Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dlnhk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-26T07:34:39.977Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Is that all there is? Or is chimpanzees group hunt “fair” enough?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 April 2020

Angelica Kaufmann*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Humanities, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, 5290002Israel. [email protected]://biu.academia.edu/AngelicaKaufmann

Abstract

Tomasello claims that we lack convincing evidence that nonhuman animals manifest a sense of moral obligation (i.e., the concept of fairness) in their group activities. The philosophical analysis of distinctive evidence from ethology, namely group hunting practices among chimpanzees, can help the author appreciate the distinctive character of this behaviour as a display of fairness put into practice.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Boesch, C. (2005) Joint cooperative hunting among wild chimpanzees: Taking natural observations seriously. Behavioural and Brain Sciences 28(5):692–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boesch, C. & Boesch-Achermann, H. (2000) The chimpanzees of the Taï forest. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Bratman, M. E. (2014) Shared agency: A planning theory of acting together. Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brosnan, S. F. & de Waal, F. B. M. (2003) Monkeys reject unequal pay. Nature 425:297–99.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
de Waal, F. B. M. (2006a) Joint ventures require joint payoffs: Fairness among primates. Social Research 73(2):349–64.Google Scholar
Høgh-Olesen, H. (Ed.) (2009) Human morality and sociality: Evolutionary and comparative perspectives. Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Kaplan, H., Hill, K., Cadeliña, R. V., Hayden, B., Hyndman, D. C., Preston, R. J., Smith, E. A., Stuart, D. E. & Yesner, D. R. (1985) Food sharing among ache foragers: Tests of explanatory hypotheses. Current Anthropology 26(2):223–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kaufmann, A. (2015) Animal mental action: Planning among chimpanzees. Review of Philosophy and Psychology 6(4):745–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kaufmann, A. (2017) Joint distal intentions: Who shares what? In: Routledge handbook of philosophy of the social mind, ed. Kiverstein, J., pp. 343–56. Routledge.Google Scholar
Walker, R., Hill, K., Kaplan, H. & McMillan, G. (2002) Age dependency of hunting ability among the Ache of eastern Paraguay. Journal of Human Evolution 42(6):639–57.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed