Latest / Art of the Question / Do Animals Know Right from Wrong? - Dr. Jessica Pierce - #47

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Do Animals Know Right from Wrong? - Dr. Jessica Pierce - #47 · Art of the Question

• Julius Moorman: Jessica, thank you so much for coming on the show. I am incredibly interested in your work and and what you do. It's a topic I don't see as much as I think we should. So ⁓ yeah, hopefully we can have an interesting ⁓ discussion about the morality of of animals today and I thought first of all I was curious to hear when did you first become interested in studying the morality of animals and what inspired you to do it? would say it it took root probably around gosh, it's probably been twenty years because Wild Justice came out in two thousand nine. So it was, you know, good four four or five years before that. I had been in my reading in in my home field, which is ethics or moral philosophy, I had been doing a lot of reading in ⁓ philosophy of science. which was taking me into this growing literature on ⁓ the evolution of moral behavior in humans and also it seemed ⁓ that this was a a ⁓ set of behaviors or traits ⁓ we can talk about the language ⁓ later but ⁓ that that were not actually unique to humans but had evolved ⁓ broadly within species of animals where social living, ⁓ group living was ⁓ important. So I thought that that's really interesting. And I've always been interested in animals. So this was a way for me to sort of combine my ethics and animal interests together in a way that I hadn't ⁓ hadn't known to do before that. And it Just coincidentally, as I was kind of working into this literature and thinking about writing a book about the evolution of morality, kind of from a philosopher's point of view, I was invited to a dinner party by a friend who was also ⁓ friends with Mark Beckhoff, who's an ethologist, and we got to talking and it turned out he was trying to write the same book. But he was coming from the science, like the ethology, animal behavior. He was feeling like he really was missing the philosophical piece, like didn't have the background to dig into that. And I was feeling on, you know, for my part that I was missing that animal behavior science piece. And so we're like, we should do this together. So that was wild justice. That's beautiful. That's a beautiful coincidence. And It is an incredibly interesting topic. How far does the idea of ⁓ the moral animal go back? Because I believe Darwin has ⁓ had a view on this as well, right? Very much so. ⁓ it was this is classic Darwin. And I mean what's interesting is that it I wouldn't say it was suppressed, but it Kind of stayed quiet, I would say, ⁓ until maybe twenty, thirty years ago. for a whole variety of reasons. ⁓ but but it it is very Darwinian. I suspect it goes back I mean, if you look at even older texts, there are often references ⁓ to animals and sometimes and I'm thinking in my mind of Aesop's fables, these moral tales. You think, well, they're just using animals are being used as a a way to to teach a lesson, but it perhaps there's more ⁓ more in there. ⁓ and people have lived so closely with animals for forever, ⁓ it makes sense that we would know them pretty well. And I think we have maybe forgotten some things we used to know. Right. Yeah, it's interesting that I mean, Darwin was already pointing this out, and then it seems to kind of die down a little bit the idea. Before we get into the specifics of animal morality, h how do you define morality in general? So that was I would say the the most difficult task in writing wild justice was Defining morality. Believe it or not, you think, well, this is, isn't it obvious? ⁓ and it's not at all obvious. And the definition that we settled on, and it's contentious, ⁓ and we can talk about why, but the definition that we settled on is that morality is a suite of other regarding behaviors ⁓ that cultivate and regulate social life. So You'll notice that's a definition that really focuses on the function of the behavior. ⁓ what is it doing? It's functioning to regulate social life. ⁓ you could have a thicker definition that would say, well, it has to include some self-reflective component. ⁓ you know, well, we stopped and thought about it and talked about it and like, well, what's the right thing to do? ⁓ which is what we often think. of as being ethics or morality. but we we wanted a a definition that allowed us to ask the question about other animals and explore it in an open minded way. and so that's the definition that we settled on. Very interesting because ⁓ the I yeah, well ⁓ a mo one of the definitions of morality ⁓ something that comes to mind is indeed a a ⁓ sense of knowing what is right or or wrong, which is a more subjective definition rather than a yeah, like you say, a practical practical one. ⁓ but the the definition you use does seem to make it ⁓ more conclusive. You you'll you'll find more conclusive answers, more definitive answers when you look into it rather than the the right or wrong part, since it's so difficult to communicate with animals that we can never really be sure. So therefore the book would have been quite short if if if the other definition would be what you landed on. Right. And I and I think so that that's exactly right. And I also think, well, two things. One is, you know, when you say ethics is about right and wrong behavior, that's absolutely correct. However, what counts as right or wrong behavior is basically social norms, which animals have, you know, as much as we do. they're different. You know, wolf social norms are different from human social norms. So what's right or wrong for a wolf in wolf society is going to be different. And that's one thing that we are