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Constructivists/non-essentialists and essentialists/naturalists represent two opposite views on how to understand the way that people actually form their ideas of justice (Winsor, 2003; Amundson, 2005; Bloom, 2010; Berg-Sorensen et al, 2010). The former understand that individuals‟ ideas of what is socially fair or unfair are mainly based on social constructions. On the opposite side are those who believe that these ideas are basically printed in their DNAs. Of course, there are those who believe that individuals are partially defined by their genes, partially by their cultures. It seems a more reasonable position and it is adopted in this thesis, as the further discussion makes evident. Related to this debate, a distinct opposition is explored here: are people‟s ideas and actions towards what they consider fair or unfair oriented by their rational capacities or by their feelings?

According to thinkers like Hume, sentiments have a central role in this process: “reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions” (1817, p.106). This view is classified as a sentimentalist theory of justice in opposition to rationalist theories (Frazer, 2010). The two previous chapters focus on the latter, which defends certain features of just societies grounded on current Western values derived from rational reflection. People‟s natural

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feelings and predispositions for action are not deeply analysed. However, Haidt, following Hume, claims that “moral reasoning does not cause moral judgment; rather, moral reasoning is usually a post hoc construction, generated after a judgment has been reached” (2001, p.834). Haidt says that moral intuitions based on emotions are superior to moral reason by saying that a series of experiments show that people insist with their ideas based on their emotions even when they do not have any rational reason to support them (Goya-Tocchetto, 2014, p.113).

Supposing that Haidt is at least partially right, it is possible to investigate the origins of people‟s feelings. Do they come mostly from human beings‟ biological development, from the way that their cultures have been developed, or from a combination of both? Here, this is investigated. However, considering that Haidt is not completely right, it can be claimed that individuals are also rational and this fact establishes some limits to the consideration of their sentiments in trying to identify the basis of people‟s ideas of justice. As explored in 5.2, if people simply followed their natural predispositions or their cultural tradition, they would keep reinforcing gender inequalities, prejudices against other races and homosexuals, and would not care about strangers. However, currently, even those who “benefit” from these social practices built throughout history are (in higher or lower degrees) against them, since rationality also has a place in people‟s understanding of justice.

Nevertheless, before exploring the impacts of rationality in people‟s understanding of justice, their feelings are investigated. The idea is roughly to identify to what extent Haidt‟s claim towards the priority of feelings over reason is correct. As Haidt, Bloom considers that “developmental psychology, supported by evolutionary biology and cultural anthropology, favors the view […] that some aspects of morality come naturally to us” (2013, p.5). Focusing most of his studies on babies and children, Bloom shows that “[o]ur natural endowments include […] some capacity to distinguish between kind and cruel actions” and to feel “empathy and compassion – suffering at the pain of those around us and the wish to make this pain go away” – “a rudimentary […] tendency to favor equal divisions of resources”, and “a rudimentary […] desire to see good actions rewarded and bad actions punished” (2013, p.5). In summary, what he says is that “certain moral foundations are not acquired through learning […]; they are instead the products of biological evolution” (2013, p.8).

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This understanding identifies some natural roots in people‟s practices related to justice, and therefore that not all of these practices are socially constructed. In this way, the first point explored here is to what extent the “natural endowments” mentioned above orient actions that are beyond self-protection. It seems that it is exactly when people, based on different motives, stop only protecting themselves and start taking others into consideration that the idea of justice emerges. Concerns towards others can be investigated in evolutionary/natural and in reflective/rational terms. The former, explained here, is related to certain behaviours‟ natural/instinctive orientation. The latter, investigated in 5.2, is related to conscious decisions taken by individuals.

The first reflection associates natural altruism, a type of altruism related to natural selection, with the interest in taking others into consideration. From this, by now, “[a]ltruistic behavior is defined, in the evolutionary sense, as all behavior that simultaneously involves a cost to the donor and a benefit to the recipient” (Goya-Tocchetto, 2014, 70). Opposing such an altruism, egoism is an attitude that implicates benefits for the agent and costs for the recipient. Regarding this, it is possible to expand this definition through imagining that some altruistic attitudes can involve short term costs to the donor but long term benefits to him/her.

Firstly, reflecting at the individual level, Alexander (1987) claims that an altruistic/beneficent individual, though having some costs, has more chance of spreading genes, since such an individual would be rewarded by the community and have more chance to find partners, and his/her attitude would help the success of the whole group and, as a consequence, his/her own success. The first reason for altruism is based on the direct advantages that an altruistic individual could have. In other words, it presents some advantages of altruistic over egoistic individuals in spreading their genes. The third reason deserves more reflection, since it is related to certain sacrifices for the group‟s good.

