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Naturalizing Cruelty
By G. Randolph Mayes
Abstract: Cruelty is widely regarded to be a uniquely human trait. This follows from a standard definition
of cruelty as involving the deliberate infliction of suffering together with the empirical claim that humans
are unique in their ability to attribute suffering (or any mental state) to other creatures. In this paper I argue
that this way of thinking about cruelty is not optimum for the purposes of scientific inquiry. I suggest that
its intuitive appeal stems from our abhorrence of cruelty, and our corresponding desire to define cruelty in
such a way that it is almost always morally wrong. Scientifically speaking this is an arbitrary condition that
inhibits our attempt to study cruelty as a natural phenomenon. In this essay I propose a more fully
naturalized definition of cruelty, one that considerably expands the range of beings and behaviors that
might be conceived as cruel. This definition allows us to examine the evolutionary history and
neurobiology of cruelty, without requiring us to suppose a specific point in our evolutionary history
corresponding to specific structural or chemical changes in the human brain at which cruelty became
possible. It also expands the range of specifically human behaviors of which cruelty may reasonably be
predicated. As with any other term whose meaning is modified for used in a scientific vocabulary, one
might insist on the continuing importance of its ordinary usage. I argue that in this case the fully
naturalized meaning is adequate even for ordinary purposes and that no harm would result from permitting
it to replace the ordinary meaning.
1. Introduction
Most people think of cruelty as a uniquely human characteristic, though few see it as a
normal or healthy one. These few are notable, however. Nietzsche is famous for his
remarkable claim that “Almost everything we call ‘higher culture’ is based on the
spiritualization of cruelty.” Milgram’s infamous experiments showed that ordinary
human beings are easily persuaded to perform and rationalize cruel acts. More recently,
Philip Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment provided a purely situational model of the
shocking behavior of American military personnel at Abu Ghraib.
The suggestion that cruelty is a pedestrian human characteristic offends liberal
sensibilities. We can conceive of human beings as naturally egoistic, but not as naturally
sadistic. Thomas Hobbes, the philosopher of liberalism with perhaps the lowest regard for
human nature still not allow that normal humans might pursue the suffering of others for
its own sake: "That any man should take pleasure in other men's great harm, without
other end of his own, I do not conceive it possible." Even if we view cruelty as
something of which humans are uniquely capable, we tend to insist with Hobbes that
delight in the suffering of others is a monstrous aberration of human nature, not an
essential aspect of it.
But the nature and extent of cruelty in the world is ultimately an empirical matter, and
correct answers to empirical questions respect neither the limits of our imaginations nor
our moral sensibilities. If we are to understand cruelty in empirical terms we must
operate with a definition that satisfies the aims of natural science. Specifically, we must
operate with a definition that allows us the maximum flexibility to integrate evolutionary,
behavioral, and neurological evidence of cruelty into a unified picture of the
phenomenon. This aim is not facilitated by assuming a priori either that cruelty is a
uniquely human phenomenon, or that it is a perversion of human nature.
In this essay I argue that significant empirical work on cruelty will be impeded by a
working definition of cruelty that is inappropriately burdened by moral and preDarwinian intuitions about the uniqueness of man. I then propose a broader, more fully
naturalized definition that would allow us to predicate cruelty of non human animals and
normal human beings without risk of logical absurdity. I’ll also show that this definition
does no real violence to our moral intuitions, and that it should in fact help to advance our
understanding of morality, and to promote ethical behavior.
2. A word about definition
Philosophers who try to assist science with its conceptual problems are often met with
cold indifference, and this is at least partly because scientists doubt that philosophers
really understand how scientific inquiry works…. According to Socratic tradition
philosophical inquiry is fully constituted by the process of searching for the proper
definition of a term, a process that can be carried to completion from the comfort of a
good recliner. This, of course, is a perfectly useless concept of inquiry for natural
science, which requires us to interact with the world itself before we can know whether a
definition is of any real value.
Of course, the problem has never been that philosophers didn’t grasp the difference
between philosophy and science; they have long insisted on this difference as a way of
preserving the independence of their own discipline. The problem is more that to a man
with a hammer everything looks a lot like a nail. The philosopher’s hammer is logical
analysis, which means that we have a bias toward seeing problems as fundamentally
logical or conceptual in nature. Of course, science is loaded with problems that are at
least partly conceptual, but scientific progress often requires a lot of flexibility in how a
term is being used. Strong commitment to a particular definition because of its clarity or
intuitive appeal can be disastrous.
To simplify a historical example, a strong commitment to the definition of ‘earth’ as the
element which by its nature tends toward the center of the universe makes it almost
impossible to imagine that the earth moves about the sun. Of course, to unaided eyes it is
very plausible that the earth is a motionless body at the center of the universe, but it was
the definition of the element of which our planet is composed, together with a strong
moral sense that this is the proper place for the earth, that protected this view for
millennia. Similarly, I suggest that an a priori commitment to a morally satisfying
definition of cruelty is to be regarded with suspicion.
Like any philosopher worth his hammer I am suggesting here that the nature of cruelty is
partly a conceptual problem. However, I am not saying that it is essentially a conceptual
problem, nor even that scientific inquiry will be significantly aided by a more exacting
definition. Rather, what I am suggesting is that at this point research on cruelty will be
hampered by too restrictive a definition, especially one that has as its basis intuitions that
do not arise from scientific concerns.
