Is Evil Possible Without Intelligence?
And does that mean humans are inherently evil?
The answer to both questions is yes.
Think about it. What does it really mean to commit an act of evil? When a lion kills and eats a deer for dinner, is that evil? What about when a mother sloth bear eats her stillborn or weak newborn baby? Is that evil?
Well, yes. These two examples are classified as naturally evil acts, acts that do not result from the intentions or negligence of moral agents. Humans also need to eat and commit necessary evils to survive. In that sense, we are inherently evil.
I guess the real question is: is moral evil, the evil committed by morally aware beings, possible without intelligence? Is the truly horrific evil of this world, the ability to gruesomely commit mass genocide or wipe out entire animal species, possible without intelligence? Perhaps the answer can be found by looking at our closest intellectual peers.
Many studies suggest that dolphins are only second to us humans in intelligence. Using brain size as a means of measuring intelligence, dolphins come in second only to humans in brain-to-body size ratio. Dolphins, furthermore, excel in intelligence-based tests. They are one of the few mammals able to recognize themselves in a mirror and one of the few mammals able to comprehend symbols based communication with humans.
Yet, dolphins are colloquially known as “the rapists of the ocean.” In The Straight Dope: A Compendium of Human Knowledge by Cecil Adams, Adams reports that “Gangs of male dolphins may isolate a female, slap her around with their tails, and forcibly copulate with her for weeks.” Dolphins have, furthermore, baffled marine biologists when they were found to be the culprits behind the long-term mysterious brutal murders of harmless baby porpoises. Film taken of gangs of dolphins show them repeatedly ramming baby porpoises, tossing them in the water, and sending their bodies spinning violently enough to break their backs and shatter the soft tissue of their bodies. Porpoises are not a source of food for dolphins, don’t rival dolphins for territory or resources, and don’t antagonize them. This kind of unprompted, recreational killing is a feature ominously shared most obviously with humans and is seemingly a behavior of intelligent species.
Similarly, many studies have shown chimpanzees to continuously match our intellect. In the late 1900s, mankind was believed to be the only animal that systematically made tools, a stance that was directly challenged by Jane Goodall’s observation of chimpanzees in the wild. Chimps, a species that share up to 99% of our own DNA, were seen to strip leaves from a stem to make a tool capable of digging for termites. This brought about the famous line telegramme from Goodall’s colleague, Louis Leakey: “Now we must redefine tool, redefine Man, or accept chimpanzees as humans.”
Yet, after years of observation, the same Jane Goodall mourned the complete annihilation of on group of chimpanzees after witnessing a chimpanzee war. After some chimpanzees broke away from the main group, their family began to regard them as a rival clan and forsook any fond, familial remembrance with the ensuing war. Goodall redefined her understanding of chimpanzees when she said, “I’d no idea of the brutality they could show. War always seemed to me to be a purely human behaviour. I’ve come to accept that the dark, evil side of human nature is deeply embedded in our genes, inherited from our primate ancestors.”
By all means, these intelligent creatures are committing acts of evil, whether that be a natural or moral evil. But these evils make you wonder if there is a thought process driven by more than just instinct behind the scenes. One can look to nature to see that these kinds of puzzling evils are commonly perpetrated by the more intelligent animals, with the natural evils that are committed out of necessity falling easily to less intelligent species.
Is this kind of evil moral evil, then? Well, committing a morally evil act, rather than a naturally evil act, fundamentally comes down to whether the perpetrator is a moral agent, a being who has the ability to understand the difference between right and wrong. Did the dolphin act on the intention to kill the porpoises with an understanding of where the killing falls on a moral compass?
This is a hard thing to diagnose. Of course, one cannot simply look at the phenomena of unnecessary, cruel actions that potentially fall beyond the scope of natural evils, and conclude that these mammals are moral agents with the ability to discern right from wrong. However, given no other reason to explain why a dolphin would aggressively attack and kill another friendly species, one might hypothesize that dolphins have taken on the sport of killing baby porpoises. Furthermore, given a dolphin’s intelligence, perhaps dolphins understand their action on an advanced level, which would mean that they choose to kill baby porpoises over and over again with intentions that run deeper than the basic need to survive. This runs dangerously close to becoming a morally evil act, with dolphins understanding the harm that they are doing, the fact that it is not necessary to their survival, and intending to do it anyway.
Perhaps, the ability to commit moral evil lies on the same spectrum as intelligence: the more intelligent the species, the closer it gets to reaching the threshold of intelligence that enables the understanding of what one is doing, which lays at the foundation of being a moral agent.
We ourselves lack the understanding of what other animals of rivalry intelligence are capable of, and thus mistakenly concede that they must not have abilities that we do because they do not exactly compare to us. With this flawed thinking, the British obliterated the natives North Americans in the 16th century, the Russians exterminated the natives of Siberia in the 17th century, and the French wiped out the indigenous populations of Algeria in the 19th century. And if aliens were to ever visit us, we would probably kill them too.
However, Goodall herself proved our misguided belief wrong when she showed that chimpanzees were indeed capable of making tools, a skill once believed to only be capable by humans and the intelligence we possess. Who’s to say, then, that these dolphins, chimpanzees, and any visiting aliens are not capable of moral compasses?
Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card reveals the existentially regretful thoughts of an alien species who makes this very mistake of assuming the humans of Earth were unintelligent because humans did not think like them. Card writes, “We are like you… we thought we were the only thinking beings in the universe, until we met you, but never did we dream that thought could arise from the lonely animals who cannot dream each other’s dreams. How were we to know? We could live with you in peace. Believe us, believe us, believe us.”
True, the only thing we can be sure of is our own intelligence. There is no question that most of us share an understanding of right and wrong. Hence, the answer to the last question of whether moral evil is possible without intelligence is unknown. We don’t know if the intelligence of other species, even those that share 99% of our DNA is capable of moral discernments. But it would be both a mistake and wrong to assume ourselves the only capable beings on this planet. At the far end of the spectrum, with a high level of intelligence and a correspondingly high level of morality, we owe it to the life around us to do what is right.
So, yes, we humans all possess the ability to commit natural evils, which is unfortunate, but necessary to our survival. With our self proclaimed legal codes of conduct and religions to reinforce the notion that we also understand the difference between right and wrong, and are thus moral agents and capable of committing moral evils too. In this respect, we are all inherently evil. Go ahead, lament and deny and grieve this characteristic of humanity.
Look on the bright side though, this ability to commit moral evil is the burden of our intelligence, but so is our morality. We have the choice to use that second burden, the unique ability to discern right from wrong, and always choose right. We must always choose what’s right.
God knows we have caused enough evil.
Inspired by Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card.
