I was born in Den Bosch, where the painter Hieronymus Bosch named himself after. And I've always been very fond of this painter who lived and worked in the 15th century. And what is interesting about him in relation to morality is that he lived at a time where religion's influence was waning, and he was sort of wondering, I think, what would happen with society if there was no religion or if there was less religion. And so he painted this famous painting, "The Garden of Earthly Delights," which some have interpreted as being humanity before the Fall, or being humanity without any Fall at all. And so it makes you wonder, what would happen if we hadn't tasted the fruit of knowledge, so to speak, and what kind of morality would we have.
我出生于登博斯, 大画家希罗尼米斯·博斯取名于此城。 我一直很喜欢这位画家 他生活和工作在15世纪。 他与道德的关系很有趣的一点是, 他生活的那个时代宗教的影响在衰弱, 我想,他肯定琢磨过 社会将会发生什么事情 如果没有宗教,或有少一些宗教。 所以,他画了著名的《俗世乐土》, 有人诠释为 那是人类堕落前的人性, 或者说人性本就是这样,谈不上任何堕落 这会让人惊奇, 如果我们没有尝过智慧树上的果子会怎么样, 也就是说,我们的道德会是什么样呢?
Much later, as a student, I went to a very different garden, a zoological garden in Arnhem where we keep chimpanzees. This is me at an early age with a baby chimpanzee.
很久以后,我还是个学生的时候, 去过一个与众不同的花园, 是在阿纳姆一个动物花园, 在那里我们饲养着大猩猩。 这就是我年轻时抱着一头小猩猩。
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And I discovered there that the chimpanzees are very power-hungry and wrote a book about it. And at that time the focus in a lot of animal research was on aggression and competition. I painted a whole picture of the animal kingdom and humanity included, was that deep down we are competitors, we are aggressive, we are all out for our own profit, basically. This is the launch of my book. I'm not sure how well the chimpanzees read it, but they surely seemed interested in the book.
在那我发现 黑猩猩权利欲很强,我还写了一本书。 当时大多数的动物研究 都集中在动物的攻击性和竞争性。 我描述了在动物王国里, 包括人类, 本质上,我们是竞争者, 我们也有攻击性, 全是出于我们自己的利益。 我的书就这样出版了。 我不知道这些黑猩猩们读懂多少, 他们看上去对这本书很感兴趣。
(Laughter)
在做这些
Now in the process of doing all this work on power and dominance and aggression and so on, I discovered that chimpanzees reconcile after fights. And so what you see here is two males who have had a fight. They ended up in a tree, and one of them holds out a hand to the other. And about a second after I took the picture, they came together in the fork of the tree and kissed and embraced each other.
研究权利,统治 和侵犯等等的过程中, 我发现黑猩猩们争斗之后会和解。 这里你看到的是两只雄猩猩打架之后。 他们爬上树,其中的一只伸出手给另一只。 我刚拍完这张照片,他们就跳到一棵树枝上, 抱在一起亲吻并且拥抱对方呢。 这真的是很有趣,
And this is very interesting because at the time, everything was about competition and aggression, so it wouldn't make any sense. The only thing that matters is that you win or you lose. But why reconcile after a fight? That doesn't make any sense. This is the way bonobos do it. Bonobos do everything with sex. And so they also reconcile with sex. But the principle is exactly the same. The principle is that you have a valuable relationship that is damaged by conflict, so you need to do something about it. So my whole picture of the animal kingdom, and including humans also, started to change at that time.
因为当时的描述猩猩的很多事,都是关于竞争和攻击的, 那么这有点不合常理。 唯一要紧的是你赢了或输了。 但为什么打完架再和解呢? 没道理的嘛。 这是倭黑猩猩的做法。他们用性交来解决问题。 他们也用性交来和解。 但规律是相同的。 规律便是你有一段 珍贵的关系 往往被冲突破坏, 所以需要想办法来解决。 所以,当时我对整个动物王国的看法。 也包括人类 开始改变。
So we have this image in political science, economics, the humanities, the philosophy for that matter, that man is a wolf to man. And so deep down, our nature is actually nasty. I think it's a very unfair image for the wolf. The wolf is, after all, a very cooperative animal. And that's why many of you have a dog at home, which has all these characteristics also. And it's really unfair to humanity, because humanity is actually much more cooperative and empathic than given credit for. So I started getting interested in those issues and studying that in other animals.
