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Hello, and welcome to Humanities Matter, brought to you by Brill. I'm Lee Chung-Greffo, and this week we'll be looking at key issues in the field of humanities. We're talking today with Dr. Chris Ketchum, an independent researcher and author of Flowers and Honeybees, a study of morality in nature.
Dr. Ketchum, thanks so much for talking with us today. Thank you so much for putting this all together. So I'd like to start first off with sort of the thesis of your paper, which is, is morality solely a human creation, or can we find evidence of morality in nature?
Basic answer is the antecedent of morality can be found in life's existential propensity towards optimization. And what optimization is, is choosing the best among different options, considering current conditions, but also considering the capabilities of the creature we're talking about. For example, in the middle of a drought, the honeybee can fly down to the stream that's still flowing and get water. The plant cannot.
So we've got to optimize its own processes to be able to use more energy to find water through growing roots than perhaps using the bright sunlight for photosynthesis. So most creatures are constantly optimizing their decision rather than maximizing their decision. They're trying to do what's necessary in order to persist and thrive. I thought it was really interesting.
You write that plants are aware and they cognize and honeybees think, you know, for anyone who maybe has a collection of plants in their house right now, like succulents, you know, maybe you talk to them or give them kind of personalities and say, this is how they're feeling. But I wasn't aware that plants cognized. Can you just tell me, what does that mean? Are plants communicating with the bees on some very basic level?
Yeah, I think there are a couple of things to look at. There's no one easy answer. And when I look at the notion of cognition versus thinking, there is not a perfect answer for that. The idea of cognition, I believe, comes out of work done with artificial intelligence.
So what the idea is, is there's something different from what we call neurological thinking that perhaps artificial intelligence or even the plant can do. So let's kind of throw the evidence out there and see what we can come up with. They can't think because they have no neurons and let's give thinking to creatures that have neurons. They're all middle, meaning that there is no distal and like the honey bee has a brain or the human has a brain, they have no brain.
And they're also an aggregate of processes that communicate with each other. And this is a form of distributed intelligence rather than the close concentration. I think close second to the plant might be the octopus that has significant nerve ganglions all the way throughout his body. And it's not just centrally focused.
The processes in the plant are aware. They sense the world and they take action upon what is sensed. In other words, they're open to the world and they're so terrifically oriented to it. What I mean by centrifically oriented towards the world, they push out.
They push out. They push their roots down. They extend their branches up. They call to the honey bee with color, scent and shape to come visit me.
So they're like giant communicating billboards. You know, we see billboards all the time. And the flower sees these billboards and saying, hey, I'm open to business. Now what plants can also do is they can retain experiential knowledge for use in the future.
They can remember what one thing happened and do that there and they do the same thing later on. For example, when they've been injured by some kind of pathogen that can release appropriate pheromones to overcome that problem. But the difference is is that why they can remember things, they cannot speculate on things other than those that confront the plant at the moment. So they exhibit a kind of mindfulness and intentionality without having a mind.
That's kind of how I'm thinking about all of this through the various different pieces of evidence of existentiality of plants that's different from honey bees. What is very similar in some respects? So they have, as you said, this experiential knowledge. So, you know, they know perhaps that maybe is there a brighter color or they extend their roots in a certain way that that passes down a good gene, maybe to the next generation of plants.
But like you said, they don't have brains. So they can't make a moral judgment, right? No, they can't make a moral judgment. But I think where the morality comes in is the fact that they are, they are very much oriented towards the honey bee and vice versa.
They have co-evolved towards each other. In other words, there are three basic types of things that all creatures can use to adapt to changes in the world. And one, of course, is thinking which is or reasoning which can be done very quickly and it solves problems in the immediate vicinity. There's something else called epigenetics which is a fairly new science.
It's when genes can turn themselves on or off depending upon conditions in the environment. And when they do that, they can retain that information and keep that gene on for example against certain pathogens and even pass that down. And the third, and that's a fairly short-term situation. It may involve just one generation and they have involved multiple generations.
But then there's the big hammer and that's evolution itself. Well, you have mutation mutating things. But what's interesting about these two creatures is that they have evolved towards each other. So they've had to use behaviors in addition to genetics and epigenetics in order to come together.
In other words, instead of requiring a Machiavellian sovereign as Tom has said, might be necessary to get out of the state of nature, the other is the sovereign. And they look towards the other to focus on how they both can benefit from and exploit each other. I'm wondering if you can get into these three requirements for the emergence of morality in nature that Singer writes about. How does the honeybee and how flowers fit that bill?