Regarding this third reason, several puzzles of Game Theory show that in a group interaction, the ideal schema for optimisation of individual‟s profit/advantage is one in which everyone else cooperates and he/she does not (Harrington Jr, 2009). In this scenario, egoistic individuals would have an advantage. This would make them more prone to survive than altruistic individuals. However, as soon as these egoistic individuals proliferate, their societies would be weaker than societies in which individuals, through cooperation, sacrifice part of their personal gains to favour the group. Thus, the latter societies have much more

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chance of surviving. The same happens in societies in which individuals care more about their offspring, since, mainly amongst primates, young individuals are very fragile and would die without extra care. Thus, individuals naturally programmed to dedicate themselves to their offspring have a better chance to perpetuate their genes. In the same way, in-group protection makes the group stronger and the perpetuation of genes is equally favoured.

It is, thus, being suggested that the feeling/propensity to act partially towards the other members of the community can be something natural in human beings, that is, it can have evolutionary explanations. In this way, sympathy and compassion (concepts defined below) can be rooted in such a development. However, it is also possible to say that people‟s rational skills allow them to learn that they should care about the others. Studies in primatology give interesting clues about the rise of this process. Fleck & De Waal (2002), through studying habits of food sharing amongst some primates as a broader system of mutual obligations that generates mutual benefits, defend the “reciprocity hypothesis” (Goya-Tocchetto, 2014, p.68).

In some sense, this claim is still strongly related with evolutionary advantages that make cooperative individuals more likely to transmit their genes. However, it is being said here that the most prone to survive are those individuals that have the capacity to learn that cooperation gives an advantage for them. Fleck and De Waal identify in these practices that a proto-social system based on “[prescriptive] rules that are generated when members of a group learn to recognize the contingencies between their own behavior and the behavior of others, are formed. The existence of such rules and, more significantly, of a set of expectations, essentially reflects a sense of social regularity, and may be a precursor to the human sense of justice.” (2002, p.9) In the same way, “proto-empathy” and “proto- sympathy” arise in this context, that is, a “proto-morality” (Goya-Tocchetto, 2014, p.67) Related to this, analysing small groups as hunter-gatherer communities, it is possible to identify, as a result of such cooperation, a reduction of material inequalities (Boehm, 1999).

It is possible to identify in these small communities the roots of an idea of justice through associating them with natural selection. However, these communities, though “egalitarian when it comes to relationships between adult males”, are “hierarchical otherwise: parents dominate their children and husbands control their wives”. Moreover, these “societies are hyperviolent – there‟s violence against women, violence between men competing for mates, and violence against rival groups” (Bloom, 2013, p.67). In addition, it is possible to say that

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rejecting malformed offspring is a common practice aligned with natural selection (Bloom, 2013, p.143-4). Harari (2012), observing the long journey of development of Homo Sapiens, agrees with these three claims. Thus, if human beings are partially naturally altruistic, they naturally also disrespect current basic principles of justice.

Moreover, apart from in-group practices against the idea of justice, it is even clearer that natural selection does not explain why individuals should care about those who belong to other groups. People‟s “natural reaction when meeting a stranger is not compassion. Strangers inspire fear and disgust and hatred” (Bloom, 2013, p.103). This claim is supported by Diamond‟s observation in the small-scale societies of Papua New Guinea: “to venture out of one‟s territory to meet [other] humans, even if they lived only a few miles away, was equivalent to suicide” (1992, p.229, Apud. Bloom, 2013, p.102-3). Bloom says that:

While the force that drives the evolution of morality toward kin is genetic overlap, and the force that drives morality toward the in-group is the logic of mutual benefit, the force that drives morality toward strangers is … nothing. (Bloom, 2013, p.177-8)

Thus, based on natural selection, individuals do not have reasons to care about unknown people. In this way, it is possible to identify that babies have rudimentary development of compassion, but “while we do see all sorts of spontaneous kindness by babies and young children – soothing, sharing, helping, and the like – these are directed toward family and friends” (Bloom, 2013, p.178-9). In this respect, if natural selection can be seen as the first source of morality, it is not enough.