我们有这样的印象, 从政治科学,经济学,人文学, 和哲学来讲, 人对人来说,像一头狼似的。 所以从根本上来说,我们的本性是凶残的。 我觉得这对于狼来说是不公平的。 不管怎么说, 狼是一种很有合作精神的动物。 这就是为什么很多人在家里养狗, 狗也拥有这些特征。 对人类来说也是不公平的, 因为人类实际上比公认的评价 更会合作和有感情。 所以我开始对这些课题感兴趣 并在其它动物身上做研究。
So these are the pillars of morality. If you ask anyone, "What is morality based on?" these are the two factors that always come out. One is reciprocity, and associated with it is a sense of justice and a sense of fairness. And the other one is empathy and compassion. And human morality is more than this, but if you would remove these two pillars, there would be not much remaining, I think. So they're absolutely essential.
这些就是道德的支柱。 如果你问一个人,“道德从何而来?” 通常总会有两个因素。 一个是互惠 这与正义感和公正感有关系。 另一个是共鸣和怜悯。 人类道德远不止此, 但是如果你把这两条拿走, 我觉得剩下的就不多了。 所以,它们是绝对必要的。
So let me give you a few examples here. This is a very old video from the Yerkes Primate Center, where they trained chimpanzees to cooperate. So this is already about a hundred years ago that we were doing experiments on cooperation. What you have here is two young chimpanzees who have a box, and the box is too heavy for one chimp to pull in. And of course, there's food on the box. Otherwise they wouldn't be pulling so hard. And so they're bringing in the box. And you can see that they're synchronized. You can see that they work together, they pull at the same moment. It's already a big advance over many other animals who wouldn't be able to do that. Now you're going to get a more interesting picture, because now one of the two chimps has been fed. So one of the two is not really interested in the task anymore.
这里来举几个例子。 这是耶基斯灵长类研究中心拍的很旧的录像, 他们在那里训练黑猩猩去合作。 我们做合作方面的实验 也有百年历史了。 这里我们看到的是两只年幼的黑猩猩,这里有一个盒子, 盒子太重,一只猩猩拖不动。 当然喽,盒子上面有食物。 不然他们也不会卖力来拖。 盒子被拿过来了。 你看,他们同时在拖。 他们一起工作,同一个时刻拖这个盒子 这已经比那些不会这样做的动物 高级了很多。 接下来的画面更有趣, 因为这两只的猩猩中,有一只已经吃过东西了。 所以说,其中一只对这个任务 是不感什么兴趣的。
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[- and sometimes appears to convey its wishes and meanings by gestures.] Now look at what happens at the very end of this.
现在来看看最后的结局是什么。
(Laughter)
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He takes basically everything.
他把所有的都吃光了。
(Laughter)
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There are two interesting parts about this. One is that the chimp on the right has a full understanding he needs the partner -- so a full understanding of the need for cooperation. The second one is that the partner is willing to work even though he's not interested in the food. Why would that be? Well, that probably has to do with reciprocity. There's actually a lot of evidence in primates and other animals that they return favors. He will get a return favor at some point in the future. And so that's how this all operates.
这里有两点很有趣。 第一点是,右边的这只猩猩 清楚地知道他需要搭档-- 完全理解需要合作。 第二点是,它的搭档即使自己对食物不感兴趣, 但还愿意帮忙。 为什么会这样呢?他们这样做可能是出于互惠。 实际上也有很多的证据证明, 灵长类和别的动物都会报恩。 所以,有朝一日 他会得到报恩。 所以这是他们的运作方式。
We do the same task with elephants. Now, it's very dangerous to work with elephants. Another problem with elephants is that you cannot make an apparatus that is too heavy for a single elephant. Now you can probably make it, but it's going to be a pretty clumsy apparatus, I think. And so what we did in that case -- we do these studies in Thailand for Josh Plotnik -- is we have an apparatus around which there is a rope, a single rope. And if you pull on this side of the rope, the rope disappears on the other side. So two elephants need to pick it up at exactly the same time, and pull. Otherwise nothing is going to happen and the rope disappears.
