Planet of the Apes and Philosophy (28 page)

So, what do tree-thinkers have to say about human nature? Well, if there is a human nature, then on the basis of evolutionary tree thinking, it must be mostly like the natures of the nearest other primate species on the tree. Human nature should be like the nature of apes, like Caesar.

Organisms were classified in a tree structure long before Darwin explained that very structure with hypothetical ancestor-descendant historical trees. The basis of this classification, then and now, is
homologies
, a term for those parts inherited from a common ancestor, no matter how much those parts may have changed in function or appearance. Go to a natural history museum sometime and look at the mammal skeletons and
you'll see that they pretty much all have the same bones in the same arrangement—the correspondences (or homologies) are easy to spot. Our feet and Caesar's feet look pretty different, but they are homologous.
Homo sapiens
retains a tailbone, sans tail; birds and bats are still four-limbed creatures, even though their forelimbs can take them aloft; moles and blindfish have either eye remnants or some nerve-bundle in the place where eyes might have been. Homologies are similarities based on common origin.

By arranging organisms by homologies, we get something approaching a natural, branching classification, as opposed to an arbitrary, human-centric, linear Chain. The question to ask now is, does this translate into a classification of behaviors, too?

If several members of a branch, or
clade
, of an evolutionary tree have some trait, then it is highly likely that all members of it have that property. But some traits of organisms, like teeth, are very malleable and can be changed rather radically. Some behaviors are like that. It's not at all easy to see whether social behaviors are homologies or not. Nor is it easy to see that, because some organisms—apes—act a certain way, so must all other members of that group, including humans. To be sure that some trait or behavior is shared between humans and the other apes, you have to see that behavior in most, if not all, of the other members of the clade. Only then can you be confident that you aren't projecting human traits onto apes, or vice versa. The expectation is that if apes do something, so should we, except for our unique species behaviors.

Where does all this get us with Caesar? To answer that we have to ask what it might be for a species to have a nature. So far, we're looking at how traits are shared between species. If we know all primates are social (and they are, even orangutans when they live together), then any differences between one primate (us) and the rest must be due to our special evolution. However, we humans like very much to assert our differences from other animals. Let us instead consider our homologies.

We should predict that humans will have the kinds of social co-ordination systems that our nearest relations have, and so we do. We have social dominance hierarchies like any primate; we punish those who defect and reward those who cooperate. In other words, we establish social norms of behavior. What is
rather interesting with humans, though, is that we're biased somewhat towards altruism. Our shared traits are apelike, but our uniquely moral norms are subtly different. That is our own specific trait. Would Caesar and the rest of the apes have adopted human moral behavior despite their biological differences
just because
of the retrovirus that was given to them?

Species have typical anatomical traits. There is, however, a bit of a myth that, before Darwin, people thought species had
essences
which were invariant for all organisms within them. Since this myth was put forward in the late 1950s and early 1960s, it's become the orthodox view that species do
not
have essences, and therefore don't have natures. We can understand why people might think this: the Holocaust left everybody reeling at the implications of human groups being thought to have innate natures; each race or ethnic group or class could then be evaluated against others and some considered to be worth more or less morally.

In all the
Planet of the Apes
movies, early and recent, each species of ape has a special nature. Gorillas are warlike and aggressive; chimps are scheming and inquisitive; orangutans are clever and subtle. Humans, when not “devolved” are a bit selfish (according to the Sacred Scrolls and especially well exemplified in
Conquest of the Planet of the Apes
), and in
Rise of the Planet of the Apes
, the humans are nasty and selfish.

This is not a new problem. It goes back at least to Plato, who argued in his
Republic
that some types of people are just the best (philosopher kings, who have gold souls), some are good but not the best (the auxiliary warriors, with silver souls) and some are the least (the majority, who have iron or bronze souls). Assertions of innate natures often lead to discrimination and even genocide; scientists became most concerned about this after World War II and effectively put a ban on the notion.

But recently many scientists are claiming that race, and therefore innate natures, are real; they point out the obvious geographical variation between populations. Medical personnel need to know the ancestry of African descendants to know how to treat some diseases, for example. And some insist on immediately transferring this to behaviors: some groups (or genders,
or sexual orientations) have typical behaviors, usually deemed lacking in value compared to the “best” kinds. Everything from IQ to promiscuity has been asserted to be a “nature,” justifying all kinds of power relations between groups. No wonder scientists and theoreticians object to “natures” talk. It can be seriously dangerous. But is it false?

The idea that whole species have natures is equally scary. It suggests biological or genetic determinism, that each of us is forced to behave in a certain fashion because of our genes or something. So if we're to criticize and check the claim that reason forces us to be moral, or that Caesar would not be so pro-social as a human, we need first to clear up the notion of a species (especially a human) nature. And simply because it has unpleasant or unwanted consequences does not mean the notion is, in fact, false. That is a logical fallacy, one of the oldest.

What having a nature does not mean, if we are informed by modern biology, is that we must act in a single determined fashion. We hear loose talk by journalists and occasionally by public intellectuals of the “gene for” this or that—homosexuality, religious belief, violence, rape, or alcoholism. No geneticist would ever make such a claim. Instead they would carefully qualify the claim: this gene has some role in modulating that behavior. Think of it like the claim that a certain player in a team sport had a role in winning the game. The team wins the game; the player is maybe crucial but is not the only reason they won. Moreover, even if that player is consistent, the rest of the team can lose the game next week.