really careful to ⁓ to to state clearly in our book is that this is a species specific or species relative account of morality. ⁓ the other thing is that, you know, if you're if you're gonna take this thick accounting of what morality is, then a great deal of human behavior That we think of as moral actually wouldn't fall under that thicker definition. because and this is one of the things that got me interested in the book in the first place, you know, reading in the the literature and psychology, ⁓ and like human behavior literature, you know, there's it was becoming more and more clear that human social behavior and particularly human moral behavior is often unconscious, it's just subconscious almost. thinking, for example, of the work of Jonathan Hayt, who's a a very well known ⁓ sort of philosopher sa slash psychologist. I mean he's psychologist by training, but his work has been extremely influential in my field. ⁓ and he his research suggests that most of human moral behavior For example, responding to somebody in distress or responding to a situation that feels unfair is actually unconscious when it first happens and then we come in with this reflective judgment or sort of self conversation about it after the fact. So but that the process in the brain first is to act and then to think about it. Interesting. So on that view, you'd say, well, animals might not get to that self-reflective, ⁓ was that the right thing to do? Or, you know, why did I do that phase? That is, I think, probably unique to us. ⁓ but that doesn't, you know, then there's this whole other realm of really I'd say the more important realm of of behavior that just flows naturally from us. You know, for example, there's really interesting research about truth telling and lying, that it actually is cognitively more challenging, more demanding to tell a lie. Like you have to like kind of go through this process with yourself because what comes out intuitively for most people is the truth. ⁓ and of course they're pathological liars, but there's a reason it's called pathology. 'Cause it's not normal. So ⁓ so yeah. Yeah, that's super interesting. And one video that really comes to mind when you say that humans but also animals might act based on their instincts and that humans might have a reflective part after the fact ⁓ which we would then or we could call like moral reflection, but that the act itself might be intuition, if you will. A video that comes to mind is I don't know if you've seen it, but it's such a wonderful video. It's ⁓ a toddler and he's playing outside on the driveway and then he gets attacked by a dog. And then the the cat of the of the house just immediately comes to rescue, jumps at the dog stands big, ⁓ makes noises and scares the dog off very effectively immediately, and then the cat continues to surround the child and waits until the parents are there so the child is in good hands. And there was this news item and it's a very funny video after ⁓ this happened because the the cat is looking very smug ⁓ sitting on the couch and of course of course ⁓ the last part, ⁓ I'm not I'm not sure whether the cat was aware of of that he was being interviewed after his heroic I'm sure he was. He certainly looked ⁓ like he did, but it is an example of an animal that is helping someone that isn't one of their own, ⁓ in this case a human being, a toddler, ⁓ protecting it from yet another species of ⁓ an animal, a dog in this instance. why would he do that? Like w what's the what's the benefit? Like why it's it's probably presumably not even the toddler that's feeding him, right? So so there's not even the argument that's like, yeah, the cat just wants to preserve his food supply and ⁓ the toddler was I don't think a three year old is feeding the cat every single day. So All of the Although maybe when my my three year old kept our dog really fat, like all the food went straight onto the floor. Well then I sta I stand corrected, but I think the the the my main argument is that it is a very interesting example of what you could argue is a form of animal ⁓ morality. ⁓ what do you make of that example and what are some more examples? ⁓ where animals do show ⁓ a sense of ⁓ morality. So I mean that's a really it's a it's a super interesting example. I haven't seen the video, but I will definitely go and look it up after we're done. ⁓ I mean a lot of things are interesting about it. For one thing that it's you know, I said a few minutes ago that we're really interested in species specific, like you know, cat on cat morality or, you know, within dog societies or so on. You know, and this is clearly a a cross species helping behavior. ⁓ it seems to be anyway. And I think what what maybe what's most helpful about the example is that it as you were already articulating as you talked about it, you know, what's going on at what level should we be sort of picking apart this This example and and asking about it, wondering about it. And, you know, so there's the the actual behavior that we saw that looked like helping. And we could have a long conversation about, you know, why that looked like helping, what helping behavior is, and what might have motivated the cat in this case. ⁓ we'll never know because as you said at the beginning, you know, minds are private. That's the the ⁓ perennial problem in this kind of work. And it's not unique to animal minds. Human minds are private too. Can never ⁓ know for sure what's motivating a person. You can ask them, but ⁓ even that so what would so in in terms of that specific example, I would say Probably helping behavior. I don't know. Would I put it in the category moral? I don't know. I I can't I guess I would say I need more information. ⁓ and that's what some of the the