and empath- uh, uh, intimacy with one another. So, I think that, uh, the, the phenomenon of grandstanding and virtue signaling, uh, arises in this society where we can't, we have, uh, no firmer way to track people's reputations and their behavior, and we have to rely on what they say. And so this opens the, the, the door for people to perform their moral commitments and garner sympathy and prestige and all kinds of other social goods by, um, by talking a big game.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, seeming like you do good rather than actually doing good because at the moment-
- VKVictor Kumar
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... most people are assessed by their opinions rather than their deeds. You know, we don't get to see-
- VKVictor Kumar
That's right.
- CWChris Williamson
... what, nobody gets to see h- what happens when you get off the, the conversation and this is an incredibly rich, deep version of what most people put out on the internet, right? Which is either just images or just text. And, uh... Yet, i- i- it's kind of funny that in a world in which you can get obligation-free status and goodwill, the incentive is always going to be there for people to overplay their hand about how moral they are.
- VKVictor Kumar
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And I mean, this is exacerbated by the internet and social media which, um, you know, makes a- turns so much of our interactions into a communicative game. Uh, and i- it's, it's unclear, you know, what the solution to th- is to this problem because, uh, y- you know, e- there are occasional instances where people, uh, are demonstrably engage in behavior that's inconsistent with the virtues that they've been signaling. But it's so rare, it's so rare that it doesn't change the incentive structure. There's still a massive incentive to, um, to virtue signal.
- CWChris Williamson
Okay, so what's
- 51:23 – 1:06:23
Did Religiosity Evolve?
- CWChris Williamson
religion? Is religion a norm? Is religion a culture?
- VKVictor Kumar
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
Or is it, uh, well, I, there must be, it's evolved independently in tons and tons of places all over the planet. Uh, how have you come to believe, uh, religion's development occurred?
- VKVictor Kumar
Yeah, and so this gets at, um, thinking about... We've been talking about gene culture coevolution, but now the issue is more strict cultural evolution independent of major changes in our genetic heritage. Um, so over the last, you know, we, we've talked about the moral mind, emotions and norms and how they fit together, but this moral mind also fits with our social institutions that have evolved culturally over the last, um, 10 or 50,000 years. So, we have various kinds of social institutions, political institutions, military institutions, family institutions, and one of the most important institutions in human history is religious institutions. So, um, religious institutions have shaped our moral mind, not just in terms of religious ideology, but religious practices and rituals have changed and, um, expanded our moral minds to encompass people who are from the same religious tribe. So, Joe Henrich and, um, Naren Zayan have done some really important work on this and one of the ideas that they put forward is this idea that religions, uh, religious institution... The, the way that I would put it, and so this is a bit of my spin on this, is that religious institutions have been really important in the cultural evolution of morality by expanding our moral circles. You know, generally who you feel sympathy and respect to in human history has been your, your group, your band of 100 people. And one thing that religious, religious institutions did is that they allowed us to see other people who share the same religion as members of the same extended family, brothers and sisters. And so they, this kind of cultural adaptation interacted with our moral minds to expand our moral circles to encompass the whole religious tribe and not just our local bands.
- CWChris Williamson
Yes, because we already had the capacity for sympathy to people.
- VKVictor Kumar
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
Uh, but because we were in a Dunbar number group of whatever, 100, that was usually what we were used to. Then we said earlier on, you get into a big city where you don't rely on other people, especially in a modern agricultural, uh, world where if you have sufficient resources, you don't actually care how everybody else is getting on and, you know, even your farmer dies there's another farmer probably not too far away that you can go to. So, religion in your view opens up the scope of this to re-uh, engage with a broader group of people.