我们也在大象的身上做了同样的实验。 说起大象,跟它们工作也挺危险的。 大象实验的另一个问题是, 很难找到一个 对大象来说太重的器具。 现在,你能做到的, 但是,是亿个比较脆弱的器具。 我们还是做到了-- 我们在泰国为乔舒亚·帕劳特尼克(Josh Plotnik) 做了些研究--我们用的工具就是单单的一根绳子。 如果你拉着绳子的这头, 那头就看不见了。 两头大象必须同时捡起绳子同时拉。 不然的话,绳子一头不见了, 什么也做不成。
The first tape you're going to see is two elephants who are released together arrive at the apparatus. The apparatus is on the left, with food on it. And so they come together, they arrive together, they pick it up together, and they pull together. So it's actually fairly simple for them. There they are. So that's how they bring it in. But now we're going to make it more difficult. Because the purpose of this experiment is to see how well they understand cooperation. Do they understand that as well as the chimps, for example?
第一个录像上你看到的 是两头大象一起被带到 器具这里。 工具放在左边,上面放着食物。 所以,他们要一起来,同时到, 一起拿起绳子,一起拉。 这对他们来说很简单。 他们过来了。 他们就这样拉过来。 现在我们来加点难度。 因为这个实验的目的 是看他们如何理解合作。 譬如,他们会不会像黑猩猩一样来理解合作呢?
What we do in the next step is we release one elephant before the other and that elephant needs to be smart enough to stay there and wait and not pull at the rope -- because if he pulls at the rope, it disappears and the whole test is over. Now this elephant does something illegal that we did not teach it. But it shows the understanding he has, because he puts his big foot on the rope, stands on the rope and waits there for the other, and then the other is going to do all the work for him. So it's what we call freeloading.
我们下一步做的是 把一头象先放出来, 这家伙必须很聪明 呆在那里等着,不能拉绳子-- 因为如果他一拉,绳子那头不见了,这个实验也就结束了。 这头大象做了点不法的事, 不是我们教的。 他看来有些理解, 他把大脚踩在绳子上, 站在那里等着另外一头大象, 另一头将尽全力来帮他。 我们称之为不劳而获。
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But it shows the intelligence that the elephants have. They developed several of these alternative techniques that we did not approve of, necessarily.
这也看出大象的聪明才智。 他们发展了几种可供选择的技术, 我们不必要都赞成。
(Laughter)
看,另一头大象过来了,
So the other elephant is now coming ... and is going to pull it in. Now look at the other; it doesn't forget to eat, of course.
要去拉绳子。 看看另一头。它可没忘记吃。
(Laughter)
(笑)
This was the cooperation and reciprocity part.
这是合作互惠的部分。
Now something on empathy. Empathy is my main topic at the moment, of research. And empathy has two qualities: One is the understanding part of it. This is just a regular definition: the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. And the emotional part. Empathy has basically two channels: One is the body channel, If you talk with a sad person, you're going to adopt a sad expression and a sad posture, and before you know it, you feel sad. And that's sort of the body channel of emotional empathy, which many animals have. Your average dog has that also. That's why people keep mammals in the home and not turtles or snakes or something like that, who don't have that kind of empathy. And then there's a cognitive channel, which is more that you can take the perspective of somebody else. And that's more limited. Very few animals, I think elephants and apes, can do that kind of thing.
再来看一下同感共鸣。 共鸣是研究的主要课题。 共鸣包含两种品质。 一种是理解部分。这只是个普通定义: 理解和分享对方感受的能力。 另一种是情绪部分。 所以,共鸣有两个渠道。 一个是身体渠道。 如果你跟一位悲伤的人交谈, 在你还没感觉悲伤的时候, 你就在接受它的伤感和态度。 这就是一种情绪共鸣的身体渠道, 很多动物都有的。 普通的小狗都有的。 这就是为什么人们喜欢在家里养哺乳动物, 而不是乌龟,蛇 或没有感情表露的动物的原因了。 再一个就是认知渠道, 这个渠道更多的是你能接受别人的看法。 这也有更多的限制。 有很少的动物--大象和猿类可以做得-- 但能做得的动物寥寥无几。
So synchronization, which is part of that whole empathy mechanism, is a very old one in the animal kingdom. In humans, of course, we can study that with yawn contagion. Humans yawn when others yawn. And it's related to empathy. It activates the same areas in the brain. Also, we know that people who have a lot of yawn contagion are highly empathic. People who have problems with empathy, such as autistic children, they don't have yawn contagion. So it is connected.