research studies into moral behaviors and animals are trying to do, exactly that, trying to to untangle and piece out ⁓ that more information that we might need to answer what was what was happening. ⁓ Some examples of moral behavior in animals. So I mean, taking the the general structure of wild justice as as the cue here, we broke things down into three, we call them clusters of behaviors or like families of behavior. ⁓ one was empathy. ⁓ so behaviors related to ⁓ feeling distress for another person. another who is in distress or needs help, ⁓ and then responding to that. And, you know, that empathy can there are what you might call primitive forms of empathy like emotional contagion. You know, you're scared, so I feel scared even though I don't know why I'm scared or why you're scared. and, you know, then there are more like targeted helping where You know, I I recognize your distress and I choose to, you know, act in a way to to relieve your distress. and you know, from less to more cognitive involvement. And one of the the interesting studies in empathy, and actually a lot of the empathy research has been in rodents, ⁓ rats and mice. ⁓ there was a an interesting study in in rats that involved ⁓ it's a little icky to talk about. So that's my professional assessment, icky. a lot of these studies do involve some ⁓ invasiveness. But this study was it was kind of an early study, it was 1959 ⁓ by church and it was a study of rats. one rat was A rat was trained to press a lever and then ⁓ in an adjoining cage, a rat was on an electrified floor and the rat in the the free rat could choose to ⁓ press a lever to get a food reward, but it would also electrify the floor. And they chose not to do that. So they were aware of the distress. ⁓ there was another study in mice that was interesting that involved injecting one mouse with acetic acid, which is really kind of painful ⁓ under the skin, with another mouse watching and ⁓ measuring the level of stress, distress in the mouse that was observing the mouse in pain. ⁓ and that there was some emotional contagion going on there, some being being pained by watching a neighboring ⁓ one of your kind be in pain. ⁓ so we had the empathy cluster and then the the cooperation cluster, which would involve behaviors like reciprocity. You help me, I help you, ⁓ let's see trust, ⁓ cooperating in tasks, consolation behaviors after a fight, you know, ⁓ And and then the the third and final cluster, which I think is probably the most contentious, is the what we call fairness or justice ⁓ cluster, which I mean and the the target behavior there at the time ⁓ was what's called inequity aversion. And the the famous research on this was actually done by Franz de Wal, who's Dutch. and yeah. The the behavioral setup that he masterminded was this ⁓ kind of exchange. It was an ex exchange setup with ⁓ capuchin monkeys and they had rocks as tokens and they were trading these tokens with the researcher for various rewards and watching each other. They were right, you know, one next to each other and One would give a rock and get a grape, which is a delicacy. ⁓ and then ⁓ you know, the next one would give a rock and get a cucumber, which is not so great. and the the monkeys would get very upset, like throw cucumbers and, you know, refuse to participate. And there've been you know, they've repeated this kind of setup in all sorts of different species and it's I would say gotten a little bit more the research has gotten messier rather than clearer. ⁓ there was a meta meta analysis in twenty-four that that looked at all of the well not all, but many of the studies that had been done and it it just didn't the results didn't pan out as strongly as one might have hoped. But I don't think that means that animals don't have a sense of fairness. It just means that the tests that we've been using to explore that might not be What we need. Right. There's so much to unpack there. I have a lot of follow-up questions and a lot a lot of things to say. Let me start with ⁓ the mice ⁓ study or the rat study, ⁓ whichever one was with the treat and the ⁓ electrical floor. It seems so interesting to me that most of the evolutionary battles that are co ⁓ go are going on, evolutionary ⁓ traits that we have are very often within an individual of a species. Meaning a lot of the times we have certain traits to help that specific individual thrive within the species, right? So Males are more aggressive, so they are better able to fight off other males in order to increase the likelihood of procreating, right? Is just one example. so empathy is in principle, from an evolutionary point of view, not a good trait to have. Because in that red example, if that specific rat wanted to have food, feed himself, he could choose to feed himself over the other rat from the species. But in this example, it seems to be better from an evolutionary point of view to develop a sense of empathy. why is that the case? Is some some of these evolutionary traits not just for the individual or to to help the entire species forward or is it more complicated that it could be if I help my friend today, he might help me tomorrow? Yeah, it's you're getting at several of the the really interesting and ⁓ complicated threads. So one is what you're what you're pointing at is what biologists call kin selection. So We humans, I mean, this is true almost across the board. I'm sure there are exceptions, but that organisms are more likely to help ⁓ those who are related to them. And the evolutionary explanation is simple because to to replicate your genes, you want to help people who have those genes or or organisms who have those genes. ⁓ so it makes sense it because helping often comes at a cost to the individual. So it