- VKVictor Kumar
Yes. Yeah, and I think it's been... I think religious institutions predate ag- agriculture and had been around for a really long time and are responsible for the way in which humans possibly starting 50 to 100,000 years ago started to live in tribes. That is not just the band but a group of bands that are linked together via ethnicity and dialect and religion. So this again relates to an idea in Henrich which is... And something that we maybe didn't talk enough about which is the really way, the important way in which morality has co-evolved with our knowledge and technology. So-... roughly 100,000 years ago, you see this explosion in the fossil record of tools and technology, things like, um, spears and spear-throwers and bow and arrows, but also things like sewing needles and various kinds of craftwork. Um, and what seems to have arisen, uh, during this period of time is that humans are beginning to live in religious- religiously unified tribes, groups of groups. And the key thing here, this is something that Henrik talks about, is that what that ... what living in a tribe does is that it expands our collective brain. It creates a larger number of people who are communicating with each other, generating ideas, filtering each other's ideas, and, um, becoming more intelligent because of our intellectual cooperation. So, um, there's a ... you know, religion, along with other social institutions, has been really important in human history because it's allowed us to cooperate on a larger scale, which allows us to do things like farming and agriculture, but it also s- allows us to be smarter and generate more ideas and more technology. And so morality, institutional morality, that's expanded our circles, has been really important for the evolution of our brains, our minds, and our intelligence.
- CWChris Williamson
I'm just thinking about the fact that, um, religion as a cultural response to the difficulty of coordinating large groups of people, and that 150 or 200,000 years ago, if you're in a familial tribe of maybe 25 to 50 people, you probably don't need religion. Like, what, what ... you know-
- VKVictor Kumar
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... you might have ideas and stories that you tell about the sun rising and so on and so forth, but the more, um, I dunno, like, prosocial human element of religion-
- VKVictor Kumar
Mm-
- CWChris Williamson
... I would imagine doesn't really need to exist. You, you, you ... there would be no-
- VKVictor Kumar
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... adaptive reason to have that and you already feel such a strong sense of kinship, especially if it is, like, just a pan-generational group, you know, you and 25 of your family.
- VKVictor Kumar
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
You, you don't need to layer any more on top of that. That's not to say that someone wouldn't have said, you know, "We are the chosen ones and we have been placed here," and blah, blah, blah-
- VKVictor Kumar
Right. Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... some proselytizing caveman, but do you know what I mean? That i- i- it seems like-
- VKVictor Kumar
Yes. Yes.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- VKVictor Kumar
And there's, there's a clue in the archeological record that I s- ... I think supports what you're suggesting, which is that, you know, up until about 50 or 100,000 years ago, humans are confined to small portions of the African continent and it's, it's perhaps only until we can cooperate in a larger tribe that we have the, the manpower to extend out of Africa, to not just make some incursions into Eurasia, but to overpower the other human species that live there at the time and ultimately to rely on each other in our tribe to colonize the entire world.
- CWChris Williamson
This would suggest then that the bigger that a human society gets, the more religion would be useful.
- VKVictor Kumar
Yeah, I mean, I think that m- ... that ... I think that generation- generalization is likely to have been true until some point in human history. I mean, I think we can think of counterexamples, like China is a huge country and has not been as religious as other countries in, in recent, uh, s- ... in the recent century or so. Um, so I think that there ... I think that ... I mean, here's the thing to think, that religion was a very important institution in organizing society, determining, um, the size of an effective cooperative population. But in more recent times, there are other kinds of institutions that have been able to do the job just as well or better. And so, you know, you think of, um, very authoritarian kinds of political institutions that can control people's behavior in a way that's just as or more effective than, um, religious ideologies and practices. Other institutions have been, um, rising in relative prominence compared to religion, I think over the last few centuries.
- CWChris Williamson
What have you come to believe about the place that religion has then? You know, uh, uh, the collapse of grand narratives and the listlessness and the existential dread of the modern world despite the fact that we're more convenient than ever, people are s- feeling lost and alone and so on and so forth. Um, it seems like religion independently arose all over the world, that would suggest that it is an incredibly useful adaptive response to the issue of being human. Now, presumably, it's humans made across humans, but also will give you some individual existential comfort about the malaise of just being a, a, you know, a fallen creature. What, what have you ... what have you come to believe about the, the role and the reason that religion, uh, is here in sort of its, its current position i- i- and lack thereof in the modern world and what that means kind of for individual, um, happiness and, and group cohesion?
