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It’s important knowledge, but it’s had the effect of reducing the scope of the human self. “Man is the measure of all things,” the Greek philosopher Protagoras declared millenniums ago. But in the realm of the new science, the individual is like a cork bobbing on the currents of giant forces: evolution, brain chemistry, stress and upbringing. Human consciousness is merely an epiphenomena of the deep and controlling mental processes that lie within.

other chimpanzees would console the loser.

Social living requires empathy

reconciliation

human morality may be severely limited by having evolved as a way of banding together against adversaries, with moral restraints being observed only toward the in group, not toward outsiders.

eciprocity and fairness

Chimps are more likely to share food with those who have groomed them.

These four kinds of behavior — empathy, the ability to learn and follow social rules, reciprocity and peacemaking — are the basis of sociality.

People enforce their society’s moral codes much more rigorously with rewards, punishments and reputation building. They also apply a degree of judgment and reason, for which there are no parallels in animals.

Capuchin monkeys show their displeasure if given a smaller reward than a partner receives for performing the same task

reason is generally brought to bear only after a moral decision has been reached

Morality, he writes, is “a sense of right and wrong that is born out of groupwide systems of conflict management based on shared values.” The building blocks of morality are not nice or good behaviors but rather mental and social capacities for constructing societies “in which shared values constrain individual behavior through a system of approval and disapproval.”

Some animals are surprisingly sensitive to the plight of others.