Rousseau or Hobbes?

A man is a wolf to another man, so Hobbes. Man is selfish and egoistic by nature, he thinks, and in order to protect men against other men they must be forced to cooperate. That’s why there are states. States force men to work together and to help each other, if necessary, so that in the end everybody is better off. Others, however, think that men are good by nature and that men are by far that selfish as Hobbes thinks. According to Rousseau, for example, men are helpful and cooperative and it’s just the state that corrupts them. Which view is correct? In his first Tanner Lecture on Human Values in 2008 Michael Tomasello tried to answer this question.

Three main types of human altruism can be distinguished, so Tomasello: You can share goods like food with others. You can help others like fetching an out-of-reach object for someone. Or you can altruistically give information to another person. What can we say about the presence of these types in man? All men are more or less sharing, helping and informative but are we naturally so or are these characteristics forced upon us and do we share, help and inform others only for egoistic reasons? For answering these questions Tomasello presents several investigations done with young children and chimpanzees.

He first discusses helping. In one study (Tomasello pp. 6ff), of the 24 eighteen-month-old infants tested 22 helped at least once, when a person they didn’t know dropped something accidentally, but they did nothing, when the person dropped something on purpose. Tomasello gives several reasons why studies like this one makes it likely that men help altruistically by nature. First, they show helpful behaviour already at a very young age before most parents expect their children to behave pro-socially. Second, parental rewards and encouragement don’t seem to increase infant’s helpful behaviour. Third, chimpanzees do such things as well. Fourth, probably such behaviour is shown in different cultures. Fifth, an adult makes a drawing and another deliberately tears it up. Or, alternatively, an adult puts aside an empty sheet of paper and another adult tears it up. In the first situation infants look concerned and want to help more often than in the second situation. For such reasons, Tomasello believes that “children’s early helping is not a behavior created by culture and/or parental socialization practices. Rather, it is an outward expression of children’s natural inclination to sympathize with others in strife.” (p. 13)

Although altruistically helping is something both human infants and chimpanzees do in some situations, altruistically informing others seems typically human. Take this study, for example: An adult is stapling papers and an infant is watching it. The adult leaves the room for a moment and another adult comes in and moves stapler and papers to some shelves. The first adult comes back and wonders where stapler and papers are. Then most infants will spontaneously point where they have been put. In another study, a chimpanzee is looking for food. You see where it is and point to the location. However, the chimp doesn’t understand, for why should you tell him where to find the food? Any chimpanzee tries to keep it for himself! Apes don’t point or it should be advantageous for themselves. Generally they don’t understand what (altruistically) pointing means, while infants see it as informative behaviour. Such studies show, so Tomasello, that “the comparison between children and apes is different in the case of informing. When it comes to informing, as opposed to instrumental helping, humans do something cooperatively that apes seemingly do not at all. This suggests that altruism is not a general trait, but rather that altruistic motives may arise in some domains of activity but not in others.” (pp. 20-21.

And sharing? “Virtually all experts agree that apes are not very altruistic in the sharing of resources such as food.” (p. 21) How different children are. Since Tomasello presents cases of somewhat older children, where learned culture may have had already an influence, I prefer to give an experience of my own with the same content. Once on holiday by bike in Norway, my wife and I stopped somewhere. A man came from a nearby house and began to talk to us in Norwegian and we didn’t understand a word of it. We were a bit confused and didn’t know what to do. Then the man left for a moment and returned with a big bag with shrimps and gave it to us. Why? Till today I have no idea, but I think that it is a case of altruistically sharing in due form. But back to Tomasello. Do people always share? Probably not, he says, when your plane crashes in the Andes and you have one granola bar in your pocket. So, his conclusion is: “In the case of sharing resources such as food … human children seem to be more generous than chimpanzees. But … this is only a matter of degree. Starving humans are not so generous with food, either. It is just that chimpanzees act as if they were always starving.” (p. 28).

Now I must cut short my analysis, but anyway, there is little proof that altruism in helping, informing or sharing is the result of acculturation, parental intervention, or any other form of socialization. (p. 28) This doesn’t mean that man is only altruistic by nature, and that helpfulness etc. are not also promoted by culture in some way. Children learn by themselves, too. They adapt to what society requires of them, although this adaption, too, is innate to a large extent. Children follow the rules because they feel to do so and they often feel ashamed and guilty by themselves if they don’t follow the rules. The upshot is then: If someone is right, it is not Hobbes but Rousseau. But we start as a Rousseau and then we become infected by Hobbes.

Source

Michael Tomasello, Why we cooperate. Cambridge, Mass., etc.: The MIT Press, 2009.