所以说, 同步是整个共鸣体系的一部分, 这动物王国里也有历史了 对人类呢,我们能够通过 打哈欠传染来研究。 当一个人打哈欠时,其他人也会跟着打 这就跟共鸣有关。 它可以激活大脑的相同区域。 我们对打哈欠传染 有很高的共识。 对那些有共鸣障碍的人,比如患自闭症的孩子, 他们不会有打哈欠传染。 所以,它是有关联的。
And we study that in our chimpanzees by presenting them with an animated head. So that's what you see on the upper-left, an animated head that yawns. And there's a chimpanzee watching, an actual real chimpanzee watching a computer screen on which we play these animations.
我们通过给黑猩猩看一幅动画头像来研究它们。 现在看到的左上角是 一幅动画头像在打哈欠。 一头黑猩猩在看着, 这头真的黑猩猩看着 我们在电脑屏幕上放的动画。
(Laughter)
(笑)
So yawn contagion that you're probably all familiar with -- and maybe you're going to start yawning soon now -- is something that we share with other animals. And that's related to that whole body channel of synchronization that underlies empathy, and that is universal in the mammals, basically.
打哈欠传染 大家都很熟悉-- 可能你马上也要打哈欠了-- 这一点我们和动物是一样的。 这就联系到我们身体的同步渠道, 其中蕴藏着共鸣, 这基本是哺乳动物的普遍性。
We also study more complex expressions -- This is consolation. This is a male chimpanzee who has lost a fight and he's screaming, and a juvenile comes over and puts an arm around him and calms him down. That's consolation. It's very similar to human consolation. And consolation behavior --
现在我们也研究更复杂的表达方式。这是个安慰。 这头雄猩猩吃了败仗在大喊大叫, 一头小猩猩过来抱着他, 使他安静下来。 这就是安慰。跟人类安慰很像的。 这种安慰行为
(Laughter)
就是来自共鸣。
it's empathy driven. Actually, the way to study empathy in human children is to instruct a family member to act distressed, and then to see what young children do. And so it is related to empathy, and that's the kind of expressions we look at.
事实上,研究人类儿童的共鸣的方法 是让一名家人假装苦恼, 然后看看孩子们会怎样做。 这与共鸣有关, 我们看到的表情是这样。 我们最近也发表了一项实验,你们可能也听说过了。
We also recently published an experiment you may have heard about. It's on altruism and chimpanzees, where the question is: Do chimpanzees care about the welfare of somebody else? And for decades it had been assumed that only humans can do that, that only humans worry about the welfare of somebody else. Now we did a very simple experiment. We do that on chimpanzees that live in Lawrenceville, in the field station of Yerkes. And so that's how they live. And we call them into a room and do experiments with them. In this case, we put two chimpanzees side-by-side, and one has a bucket full of tokens, and the tokens have different meanings. One kind of token feeds only the partner who chooses, the other one feeds both of them.
是有关利他主义和黑猩猩的, 问题是黑猩猩 关心别人的幸福吗? 几十年来人们一直以为 只有人类能做到, 只有人类才关心他人的幸福。 我们做了一个非常简单的实验。 在劳伦斯维尔德野的 耶基斯野外观测站的黑猩猩们身上做的。 这是它们的生活。 我们把它们叫到一个房间,然后给它们做实验。 在这个实验中,我们让两只黑猩猩在并排的房间, 一只有满满一桶的代用币,这些代用币有着不同的意思。 一种只能给选定的伙伴, 另一种是两者都给。
So this is a study we did with Vicki Horner. And here, you have the two color tokens. So they have a whole bucket full of them. And they have to pick one of the two colors. You will see how that goes. So if this chimp makes the selfish choice, which is the red token in this case, he needs to give it to us, we pick it up, we put it on a table where there's two food rewards, but in this case, only the one on the right gets food. The one on the left walks away because she knows already that this is not a good test for her. Then the next one is the pro-social token.