3. Problems concerning the meaning cruelty
In a recent target article for Brain and Behavioral Sciences entitled “Cruelty’s rewards :
the gratifications of perpetrators and spectators,” Nell defines cruelty as follows:
Cruelty is the deliberate infliction of physical or psychological pain on other
living creatures, sometimes indifferently, but often with delight.1
Nell is clear from the beginning of his article that this definition in conjunction with the
empirical claim that humans are the only animals capable of attributing mental states to
other creatures implies that cruelty is a uniquely human phenomenon. The paper goes on
to argue on the basis of evolutionary, neurological and literary evidence that “cruelty is a
behavioral by-product of predation” that has conferred various survival benefits to its
practitioners. Nell takes his evolutionary account of cruelty to at least partially vindicate
the nativist view that “cruelty is perpetrated… by manifestly normal and decent people”
who have not in any way been socialized or trained to exhibit cruel behavior.2
Confusion about the meaning of cruelty is apparent, both within Nell’s paper, as well as a
large number of commentaries and criticisms contributed by an array of professionals,
some of whom explicitly call Nell’s definition into question, and others who make claims
that demonstrate a clear failure to grasp the way that Nell is using the term.
Confusions within Nell’s paper
In the section entitled “A taxonomy of cruelty” (p.212-213) Nell makes several
observations about cruelty and cruelty related phenomena.
(1) Nell claims that “punishment is cruel if its purpose is not to vanquish or disable the
victim, but to inflict pain.” In the context, it seems clear that Nell’s aim here is to
identify a proper subset of punishment behaviors that may be counted as cruel. The
difficulty here is that we normally understand punishment to involve the infliction of pain
by definition. This means that according to Nell’s original definition of cruelty all
punishments are cruel, not just a proper subset of them.
There are two plausible readings here:
(a) Nell is focusing on a particular manifestation of punishment behavior in which the
suffering of the victim is the end itself, rather than a means to some end. This
interpretation receives some support from Nell’s list of exclusions at the end of this
section: “These definitions of cruelty exclude pain that results from fighting, killing and
war, in which the goal is not to inflict pain but to cause the adversaries flight submission
or death, and also exclude pain that is a by-product of treatment intended to cure or heal
(p.213).”
While we might acknowledge actions whose sole purpose is to cause suffering as a
particularly pure form of cruelty, Nell can not consistently employ this distinction to
distinguish cruel behaviors from non cruel behaviors, since rational agents intend both
the means and the ends of their deliberate actions. Even pain inflicted as part of a cure is
deliberate. (It is not clear why Nell should begin by ruling out as cruel the pleasure one
might take in sterilizing the wound of an enemy whom one still feels a moral obligation
to help.)
(b) Nell is departing slightly from the ordinary definition of punishment and allowing for
the possibility of painless vanquishing or disablement. However, even when one
vanquishes or disables an individual as humanely as possible, the basic aim is to prevent
a person from achieving a strongly desired goal, which is certainly to administer a form
of psychological pain.
(2) In the same section Nell claims that “Whether or not the conditions for punishment
are met, an act is cruel if the perpetrator or the audience experiences physiological or
psychological arousal triggered by the victim’s pain” (p.213). We should note here that
the term “arousal” does not specifically relate to delight or indifference, the two
psychological conditions noted in Nell’s definition, but rather to a heightened alertness or
readiness to act. Beyond this, there are two other sources of confusion.
(a) According to the statement quoted above, an act will be cruel if it is not performed for
the actual purpose of inflicting pain, so long as any pain that does result is enjoyed.
(b) Although the title of Nell’s essay suggests that cruelty may be manifested as a
spectator behavior, Nell’s definition does not allow it.
I think the charitable interpretation here is that Nell is here conceiving of cruelty as a
psychological trait, rather than as an action. Of course, there is nothing absurd in this. It
is highly intuitive to describe a disposition to enjoy the suffering of others as cruel,
regardless of its provenance. However, this usage conflicts with Nell’s definition of
cruelty as a property of a deliberate action. We might try to preserve the action definition
as primary by defining an action as cruel if it triggers enjoyment in the perpetrator or a
spectator. However, this would have some unusual implications. For example, a bungled
rescue attempt that harms the intended beneficiary to the delight of a spectator would
count as cruel on this usage.
It is important to note here that we have not been criticizing Nell’s definition on the basis
that it is unintuitive or that it fails to present a set of necessary and sufficient conditions
for an act being cruel. Neither of these traditional philosophical criticisms is relevant to
the task of developing an operational definition of cruelty for the purpose of advancing a
research program. The point we are making here is that some of Nell’s own claims about
the nature of cruelty cast doubt concerning the meaning of his empirical claims.
Peer skepticism and confusion about the meaning of cruelty
Of the 23 scholars and scientists who participated in the open peer commentary to Nell’s
target article, several registered comments and criticisms that bear on the meaning of
cruelty. The noteworthy ones fall into two general categories: (1) claims that are openly
skeptical of Nell’s definition; (2) claims that implicitly assume a different definition.
(1) Explicit disagreement about the definition of “cruelty”
Implicit in the definition [of cruelty] is the notion that humans should be a bit more morally advanced
than sub-human primates or other animals. Because of his exclusion of … cruelty to behavior solely in
humans, [Nell] ignores the fact that the situations which he documents so well of cruelty in mankind
have strong parallels in other animals. (Dallman p. 227)
By focusing on intent as the basis for defining cruelty, serious forms of animal harm such as hoarding
are minimized because the perpetrator lacks clear intent to harm. (Herzog & Arluke p. 230)
May we need a better taxonomy of cruelty? Can one have cruelty without the reflective desire to
impart suffering? If “intention to inflict pain” is critical for the concept, how can one evaluate and
defend knowledge derived from animals? … Is a critical crux of cruelty that animalian … predatory
systems generate primal intentions that are integrally linked to aroused action tendencies? (Panksepp p.
234)
My one quibble with Nell concerns [his restriction of] cruelty to hominids, starting with Homo
erectus…. I would hesitate to deny a priori the capacity for cruelty in intelligent predator species such
as orcas. Almost every claim for human behavioral uniqueness has bitten ethological dust. (van den
Berghe p. 245)
With slightly different emphases all of these remarks express doubts about the scientific
merit of an inquiry that defines a phenomenon so narrowly that it can not be discovered
to exist in more than one species.