Having a certain gene changes overall likelihoods, but it doesn't make certain outcomes necessary. Behaviors, like everything else biological, are distributed over a statistical curve in a population. If most organisms do something, like running at a certain speed, some will do it less and some do it more, and this will form a curve (not necessarily a bell curve, but some kind of curve). This distributed aspect of populations means that any statements about the nature of a species have to allow for variations from the mean and the mode.

So, when we say that chimpanzees show a certain behavior, we must expect there will be some chimps who vary from the
“norm.” It was once pointed out to me that if roughly five percent of people are “developmentally delayed,” then if the distribution is normal there will be about the same number of “gifted,” and that degree of difference from the mode (that is, from the most common type of person in the population) causes just as many disadvantages. It follows that a single Caesar is possible, but that it is unlikely he would do well in a population of ordinary chimps, however smart they were.

We cannot predict an individual's behaviors, and yet we can say with some degree of certainty how “typical” members of a species behave. This is as true of human beings as it is of chimps: the keepers at the ape facility in the movie are shown as selfish, aggressive, status-seeking primates, in contrast to Caesar, who is shown as pro-social and moral. That there
can
be humans like that is indubitable; that they would
likely
be that way is at best a scriptwriter's conceit. In fact, the primatologists I have met and discussed things with tend to empathize closely with their charges, and treat them as well as they can. The dramatic impact of the movie's villains is in the mismatch with our default human expectations: a contemptible villain is as important to a good story as a valiant hero.

The issue here is what we can predict about a species by observing behaviors and whether these behaviors are somehow natural. It's as much a problem with humans as with other organisms. It's not even entirely clear that behaviors can be traits. Are they inherited? Are they cultural or even convergent between species? What, exactly, does it mean for a behavior to be “natural”? Rather than saying that behaving in X fashion is inherited by ordinary members of a species or population, it is far more consistent with our knowledge of genetics, developmental biology, and evolution to say instead that the
disposition
to behave in X fashion is inherited. Dispositions are philosophyspeak for some cause that will generate an effect
in the right conditions
. Our genes don't form human beings in hard vacuums, nor in the absence of the right nutrients, which is why pregnant women take folic acid supplements to prevent spina bifida. This is also true for behaviors.

Consider so-called “feral” children, who do not learn to speak by the age of five. They never learn to speak in grammatically complicated sentences, no matter how much they're taught. We
know that the developing nervous system needs the right stimuli at the right time before a “normal” behavior like speech can develop. Nova, Taylor's love interest, is an example of just such a feral child. She never learned language when her speech centers were developing, so likely never will, no matter how tenderly Taylor tutors her. Still, we can say that rats, monkeys, and humans have species-typical behaviors that ordinary members will develop
if they are given the right rearing.

Therefore, the question of a distinction between nature and nurture so beloved of popular writers and journalists is ruled out of court from the start: it has to be and can only be
both
biological and environmental inheritances that cause organisms to behave in certain ways. And if the environmental and social resources are there, the disposition to behave in X fashion will develop.

In the case of Caesar, we should be able to predict that intelligent chimps will act like their less-intelligent brethren depending on circumstances. However, Caesar had another arrow in his quiver apart from intelligence. He was
scaffolded
in his moral development by being reared in a family. The term “scaffold” to refer to cultural learning and mental development is due to the philosopher Kim Sterelny, who notes that it makes learning more stable and effective. Human scaffolding of one another in development is crucial to normal development, as in language learning. But humans also scaffold other animals, such as dogs, and in this case Caesar. Would Caesar have been so moral if not raised in that way?

Rise of the Planet of the Apes
is ambivalent about this. In one sense Caesar is shown learning morality from his “family,” to which he then applies his intelligence in what philosophers call “a wide reflective equilibrium”—an attempt to make all the principles and values he holds consistent. He asks his adoptive father, Will Rodman if he is a pet because he has a collar and a chain like a dog. Rodman recoils from the idea, and yet he has indeed been treating Caesar that way. Together, Will and Caesar work through the moral issues. They scaffold each other's moral development. So we can't say that Caesar would have been moral without this scaffolding.

But then consider the gorilla, Buck, who learns immediately from Caesar's example and ultimately sacrifices himself for all the apes once he, too, has been made intelligent. Buck was not scaffolded by years of enculturation, yet as a rational agent he immediately adopts the Categorical Imperative and defends the weaker apes from being killed. Well, there is no convincing answer to this in the film. Perhaps the next installment in the reboot will resolve the inconsistency, or even expound on it for even greater dramatic effect. Regardless, Caesar clearly shows us the cultural scaffolding necessary for moral development.

We've been looking at the differences between human beings and apes, and the ways we should expect each species to behave. What do all apes have that is common in the moral realm?

When faced with a dominant chimp, other chimps lower themselves and do not stare. To do so is to make a challenge that might be met with violence. The same occurs with gorillas (the thing to do when faced with a charging silverback is to lower your head and crouch). Same goes for many troop primates such as baboons, macaques, and rhesus monkeys, although it's not always the dominant male that runs the troop or determines social rank; some species, like bonobos, are matriarchal. The same thing will occur if an artificial troop of apes or monkeys is put together in a zoo enclosure. Put a group of school-aged children in a playground and they will sort themselves into such a hierarchy, as well. This
deference
is what all primates spontaneously do when confronted with dominant individuals.