- VKVictor Kumar
Yeah, I mean, I think you're right, that historically religion has given people a sense of belonging, a sense of purpose, that it's answered these deep philosophical, existential questions. And it's really interesting to know why it has been fulfilling that purpose less and less effectively for more and more people over the last few centuries. I mean, you know, philosophers like me, me might think, "Well, the arguments (laughs) against religion are so strong." Things like, you know, religious, religious theory was supposed to explain why we have-... plants and animals and human beings on the first place, and now we have a much better explanation in terms of Darwinian evolution. Um, so maybe it's the arguments, maybe it's things like the problem of evil, but maybe it's something, uh, more practical too. I mean, I think that people have noticed the ways in which some major religious dominat- denominations have not really been out for their own interests, have been, um, exploiting and abusing members of that religion. And so it's not really the, the, the abstract philosophical arguments, but the like, "You're, you're not taking care of me and therefore I don't trust the account you give of who I am and why I matter." Um, but I think there's this real emptiness now. I don't know that we've found anything that can effectively take the place of, of religion.
- CWChris Williamson
Isn't it interesting that religion and the, the church, churches served a, a, um, like a practical purpose, right? Like they created a foundation for, um, communal belonging, a sense, a ritual, um, connection to yourself and, and not only people around you, but the world around you, so on and so forth. So like it did things, right?
- VKVictor Kumar
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
It needed to create a, a story around that, and what we lost really was faith in the story, not faith in the things. It was this, the story of, of the, the rebirth or of the ascent to heaven on a winged horse-
- VKVictor Kumar
Mm-hmm.
- 1:06:23 – 1:14:33
Is Morality Objective?
- CWChris Williamson
to have an objective moral code? What you've suggested here is that morality kind of is this emergent adaptive solution that humans have to the problem of cooperation at scale, and you have-
- VKVictor Kumar
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... culture that comes along for the ride, and you have norms and you have emotions. Uh, it like... Is there a first principles, this is moral, this is not moral solution?
- VKVictor Kumar
Yeah. So we've been talking, I think largely about the science of morality, and now we're getting to more clearly into moral philosophy. Um, so I think that's the fir- first natural place to go when you're thinking, is there an objective morality. Can you give me an objective moral code that gives me the fundamental principles that justifies everything else? And the thing is, philosophers have been working on that for thousands of years and they've got approximately nowhere. We have gotten very little agreement about what the fundamental moral principles are. But I do think that there has been...... serious agreement about some moral issues. Not fundamental principles, but certain kinds of social changes in our society that everyone or everyone that we want to have as part of the conversation thinks of as progressive, things like the elimination of chattel slavery, greater equality between men and women, um, reduced prejudice towards ethnic minorities, towards, um, gay and lesbian people. There are progressive changes that I think we should be far more con- we should be far more confident that these changes are progressive than we are in any abstract theory that explains why these things are right or wrong. And so, I think the best hope for finding some kind of objective morality, objective in the sense that we think that it's not- it's not- we not- we don't just agree, but we think other people were wrong and that we are getting- we are coming to this view from more information about ourselves and what the world is like. I think the- the- their best hopes for an objective moral philosophy is to think about how and why these progressive changes happened, the kinds that I mentioned, and to think about the psychological and cultural mechanisms behind them, and whether those mechanisms can be exploited in the future to bring about future progressive changes. Things like, um, addressing massive social inequality, thinking about anti-trans prejudice, um, thinking about global injustice, the way in which people from developing countries are gonna suffer from climate change and other kinds of disasters. I think that we're not gonna figure out whether utilitarianism is true or not, but we might be able to figure out how we've made progress in ways that we all agree are progress and how to, um, build on those and to find agreement about other pressing problems that we haven't solved yet.
- CWChris Williamson
What could you imagine as overshooting when it comes to that particular-
- VKVictor Kumar
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... type of dynamic?
- VKVictor Kumar
That's interesting, overshooting. So, you know, addressing some of these outstanding problems, but going too far in one direction. Is that what you have in mind?