Actually, respecting members who do not belong to in-group seems a practice that was not developed through an evolutionary process – the same can be said, for example, to the promotion of gender equality. In this way, individuals and societies achieve these practices after reflecting about the fairness of them. That is, such practices depend on rationality, a type of consciousness about equality that is beyond instinctive characteristics.

Though unfair, it is possible to understand that inequalities amongst men and women within the group, preferences towards healthier and attractive individuals and towards in-group members are based on natural selection. Firstly, if someone is programmed to protect his/her genes, putting more effort in protecting the healthier (or the attractive, those who look like

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they are healthier) offspring seems a correct attitude. Moreover, as discussed above, in-group protection has the same natural justification. However, there are two types of attitudes that are against the current ideas of justice and, at the same time, do not produce gains from a natural selection perspective. They are racism and homophobia.

Regarding racism, Bloom used to consider that natural selection provokes repugnance towards other races – or at least selective empathy only towards those of the same race (Bloom, 2013, p.108). However, from the perception that people raised in mixed-race environments do not develop such prejudices, Bloom concludes that racism has no relation with biological development. Actually, what individuals really protect are their in-group members (rejecting their out-group), not necessarily their own race (2013, p.109). Thus, according to him, racism is only based on cultural values conditions transmitted across generations.

If racism, though unnatural, can be associated with in-group protection that helps genes preservation, homophobic behaviour does not have even this justification. Actually, regarding individual advantage, homosexual men make it easier for heterosexual men find female partners. In this way, only women who want to spread their genes should be bothered by the existence of homosexual men (and men, by the existence of homosexual women). Regarding the collective advantage of enlarging the whole group, only female homosexuality should be condemned, since few men are enough to guarantee that a large group of women have children. From this reasoning, basically only lesbian practices should be disapproved of (Bloom, 2013, p.143-4).

It is being said that homophobic individuals have more biological disadvantages than advantages. While lots of feelings like (at least) small scale altruism are useful for individuals‟ and genes‟ survival, homophobia does not have the same effect either in individual, or in group levels. Thus, if there is an explanation grounded in people‟s nature, it has to be different. Currently, behaviour psychologists are finding the roots of homophobia in the feeling of disgust (Dasgupta et al, 2009; Inbar, Pizarro & Bloom, 2009). Thus, homophobia “is a biological accident. It just so happens that evolved systems that keep us away from parasites and poisons respond in a certain negative way to [homosexual] activity” (Bloom, 2013, p.153).

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However, as Bloom claims, the association of homophobia and disgust is only at the beginning of such a prejudice: “Over the course of history, this aversive reaction has been reinforced, directed, and sanctified by various cultural practices, including religion and law” (Bloom, 2013, p.153). Bloom actually claims that “assessment of gay people might be influenced by bad smell in the room, and this supports a certain theory of the relationship of disgust and morality […]. But it‟s hardly clear that this matters much when people interact with one another in real world” (2016, p.225). Thus, if there is a biological explanation, though accidental, for the historical prejudice against homosexuals, cultural practices seem to feed much more such a prejudice. This argument gains further support, of course, from the fact that at different periods in history (for example, ancient Greece), homosexuality was not the subject of moral disgust/disapproval.

Regarding this “dispute” between nature and culture related to homosexual relationships, Harari claims that the superiority of equal consideration over in-group protection does not have biological roots:

The handful of millennia separating the Agricultural Revolution from the appearance of cities, kingdoms and empires was not enough time to allow an instinct for mass cooperation to evolve.

[…]

While human evolution was crawling at its usual snail‟s pace, the human imagination was building astounding networks of mass cooperation, unlike any other ever seen on earth. (2012, p.115-6)

As already mentioned in 2.4, this is linked with the facts “that humans created imagined orders and devised scripts. These two inventions filled the gaps left by our biological inheritance” (Harari, 2012, p. 149).

Regarding this, it is important to highlight that, for Harari, “[t]he imagined orders sustaining these networks were neither neutral nor fair. They divided people into make-believe groups, arranged in a hierarchy. The upper levels enjoyed privileges and power, while the lower ones suffered from discrimination and oppression. Hammurabi‟s Code, for example, established a pecking order of superiors, commoners and slaves.” (2012, p.149)

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This thesis, on the other hand, believes that these facts helped people‟s development of their rationalities and reinforced a certain idea of justice explored in 5.2. However, certain cultural practices go against this ideal. In this way, such oppressions and prejudices mentioned above that still exist in the West simultaneously clash with the Western tradition which is based on rational ideas of equal liberty in the social sphere.