makes sense to pay that cost where it's gonna pay off for you genetically. However, there also are plenty of examples and the rat one it might be complicated, but is it seems to be a case where it isn't just ⁓ a kin that is being helped, ⁓ is just a a member of the the same species. And why helping behavior would be ⁓ adaptive is That's one of the the big questions that biologists have been struggling with because I think for for a long time it was thought, well, the the most i efficient way to succeed, and I think a lot of humans still think this is the truth, is to be selfish and think only about yourself. and you know, that turns out not to be the case for ⁓ for us. or other creatures. And ⁓ you know, sometimes the payout doesn't come to the individual themselves who are helping, but to their kin or to the species. ⁓ the rat example is interesting because so there was there were some follow-up studies and one of the ⁓ more recent of the follow-up studies actually found a difference in helping ⁓ behaviors between the genders. The female rats were more likely to help. It was a slightly different experimental setup, but same, you know, basic idea, ⁓ helping at some cost. And and also that they used two different strains of rat. They used a spray dolly and then I don't remember what the other one was, but the rats were more likely to help others of the same strain. and so I think it's very nuanced. And again, a a lot of threads that you'd want to try to tease apart. Yeah. No, I agree, but it's in any case incredibly ⁓ interesting. You also mentioned the the cappuccin monkeys there, which I have done two YouTube videos about ⁓ the monkeys, one in which I wasn't an active participant, but I just thought it was such an interesting story that it deserve to be told to to a broader audience. But it was the the study where they ⁓ were taught ⁓ the value of specific tokens and they in a laboratory setting were able to establish a baseline of their preference. Like you say, they prefer grapes over cucumbers, ⁓ over nuts, over whatever, but there were different foods. And each of those different foods they they cost a different token. And ⁓ one day the monkeys broke free in this experiment. One of them ⁓ stole an entire tray of tokens and chaos ensued, and they ⁓ he he flung the tokens into the main chamber where all the the monkeys were were were located. And one of the first things they did is that they actually ⁓ Well, they they they basically immediately invented ⁓ prostitution. Let me put it that way. They started to exchange the tokens for for sexual acts, which I think is is incredibly ⁓ fascinating for for It is very interesting. Yeah, it's many it's it's it wasn't officially part of the study, but it was an anecdote after the study. but it's it's it's extensively featured online. It's an incredibly interesting story. What has been ⁓ established ⁓ more firmly is that capuchin monkeys are very good and it's basically an extension of perceiving the value of these tokens. In ⁓ Uluwatu, it's in the southern part of Bali, Indonesia, there's a temple. And the capuchin ⁓ monkeys at this temple, they learned how to steal items from tourists in exchange for food. ⁓ but they are so clever that they understand the difference that we value certain items. So this tribe of yeah, so this tribe of monkeys, they know that for example, a sandal, a slipper, that we are like, okay, we we'd like it back, but if we don't get it back, ⁓ it's okay. But if expensive sunglasses, for example, we usually tend to put more effort into getting it back and they know it. So you could trade one banana for the sandal maybe, but you need three bananas if you want your sunglasses back. And this has been studied extensively by scientists and it was ⁓ proven that they at least have some basic understanding of of what we value, these items. So that was incredibly interesting to me. And I actually went to this temple to experience this Bartering behavior myself, which I mean it's it's kind of it's adjacent to fairness, right? Understanding economics. Because I would agree. Yeah. A fair price, paying a fair amount ⁓ for something. I would argue that that has it's a bit of a stretch, but it's very adjacent, like based on my gut feeling. to yeah to to to morality, if you will. W would you would you agree? I would. I think that's a a really interesting ⁓ case example and ⁓ Definitely fairness adjacent, if not actually I mean, it seems like the same kinds of cognitive mechanisms that would allow the monkeys to figure this out, you know, are are the same ones that are driving maybe these ⁓ token exchange sort of inequity aversion ⁓ responses. So for sure. And I and I that raises a really ⁓ useful point I think for people thinking about these things, which is that, ⁓ The lines between these whether you're gonna label a behavior like a fairness behavior as moral or non moral is really blurry. Like is this is this Capuchin behavior here gonna fall under that non moral category or moral? You know, is it other regarding and I don't have a good answer for that. I think it would you know, I'd wanna read a lot more about it and hear what the scientists have speculated about and so on. But I think that kind of anecdote and ⁓ is really useful for driving scientific questions. ⁓ you know, one of the criticisms that that Mark and I got in response to Wild Justice was so so much anecdote, you know, and how can you draw conclusions from anecdotes? And you can't. But anecdotes can Suggest lines of investigation that you wouldn't otherwise see. They they open the mind to possibilities. Yeah. No, I agree. And it's but it's to me that line of argumentation, I I immediately get it, but it's basically this saying that we will never know for sure what they are feeling. Because we cannot communicate with animals. And even if we could communicate with animals like we could with humans, then still you can never be 100% sure because it's basically the philosophical zombie, right? And and the hard problem of consciousness. We can only ever be sure of our own consciousness because we are the one experiencing it. And everyone around us is likely to be conscious. But we can never be sure because they might just be an entity that behaves like a conscious being would. So I think that is I understand the argument, but I also think it would make for a very short discussion. Well, what do you make of that? ⁓ I I agree. And I I think to me the The problem of subjectivity of other minds is What I think that tells me is that we need to have some humility and some level of I'm not I'm not a hundred percent sure, but I'm gonna look as closely as I can. You could say, I'm not sure, ⁓ therefore I'm not gonna look, which I think is what happened for a long time with animal emotion in general and animal morality ⁓ in particular. Like, well, that's ridiculous and you know, there's no way, so I'm not even gonna look down that down that path and The fact that we can't know, and I'll I'll draw on the the example of dogs here because that's ⁓ an animal who many of us know well, love, live with, etc. ⁓ we can't know exactly what our dog is thinking, but we can and should observe really carefully ⁓ their behavior. And what they're commun they're they're certainly communicating with us. And dogs in particular. I mean, dogs have evolved this very sophisticated set of communicative behaviors, specifically to communicate with humans. So, you know, to say that we can't know what they're thinking, I would say is a cop-out. We can't know for sure, but we can go a long way and Especially if we're living with them and caring for them, I think we have a responsibility to observe as carefully as we can and interpret as carefully as we can. And there's always a layer of interpretation, but that's, you know, if you're interpreting a text, you know, there there would be an interpretation that is based on, like, I don't know anything about this, you know, philosopher that I'm interpreting. I'm reading it for the first time and I'm gonna tell you what it means. Or You know, I could spend forty years studying the work of this person and the school of thought, you know, out of which their work emerged and know their language and et cetera, et cetera, and I would give you a better interpretation of the work, I would argue. No, I I agree. And we when we're t talking about dogs, I w there's one thing I wanted to to bring up, which is again, videos I've seen But it seems that dogs can feel guilt. And what I mean by that is I've seen videos of where a a dog owner comes home only to discover that their couch has been ruined, for example, or or that something was like a pillow was completely destroyed. And the way those dogs react to their owner coming home, like they feel bad. busted and they just feel so they seem to be ashamed of what they've done and they seem to want to hide from their actions. And it's such a emotional reaction. Like an animal that would not care or would have zero sense of what they have done, they wouldn't act in that way. At least I don't think so. I might just be projecting my own humanness onto the dog here, but it definitely seems like there's something to it. Have you have you seen those videos, for example, or maybe experience one of those situations? And and do you think like dogs can can feel some some sort of guilt in in these scenarios? I'm really glad you bring up this example, ⁓ because it's a good illustration of where anthropomorphism can go wrong. And I'm using that term here to mean like the ascribing of human emotions or feelings onto an animal. Yes. ⁓ and some people say, well, any talk about animal morality is anthropomorphism. And I d I don't think that that's correct, but there are ways in which anthropomorphism can go wrong and guilt in dogs is one of them. ⁓ so there's been some really interesting research by Alexander Horowitz, who's a she does like canine psychology and specifically on this question of guilt. And what she found is that ⁓ dogs will do the guilty look and the guilty behavior whether or not they've done anything. ⁓ so it isn't it isn't that they've done something wrong and they're aware of that. What they know is that their owner is displeased. in some way. And so what the dog is responding with is appeasement behavior. ⁓ and circling back to animal morality, ⁓ dogs are doing what's called social referencing. So they aren't sure how to feel about the situation themselves. It's ambiguous because they didn't do anything. Or I, you know, I don't not exactly sure what they're thinking, but it's it's ambiguous. ⁓ so they look to the human and respond to what the human the signals that the human is sending, and those are you are bad. You did something bad. ⁓ so they go into this, you know, the crouched posture and the, you know, ⁓ the guilty look. And you know, it's I one of my more recent books is called Who's a Good Dog and it's What I really was trying to do in that book was kind of in a sense the opposite of wild justice to say we we are so quick to ⁓ ascribe moral intentions or motivations to dogs where they don't belong, which is why we're always calling our dogs bad dogs. ⁓ when in fact all they're doing is being dogs, engaging in normal dog behavior. you know, but we we moralize things like stealing food off the counter. That's actually just you could if you were gonna be an ethologist, you'd say, Well, that dog is foraging. ⁓ but we call it stealing as if the food only belonged to us and, you