Humans, other animals, and the biology of morality

WE humans, much as many other social animals, live completely nestled in an emotional network that makes us socially interdependent beings. The use that humans and other social animals make of the emotions triggered by the perception of others’ pain, happiness, sadness, and joy clearly depends on a huge array of factors, both internal and external, that can either inhibit or facilitate the empathic response. That said, such shared mechanisms cannot be easily dismissed. Indeed, our brains have a long evolutionary history, one shared with that of other mammal species, especially apes and monkeys. Our most sophisticated emotional and cognitive capacities are sustained by brain structures that anatomically integrate preexisting ones. This evolutionary continuity with other animals explains why we cannot understand the origins of our own moral potential without keeping in mind that we are, in fact, at base and at most, animals.