(2) Empirical claims based on a different definition of “cruelty”
It is not clear whether a cat plays with a mouse partially in order to savor the distress of the victim, or
merely since it is an optimally challenging game. (Ainslie p. 224)
Cruelty is evident in the play and interactions of quite small children….Once they can coordinate
intentional movements, infants and toddlers show… they are readily capable of inflicting pain on
others. (Kraemer p. 233)
I suggest that cruelty is linked to coalitional aggression and same species killing, and probably goes
back 7 million years or more to a common ancestor with chimpanzees. (Potts p. 238)
The “territorial warfare” of chimpanzee males is marked by continued beating, biting, and pounding
that do not always end with the death of the victim…. If these are markers of cruelty, then
chimpanzees … seem to show them. (Schuster p. 241)
Under Nell’s definition, these remarks are either nonsensical or they implausibly attribute
advanced cognitive capacities to cats, small children, ancestral hominids and
chimpanzees. The more charitable reading is that they simply express a disposition to
use the term in such a way that a broader range of behaviors may be meaningfully
described as cruel.
4. A conventionalist response
Regarding both sets of comments above one might respond that the issues raised are
entirely conventional. From a logical point of view it simply does not matter whether we
restrict the term “cruelty” to the deliberate infliction of suffering or broaden its scope and
then go on to distinguish between deliberate and non deliberate forms of cruelty. This is
certainly true. The problem is that this is not a purely logical matter. What productive
science requires of linguistic conventions is not only conceptual clarity but theoretical
fertility. Whether or not a linguistic convention will prove fertile is not something that
we can know a priori, but we can be reasonably assured that conventions that researchers
in the field regard as cumbersome, unintuitive, idiosyncratic, or burdened with
unnecessary assumptions will have a prophylactic effect.
Consider another highly simplified episode in the history of science. In classical physics
a wave is by definition a disturbance in some medium: air, water, a string, etc. Under this
definition, it is obviously nonsensical to speak of a wave being propagated through a
vacuum. By the mid 1800’s light had long been known to display properties typical of
waves, and it was presumed to propagate through an as yet undetected medium dubbed
the luminiferous aether. But in 1887 Michelson and Morley began conducting
experiments which, repeated with increasing sophistication by others, ultimately satisfied
the physics community that the aether does not exist. Light, however, was not stripped of
its wave status; rather the definition of a wave was implicitly altered so as to permit the
existence of mediumless waves. What was once believed to be a general characteristic of
waves is now captured by the narrower concept “mechanical wave”.
From a purely logical point of view, this linguistic convention was no more necessary
than the alternative. Physicists could have continued to restrict the term “wave” to
disturbances in a medium and simply adopted a different term to describe the propagation
of light. But it would be wrong to conclude that this would have had no material
significance for the future of physics. Although the Michelson-Morley experiments are
usually represented as definitive, the truth is that the search for the aether continued on a
limited basis for a very long time afterwards largely on the strength of classical intuitions
about the nature of waves. Permitting light to be described non paradoxically as a wave
was tantamount to denying the validity of classical intuitions. We simply do not know the
alternative history of physics under linguistic conventions that remained more conducive
to their expression.
Another example which more closely parallels our interest in cruelty is the concept of
rape. Although rape is defined in different ways for different purposes, it is ordinarily
understood to mean forced sexual copulation. Like cruelty, rape is widely regarded as a
uniquely human phenomenon. This is partly because rape is a crime, but it is also
because we make a distinction between human and brute uses of force. The brute use of
force occurs without any awareness or concern about the will or the interests of the
victim; brute force is just the force of nature. A uniquely human use of force, on the
other hand, may be thought to depend on an assailant’s understanding that the victim has
desires and interests that are contrary to what he is being forced to do.
Do nonhuman animals commit rape? This seems like an empirical question, yet if we
assume that rape depends on an essentially human use of force, an affirmative answer is
ruled out by definition. Again, there are no purely logical reasons why we should not
rule it out by definition. Ethological descriptions of rape-like behavior in a variety of
species including spiders, dolphins, chimpanzees and elephants do not suffer a loss of
content if we simply speak of them as engaging in (brute) forced copulation rather than
rape. Yet when we constrain the use of the term ‘rape’ so that it logically cannot be
applied to non human behavior we encourage the assumption that rape in humans and
forcible copulation in non humans are essentially different phenomena requiring different
explanations.
Of course, our folk-psychological intuitions tell us that they must have different
explanations: The correct causal account of human rape behavior will make essential
reference to the rapist’s beliefs about the desires of his victim, beliefs that spiders are
simply incapable of having. But even if we assume that folk psychology necessarily
trumps any conflicting evolutionary or neurological accounts of rape, this view is
problematic. For example, it rules out the possibility that most human rape behavior
results from the absence of such beliefs or their pathological failure to disinhibit a rapist
from his actions.
The conventionalist response to the definition of cruelty, then, simply fails to take into
account the fact that definitions of terms do have a causal effect on the direction of
research and the types of explanations we are inclined to favor. Since we can not know
prior to research which of these will prove most fertile it is reasonable to avoid
definitions that are unnecessarily restrictive in the early phases of naturalization.
5. A word about naturalization
Strictly speaking, to naturalize a term is to purge its definition of irreducibly normative,
non natural and supernatural concepts. There are many different reasons that people
oppose naturalization, but basically just one reason to support it and that is to remove
obstacles to scientific inquiry. If, for example, we insist on defining human rationality in
irreducibly normative terms and describing rational thought and behavior in terms of the
activity of a mental substance that is immune to causal influences, then there can be no
scientific theory of human rationality. On the other hand if we think of rationality as an
evolutionary adaptation and rational thought and behavior in terms of the activity of the
brain, then a route to such a theory may exist.
