Steven Pinker (“How the Mind Works”) explains the human mind and behaviour through genetic evolutionary theory and sociobiology. All of this, regarding our feelings toward kin, sex partners, children, friends and enemies makes eminant sense. Until, in the last chapter, he comes to our esthetic values and scientific curiosity – why we do things that have no survival value. He admits that the evolutionary theory goes only so far, and that humans often do additional things – like the play of children (and adults).

Much of this, as well as our sense of ethics, comes from one root, in my opinion: our sense of self and our sense of others as selves in their own right, of the same essence as our own self. An article in the November 1996 issue of Discover magazine (“The Tarzan Syndrome” by Karen Wright, pp. 88-102) describes the research by Daniel povinelli on ape behaviour when presented with a mirror. The orangutan, especially, seems to be aware that he is an “agent” initiating his own movements, and therefore a self. Other apes do not show this behaviour under the same circumstances, nor do monkeys, dogs, cats, or any other species tested.

Human infants show this self-recognition behaviour at an age from 18 months to 2 years; but in their case, it is tied to a recognition of the selves of other persons. The name for these tied concepts is “a theory of mind”. The recognition of the selves of others similar in essence” to one’s own is called “empathy”. It is apparently something specifically human. It may even be tied to the origin of language. Children learn language at about the same age.

When Pinker and others explain altruism by the inclusive fitness theory of sociobiology (“selfish genes” trying to perpetuate themselves in the next generation, through our close kin if not ourselves), this goes only so far. It does not explain sacrificing oneself for genetically unrelated friends, or for a cause that would benefit humanity as a whole. But if we recognize the minds of others, through the faculty of empathy that we possess, an explanation of such extended altruism is at hand. Our inborn faculty of empathy, or what I call “the Principle of Common Essence”, is the root from which Agape (all-encompassing love) can spring. For some people it is founded on religion, but it need not be; it is a free-standing moral sense, akin to Immanuel Kant’s categorical Imperative. Various world religions embody it in different wordings of the Golden Rule.

Of course, the faculty that enables us to see others as ourselves also accounts for the formation of enemy images, if our own minds plot intrigues against others; by the process of projection, we then perceive that the others are plotting against us. The perception of others as ourselves can be pernicious (the very root of war) as well as beneficial., as in creating universal love. Both good and evil stem from the same primal energy source.

Now about sociobiology itself: I would extend inclusive fitness to be even more inclusive. All humans share about 99.9% of the base-pairs of DNA, so I should have the evolutionary urge to preserve and perpetuate the entire human genome, i.e. to want to so act as to prevent human extinction, and be willing to lay down my own life to promote this goal. Is that false reasoning? Maybe I somewhat prefer my own kin, especially my children, but not by that much.

Thus I would argue that human behaviour extends in several respects beyond the part that is explained by the Darwinian principles of sociobiology: art, science, play, and ethics. These non-survival-oriented behaviours do not prolong, preserve, or pass on life, but they make life worthwhile. In the movie “Dr. Zhivago” (the name means “life” in Russian), Dr. Z. says to his love Lara that they need not take part in the revolution that will liberate humanity, because the revolutionaries are doing it so that love like theirs may freely flourish. He seems to be saying that he and Lara are the end value, the revolution merely a means value.

What would life be without art, music, and scientific curiosity? The genes should serve the brain, not vice versa. Perhaps the selfish genes served their purpose for previous species, by making bodies (gene products) pass through the sieve of natural selection; but in the human case, the roles have switched. We now evolve through cultural evolution, which is a million times faster than the natural kind. And the instrument of cultural evolution is the brain, not the gene.