Okay, we have three things that Singer says are antecedent to the development of morality. One is a social group. For example, right now the two of us are a social group and I'm driving down the highway. It's a kind of social group.
I go to the club. It's a social group. I'm not the family. It's a social group.
The poem is a social group. Second is restraint. In other words that there's restraint of action against the other. There's a consideration of the other.
And the third is the ability to judge. And I believe that both flowers and honeybees can judge. So let's look at what that kind of thing is. Their orientation to each other is asymmetrical.
As I mentioned, the flower is centrifugal. It moves outwards. It looks outwards towards the world that advertises outward. The honeybee is centripetal.
It looks down to the earth where the middle of the flower is. It looks to the flower and plant. It looks to the hive. So it's oriented.
So these two orientations converge even though it's symmetrical. They do communicate with each other. The honeybee, when it enters the flower, advertises through its vibrations or through how it walks across the flower itself or falls into the flower. That is a pollinator and not a predator.
And they both benefit each other and exploit each other. What I mean by that is the honeybee benefits from the pollen and the nectar that the flower produces. The flower benefits from the mobility of the honeybee to be able to go from its its flower to another flower and carry pollen with the honeybee to help pollinate the other flower. How do they exploit each other?
Well, the flower exploits the capability of the honeybee to fly and also the energy it takes to do so. And the honeybee exploits the flower or the energy that they use to produce the building blocks for what the honeybees each. There's a kind of a farmer's market or commerce here because it's exchange of value. When you think about it, the honeybee is exchanging its mobility and its energy to fly to the honeybee and fly to the flower and fly again to other flowers of the same species.
And the same thing that's happening is that for the tree, the tree that the honeybee is given in flower and nectar, that's being juxtaposed against the energy it requires to produce the nectar and pollen. And also it exchanges these goods for the flight capability of the honeybee to help pollinate its flowers. So I guess I got back to one of the first questions I wanted to ask you, which is you argue that evolution itself provides evidence that morality exists in nature, that life isn't inherently cruel because it offers creatures ways to optimize their existence. But when I think of the term evolution, I think survival of the fittest, which sounds like something rather cruel.
So how does optimization actually move creatures toward good or toward moral behavior? Well, I think that the thing that we have to understand is that optimizers tend to avoid unnecessary conflict. In other words, Hobbes's problem with the state of nature is solitary poor and nasty producing short, requiring a sovereign, I don't think is absolutely necessary in this context. Now, what also optimizers do, they work with the nature's parameters rather than against them.
In other words, they consider what is available to them in the situation. They consider the risk appetite of the creature. For example, some of the honeybee workers will roll up to be forgers. Others will be guardbeats.
Some of them won't need to lead the nest. The decisions they make are optimal according to their individual risk appetite. We're going to find the same thing in just about every other kind of social group. Wolf packs are going to be different from different wolf packs, for example.
Utilism requires two species to work towards each other, both in benefit and exploitation. So I'm seeing that the flower and honeybee neutralism, the other is the sovereign, not the Machiavellian prince. So I'm seeing in this particular environment, which I'm looking at as saying, here's an instance in nature where there is no real competition between the two species. They've grown towards each other, meaning that they find value in each other.
And this kind of the other is a sovereign, it's a very levenosian idea of responsibility to the other as being a primary, ethical, or moral process in humanity. So I'm interested after you wrapped up this study or any other creatures' groups that you would like to delve into and see if it supplies to them. After I read this, I was like, well, maybe humans aren't the most moral. I guess compared to sort of the relationship, that kind of symbiotic relationship that honeybees and flowers have.
One of the issues is we have to work through the problem of a common commodity competing for a common commodity in human relationships. That's the number one, I think, that makes it difficult for humans to become like the flower and honeybee mutualism. I think that's a difficult proposition that needs to be overcome. I think there are a lot of other mutualisms, a lot of other relationships that deserve study.
I only have done this one, but if you think about it, there are the ant colonies, for example, or another, in social species. Some of them cultivate aphids, for example, where they get a drink from, the aphids who's been sucking on the plant. So there's a lot of other creatures that we can look at for the possibility of the emergence of morality in different situations. Dr.
Chris Ketchum, he's author of Flowers and Honeybees, a study of morality in nature. Dr. Ketchum, thanks so much again for talking with us today. Thanks for talking with you.
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