There is actually quite a bit more to naturalization than ridding the vocabulary of
empirically inscrutable terminology, however. Definitions that appear to be fully
naturalistic can still have a stifling effect on scientific inquiry. Nell’s definition of
cruelty, for example, does not explicitly employ irreducibly normative concepts, and so
in that sense it is already fully naturalized. However, this definition may still be regarded
as having been fixed by our normative beliefs.
To see what I mean, let’s pause to consider a happier concept that involves many of the
same considerations we are now making with respect to cruelty. “Altruism” is ordinarily
defined as “unselfish devotion to the welfare of others.” According to this definition, a
person who receives a benefit from helping another is not acting altruistically. But
because it is not clear whether there are any altruistic acts on this definition- most of us at
least get the benefit of a good feeling from helping another individual- we might suggest
modifying it to permit at least some degree of personal benefit. For example we might
define an altruistic act as one in which the benefit received is less than the benefit
bestowed. Even though the common definition is not irreducibly normative, our reasons
for suggesting this modification would be to bring the term “altruism” more into
conformity with a naturalistic view of human motivation. To bring it more in accord with
a naturalist view of non human motivation, we might also suggest dropping the
requirement that altruism be intentional or that it involve the capacity to consider the
welfare of another individual.
Because altruism is ordinarily defined so that only humans can be conceived as engaging
in altruistic acts, biologists who study apparently self-sacrificing behavior in non human
animals must, on pain of absurdity, distinguished between psychological and biological
altruism. This latter concept involves no reference to intentionality and it construes
‘welfare’ narrowly in terms of a contribution to reproductive fitness. Although this
distinction has been fertile insofar as it has created a logical space in which to develop an
understanding of animal self-sacrifice, it also reinforces the idea that biological altruism
is not ‘really’ altruism; that human altruism is something entirely different, requiring a
fundamentally different explanatory framework.
It is possible that the human capacity for altruism and cruelty has no connection
whatsoever to our evolutionary history; that the violent and self-sacrificing behavior of
our non human ancestors bears only a superficial resemblance and has no explanatory
significance for real cruelty and altruism. But from a naturalistic point of view this seems
very unlikely. Rather, it seems far more likely that our need to insist on a categorical
distinction between brute and human behavior stems from fundamentally moral
intuitions: cruelty is always evil; altruism is always good; since animals are not proper
subjects of moral evaluation it follows that they are capable of neither.
In general, then, the task of naturalization is not only to produce definitions that make
scientific inquiry possible, but to be sure that they serve scientifically plausible
assumptions rather than those that originate from and tend to reinforce the idea that
certain features of the world are simply not susceptible to scientific explanation.
6. Ordinary language analyses of cruelty
Although Nell’s definition of cruelty results in the confusions noted above, we should
note clearly that these problems are not due to anything odd or tendentious in his use of
the term. Nell’s definition is roughly that which is offered by the Oxford English
Dictionary: “... the disposition to inflict suffering; delight in or indifference to the pain or
misery of others…”
While the concept of cruelty has received scant attention in contemporary analytic
philosophy, one satisfying exception to this is John Kekes’ (1996) article “Cruelty and
Liberalism.” In this article Kekes criticizes philosophers like Richard Rorty and Judith
Schklar for defining a liberal as someone who abhors cruelty. According to Rorty and
Schklar a liberal is someone “who believes that cruelty is the worst thing we do.” Kekes
argues that this is either a vacuous slogan, or manifestly false under any acceptable
definition of cruelty. Although this argument will not concern us here, Kekes’ analysis
of cruelty is instructive.
Kekes’ approach to the analysis of cruelty follows the basic unwritten guidelines of
ordinary language philosophy, which is to refine and clarify while doing as little violence
as possible to ordinary intuitions. So, for example, Kekes is critical of the following
definition proposed by Schklar on the basis of it’s unintuitive implications:
[Cruelty is]… the deliberate infliction of physical and, secondarily, emotional pain
upon a weaker person or group by a stronger person or group in order to achieve
some end, tangible or intangible, of the latter.
Why, Kekes asks, should weak people be incapable of cruelty? Why should we regard
doctors, dentists and dieticians (for whom the infliction of pain is deliberate but not
essential to their goals) as cruel? Kekes finds both of these implications to be absurd. It
is clear in the context of the article that he see’s Schklar’s definition as having been
concocted for the purpose of justifying liberal outrage at cruel behavior.
Kekes is equally critical of a different take on cruelty represented in the work of Philip
Hallie (1969). According to Hallie, cruelty has nothing essentially to do with the
perpetrator’s state of mind; it is simply the “activity of hurting sentient beings.” Hallie’s
consequentialist definition would allow us to describe the unintended harms of nature,
social institutions and human agents as cruel, and Kekes dismisses it for this reason
alone.
Keke’s argues that any proposed definition must capture the essential aspects of the OED
definition (1 and 2 below) while correcting two of its omissions (3 and 4 below).
1. Cruelty requires both an agent and a victim.
2. Cruelty is a disposition to inflict pain and suffering.
3. Cruelty requires the infliction of pain and suffering significant enough to pose a
threat to the agency of the victim.
4. Cruelty requires that the infliction of pain be unjustified or excessive.
Keke’s own definition satisfies these criteria nicely:
Cruelty is the disposition of human agents to take delight in or be indifferent to the
serious and unjustified suffering their actions cause to their victims. (p.838)
What Kekes does not appear to appreciate, however, is that both his criteria and his
definition are no more intuitively plausible that the definitions he rejects. For example:
1. Why would we not count as cruel, a person who enjoys the suffering of others,
but who has no disposition to cause it?
2. Why would we define cruelty in such a way that only beings capable of agency
(i.e., humans) may be victims of cruelty?
3. Why should cruelty be restricted to serious and unjustified suffering? Do we
know that the enjoyment of minor or justified suffering is an entirely different
psychological phenomenon?
The point is not that there is still something fundamentally wrong with Keke’s analysis.
Rather, it is that, like most philosophically interesting concepts, there just is no analysis
that is going to capture all of our ordinary intuitions while offending none. If, like
Schklar and Rorty, you want a term that will stand for what liberals hate most, i.e., the
exploitation of the poor by the rich and powerful, the term ‘cruelty’ seems as apt as any.
If, like Hallie, you want a term that stands for all of the preventable pain and suffering in
the world that we excuse simply because no one intends it, then ‘cruelty’ can surely serve
that laudable goal as well. If, like Kekes, you simply wish to block the tendentious
appropriation of ordinary terms, then it is certainly helpful to remind us how the term
“cruelty” is used in the majority of cases so that we are not taken in by arguments that
trade on ambiguities.
The definitions considered above have at least one thing in common and that is that they
are inspired by fundamentally moral concerns. The definitions themselves contain no
irreducibly moral language, but they all aim to connect the strongly negative moral
feelings the term “cruelty’ elicits from us with a certain range of phenomena. This aim
contrasts with the current project, which is not to justify a set of moral intuitions, but to
explain a range of behavior. In the next section I will argue that Nell’s definition does
not lend itself to his naturalistic project of explaining cruelty and that this is because it is
rooted in fundamentally moral intuitions.
7. Naturalizing cruelty
As we have seen, Nell begins his attempt to contribute to an empirical theory of cruelty
by accepting something close to the OED definition. In response to some of the concerns
noted in section 3 above, Nell generally insists that this definition is commensurate with
his explanatory aims. In fact, he clarifies the original definition in a way that makes
cruelty by non human animals very difficult to imagine. In discussing van den Berghe’s
and other’s suspicions that cruelty is not a uniquely human trait, Nell writes:
I am not persuaded. The question is whether the intentionality that is evident in these
and other examples …. amounts to a theory of mind that enables these demonic males
to not only formulate an intention to inflict pain, but to do so because that pain would
cause the victim to suffer. (p.247)
Although it is not clear what Nell means when he speaks of pain causing suffering, his
point seems to be this: We may be able to justify attributing a certain rudimentary form
of deliberate action to chimpanzees, even the deliberate desire to cause injury to another
being. But we have no basis for explaining this behavior as the result of the chimp’s
intention to provide another being with a certain set of experiences, nor its ability to
desire that its own actions should cause the being to have these experiences.
So Nell seems to assume that cruelty can be meaningfully predicated only of a being that
(a) possesses a theory of mind (i.e., one that is capable of understanding the behavior of
other beings by attributing mental states to them) and (b) whose own behavior requires
explanation in terms of its disposition to both desire and cause certain types of mental
states to occur in other beings.
Additionally, as noted in section 3 above, Nell treats the psychological response to a
victim’s suffering as a criterion. Specifically, while he does not treat deliberate inflictions
of suffering as cruel when they are not specifically motivated by the desire to produce
suffering (i.e., as with self defense or surgery), he counts any deliberate infliction of
suffering as cruel if it is followed by pleasure or indifference to that suffering.
While Nell does not himself provide a definition that incorporates all of these necessary
features of cruelty, I suggest something like this is close to what Nell has in mind:
Cruelty is any deliberate action that (a) is specifically motivated by the desire to
produce physical or psychological suffering; or (b) causes one or more beings to take
pleasure in or be indifferent to the suffering caused by that action.
This definition captures some important features of cruelty according to Nell.
1. Disciplinary punishment is cruel insofar as it necessarily involves the infliction of
pain.
2. An action is not cruel, even if the pain is caused deliberately, it it is not
specifically motivated by the desire to cause pain. (In counterfactual terms: all
things being equal, the agent would choose to achieve the goal of the action
without causing pain if such an option were available.)
3. Pleasure or indifference to perceived suffering is a manifestation of cruelty, even
when the action is not specifically motivated to cause suffering.
We will now examine three aspects of Nell’s definition that seem to be most questionable
from a naturalistic point of view: I will call these (1) the causal condition, (2) the
deliberateness condition and (3) the disjunctive condition (of pleasure in or indifference
to the suffering of others)
The causal condition
Nell’s definition treats cruelty as a property of actions that cause suffering. We noted in
section 3 that this does not comport well with his view that cruelty may be exemplified in
the reaction of causally uninvolved spectators, and we suggested there that Nell may at
least sometimes be thinking of cruelty as a behavioral disposition rather than an action.
Ordinary language supports both uses of the term. However, as Kekes notes, the
attribution of cruelty to actions is best regarded as derivative. “To say that an action is
cruel is to say that it is the kind of action that would be performed by a cruel agent…”3
Although scientific aims permit us to disregard ordinary usage to some extent, in this
case it is not advisable, for our theoretical starting point is that cruelty is a property with
explanatory significance; we begin from the assumption that some kinds of actions can
be understood as the result of the cruelty of the creatures that perform them. A scientific
theory of cruelty should attempt to identify the evolutionary history that has resulted in
neurobiological and psychological characteristics enabling creatures to act in a particular
manner. Indeed, this is precisely what Nell himself aims at.
If a scientific theory of cruelty is to break with ordinary usage, then, it should do so by
actually avoiding the derivative use of cruelty as property of actions. Actions that
promote suffering should not be defined as cruel, but simply explained, when possible, as
a result of cruelty. The main reason for this is that the purpose of any scientific theory is
to unify disparate phenomena. Actions that cause suffering and pleasurable reactions to
suffering are distinct phenomena, but both may be plausibly explained as the result of
cruelty; i.e., we may reasonably defeasibly assume that the same basic neurobiological
properties that permit us to cause suffering also permit us to enjoy it. Even if this
assumption turns out to be wrong, it is more sensible than beginning with a definition that
makes it difficult to conceive of pleasurable reactions to suffering as cruel.
Nell’s own theory of cruelty as the behavioral byproduct of predation is entirely
compatible with speaking of cruelty as a property of agents, rather than actions. If,
however, he were to insist on representing cruelty as a property of deliberate actions, he
could represent pleasurable reactions to suffering in a derivative sense, and only insofar
as they result from suffering that is caused by an agent. So, for example, Nell’s
definition would not permit us to represent as cruel a delighted reaction to the accidental
or purely natural misfortune of others.
The deliberateness condition
Nell’s requirement that cruelty be deliberate or intentional is susceptible to the points we
made above, since it awkwardly constrains the cruelty of spectators to suffering that it is
caused by the deliberate action of agents. But the deliberateness condition is problematic
for other reasons as well. In discussing these problems I am going to speak of cruelty
primarily as a property of agents, and only derivatively as a property of actions, as I
believe even Nell’s own views finds more satisfactory expression on this way of
speaking.
First, recall that, according to Nell, a cruel action is not just a deliberate action that gives
rise to suffering, but rather one whose purpose is to cause suffering. To appreciate the
significance of this requirement, consider two brothers, Seth and Cyrus, both of whom
derive immense pleasure from performing actions that hurt others in any number of ways.
The difference between them is this. While Seth immensely enjoys doing things that hurt
people, he maximizes his pleasure by not reflecting on the suffering of his victims.
Because Seth is not a particularly reflective individual, this requirement is something he
can easily satisfy. However, it is possible for some people (e.g., his mother) to cause him
to reflect on the suffering his actions cause and doing so makes him feel badly for them.
Cyrus, on the other hand, is always keenly aware of the suffering he is causing, and his
pleasure actually depends on it. Indeed, because of the exertion and danger involved in
harming people, Cyrus would not be motivated to do so if he could not anticipate their
actual suffering.
We may regard Seth and Cyrus as caricatures, but do note that the properties they possess
are just extreme versions of normal human traits. For example, we exemplify our own
Sethness when the enjoyment we derive from winning a competition is diminished upon
consideration of the pain our competitors experience as a result, something we normally
find it easy to ignore. We exemplify our Cyrusness when we feel disappointed at our
victim’s failure to register pain, or when they express something entirely inappropriate,
like compassion for or genuine amusement at our sense of accomplishment in having
defeated them.
According to Nell’s definition, only Cyrus’ actions satisfy the conditions of cruelty.
However, I think most readers will agree that ordinary usage easily permits us to describe
both Seth and Cyrus as cruel individuals. I have presented this example to a number of
people and few hesitate to describe Cyrus as cruel. Many express the belief that Seth is
crueler than Cyrus, and this for the very reason that Seth enjoys the suffering itself.
Interestingly, however, this intuition is typically supported by the more fundamental
intuition that Seth is the more evil of the two brothers. But, of course, it would not
contradict ordinary usage to allow that the brothers are equally cruel, even if we were to
evaluate them differently on moral grounds.
The point here is not that Nell’s definition fails to capture ordinary usage, since our
strong tendency to let moral considerations inform our ordinary intuitions guarantees that
no naturalistic definition will succeed in this aim. The point is that neither ordinary usage
nor naturalistic considerations counsel drawing a sharp line between Seth and Cyrus.
When we treat cruelty primarily as a property of agents and only derivatively as a
property of actions, then we have no prior reason to think that in developing a scientific
theory of cruelty we should assume that there is a categorical difference between
individuals who both get pleasure from doing harm to others, but whose pleasures can be
intensified and diminished in different ways.
The second problem with Nell’s definition is that it seems to be grounded in something
like the principle of double-effect. According to this principle there is an important
distinction between the known side effects of an action and its intended consequences.
So, for example, if the only way you can see to relieve a person’s suffering is to
administer what you know to be a lethal dose of morphine, the principle holds that it is
possible (and morally permissible) to do so with the intention of relieving the suffering,
but without the intention to kill. This principle is, of course, highly controversial.
The reason Nell’s definition seems to depend on something like the principle of doubleeffect is that he insists that there is an important distinction between an action in which
the goal is pain and suffering and one in which “the goal is not to inflict pain, but to cause
the adversary’s flight, submission, or death….and …pain that is a by-product of
treatment intended to cure or heal.” 4 For Nell, actions that meet these conditions are
excluded from the definition of cruelty. (We preserved this feature of Nell’s view in
condition (a) of the definition provided above, requiring that a cruel action be
“specifically motivated” to cause suffering.) But what is the basis of this exclusion?
Why should we classify only deliberate actions in which suffering is the primary goal are
cruel rather than a broader class of deliberate actions in which suffering is not the
primary goal, but no less the result of informed deliberate action?
I think that the most plausible answer to this question is that it comports with certain
moral intuitions. Many would agree that an action that is specifically motivated to cause
harm is less vile than an action that is known to cause such harm, but which is
specifically motivated to bestow some benefit. But, as we just noted, a naturalistic theory
of cruelty should not be built upon moral intuitions. We have no good empirical basis for
assuming that the neurobiological mechanism that permits us to cause suffering for our
pleasure is distinct from the one that allows us to cause suffering for the purpose of
repelling an intruder, cleaning a wound, or punishing a child for misbehavior. It may
even be that a willingness to cause injury for personal benefit is what made it possible to
inflict suffering for the benefit of others.
Finally, a major problem with the deliberateness requirement is that it seems to require us
to understand cruelty in terms of folk psychological concepts which may ultimately have
little explanatory significance for evolutionary neuroscience. In other words, it
presupposes the incorrectness of the eliminativist position, according to which beliefs and
desires simply are not natural kinds, and will ultimately play no explanatory role in a
completed neuroscience.