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- VKVictor Kumar
Yeah. That's- that's interesting. I mean, (clears throat) I think that there... You know, one of the- one of the things we see in human history is expansion of the moral circle, coming to care about more than just your tribe, n- and not just your religiously unified b- uh, uber-tribe. Um, I think that it is possible to go too far into this cosmopolitan direction and to think that other people, that strangers matter just as much as your loved ones and your friends do. I think that this is probably a tendency on the left, to minimize the importance of intimate connections between friends and family and to overestimate the degree to which you have an obligation to strangers that aren't part of your family or your- your tribe.
- CWChris Williamson
That's interesting. Yes, and I d- I do understand the- (sniffs) the dynamic that you're talking about, where, uh, the sort of de-pedestalization of motherhood, the de-pedestalization of the family almost being seen as some sort of, um, privileged or- or oppressive institution. You know, we've seen this in, like, those once-every-couple-of-months-insane news article titles that come up about, like, the family is a- a- a patriarchal institution. I saw one a little while ago, "The myth of motherhood is, uh, is a myth that men created in order to keep women down," and stuff like that. And you think, "Well, I- it would have been very, very difficult for motherhood and- and for humans to have survived without motherhood having been there." And it is a... The- the subtext behind that is motherhood is a myth. You should care about everybody the same amount that you should, that you would care about your children.
- VKVictor Kumar
Yeah. I mean, I think that there are aspects of family institutions that are worth preserving, the bonds that people have towards family members, the important relationships between children and caregivers that can't be replicated, can't be outsourced to our institutions. So, I think those parts of family institutions are worth preserving, because I also think that there are aspects of our historically evolved family institutions that are oppressive towards women, that force them to occupy subordinate social roles within the family and to assign low status to motherhood. Um, and-
- CWChris Williamson
Just to interject there-
- VKVictor Kumar
... t- yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
One of the fascinating things that I've noticed is, um, I- I- I don't disagree that, you know, for a- a good chunk of time, there wasn't parity in education, employment, freedom, autonomy, voting rights, uh, you know, bank accounts, ability to drive. I remember reading this article about, (clears throat) uh, the, uh, concerns in the early 1900s that the bicycle would emancipate women to be able to go out on their own without the supervision of their husbands, because typically, women would only be able to go out, like, linking up, presumably linking arms with their- with their partner or whatever. Um, so I do get that. However, um, what you have seen, and that was what that article showed, is that if you push the progressivism too far, you end up, um, how would you say? Like, demonizing some of the inherent beauty and wisdom that the feminine brings into the world, right? In order for you to say that motherhood, the maternal instinct is a myth that men created, it inevitably puts women who are mothers back into that second-class citizen role that they only just got emancipated from. You know what I mean?
- VKVictor Kumar
Right. Yeah, a- absolutely. I mean, I think the kind of feminism worth having is one that expands op- options and possibilities for women and that doesn't, um, say that on- only the new possibilities are worth having and, um, traditional roles as mothers and caretakers aren't. I mean, I think that what's really the key- the key part of the feminist movement that- that I think many people should agree is worth, um, preserving and continuing is, um, expanding liberty, expanding freedom of people, uh, of- of all genders to, um, to occupy social roles and economic roles that they are interested in doing. You know, I think that, uh, new options doesn't mean we should devalue the old ones.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, I would agree. Look, Vic, I really appreciate your time today. Uh, where should people
- 1:14:33 – 1:15:13
Where to Find Dr Kumar?
- CWChris Williamson
go if they want to keep up to date with the work that you do?
- VKVictor Kumar
Uh, well, they can read my new book called A Better Ape with Richmond Campbell. They can also, uh, check out my website for links to new articles that I've written. I have an essay in The Boston Globe, for instance, which you might like to read.
- CWChris Williamson
Very cool. Thanks, Victor.
- VKVictor Kumar
Yeah. All right. Thank you so much. It was great to talk to you, Chris.
- CWChris Williamson
(instrumental music plays) What's happening, people? Thank you very much for tuning in. If you enjoyed that episode, then press here for a selection of the best clips from the podcast over the last few weeks. And don't forget to subscribe. Peace.
Episode duration: 1:15:13
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