know, the dogs are are committing some infraction ⁓ against the the social norms or the moral norms of the household. And I think that's really bad for dogs and it's bad for people who live with dogs because it doesn't I don't think that it cultivates a spirit of compassion and collaboration. Yeah, and it is is what is part of the danger of anthropomorphizing animals and and projecting this morality in the sense of of right and wrong onto animals also that morality comes with responsibility? ⁓ and what I mean by that is if a toddler knocks over a vase, for example, we might be a little angry. ⁓ if a twelve year old knocks over that face, we might be a bit more angry. If I were to knock over a face, my parents would get very angry. Wha wh why the hell did you do it? You should know that you shouldn't have done that. Yes. we cannot Prosecute animals, at least not in the West. Maybe there is some country in in the world where we we can prosecute animals, but our legal system is built in a way that the owner of an animal is responsible if ⁓ they hurt someone, if they damage property or whatever. so in our legal system we have very clear distinction ⁓ between yeah, responsibility ⁓ ⁓ but if we start to anthropomorphise animals, for example, when they when they break something, we might want to punish them when they never really had any harmful intentions. Is is that part of ⁓ the issue there? Ab absolutely and I think I don't I I don't think there's ever an appropriate time or place to punish an animal because they aren't doing things. They're not doing wrong. If they do something that we don't like, it's because either because that's just a normal behavior for them and we shouldn't sort of shouldn't expect them not to do it. Or we haven't communicated clearly what it is that we would like them to do or not do. And so it I think in the United States especially, the the general attitude toward dogs in particular is very punitive. You know, if a dog does something wrong, you smack them over the head with a newspaper or ⁓ you get a shock collar and put it on and punish them. Because they should know better. And I think that's ⁓ mixed up. You know, it's not it's not an an effective or ethical way to partner with another animal. And I think I mean, i it that's a whole nother topic for a different podcast, but you know, in in past times, ⁓ animals actually did get punished for things like ⁓ communities would kill a whole colony of rats if they happen to, you know, get into the grain stores. or, you know, elephants would be ⁓ killed for trampling crops or whatnot. And even today I think we do punish animals for ⁓ wronging us in this might be a stretch, but you know, I it where I live, we have we have human wild wildlife conflicts. ⁓ for example, you know, last fall a woman running in the mountains got attacked by mountain lions. Right. And the response there is to kill the mountain lions, which I understand, sort of. For protection of other hikers. ⁓ there is also seems to be a retributive element to that too. ⁓ and I'm not sure that that's an appropriate response either. Yeah. No, it's it's interesting that we want to Yeah, that our sense of of of justice and wanting to get even, if you will. ⁓ I mean l legally we've we've managed to to get it out of our our our legal system, but ⁓ yeah, I think you're very right to say that in practice many people do still ⁓ punish their their pets when ⁓ when they do something ⁓ wrong or or or trying to teach them. What is interesting is ⁓ so on the one hand we say that animals are moral, but on the other hand we say that also we cannot punish punish animals because they don't have a sense of right or wrong. And this is more within the definition we made a a distinction in the beginning of our conversation. if you if your definition of morality is ⁓ knowing when knowing the distinction between right or wrong, then there's some pressure there if it if you view it as the ⁓ more practical ⁓ view, then not so much. ⁓ but long story short, why is it so important to understand ⁓ morality within animals? think if we want to understand who animals are. We need to understand their social lives and I think it's important as a scientific question and interesting. And also I think for it has welfare implications for animals that we keep in our homes or keep in zoos or on farms. ⁓ and even in our interactions with wildlife, I think knowing what what it takes for an animal to have a life that is very much its own, ⁓ requires some understanding of their social interactions with with others of their kind. ⁓ And I think d you know, to take the the example of dogs again, ⁓ There was a very interesting paper recently on ⁓ They called it scaffolding in dogs, social scaffolding. And they the researchers basically compared ⁓ urban pet dogs with free ranging dogs. And ⁓ what they were trying to get at was whether and to what extent social group living was essential to dog welfare. and what they found is that living in a social group the way free roaming dogs would, you know, group of roughly, you know, three to eleven individuals, kin and also some non kin, relatively stable groupings where ⁓ behavioral expectations are are set, like you know. when you interact with another of the group, how it's gonna go. ⁓ you don't have you're not you know, when you meet somebody for the first time, you're kind of assessing them and you don't know whether to trust them and you're like nervous about it. Once you know somebody really well, then you have this rapport. ⁓ the same is true for for animals, for dogs. And if they so one of the things they get from having a a stable social group in a free free living ⁓ scenario is emotional regulation. They have time for their nervous system just to calm down because they're not every time they meet somebody having to be stressed out about the encounter until they figure out how it's gonna go. And dogs who live as pets often don't have that. They don't have any stable network They might have interactions with dogs at a dog park or on the street. But those are actually stressful because they don't know the dog that they're interacting with often. So there's that stress of, you know, how's this encounter gonna go? Is it gonna be agonistic? ⁓ and they don't have the the benefit of that emotional regulation. So they as a consequence kind of have this. Chronic low-level stress, dysregulation, ⁓ which is borne out in the veterinary literature. If you look at the the number of dogs who ⁓ have reported problems with anxiety, it's off the charts. I mean, one study ⁓ said roughly 75%. Another study that I saw recently said almost all dogs, like 99% of pet dogs, have chronic anxiety. And so I think what what's interesting about that to me is that dogs in order to flourish need that stable social grouping and those interactions because it's within those interactions that they build their capacities to be good dogs. That's where they learn the norms of dog behavior, dog society, ⁓ and appropriate behavior, you know, and and puppies who are being raised by their mothers and fathers and aunts and uncles and siblings are learning those moral rules. and when they're not when when they don't have access to that dog society, they they're missing out on the the development of those Participatory capabilities. Sorry to use a obnoxiously fancy word, but I I I yeah yeah I get it. No, go for go go ahead. Go ahead. So I was just gonna say I th I think that the behavior of moral animals is important to understand in order for us to treat them morally. If that makes sense. We'll go back to the conversation in just a second, but first I have an important announcement to make. 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What I'm what I'm also very curious about is ⁓ in the scientific papers we discussed regarding the evidence, if you will, or at least vivid examples of animals that show moral behavior that fall within one of the three clusters you mentioned. Mm-hmm. There's a great variety within those animals, right? We have mice, we have ⁓ rats, we have dogs, we we we well ⁓ Crows, ravens, fish. Yeah. Fish. Well, it's it's ⁓ it's a lot monkeys, so it's a it's a huge variety. Are there any species of animals that show this behavior in abundance and are there animals that might show it less than than others because I assume maybe there are some surprising results there because I assume if if people say, yeah, ⁓ my dog is is a moral creature, I think many people would would probably agree to it. But maybe if we say, hey, the the alligator is a moral creature or or the white shark, many people might might not agree with it based on their own value of morality. But I'm just curious to hear whether there is ⁓ some of them that really stand out. So Let's see. I mean, I think that the the question, the book is still very much being written. ⁓ and the more we look at a taxonomically broad range of animals, the more we're seeing ⁓ sentience. And I think that the evolving conversation about animal sentience is going to ⁓ filter down into research into behaviors, pro social behaviors, that are probably gonna surprise us. ⁓ has there been research on alligators? Not that I know of, but I wouldn't be surprised. And I guess what I would say as a general rule is the the more complex the social life of an animal, of a species, the more likely we are going to see evolved ⁓ moral capacities and more sophisticated, the more complex the sociality. ⁓ That's not to say though that there may not be I mean you think of a an animal like a wolverine that's quite solitary. ⁓ I wouldn't wanna rule that out either, but I think the their need for social norms and social regulation is probably less acute than it is for species like mere cats or ⁓ humans. Yeah, that makes sense. So it's not speci Specifically tied to intelligence, but rather the social environment of creatures. Yeah. Well, yeah. Yes and no. And that's I mean, I know we're close to the end. And that's I have time if you have time, so we can ⁓ we can continue. It's a it's a really complicated question, and I would say it's not settled scientifically, but it there does seem to be ⁓ a correlation between Social complexity and intelligence. It's like it's called the social intelligence hypothesis. And the idea is that, you know, the more socially complex an animal society is, the more need there is for ⁓ complex cognitive sort of social processing. ⁓ so there may be a link between intelligence and this suite of moral behaviors. However, ⁓ intelligence is I mean if you look up definition of intelligence, you'll get fifty hits, you know, fifty different options. So I mean I think that's that's contested too and also evolving and you know, what we used to think of as the brain, you know, as the center of intelligence, just to draw one example, you know, if you look at octopus ⁓ brains, their their cognition is distributed. They don't have a brain in their head, they have a brain in all of their tentacles. And it's like mind blowing, different kind of intelligence. and like there's been really interesting research, and I don't know the literature well, but just to to point it out ⁓ on bees, and there've been there's been research on play behavior in bees and ⁓ a lot of really complex social behavior. And cognitive behavior. So I think the more we learn, ⁓ the more we're gonna discover in terms of of these behaviors in a a broad range of of animals. So be prepared for alligator morality. That would be