One might argue that Nell’s requirement depends only on an agent’s possessing a theory
of mind, i.e., its ability to grasp the behavior of other beings by attributing beliefs, desires
and other internal mental states to them, which does not strictly entail that beliefs and
desires are to be given a realistic interpretation in the theory of cruelty itself. However,
this is at odd’s with Nell’s own requirement (noted above) that the agent acts “because
that pain would cause the victim to suffer”. This amounts to requiring that the agent not
only possess a theory of mind, but that the agent’s actions be best explained in terms of a
theory of mind. At any rate, it is hard to see why anyone who is skeptical of the ultimate
explanatory significance of folk psychological concepts would insist that cruelty depends
on an ability to employ them. Absent this requirement it is more plausible to assume that
a theory of mind simply enhances the efficiency and sophistication of a cruelty-enabled
being.
Finally, it is worth noting that Nell’s requirement that the agent be motivated by the
victims suffering seems to imply that a cruelty-enabled being must be capable of selfconscious suffering, i.e., not only of suffering itself, but of knowing that it is a being that
suffers. In the absence of this assumption we would lack an explanation of the agent’s
desire to place other beings in this state. This degree of self consciousness goes quite a
bit beyond the simple requirement that the agent possess a theory of mind. For a being
that is capable of explaining the behavior of others in intentional terms, may in fact lack
any concept of itself as a being to which such explanations apply.5
The disjunctive condition
Nell accepts the OED definition of cruelty as requiring that an agent take pleasure in or
be indifferent to the suffering of its victims. Generally speaking, disjunctive meanings
are not conducive to scientific aims. For example, we should not expect a unified
scientific theory of flight if we define “flight” as “a passing through the air or through
empty space”. This conforms to ordinary usage, but the physics of movement through a
vacuum and movement through a medium like air are entirely distinct.
Nell adopts the disjunctive definition, not out of respect for ordinary usage, but because
he sees cruelty in terms of “a continuum ranging from instrumental cruelty, marked by
the perpetrator’s emotional coldness and distance from the victim, to expressive or
affective cruelty, marked by the perpetrator’s escalating arousal” (p. 213). Unfortunately,
not all continua are scientifically interesting. Similarly, we could say that flight occurs
on a continuum ranging from movement through empty space to movement through a
solid. But this does not mean that it makes sense to look for single unified explanation
for how an object moves through any kind of medium.
In fact, however, there is a psychological principle that links pleasure and indifference,
viz, the principle of habituation, which Nell cites: “Cruel acts arouse strong positive or
negative emotions in the perpetrator and the audience, although habituation and
instrumentality may attenuate them.” (p. 213). So it seems clear that Nell adopts the
disjunctive condition on the basis of a particular view about the origin of indifference,
i.e., that it results from habituation to an initially arousing stimulus.
The problem here is that this is just one way in which indifference may occur. My basic
indifference to the suffering of millions of sick and starving people in third world
countries (relative, say, to my extreme anxiety about the comparatively minor sufferings
of my loved ones) is not the result of habituation to an initially arousing stimulus. Most
human beings simply do not ordinarily have a strong emotional response to the pain or
pleasure of people with whom they have (or can imagine) no practical connection.
Even when a strong practical connection does exist, indifference is far more typically the
result of habituation to feelings of sympathy, horror or disgust. Neither the indifference
of a civil war surgeon, nor necessarily even that of a Nazi war criminal are best explained
as the result of habituation to pleasure in the suffering of their respective charges. This is
a fact that Nell accommodates in a second disjunctive condition: “Cruel acts arouse
strong positive or negative emotions…” in the quotation above. However, if Nell intends
positive, negative and indifferent emotional responses to be subsumed within the
definition of cruelty, then he is has effectively defined cruelty as any deliberate infliction
of suffering, regardless of the emotional response of the perpetrator. This is not
necessarily an absurd result, but since a negative emotional response typically reduces the
frequency of the action that gives rise to it, this definition no longer construes cruelty as a
trait that would explain why certain individuals are more likely to cause other beings to
suffer.
Indifference to suffering may, of course, be pathological. For example, Antisocial
Personality Disorder as defined in DSM-IV typically involves extreme egocentricity and a
total disregard for the feelings of others. The etiology of this kind of indifference
probably has nothing to do with normal habituation processes. But, by the same token, it
may have nothing to do with normal human cruelty at all. Sociopathic indifference to the
feelings of others is presumed to be the result of some brain dysfunction; ordinary
indifference is the result of normal, non pathological brain processes.
Hence, if indifference to suffering is to be subsumed within a Nell-type definition of
cruelty it must be narrowly construed as indifference resulting from habituation to an
initially pleasurable response. However, this effectively means that indifference need not
be mentioned at all in the definition, since it is the initial pleasure response that explains
the capacity for cruel behavior. Since indifference itself has no unique explanatory value,
I suggest that the intuitive basis for incorporating it into a definition of cruelty is mostly
moral in nature. Because both pleasure and indifference to suffering are morally
abhorrent, we naturally assume that they must both figure essentially in our conception of
cruelty.
8. Desiderata for a definition of cruelty
On the basis of the above considerations, I suggest that scientific progress in our
understanding of cruelty is most likely to be advanced by a definition that is consistent
with the following claims.
1. Cruelty should not be regarded primarily as a kind of action. Rather, it should be
construed as a behavioral or psychological disposition to be explained in historical and
structural terms by evolutionary science and neuroscience respectively.
2. A creature’s capacity for cruelty should not be essentially tied to its ability or
willingness to cause suffering, since the disposition to enjoy suffering caused by others
and the disposition to enjoy suffering caused by ones self are both reasonably construed
as a manifestation of the same basic trait.
3. Cruelty should not be construed as requiring an agent to grasp the subjective suffering
of another living creature, since the pleasure derived from observable signs of injury to
living creatures would is the real phenomenon of interest, and this pleasure may
sometimes be optimized by the actual failure to reflect on a victim’s suffering. This
means that cruelty may be legitimately (i.e., either truly or falsely, but not nonsensically)
predicated of non humans creatures.