这个研究是我们和维奇·霍纳尔做的。 这里有两种颜色的代用币。 他们有满满一桶。 他们必须从两种颜色里选一种。 让我们来看看吧。 如果这头猩猩选了红色的, 这个是代表自私的, 他就得把它交给我们。 我们就会拿起它,放在桌子上,桌上有两种食物奖励, 但如果他选了红色,右边的那头得到了食物。 左边的那头已经知道了,所以她走开了。 这对她来说不太好。 下一个就是“利他”代用币。
So the one who makes the choices -- that's the interesting part here -- for the one who makes the choices, it doesn't really matter. So she gives us now a pro-social token and both chimps get fed. So the one who makes the choices always gets a reward. So it doesn't matter whatsoever. And she should actually be choosing blindly. But what we find is that they prefer the pro-social token. So this is the 50 percent line, that's the random expectation. And especially if the partner draws attention to itself, they choose more.
做选择的这个-- 有趣的部分在这-- 对做选择的这位来说, 并不重要。 她给了我们一枚“利他”的代用币,两者都得到了吃的。 所以,做选择的这个总得到奖赏。 没有任何关系的。 她只是盲目地选择而已。 但是,我们发现 他们都比较喜欢“利他”的代用币。 这是随即可能的50%分界线。 尤其是,如果这位同伴注意到自己,他们就选的更多。
And if the partner puts pressure on them -- so if the partner starts spitting water and intimidating them -- then the choices go down.
如果这位同伴对他们施压-- 如果这位同伴开始吐水和威胁他们-- 选择就下降。
(Laughter)
就好像他们在说,
It's as if they're saying, "If you're not behaving, I'm not going to be pro-social today." And this is what happens without a partner, when there's no partner sitting there. So we found that the chimpanzees do care about the well-being of somebody else -- especially, these are other members of their own group.
“你如果表现不好,我就不会做“利他”的选择。” 这里是没有同伴的情形, 没有同伴坐在那儿。 所以我们发现黑猩猩们 真的关心他人的生活-- 特别是他们是同一个群体。
So the final experiment that I want to mention to you is our fairness study. And so this became a very famous study. And there are now many more, because after we did this about 10 years ago, it became very well-known. And we did that originally with capuchin monkeys. And I'm going to show you the first experiment that we did. It has now been done with dogs and with birds and with chimpanzees. But with Sarah Brosnan, we started out with capuchin monkeys.
我想提一下,最后的一个实验 是公正研究。 这也是一个很有名的研究。 现在有更多的了, 因为十年前我们做了这个后, 它就出名了。 我们最初做实验的是卷尾猴。 我会给你看一下我们的第一个实验。 现在都已经有对狗, 鸟和黑猩猩的实验了。 最开始,我们是和萨拉·布鲁斯南在卷尾猴身上做的。
So what we did is we put two capuchin monkeys side-by-side. Again, these animals, live in a group, they know each other. We take them out of the group, put them in a test chamber. And there's a very simple task that they need to do. And if you give both of them cucumber for the task, the two monkeys side-by-side, they're perfectly willing to do this 25 times in a row. So cucumber, even though it's only really water in my opinion, but cucumber is perfectly fine for them. Now if you give the partner grapes -- the food preferences of my capuchin monkeys correspond exactly with the prices in the supermarket -- and so if you give them grapes -- it's a far better food -- then you create inequity between them. So that's the experiment we did.
我们让 两只卷尾猴放在相邻的房间。 他们这些动物,住在一个群体,都互相认识。 我们把他们分离出来,放在一个实验房间。 给他们准备 很简单的任务。 如果我们给他们两个黄瓜, 他们肩并肩 会一直重复25次。 黄瓜对我来说只是水分, 但对他们来说非常好。 如果你给这个同伴葡萄-- 这是我的卷尾猴的特爱, 符合超市里的价钱-- 所以,如果你给它们葡萄--这是它们喜欢的食物-- 那你就在制造不平等。 我们的实验就是这样做的。
Recently, we videotaped it with new monkeys who'd never done the task, thinking that maybe they would have a stronger reaction, and that turned out to be right. The one on the left is the monkey who gets cucumber. The one on the right is the one who gets grapes. The one who gets cucumber -- note that the first piece of cucumber is perfectly fine. The first piece she eats. Then she sees the other one getting grape, and you will see what happens. So she gives a rock to us. That's the task. And we give her a piece of cucumber and she eats it. The other one needs to give a rock to us. And that's what she does. And she gets a grape ... and eats it. The other one sees that. She gives a rock to us now, gets, again, cucumber.