interesting. I would be very curious. Yeah. Well one thing I I wanted to to say, to mention, and also get your take on is that I find it somewhat arrogant that many people believe that we are entirely different from animals. I mean, obviously there are distinctions to be made, but I think we are animals and that we just happen to be a very intelligent subset of of animals with extremely complex ⁓ social Interactions, dynamics, power dynamics, very, very complicated, but still animals. ⁓ w w what what do you make of that? Is that is that the Darwinian take to have and and and and what what is the ⁓ yeah, how how do you view that? I think that ⁓ Claims of human uniqueness are they're complicated. I think s I'm sometimes I'm not sure what motivates them. Is it a a fear of ⁓ I'm not sure. ⁓ terror management theory. Let's throw that out there. Fear of death. ⁓ To me, the the scientific rigor of evolutionary continuity is unquestioned. Like so there's no bright distinct line between humans and I mean we are animals, you know, humans and other animals. ⁓ to me, saying that there's evolutionary continuity and even saying that other species exhibit behaviors that we kind of consider like the the pinnacle of being a civilized person doesn't threaten humans or human uniqueness to me to me it highlights it like the ways in which we're different from other animals are really interesting too. And the fact that we use language to communicate norms and norm violations and the complexity of our ideas about fairness and ⁓ and empathy are are really interesting and and unique. ⁓ and that I don't find that threatening at all. Yeah I I think part of the reason might also be because it's sometimes pretty uncomfortable if we look at ⁓ the biological drivers that we have, the primal instincts that we that we have, differences, just differences between men, women, ⁓ strong, weak, large, small. ⁓ it's it's not always what we would like it to be. If if we from a modern perspective of equality and and our sense of justice, sometimes these primal drivers that we have and and and these these differences and and us trying to survive. It's just not very pretty and it doesn't really align with the the ethical beings that we pretend to be. So I think it's it's it's it it I I'm not exactly sure I can really put my ⁓ finger on it, but it wouldn't surprise me if that's part of it. And that it would just be easier to To say, hey, we are different from animals. And because we are different from animals, we can now pretend that ⁓ there's literally zero difference between any entire human on on Earth and and and we are all exactly the same. I think that might be part of it. I think so too. ⁓ and I think another thing that might be going on here as well in the kind of suppression of ideas about animal emotion, animal sentience, animal morality is that we we live in a fairly violent relationship with other animals. And if we recognize that animals are feeling empathic creatures who who feel grief, who suffer loss, who f have fear, who care about their families, then it can make our behavior feel uncomfortable. And ⁓ change is uncomfortable for people. So thinking about changing how we interact with animals is scary too. ⁓ but I do think su suppressing writing off animals ⁓ may be easier than trying to change our own behavior. ⁓ not the moral path, but easier. Yeah, I agree. Like it's so much easier to eat a steak if ⁓ the cow is not a moral entity. Right. Yeah. It it it it comes ⁓ it it's just it introduces a a whole set of ⁓ problems and and uncomfortable ⁓ feelings if we start to to view animals as ⁓ as such. Yeah. Is is there is there anything ⁓ that you think we haven't touched on that is ⁓ important to to still discuss while while we're on the topic? I don't know. We've been over a lot of material. I don't think so. I don't I feel like we've we've done a good canvassing of some of the main Yeah. ⁓ moral and scientific questions and Yeah, I I really ⁓ wanna say I appreciate you having me on and having this conversation because it is it can be uncomfortable. ⁓ and it's also really interesting. And yeah, I hope that I hope that it sparked curiosity in your listeners. Yeah, well, I'm I'm I'm sure that it did in ⁓ in me. ⁓ if I if I speak for myself, ⁓ this was incredibly interesting. So Yeah, I really wanna thank you for for taking the time to to have ⁓ the discussion ⁓ with me. It was incredibly interesting. If people want to to keep up with ⁓ future books, if they wanna buy existing books, if they wanna follow you or some of the papers you are ⁓ writing on the regular, ⁓ what is the best place for people to go? So ⁓ my website is a good ⁓ landing spot. It's just jessica pierce.net. ⁓ I have a psychology today blog called All Dogs Go to Heaven. ⁓ I haven't been super active with it the last couple of years, so most of this stuff is older, but still there. And ⁓ my books are easy to find on Amazon and whatnot. Yeah, just Perfect. Yeah, I'll make sure to put everything ⁓ in the in the show notes. And not ⁓ I'm not not on social media at all because it's political. Our I mean ⁓ it doesn't need any ⁓ any excuse. ⁓ good for you. No, yeah. I mean it's ⁓ it's it's ⁓ not always ⁓ it's a great ⁓ not always a great environment and yeah not always ⁓ best My publisher does not appreciate my absence from social media, but too bad. Too bad. Well, Jessica, thank you so much for for ⁓ for ⁓ meeting with me today. Like I said, I I really appreciate you. ⁓ this was incredibly interesting. And yeah, ⁓ I feel maybe in the future when we ⁓ when there's both some new maybe science out there, ⁓ some new thoughts that have entered ⁓ into my ⁓ my mind we can ⁓ we can run it back someday. Sounds good. Awesome. Well thank you so much Jessica.