4. Cruelty should be defined in terms of psychological dispositions (e.g. pleasure) or
neurological pathways (e.g., dopaminergic responses) that reward and reinforce cruel
behavior. Specifically, cruelty should not be tied in any essential way to psychological
indifference, since indifference has multiple causally unrelated origins and little if any
explanatory significance.
9. A naturalized definition of cruelty
In light of the above I propose the following alternative definition of cruelty for scientific
purposes.
Cruelty is a creature’s disposition to be rewarded by the perception of injury.
The terms and implications of this definition may be clarified as follows:
1. A creature is any living thing. This definition might be expanded to include non
living entities like robots depending on future developments in artificial
intelligence. (Since the majority of living things lack any power perception, most
creatures will have no capacity for cruelty on this definition.)
2. A disposition is a tendency toward a certain form of behavior. It implies no
particular physical mechanism. Dispositions is an inherently quantitative concept
but it implies no particular measurement operation.
3. A reward is any external object or event that acts to positively reinforce a
creature’s behavior. In the case of human cruelty, the perception of injury is a
reward which positively reinforces a human’s tendency to experience and/or
cause injury. A creature may be rewarded by injuries caused by other creatures.
4. The perception of injury may range from the actual feeling of pain, to visual,
auditory or tactile experience indicating injury to oneself or others. The
perception of injury is distinct from injury itself. This implies the following:
a. The false perception of injury may act as a reward, since the psychological
benefit of injuring a creature occurs even though the actual injury does
not.
b. Unperceived injury from which a creature in fact benefits (e.g., the death
of another creature competing for a limited food supply) does not activate
the creature’s reward system and does not affect cruelty.
c. The perception of injury is cognitively distinct from the reception of injury
images or information. Perception of injury implies that the creature’s
brain has interpreted injury information as a reliable indicator of the
external world. The reception of injury information, which may occur in
humans through dreams, imagination, and cinematic or literary depictions
of injury, does not imply realistic interpretation. Scientific study of the
effects of the latter on the brain reward system must ultimately determine
whether the definition of cruelty should be expanded beyond injury
perception to include certain non veridical forms of injury image
reception.
5. An injury is any form of physical or emotional harm to a creature, including
oneself. Pain is subsumed as harm, even when no physical damage occurs. This
definition might be expanded to include harm done to non sentient beings (like
trees or works of art) depending on what neuroscience reveals about the way the
brain’s reward system responds to harms of this kind.
10. Impact of this definition on scientific research and ordinary language
It should be clear that the proposed definition meets all the criteria specified in section
(8). It is, of course, inconsistent with any definition that limits cruelty to a narrower
range of behaviors. For example, it is at odds with Kekes’ definition insofar as the latter
explicitly restricts cruelty to (1) human agents, (2) a disposition for the agent to take
pleasure in the suffering the agent himself causes, and (3) the enjoyment of serious and
unjustified suffering. It is also inconsistent with Nell’s definition insofar as the latter
explicitly restricts cruelty to creatures with mental states like beliefs and intentions and
creatures capable of attributing mental states to other beings. The proposed definition
also does not follow Nell in allowing psychological indifference to be a criterion of
cruelty, though it is not inconsistent with the possibility that habituated indifference is an
indicator of cruelty.
For the most part, however, the proposed definition is simply more general. Almost any
form of behavior that would count as cruel under Kekes’ or Nell’s definitions will count
as cruel under the proposed definition as well. On the proposed definition the faculties
that human beings use to perpetrate and enjoy injury differs from those of other beings
mainly insofar as they are more effective for achieving human goals.
As we noted in section (3) above, much peer criticism of Nell’s target article was
semantic in nature. Our proposed definition would allow Nell’s own empirical theory to
be expressed in a manner that would focus the scientific debate on empirical and
methodological issues. Nell’s view that human cruelty is the evolutionary by-product of
the rewards of both predation and intraspecific aggression in our non human ancestors
ultimately finds clearer expression in a simple distinction between human and non human
cruelty and relieves him of the mental gymnastics required to define cruelty in such a
way that it plausibly applies to one and only one species.
We noted in section (5) that scientists now routinely distinguish between biological and
psychological altruism, and that it is widely assumed that biological altruism, which
involves no specific intention to suffer for the benefit of others, is almost certainly an
evolutionary precursor to psychological altruism which ordinarily does involve this
intention. (It is worth noting in this connection that altruism may, under our definition,
be partially characterized as cruelty to oneself.) Using the term ‘altruism’ to apply to
both the behavior of humans and non humans alike does not in any way obscure the fact
that there is an important difference between biological and psychological altruism.
Evolutionary biologists and neuroscientist are fully aware that we do not have a
satisfactory scientific theory of altruism in the absence of a well-articulated evolutionary
mechanism by which the latter may arise from the former. (Presumably this mechanism
corresponds to the mechanism by which brains that can not form intentions evolve into
brains that can.)
By the same token, then, we may help ourselves to a distinction between biological and
human cruelty. With Nell, Kekes and others we note an important difference between an
ability to cause and be rewarded by the perception of injury, on the one hand, and the
ability to intend for an individual to have the experience of suffering on the other.
Though clearly related, the latter requires a great deal more brain power than former.
Those for whom cruelty is primarily a matter of ethical interest may choose to focus their
attention on psychological cruelty, though their normative conclusions should be
informed by an understanding of its evolutionary origins. On the other hand, those who
set themselves to explaining cruelty as a general phenomenon should understand part of
their task as showing how the extraordinary varieties of psychological cruelty (torture,
punishment, delayed gratification, negative reinforcement, child abuse, ridicule, sadism,
mortification, schadenfreude and reading philosophy) may have emerged from its
biological counterpart.
1
p. 211. I quote this definition from the abstract of the paper. Nell provides a slightly different definition
in the body of the paper, which drops the word “other” apparently in acknowledgment of masochism as a
form of cruelty.
2
p. 248
3
p. 837
4
p. 213
5
Francesca Happe on Autism