我们最近又拍摄了一些没做过这个任务的猴子, 我们认为他们的反映更强烈, 果然如此。 左边的这只猴子拿到了黄瓜。 右边的这只得到了葡萄。 得到黄瓜的这只猴子, 注意到第一片黄瓜很好。 她就吃掉了第一片。 接着她看到另一只猴子得到了葡萄,好戏在后头。 她朝我们扔石头。那就是任务。 我们给她一片黄瓜,她吃掉了。 另一只也朝我们扔石头。 她也做了。 她得到一颗葡萄,又吃掉了。 另一只看在眼里。 她又朝我们扔石头, 又得到了黄瓜。
(Laughter)
(笑)
(Laughter ends)
她在墙上敲她的石头。
She tests a rock now against the wall. She needs to give it to us. And she gets cucumber again.
她应该把它给我们。 她又得到了黄瓜。
(Laughter)
(笑)
So this is basically the Wall Street protest that you see here.
你看到的是就像是华尔街抗议活动。
(Laughter)
(笑)
(Applause)
(鼓掌)
I still have two minutes left -- let me tell you a funny story about this. This study became very famous and we got a lot of comments, especially anthropologists, economists, philosophers. They didn't like this at all. Because they had decided in their minds, I believe, that fairness is a very complex issue, and that animals cannot have it. And so one philosopher even wrote us that it was impossible that monkeys had a sense of fairness because fairness was invented during the French Revolution.
听我说-- 我还有两分钟,让我来讲个好笑的故事。 这个研究很有名气, 我们收到很多评论, 尤其是人类学家,经济学家 和哲学家。 他们一点也不喜欢这个。 因为他们已经在心里打定主意, 公正是个很复杂的问题, 动物是不能够有的。 并且有一位哲学家写信给我们说, 猴子不可能有公正感, 因为公正是在法国大革命中才被发明的。
(Laughter)
(笑)
And another one wrote a whole chapter saying that he would believe it had something to do with fairness, if the one who got grapes would refuse the grapes. Now the funny thing is that Sarah Brosnan, who's been doing this with chimpanzees, had a couple of combinations of chimpanzees where, indeed, the one who would get the grape would refuse the grape until the other guy also got a grape. So we're getting very close to the human sense of fairness. And I think philosophers need to rethink their philosophy for a while.
还有一位给我们写了一大段 说如果那只得到葡萄的猴子拒绝葡萄, 他才会相信这跟公正有关。 滑稽的是,萨拉·布鲁斯南 在做这个实验期间, 有几次黑猩猩的组合, 实际上,其中一只猴子宁愿不接受葡萄 直到它的伙伴拿到了他才接受。 我们离人类的公正很近了。 我觉得哲学家们需要重新思考他们的哲学。
So let me summarize. I believe there's an evolved morality. I think morality is much more than what I've been talking about, but it would be impossible without these ingredients that we find in other primates, which are empathy and consolation, pro-social tendencies and reciprocity and a sense of fairness. And so we work on these particular issues to see if we can create a morality from the bottom up, so to speak, without necessarily god and religion involved, and to see how we can get to an evolved morality.
我总结一下。 我相信有一种进化来的道德。 道德已远远超过我一直讨论的, 但如果没有别的灵长类的元素 也是不可能的, 正是共鸣,安慰, 亲社会倾向,互惠以及公正感。 我们也致力于这个特殊的课题, 看看我们是否能从头开始创造一种道德, 也就是说不涉及神圣和宗教, 来看看我们如何去进化道德。
And I thank you for your attention.
谢谢大家。
(Applause)
(鼓掌)